Guild Wars 2: Choosing a Healer 

Time Stamps: 0:00 - Intro/The Role 1:45 - The Elementalist 3:28 - The Necromancer 6:00 - The Thief 7:35 - The Ranger 9:32 - The Engineer 11:10 - The Guardian 14:38 - The Revenant 18:36 - Outro

i've been pressing F to rez my fellow gamers throughout my time in gw2, so you know, i'm somewhat of a healer myself😏

I love your enthusiasm and presentation style - this has been the best (most useful and entertaining) GW2 heal video yet 🙂

This was a wildly needed video! Thank you for helping in making content, so I can share with my friends who have been struggling to find which classes to play.

I personally like the fact that quickness healers exist. It allows for more variety in builds and group compositions. I pretty much main alac dps renegade and my build wouldnt be very viable without quick healers.

It makes me happy to see more support/healer builds in GW2! Thank you for the excellent video. This makes me excited to try some more builds.

I must say that I love your content :) Healing is super fun in this game-so much so that I have a Druid, a Scourge, a Healbrand, and a Mechanist. Thank you for spotlighting and bringing justice to the support role ☺️

I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart, for this great guide, you have helped me to return to having the love that I had for this game with great feeling, I stopped playing it due to the loss of my older brother. but thanks to the fact that I love being support, I would like to have the love that I had for him again. Please keep making great content like this! Pura vida from Costa Rica!! ❤🥰

Loved watching the video, is a good start to learning the healers! Was disappointed I didn't see Heal Quick scrapper though xD gives quickness with gyros, insane condi cleanses, and insane heals with Med kit & elixer gun, not to mention the utility from the function gyro. Underrated xD. Heck even Heal Catalyst although both of these are probably underrated. Heal catalyst even more lol.

Great video as a new player I like the information that was given and the presentation of the info. My only critique would be maybe explaining what alacrity is/does that makes it so good.

ive been playing this auramancer support tempest build that this youtuber Vallun introduced a few weeks ago and its been one of my favorite builds to play rn. it kind of revitalized my love for the tempest. giving auras to allies while healing and buffing them too has been so satisfying. it was originally an sPvP build but ive been having so much fun using it in PvE and WvW.

Really good video! Helped me decide on which support/healer class to try next

A small note, healer tempest generally does not overload water (at least from what I've seen and played). You do switch to and from water a lot, but you only overload it in dire situations because you need to swap into it constantly to keep healing up. Overloading water locks you out of it and therefore from healing for too long. Instead you overload every other element and swap into water between each element to cast 1-2 heal skills and refresh the passive healing. Basically it goes fire, overload, water, air, overload, water, earth, overload, water, repeat. Overloading water is so dangerous since it takes way too long to gain access to water again and leaves you with only 2 abilities to heal allies with (heal skill and Rebound). It does really need a better way to give alacrity though because you have to fully complete a long channel for it right now. If it gets interrupted in any way, you're in for a rough bit without alacrity. I really hope they do something to fix that as it feels really bad to not be able to react to things as a healer.

Thanks for this, was considering getting back into GW2, this helped alot!

Amazing video! Just started watching your content and love what you are doing keep it up! Taking advantage of Halloween event and getting my alts to 80. I was thinking about making an Engi and now after this video! Im sold!

Definately worth to watch this. Got myself a druid and a mechanist but having issues figuring out which to run. Curse of being a healer/support main :D

I think Healbrand's tomes shine most in WvW. Tome 3 especially can be wasted in the wrong hands when stability is highlighted the most

Awesome vid been looking at more healer options! I love playing my druid tho!

Nice video. I don't typically play support and very rarely play healer, but I like having the knowledge of what specs are good at those roles so that I don't put the people playing them in untenable situations. I am a little surprised that you didn't mention Scrappers because, as far as I know, they are still good at heals and support. Thanks for the breakdown 😀

Definitely an insightful video as a returning player, thanks!

Thanks for this! Still early in my journey as a ranger but enjoying the game so far.

Awesome video. I leveled up a guardian to firebrand and I'm enjoying it a lot, the next one will probably be scourge.

