Tips for Healing

[Blastyswa]

I've been playing a healer quite a bit for years now, and decided I'd post some of my tips and insights. I'll try and separate this out into several titles, that way it's easy to tell different sections apart.

[Blastyswa]

There's a big difference in effectiveness between a caster build who can heal others and a primary healer. For example, I have a 17/3 druid/fighter that is a dedicated healer. What exactly does that mean? Well, for one the build has over 1000 positive spellpower, as well as lots of critical chance and critical damage. The build also has high healing amplification, which makes it possible to self-heal on higher reaper difficulties, something impossible on for example a pure DPS druid that is sitting on only around 600 positive spellpower and 100 or less healing amplification.

A primary healer, as well as self-healing, has the ability to heal lower healing amplification characters. Getting an initial read on the incoming healing values on different players is important. When attempting to heal an entire party, it's incredibly silly to think that it's possible to heal every player with the heal spell; this only works if one player is severely wounded every 6 seconds. So, for example, lets say I play in a party where throwing a CLW on every player yields these results (Criticals would be roughly divided by a third to find normal average values):

Myself: 1000~
Player 2: Immune
Player 3: 240~
Player 4: 100~, dulled numbers
Player 5: 600~
Player 6: 300~

In this example, there's a few results important to notice, and a few that can be nice to remember for establishing a baseline. For one, my CLW heals 1000 with an x5 multiplier on myself, giving it a normal hampless heal of 200. Player 2 is immune to positive healing, likely through being undead (Which can be checked by examining or asking) or less likely through having improved fortification as a robot. Player 3 healed for 20% more than normal hampless, meaning that they have no hamp but the ship buff. Player 4 is healed for only about 100 HP, and has dulled numbers, meaning they are warforged or bladeforged and don't have healing amplification. Player 5 healed for around 600 HP, meaning that they have pretty good healing amplification, but not as much as myself. Player 6 is healed for 300, meaning they have a little hamp (Probably guild buffs and paladin past lives, or guild buffs and a mysterious cloak or something). Now, what do these numbers mean? Basically, this tells you what heal to put on what characters. In the above situation, this is the listing for players hamp:

Myself-Use Heal Spell and Regenerate because of hamp debuff in reaper
Player 5-Use low level cure spells (CLW, CMW), medium level vigors
Player 6-Use higher level cure spells (CMW, CSW) medium/high level vigors
Player 3-Use even higher level cure spells (CSW, CCW) or heal, greater vigor or regenerate
Player 4-Use heal spells and regenerate
Player 2-Use Reincarnate and Resurrection

[Blastyswa]

Prioritizing with healing is very important. For example, who should be healed first? Yourself or the blitzer? The Tank or the DPS? Yourself or the tank? Here's a general guideline on who needs heals first.

1. Yourself. Obviously, it's a lot more difficult to heal people when dead than when alive. Prioritization for healing should almost always be yourself. The only real exception to this is if the tank is at critically low health and you are doing fine on health.

2. The other healers. Other healers are also a heavy prioritization, although typically you'll be the only dedicated healer in a group. This is especially important in raid settings so that all healers can focus more on the effective healing of others and less on trying to heal through their healing penalties.

3. The Tank. Healing the tank is the main goal of the healer. The tank's goal is primarily to hold the attention of as many enemies as possible to reduce risk to other players, and the healers job is allowing the tank to do so.

4. The ranged/melee characters. Ranged and melee characters will typically have a little better survivability than casters, although there are definite exclusions to this rule. In this case "casters" is applying typically to builds like the 1000 HP 100 PRR fvs/wizard/sorcerer/cleric builds, not the 2000 HP 150 PRR warlocks and other more tanky builds. Melee/Ranged characters are considered the one's with 1500-2000 HP and 150-200 PRR that are reasonably defensive. It might seem counter-intuitive to heal the more defensive oriented before the squishier characters, but if a caster type build is getting attacked that probably means the tank isn't doing their job correctly and the caster is probably dead anyway (On high reaper). Healing a sorcerer at 200 HP back to 1000, on high skull reaper the next hit will still kill them. Healing a fighter at 200 HP back to 2000, the next hit can give them a decent bit of time before they need the next heal.

