Healing Seed discussion...

It is amazing what a good warrior can do for a team, what is actually more important is the team behind the warrior. A few guildies and I were very lucky to get a pug in Raisu Palace the other day who, without even discussing it beforehand, knew exactly how to manage aggro. Our guildie warrior went in and got agro, all the casters stayed just at bubble range for targetting enemies. Masters in Raisu in 15 minutes.

Usually your best warriors and support players are ones who have been part of a team in FoW, UW or the elite missions as they know the true importance of proper agro mgmt.

Even if you don't have the greatest warrior, give seed a chance, as I said above, you will almost always find a use for it (when Danika decides she is a tank)

Cool! Ill gladly give it a shot.

BTW, I'd done FoW/UW and the Elites with almost all my lvl 20 classes

Warrior/Necro/Monk/Mesmer I haven't brought my Ritualist there but she's been to the Deep/Warrens

EVEN in situations like that I still end up seeing tanks run off, trying to kill everything themselves instead of waiting for a team, then turn to the team and go "Noob Monk, why are you not healing". Yet the person is half a screen away and me and the other monk is there trying to heal the rest of the group who are actually doing well.

Maybe I just don't have good luck with Warriors... but honestly most of them just feel that its all about killing and not tanking/controlling aggro. My favorite response is "Enemies can't attack if they are dead, why do I need to tank". Classic.

Pointless to argue as well.... they know everything, and of course me and a few select other people don't know crap. Blah!

Anyways ill definitely give it a try... Maybe Ill just give it a whirl on some henches for kicks. Hench > Pugs anyways Seriously I can do pretty much any mission in either game without a pug. I prefer to have one guildy to go with me, so there are 2 controlled players and the rest just henches. We did THK a week or so like this (me and a guildy + henches). I was Monk, he was Necro and no one even died. Not even stupid henches. Just goes to show...

There are certainly uses for the skill, but I'm not a big fan of it for general PvE. It's vulnerable to enchant stripping, and if enchant stripping is not an issue then bonding would be more effective. The AoE healing bonus is irrelevant in most situations because players are usually not "adjacent" to the one holding aggro. If aggro is out of control and everyone is getting hit, Heal Party is more effective for dealing with group-wide pressure.

Even if you have a dedicated tank than can hold aggro, he should be using skills to mitigate damage and therefore healing 25hp per hit is probably overkill (not always, but in many cases it is). If he has all the aggro, then you don't have to worry about healing anyone else and all your energy can go toward his welfare; if agrro breaks, a monk with spam heals and Heal Party will be better equipped for the situation than one with HH and/or Seed. And let's not forget that Seed foregoes the benefit of Divine Favor, unlike spam heals.

Again, I'm not saying Seed is a bad skill. I just don't think it's flexible enough to find a permanent spot on my skillbar. In a very organized PvE situation where the tank will be under serious fire, HH/Seed is a good combination; in my experience, you can't generally count on this for missions/quests especially in a PUG. HH and Seed become inferior in any situation where multiple players are taking damage, and those are the circumstances I try to plan for when I monk.

Seed is useful in PvE - either for putting on whoever is going to get the first bit of aggro from a mob in Prophecies, or for putting on a Ghostly Hero about to move in to capture an altar.

In Factions, it's kinda blah because it feels like every mob blows up enchantments, so precast Seeds don't do much. In PvP, it is a skill that responds to heavy damage on a single target with a two second cast time. the effect is strong, but the cast time makes it marginal.

Peace,
-CxE

For pve i occasionally use a build based around healing seed, 20% enchantment staffs and glyph of renewal with something like essence bond for energy management. Seed can stay up permanently if it isn't stripped.

Healing Seed + Healing Hands = PVE ownage.

Any other questions?

I think that the money maker of seeed is it's the closest thing healing has to damage reduction, and not red bars go up. Seed a target, and you're negating a lot of damage.

not sold on healing seed. In the same time it recharges I can put vig spirit on several people and that lasts 36 secs with my enchant mod.

If im not doing rotscale (which means enchants are bad) I have Healing seed in my build 95% of the time.

As other people have pointed out if there is enchant strips cover it ( vigorous spirit is nice for this,since if it gets stripped but it recharges fast enough to be reapplied if needed)Or dont/wait to use it.