@KROOF - what an amazing tutorial - congrats on this content !!

Amazing video, I'm not familiar with the game but you explain it well enough that I have an idea of what I'm getting myself into! I was eyeing out the Mesmer as a fun class to start with, so sad it doesn't really have a healing build... Oh well, by the time I reach end game maybe things will be different!

Awesome input and video ;)

Howdy! first time viewer and new sub. Great content and you have an excellent narrative voice. You should do audiobooks id listen for sure.

As someone who has mained support in every mmo i've played, as well as being new to the game. This was truly helpful. I thank you.

Great video, Kroof. Insane knowledge of healing/support in this game :) Exactly what I was looking for! Kash - Legends of Tyria

I love your voice. Thank you so much for this guide.

so whats alacrity ? what attributes you need ? what are the rings, talisman and passives ? what weapons ? switching ? how do you switch between targets ? pre or after heal ?

Yasssssss Love this guide! ❤

thank you for this video, I just came back to gw2 and have a lvl 80 ranger who I JUST spec to druid but wasnt really feeling it. However, you did just confirm that I do indeed..enjoy the Guardian hahah thank you again I'll finish leveling her

Hey Kroof. Great summation of support/heal specs that are available! Would you also happen to have sample build templates for each, that highlight their support and heal capabilities? Even if it's just standard open world builds. Those at least can be used as launching platforms for other game modes. There are places like metabattle, of course, but it's sometimes difficult to tell if those builds are kept up to date, as most of them have been there for a while. So even if you just put the "must have" traits and abilities if you want to be support/heals on a particular profession.

Who ever wrote the " patience and care " line into the Firebrand-Description either deserves Comedy Gold or jail because Liza Minnelli lies.

Great summary. I think your ratings could have been a bit more spread out, because I don't think that 5 of the 7 specs in this list should fall into the 8-10 rating category. Maybe having sub-ratings for specific things (healing / boons / utility / gameplay) would help with the ratings as well, as you can differentiate better. Scourge for example would get a medium/low rating for healing; low rating for boons, but by far the highest for utility (due to the rez capability) and then the overal rating will also be more organic. Good vid overal though :)

I am starting with the support role. I choosed firebrand with celestial gear. Loving it soo far!

Warrior has Weaboon now that heals well and mesmer can do it with the manta healer

Love this

My main heal is Heal Alac Tempest. However, Firebrand is insanely more versatile as I can Lego myself to every encounter, because I have plenty of access to aegis, resistance, stability and projectile block, as well as extra healing and cc. I have DEFAULT access to all of these things from my tomes and weapon skills but can slot in even more based on the encounter without any sacrifices. It's the most fun healer I've played yet because I can comfortably make meaningful choices. Frankly Firebrand should be the first choice for anyone looking to play an allround healer unless they are tied to their current spec.

Yay for Firebrand mains!! I actually think that the tome skills being similar is actually an advantage. With 15 new skills, you don't want to learn 15 totally different things. With the skills being similar, you kinda only need to learn 5 new skills

I’m more into PVP but I believe Vindicators do get quickness. It’s through the st victor offensive trait line (red ability bar F3, forget the name atm). It’s an AOE that damages foes, granting more quickness and fury for each one hit.

I disagree that healing specs should have alac and not quickness. In my opinion, a support spec should have high-permanent might, fury, swiftness and protection uptime with dips into vigour, resolution, resistance and aegis. A heal spec should have as much of that as possible, combined with healing and alac OR quickness. I do miss the old chronotank build with limited, localised healing (wells) but had quickness AND alacrity permanently, and i do chafe at tempests having to choose to optimise healing at the expense of alacrity. I do love my healscourge but it will never be a solo healer as long as players stand in red aoe's :)

I'm still new to firebrand but I've been loving it. I do great solo, then swap my gear to heal and vomit buffs during world bosses and meta events.

Hey Kroof, amazing video! But I have to mention that there is a very powerful Willbender build that provides 100% alacrity uptime and heals. :)

good video!