5. The casters. Frankly, if these types get hit down to about dead, this will shortly be followed by death. Casters that know what they're doing should be able to control enemies enough, through things like hold/otto's irresistible/slowing debuffs that the enemy shouldn't be able to get them unless they mess up.

6. Anyone else. This really just means anyone who is playing a suboptimal build, like 800 HP 50 PRR rogues and the like. These are typically the people you throw resurrections to instead of healing.

Following this basic plan is recommended to keep yourself (And everyone else) alive. The more you practice this basic prioritization, the better you'll be at healing.

[Blastyswa]

Healing with nothing but the heal spell isn't advised, for many reasons. When you get multiple players needing heals, especially when many have low hamp, in raid settings, or with many AoE type attacks going off, it becomes important to cycle multiple heals for maximum efficiency and healing. For example, on my druid I have regenerate bound to the "E" key, mass regenerate to "Ctrl+E", heal to "Alt+E", and CCW-CSW-CMW-CLW to "1, 2, 3, and 4". If a single character gets hit, but isn't at critically low HP? regenerate. If a big group gets hit with an AoE? Mass Regenerate. If the tank gets hit really badly, or a bladeforged? Heal. Anyone else? I typically tap between 3 and 4 (CMW/CLW) while swapping around from different targets. If things get particularly hairy, I include 2 (CSW). For bladeforged or warforged I throw the heal spell, and when players with mediocre hamp are injured I often throw CCW or CSW. Overtime heals are also important, although those will be discussed more in passive healing.

[Blastyswa]

Passive healing means any type of healing that involves minimum involvement to heal people. Here's a few examples of ones I use:

Spring's Resurgence:
Fast cooldown and low cost, as well as being AoE, this one can be very nice. Since this only goes off below 50% HP, it can be a great reactive heal, but it doesn't scale with spellpower and it doesn't always heal the actual recipient, so it isn't particularly reliable to save people; it's so low maintenance though that the small amount of healing it does provide is worth it.

Regenerate:
This one is great as a fire and forget with high spellpower. It typically heals over a thousand a tick with moderate hamp and high spellpower, meaning as long as players don't die between ticks it's 8 seconds where you don't have to watch their HP much at all. The 30 second afterheal is also reasonably hard hitting, allowing the healer to prioritize other players.

Consecration+Sacred Ground:
This one can easily heal close to or over 1000 health on characters with decently high spellpower, and gives a tick every 3 seconds for 20 seconds. Used in conjunction with springs resurgence and regenerate is incredibly powerful.

Healing Aura:
This I don't use on my druid as it's a cleric ability, but I do have a cleric alt that plays with it some. Personally I'm not a fan, as even with incredible spellpower it doesn't heal more than 400 or so, at which point it really just exists to charge healing bonuses.

[Blastyswa]

Splitting skillsets on a healer build isn't recommended if you're planning to heal in PUGs or do effective self-healing, but for players who want to be able to focus on multiple things instead of just healing it can be nice. Here's a few examples of splits

Healer/DPS:
The healer/DPS split allows players more flexibility for soloing, as well as allowing the player to contribute in taking down enemies faster. Some decent ways to do healer/dps are just play as a pure cleric or favored soul and throw out light spells, or play a shiradi druid.

Healer/Tank:
The healer/tank split is pretty common, although realistically it doesn't work to be a primary tank in higher reaper skulls. Getting over 2000-3000 health on a healer and having high PRR is easy enough, but getting enough AC to actually tank difficult fights isn't realistic. A few decent splits for a tanky healer are 17/3 druid/fighter (Stalwart stance and mass regenerate), 15/4/1 cleric/paladin/fighter (HP, level 8 healer spells), and 13/4/3 cleric/paladin/wizard (Healing, sacred stance, arcane barrier/improved shield and mage armor). If you want to actually tank, you definitely need to drop the healing and just become a tank.