In Fow this skills shows itself to be very nice,ill give 2 examples.
a)When i go to Fow with a group of aroudn 4/5 guildies one of my guildies is always the main tank, he knows very well how to aggro and hold his ground,the problem is that we have to stay in the back so the aggro goes good, that includes me, the monk.
It has sometimes happend that he runs in and either hes in a very litttle bit too far or im a very little bit too back,so when i run in to throw some healing on him i might be too late,just by a milisecond or something,sucks.
When i throw healing seed on him i dont have to worry about him dieying while im running towards him to throw healing on him,so this is one example where its nice,another is of course simply that if he doesnt get hit so hard i dont have to heal him for the time that seed lasts.

b)Fow example again,i was the main tank this time,and it happend that almost everyone died ( ele inpatient :P) only me as tank and a monk was alive.I was getting hit by 5/6 enemies and needed healing every now and then , monk heals me but after getting my hp to 100% he throws seed on me and goes to res, during this whole time i did not need healing at all so the monk repeated this cycle untill someone else could res.If it wasnt for seed i would think that the monk would have keept healing me then he would run out of energy eventually and i would die then after me he would die, and game over.

And yes do try the skill the recharge isnt that bad cause either the fight would be over or you would be doing other heals,its a helper(huge one) its not a skill to be a main,abotu the energy, i use this skill in my build, all other healing skills are 5 energy, so maybe something along those lines would be helpfull for you.

Hope i helped i know long post but iim sorry i get carried away :P

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Honestly the only reason it was ever considered any good is because there was really nothing better in the healing line at the time. With the new expansion who knows. The 2 second cast time really kills it imo.

The 2 second cast time doesn't really kill it in PVE, as you are suppose to pre-cast it before the tank goes in.

I find seed very useful for the elite missions and endgame areas such as uw/fow where the monsters can hit very, very hard. It's good in pugs where you really don't know what you're going to get in terms of player behavior, skill usage and skill level. In uw, if you have a strength based tank that wants to tank the aaxtes, throw prot spirit then healing seed on him while you regen your energy or heal other party members.

the thing about pve is that mobs will generally go for either the lowest HP (via major/sup runes or DP) or the lowest armor players. So a majority of them will tend to start attacking the same player. Combine that with the fact that many pug eles, necros, and monks think they can stand there and take on 3 enemy warriors while being spiked by 2 enemy eles, and you've got a perfect situation for healing seed + prot spirit.

You can fire off the 2 skills (or just healing seed if the damage isn't to high per hit), and not have to worry about the player for 10+ seconds while you get back to healing the other party members with your 5e heals. That's 10 seconds you can devote to taking care of the rest of the party, whereas imagine in the same situation with a tanking caster, you had to constantly heal the damage the caster was tanking to keep them alive. I've had high DP casters who have been a complete drain on my energy and skills at the expense of the rest of the team, some get hit so hard I can't even recharge my heals fast enough to keep them alive.

But where are my priorities you say? Well, of course there are certain players who will get heal precedence (the other monk for example if he's not trying to tank..), the warrior who may be holding off the other 50% of aggro, or the high damage dealing ele or ranger who is actually a good player. But part of the reason for keeping even a bad tanking caster alive is that you know the s hit is going to hit the fan if that caster dies and the other 50% of the enemy he's got aggro'd kills him, gets loose and starts attacking all the other squishies including you. Focused healing on one player you know is taking damage is much easier and less energy draining that it is spot healing everyone who's running around in circles, especially if you carry damage mitigating skills like seed, prot spirit or Rof.
Also, ever tried casting meteor showers, fireballs, or spiteful spirit/mark of pain/etc on monsters chasing players around? Doesn't work.

As mentioned already, healing seed is also useful when you either need some time to regen energy or cast rebirth (say, then 5 or 6/8 of the part is dead and your warrior can't enough any damage - eg. against smites)

Casting healing seed takes some thought, and foresight about what might happen in the next minute. It's easier once you start getting acquainted w/ the behavior of your party as well - eg. that's the tanking monk w/ PS but very lousy self heals, the rit that runs from everything, or the one warrior that stands back and waits for the other warrior to rush in first. There will be some warriors or eles you will 99% of the time not want to cast it on because of how they behave when under attack. On the other hand there are always the ones who think they've just got to finish casting that 4 sec meteor shower while under migraine just to destroy the warriors wailing on him.

One trick I sometimes use is to cast it on a backline caster near me who may be under attack from several ranged sources, I'll throw seed on them and them run next to them for some adjacent self healing. Just make sure those ranged mobs aren't aoe users as well!

But other than that, I don't depend or count on the beneficial adjacent healing, because as stated before, generally only idiots will stand in a tight group while attacking - although it's amazing how many casters will just let the game's algorithm auto position them when getting in range.