I'm currently into my healing vin. Tree Song is OP with 3 sec cooldown, cleanses 5 condis and heal for each condi removed. Apart from that, vin removes 1 condi after dodge roll, and its dodge roll heals + barrier. Gives vigor and protection(after cleansing) after every dodge. Gain endurance for every condi removed

Great video! I was kinda hoping you would compare them in all game modes (PvE, PvP and WvW) because I think the viability of each class changes a bit with each game mode but just PvE is fine too.

I have a support build on my chrono he has really high crit and the sigil to heal on crit, and he has the healing Wells ability - really Been helping the squishies in Lab farm :)

I liked it that the healer class that needs Alac is given Quickness instead and vice versa so that it will not be OP and make more diversed.

Hiiii!! As a new player, I want to both enjoy the class but also start out on a class that can play the healer/support role (and be good for duos). I've been looking for videos and yours pops up and I'm so happy I found it! Am worried though because newer videos say that some of these classes right now, like the scourge Necro, aren't very good healers and I was about to choose that one as my first class.. Would you mind doing an updated video some time? Orrr can you tell me which ones are good and bad right now? I don't want to level a character and be told that I have to play like dps or something because my class sucks at support. Tempest seems like so much fun from what I've seen, but a lot of people say it's the most complex and I'm not sure if I should pick that up as a first class/healer to play when I don't even know the very basics of the game. xD Thank you for your videos though! I like to research before I play a game and your videos are helping me out so much in wanting to try out gw!

would be nice if mantra man mesmer healer would be a viable option :D awesome vid as always!

When I was in the lab the other day I had arcdps on and saw the most kickass heals from a berserk warrior. I have no idea how they managed it

Oh honey. I love this video! But you forgott warrior :C I always play a basic nurse warrior with warhorn and shouts. And now with the changes to banners, that give quickness now, I can happly heal in fractals. While that might not be some uber meta build, it still works great! :D But it's fine. Just thought I might mention that

I love firebrand over mechanic . Firebrand is a mini tank itself. Lots of protection boons.

Nice Guide! Thx! A little bit looking for a second support class for raids. But your part for HAM miss a little bit of the range from the HAM. Your lose a lot of playrange because you are not use elixir kit and elite kit. You lose 2 healing-fields ( waterfield and lightfield ) and a lot of combo - combinations and movement ( elixir skill 4 ) and condi remove ( elixir skill 3 ). HAM has a great movement and boon output, maybe a little bit more difficult to play perfect. But for me a 11/10 :)

You could skip all the other specs and just say HFB :) It's the more 'complete' boon/healing giver, to the point it's broken (especially in fractals). Not mentioning you could only play Guardian (core/specs) for *any* role (pdps, cdps, hfb, qfb), for *any* content, and be pretty good at it, something most classes can't really do..

I main heal druid. Made a hfb yesterday its like you said kinda boring with the animations but kinda fun to tank with

Always wanted a mesmer healer. Clones would just target heal where you apply boons/debuffs

Can you PLEASE make an updated version now that more classes have updated specializations? Would love to hear your thoughts this video was amazing but I know they added a lot!

As I am mostly playing a tempest, if I play a healer, here are some thoughts on your take: First of all, a great overview! Also the ideas for a different apllication of alacrity are pretty neat, I like them. Now, I have to be a bit rougher on the details: Tempest does NOT provide its healing through excessive use of the water attunement, nor the water overload. You never ever press that overload, except for VERY sticky situations or very well planned strategies. What you actually do ist keep up boons by swapping through the attunements, and ever so often dip back into water to refresh the ""soothing mists" buff on your subgroup. Together with your heal shout and the water signet, as well as the water elite elemental (if needed at all), this provides more than enough healing to soloheal every encounter in the game. Having the grandmaster traits "compete" (auraheal vs alacrity) may seem unfortunate at first, but the healing a tempest provided before the patch was simply insane, and even now it is still one of the best, if not the best (when playing frostbow) healer (looking at raw healing capabilities) in the game.

I'm surprised you didnt do a Chronomancer Heal build review

support mech is just so much fun, I never enjoyed support specs before I played Mech. Although I don’t enjoy power mech

the patience part. Chapter 3: Valiant Bulwark, you can spend all your chapters in this skill and that need patience. it can change various boss/world boss fight out come a lot.

