Flame Throwing

Here's one of the questions posed in the public BWE Investigation document I made last week:

What is the best healing ability?

I don't think I can really answer that as all three do slightly different things. But we can talk about when it's best to use each ability and why.

The skills in question are:

Elixir H

• 25s CD
• Heals and randomly grants Swiftness, Protection, or Regeneration
• Toolbelt skill is a ground targeted skill that just does the random part of Elixir H: 30s CD

Healing Turret

• 20s CD, heals when you drop it, continually applies Regeneration
• Toolbelt Skill: drops or explodes the turret
• Cleansing Burst When the turret is active, you get Cleansing Burst that heals and removes all conditions

Med Kit

• Drop Bandage x 3: 12s CD, heals a little when you or an ally step on it
• Drop antidote, which removes conditions
• Drop Stimulant which gives you fury and swiftness
• Toolbelt Skill:Bandage Self, 20s CD, heals yourself

So which one should we use when?

First things first, we need numbers. Tooltips are great, but actual in game numbers are better. Here's a table of rough average numbers from my healing dummies. I'm just looking at actual heals right now.

For Guild Wars 2 I am dubbing sHPS meaning self heal per second because each class skills which just heal themselves and heals for their group.

With these numbers we can calculate an optimum sHPS and a worst case sHPS. For optimum sHPS I'm assuming you are a robot and can hit all the skills right on cooldown every time.

Elixir H

Elixir H has a 33% chance to proc Regeneration, as does Toss Elixir H. Regeneration lasts for 10 seconds.

Optimal: (5600 + 2 * (130 * 10)/3) / 25 = 258 sHPS

Suboptimal (No procs, you unlucky rabbit)

5600 / 25 = 224 sHPS

Healing Turret

We run this over 60 seconds because of the cleansing burst cooldown. You have to pick up the healing turret immediately though to trigger the cooldown, so you only get 8 seconds of regeneration per drop.

Optimal

(5000 * 3 + 3 * (130*8) + 1300) / 60 = 323 sHPS

Suboptimal

This is tough to call suboptimal. I'm going to omit Cleansing Burst since it has a smaller radius than the Turret and therefore gives you no visual indication you are in range

(5000 + 130*8) / 20 = 302 sHPS

Med Kit

This is where the robot really comes in. We're assuming he can drop a bandage on cooldown and heal himself with it. I'm using 60 seconds here as well.

Optimal (3 * 5000 + 5 * 1050 * 3) / 60 = 512 sHPS

Suboptimal

For this I'm assuming you managed to get one of your bandages out of twelve (which is bad considering if you drop one while running you get it).

(3 * 5000 + 1050 * 1) / 60 = 267 sHPS

Also, just using Bandage Self alone yields 250 sHPS

Surprised? I was.

Non Quantifiables

Next let's talk about the non numerical pros and cons of each. Each skill requires a different level of babysitting and comes with its own pros and cons.

Elixir H can be used anywhere and on the run. From the math we can see it has the lowest heal potential, but is also probably the easiest to use. On the bad side, random procs are hard, especially in PvP where the fights are likely not long enough to take the randomness out.

Healing Turret is sort of a drop it and forget it, however the strange cooldown forces you to keep an eye on it and decide early on if you want your big heal recharging or you want regeneration.

Keep in mind, if you decide to leave regen up for your allies, your sHPS drops to 235 over 60 seconds.

The other obvious con is the lack of mobility. To keep your regeneration up you have a 480 unit(?) radius.

Another bonus however is your 60s CD condition removal.

Med Kit puts up some huge numbers but at a cost. It's hard to use and you have to swap into a kit to do it. However, you get a condition removal and a non-random swiftness and fury buff which you can drop while running and get it (I've tested this a lot)

What really makes the Med Kit shine though is the toolbelt skill. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets nerfed. It has better healing than Elixir H and is the same as the Healing Turret, but doesn't require any weird cooldown management.

Summary

I'll replay these numbers at launch, but right now it looks like taking the time to master the Med Kit is the way to go. As long as group heal is not your focus, it's going to give you the best healing for your selfish little Asura brain.