Is it possible to do a healer ?

[Romanreaders]

Hey guys, sorry lol, never played this game. Played a lot with WoW and FFXIV. Can we do a healer in this one ? If yes, count me in!

Thx

[kennyljs]

I have a heal Necromancer. but just be aware, that your character have their own heal skill. In Open World, you rarely need a healer. But in Raids, sometimes it's either kill it faster or have healers designated.

[Giggle/Sinbad]

Like the above answers but it is also true is some content healing others is kind of moot, while other types of content its very important to have (in most team comps).

If your background is games like WoW dung/raiding as a healer then fractal content is right up your alley!

Do keep in mind when being a healer that you should still be contributing to damage

[Livy]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย miLes:

As a healer, you want to give either Quickness (increases attack/cast speed) or Alacrity (reduces skill cooldown) to your squad members.

Quick healers are:
1. The meta, Heal Firebrand (or a hybrid celestial Firebrand that does both dps and heals, only for experienced players) (Guardian)
2. Heal Scrapper (Engineer)
3. Heal Herald (Revenant)

Alacrity healers are:
1. Heal Tempest (Elementalist)
2. Heal Renegade (Revenant)
3. Heal Specter (Thief)
4. Heal Druid, the original healer spec (Ranger)
5. The other meta, Heal Mechanist (Engineer)

Only mesmers and warriors can't do dedicated heal roles. While they do have access to healer talents/traits, they're not as efficient as the ones listed above.

Scourge support (Necromancer) is an outlier in which that instead of dedicated heals, they provide barriers (temporary HP added onto the base HP) as well as the best resurrect skills. They are the known as the "carrys" since they can often save a raid run from a wipe.

What this guy said.

[Soolcheg]

Ranger, Necromancer, Warrior, Thief. Guardian, Elementalist and Engineer have a Healler builds

[Tomkatt]

You can sort of do a healer, but the trinity (tank/heal/DPS) doesn't really exist in GW2. The equivalent of healer in GW2 still does damage, and generally builds are split support/damage, and then damage type is split into two camps, conditions and power.

Support builds sacrifice *some* damage to be able to buff, heal, grant shields, alacrity, etc., but everyone still does DPS to varying degrees, it's more a question of what else they do.

Self healing is a big thing. Every class has a dedicated self heal button, and even the most damage oriented characters will use it. For example, my Warrior Spellbreaker is using a trait line that passively heals him by doing small heals anytime he receives might buff, and anytime he also grants might to allies. In groups this is huge, because the same traits grant might to himself and allies whenever he crits, and under other circumstances, so he's always max might stacking in group fights, self-healing and sustaining without needing to think hard about it, and his shouts can also do a small bit of healing to nearby allies.

Shouts buff or mitigate, and warriors do them regularly. Shake it off can remove debuffs like daze or knockdown as well as conditions like bleed or burning, and then one like "For great Justice" grants might and crit, and the shouts are shared to group.

[Drake]

Yeah it's more appropriate to talk about support instead of healing and some support do healing, but that's not the core part of the position. Applying buffs is as important, even more important in some situations.
People remember banner warriors, that were a core part of most parties, they did dps and support (but not healing).

[Tomkatt]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Drake:

Yeah it's more appropriate to talk about support instead of healing and some support do healing, but that's not the core part of the position. Applying buffs is as important, even more important in some situations.
People remember banner warriors, that were a core part of most parties, they did dps and support (but not healing).

This. Plus, there is damage in this game you literally CANNOT heal through. Support comes in then, with things like Aegis (shield negate damage), blind (enemy attack misses), and things like resolution which decrease incoming damage. Also just not standing in stuff, as big attacks get telegraphed, and some will straight up one-shot you if you don't dodge or counter with the above mitigations. It's not a game like WoW where your tank stands in place and holds the enemy while everyone else heals or pew-pews.

Speaking of, tanking doesn't really exist either. It does to an extent, as most enemies will go straight for the player with the highest toughness rating, even if it's by one point (everyone at base has 1000 toughness, 1001 is literally enough to tank if everyone else is in berserker gear), but many boss enemies will either intermittently retarget regardless of toughness, or will just have AOE strikes that hit everyone around them if not mitigated.