You have a beautiful voice. Like voice actor quality.

u sound like lorelady in smite but this helpful for me as a new player

As someone trying to learn supports/healer, I loved this! I'm learning quick heal brand, but I love the idea of using mace as opposed to the meta axe.

What I love about GW2 healing is the absence of frames healing for almost all builds like in more traditionnal mmo. It feels like I'm playing a moba or overwatch

No love for heal scrapper 😟. Lol I get it I know that's a WvW thing

I absolutely love playing druid with spirits however you don't need all the bar full of spirits for full alac. 3 spirits are enough. I use 4 spirits including the elite but if I know it's gonna be a though one I take search and rescue with me so my pet can res a downed ally while I keep in healing.

Objective, concise, informed guide to choosing a healer in Gw2! I agree with your evaluations of the current support meta

I main vindicator healer and never have non poblem keeping the team yes it lack the boon suport but healing wise its unstoppable

where can i find the druids build you used? i really want to try it :D

Is there a video that explains skills vs attributes vs spells vs boons vs talents... etc , like I'm so confused right now ... in gw 1 you just get a crap ton of skills and you choose which one you want for the game play you want

I agree that the way some professions aply the boons need a change to be more fluid. The thing I disagree about is that specs that give quickkness should give alac instead. IMO there should be more even split and more healers should give quickess so there is space for both quickness dps and alac dps in the party. I think heal scrapper is a viable choice that you skipped and helps with evening out this split.

I wish you had described what these boons are. I know I can look it up but if so many of your scores depend on the existance of Alacrity over Quickness, it would be nice to know what both of those are.

Thematically I enjoy chrono, scourge, druid, tempest, but all of them are either boring to play( druid's spirits, tempest overloads), or dont provide key boons and strong burst healing (chrono, scourge). It's such a bummer :(

I dont know if anyone has even said this.. but when Virtuoso came out and was teased I thought that it was going to be a support spec. Like a bard of some sort. Using a shortbow or longbow that looks like a harp and instead of their f1-4 doing some kind of dmg it would instead play a song that did different types of healing and buffs. They could have access to facets like herald, but you dont just blow ur load and release them instantly like you do now. It would be more methodical. Not rly sure what ANET was thinking by adding more DPS specs when there was already 2, just like they did to warrior.... I thought warrior would have some kinda RAGEY MONK spec that did boons (support DPS) of some sort. Give em double focus weapons and they just punch the hell out of their enemies, like a brawler. You could even make it have an option to be tanky. But all this sounds like FUN and we know FUN isnt allowed in MMOs anymore.

Wait, I could swear there was at least some Warrior build focused around healing. Haven't played for that long (or played Warrior at all), but I thought the Banners were to buff AND heal. Guess I was bamboozled.

Heal scrapper is missing, but in general it's the same awful design as current herald in terms of boon application, when you need to spam your gyros to maintain quickness, while firebrand does it much better. Though the healing part is quite the same situational easy to use as the heal mechanist, but without passive shield application. The strong side of heal scrapper against heal mechanist is definitely extra access to cleansing and to fields with scrapper gyros. And they can revive up to 5 people (but mostly function gyro used to maintain quickness, so it's quite difficult to get it ready when needed) In general, when it's up to fill heal quick slot - I'd rather go on heal firebrand than suffer on scrapper, unless it will be better for certain mechanics.

Vindicator feels like it was designed to fill a "flex" role that the overarching game design unfortunately doesn't really accommodate, where they would be a DPS most of the time but swap to healing when the squad is in danger, as they get a not insignificant boost to healing output when low due to the free Empire Divided trait. Due to a variety of factors both in their kit and in the structure of endgame content it really just...doesn't work for them.

With the recent changes to elementalist and tempest I would move it to atleast to 9 because: Lucid Singularity: This trait now causes overloads to pulse alacrity while channeling in addition to granting alacrity when channeling is completed. The total amount of alacrity granted remains the same. Water Blast: This skill can now target allies. Geyser: Increased heal attribute scaling from 1.0 to 1.25 in PvP and WvW. Frozen Ground: This skill now grants frost aura to allies in the area when the field is created. Healing Rain: This skill now heals allies for each condition removed. Increased conditions removed per pulse from 1 to 2 in PvE only. Recent patch did elementalist good.

I love the video but it seems strange you neglected to mention heal scrapper. I know heal mech is all the rage but they exist, too!

I agree with most of your criticism on this video, however, I don't agree that all healers should only give alacrity. If they did, then offensive support builds that give alac would never be wanted in squads. Also, um, what happened with Heal Scrapper?? Totally a viable and good healing spec AND gives quickness!

Oh I guess I can main my mechanist as my healer then. I hated leveling engineer so I boosted it and got a full celestial armor set with runes and sit-ups which was cool. Didn’t have to farm verdant brink like I did on my weaver. Not that that was so bad but it was rather expensive getting accessories and rings and what not. And I still don’t have digits and runes on my weaver yet. Not even sure how to go about doing that.

I wish I could figure out if I'm just bad at HAM or if people just stand in stuff they shouldn't be. Maybe both. It's probably both.

"patience and care WHERE???" lmaoooo

What song was playing during the Ranger (Druid) part?

Hey, i'm new to the game and i really like play healer, currently i'm playing Specter. Who is the best healer for beginner players do the open world PVE and do support in Raids and Dungeons?

Honestly my main struggle is that firebrand seems objectively better than tempest (or most other support/healers, for that matter, at least to the general concensus of players) but it's just soooo boring... and I don't even know why - plate armor, shields, healing, support, utility, it's literally right up my alley, but I don't enjoy it...

Would love to hear what scourge is like now it can do alacrity

Heal/quick builds exist to pair with alac/dps builds. A healbrand would be paired with an alac mirage for example which is a spec that can't heal. So if they made all healers alac providers then support dps builds like alac mirage would never see any play in group content. For that reason I'm very surprised Heal Scrapper isn't mentioned. Great heals with med kit just like mechanist, res people with function gyro just like scourge, aoe mobile stealth field to skip trash in fractals, bulwark gyro letting you tank for your team and last but not least perma quickness and superspeed. It's a solid healer with great utility and any heal mechanist should have that build on hand in case their support dps is an alac provider like mirage, renegade, willbender, mechanist, or specter.

I always thought the Chronomancer was a 5/10 healer with the wells and Alacrity or Quickness.

So is this all still true a year later, especially with the new patch? I'm thinking of making a Druid.

Have to disagree on the Fireband, the ability of STAB alone is a huge benefit. Healer is my main in Fractals and WvW. The Low intensity Healbrand is pretty good. I found Shout warrior very good in WvW the healing, condi removal along with Hammer for crowd control

Would a weaver be considered a healer if you’re good at it? Or is weaver more of a selfish heal class? I haven’t done any group content yet so I’m not sure.

Ayo where shouts heal gang at?

Good video have to say , but notice one problem with healers or overall problem . And , its Alacrity . This boon have to be removed ...

vindicator decent healing? it has best in all game modes, sustained and burst 😅

Great video ! I'm a BDSM enjoyer [ *cue mukluk's grunts ] aka tank.

I would have to disagree with you about mesmers lacking healing elites. Chronomancers, with All's Well That Ends Well and Stretched Time, can work... heh, well, as healers, as All's Well gives all chrono wells a bit of healing(though even at lvl 80 it's not all that much), and Stretched Time provides the much-desired alacrity, meaning that you can spam your wells on enemies and have your melee-focused allies pick up alacrity and a bit of healing, easily fitting as a support healer. Add in Restorative Mantras, Restorative Illusions(which heals allies through Healing Prism) and Illusionary Inspiration from the core Inspiration spec and you can have a chrono mesmer as a decent healer that also provides your group with alacrity. And as a bonus, Stretched Time also gives Tides of Time shield skill the ability to give alacrity, though without healing. Of course, chrono can only heal that way on land, as both specter and chronomancer wells do not function underwater(unlike necro wells and scrapper gyros that do), which is the only downside to them.