Combat in this game is a lot more "active" than in other MMOs, it's not just following a rotation all the time. You have an active dodge button, an endurance meter tied to that, active evasion and damage mitigation skills, etc. Some full send DPS builds work, but most of the time you're going to be including active mitigation skills and traits because dead DPS doesn't DPS. There's a lot less meter watching in this game.

[SinisterSlay]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Tomkatt:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Drake:

Yeah it's more appropriate to talk about support instead of healing and some support do healing, but that's not the core part of the position. Applying buffs is as important, even more important in some situations.
People remember banner warriors, that were a core part of most parties, they did dps and support (but not healing).

This. Plus, there is damage in this game you literally CANNOT heal through. Support comes in then, with things like Aegis (shield negate damage), blind (enemy attack misses), and things like resolution which decrease incoming damage. Also just not standing in stuff, as big attacks get telegraphed, and some will straight up one-shot you if you don't dodge or counter with the above mitigations. It's not a game like WoW where your tank stands in place and holds the enemy while everyone else heals or pew-pews.

Speaking of, tanking doesn't really exist either. It does to an extent, as most enemies will go straight for the player with the highest toughness rating, even if it's by one point (everyone at base has 1000 toughness, 1001 is literally enough to tank if everyone else is in berserker gear), but many boss enemies will either intermittently retarget regardless of toughness, or will just have AOE strikes that hit everyone around them if not mitigated.

Combat in this game is a lot more "active" than in other MMOs, it's not just following a rotation all the time. You have an active dodge button, an endurance meter tied to that, active evasion and damage mitigation skills, etc. Some full send DPS builds work, but most of the time you're going to be including active mitigation skills and traits because dead DPS doesn't DPS. There's a lot less meter watching in this game.

Supports have to not let the DPS die so they can focus on their rotation.

[Livy]

So healing is kinda like FFXIV, where yes you have picked a role of healer but you are still expected to contribute with damage (and buffs/debuffs in this case).

[Drake]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย MrFox1231:

So healing is kinda like FFXIV, where yes you have picked a role of healer but you are still expected to contribute with damage (and buffs/debuffs in this case).

Yes, except it's very specific. Since all buffs are normalized in GW2 and multiple classes have access to them, people are going to ask you spam specific buffs. Like one support will stack alacrity, power, fury, the other might do quickness, stability, protection, resistance. A "tank" (tanks are in the same boat, they don't just handle the boss, they have to do dps and support too) might take care of aegis (which blocks the next attack on the group). So you're not just "a" support, you really have a specific job in that party.

But he most important part is that this is not a fixed party composition. Not all instances need a tank for example, in some it's actually the opposite, you don't want a tank there. The composition really depends on what content you do.

Building is GW2 is more fuild than in other mmos.

[Pinkspring]

Yes. Healers arnt required for most content, but they are for high level ones, and a full healer build is possible.

More often then not you'l be swapping between healing and pewpew, though.

[GS Killerkram]

Straight up healer for some game modes is a thing but guild wars builds more support classes that do more than healing. You can boost player stats with buffs, revives and healing on builds. High performance raids, instances and pvp benefit from dedicated support classes as it makes it hard for your team to die. Even in open world giant events its nice when support players show up, I can definitely notice their presence as all my abilities suddenly get a lot better.

[5$ Lewdboxes]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย merio:

warrior healer is good meme. but strong!!

I have vague memories playing a 'Schreiler'. Healing with shouts.
According to my memories it was somewhat effective and much more funny.

edit:
Asked my friend who's still playing. Apparently shout healer works better now.

[Ammo]

heal scourge, where we revive fallen ally instead of healing. failproof build perfect for noob and learning player in a team.

[uri_nrv]

Helaers are needed but only in end game content. The way you play healer here is different, there is no targeting healing/buff (except specter but is not good enough), you share boons and healing over an area or party members, you have HoT and Burst healing, even shields. Boons are very important here but you play maintain uptime (100%) rather than cast when needed, but some boons are cast when needed like aegis (block an attack) or Stability (prevent CC).

I used to play healer in every game, here is another thing, I enjoyed it too, but in another way, the good thing about GW2 is the flexibility of classes, and some classes are way more flexible than others.