Healer/DCs:
The healer/dcs split allows players to contribute control and kills while still healing. For clerics and favored souls, this usually means focusing on wisdom and getting things like implosion, destruction, or greater command, while for druids it typically means earthquake.

[Blastyswa]

Avoiding aggro and not dying is important. If the healer can take more than one hit (Preferably 3-4) then they have a much better chance of staying alive. Of course, not getting targeted is even more important for staying alive. Making certain not to run ahead of the tank (Or whatever DPS is in the party if you don't have a real tank) is important, as well as trying to stay out of the range of AoE attacks. Having high saves means less chance of getting stopped, while maximizing HP and PRR can allow you to take a few hits. Personally, to facilitate this, my druid uses a shield offhand and a throwing axe with affirmation in the mainhand. The temporary hitpoints increase survivability significantly, and having the PRR and the option to "turtle up" by blocking is great for survivability.

[Blastyswa]

For spellpoint effectiveness, you want to make certain your heals are matched to the HP you need the player to regain. If you throw 10 quickened heal spells, it'll cost around 400 spellpoints at cap. Casting 10 full metamagic cure serious wounds spells will cost well over 500 spellpower. Casting 10 no meta cure light wounds spells costs about 50 spellpower. Personally, I keep the cure wounds line of spells and the vigor line of spells completely unmetaed on my druid, allowing for cheap healing in lesser priority situations. Quicken is available to toggle for bad situations. Regenerate and Heal are used with quicken at all times, so that they can be used for effective emergency heals.

[Blastyswa]

Triage is important in difficult situations, especially when low on spellpoints and when chugging potions isn't realistic. For triage, it becomes important to reduce healing cost significantly, and prioritize the most important targets. This is the point where you want to use your free heals (Light the Dark, Unyielding Sovereignty) to conserve heals, as well as using mostly unquickened cure light wounds and other low level spells. For when you fall into this situation, which can happen relatively often with difficult and longer fights, I personally like to use endless faith as a twist from exalted angel for the increased sp pool and better sp regen when zeroed out.

[Blastyswa]

Gear for healing is pretty simple; you want maximized positive spellpower and maximized positive critical chance. It's also helpful to have high positive critical damage if you can get any (Scion of Celestia is a good place to get a little, an LGS piece can also be useful). Healing amplification can be incredibly helpful for self healing. Personally I'm a fan of using some type of competence bonus like iron mitts, +50 tier 2 bonus on LGS, and a mysterious remnant item, as well as crown of summer. Aside from that you just need spellpoints and investment in defense (or offense if you decide to incorporate DPS to the build). The actual breakdown on my druid is PDK, with 17 enhancement points in the tree for hamp, 8 points in vanguard for deflect arrows, 10 points in Nature's Warrior for Flight (+10% stacking dodge action boost, bypasses dodge cap) and 2 ranks of the crocodile enhancement (50% reduction in damage for 8 seconds, powerful emergency boost). 13 points are in Stalwart Defender for +20% HP, and the rest are put into season's herald. Feats are put into throwing speed, shield boosts, metamagics, and mental toughness line, for faster affirmation proccing with my LGS throwing axe, shield boosts for PRR, metamagics for better casting, and mental toughness line for spellpoints. Deific Warding and Epic Damage Reduction is 20 PRR and 10 MRR, and another 20 when taking damage. Scion of Celestia is used for +150 HP and +30% positive crit damage. Epic Destiny is Unyielding Sentinel, for significantly increased defense and SLA resurrection, as well as Light the Dark for emergency healing.

[Blastyswa]

Always make sure not to overheal. It can be fun seeing those heal spells for 10k, but realistically you never need them to hit that much. Healing amplification and healing spell used should be inverse of each other, with the higher heal spells going to the lowest amplification. The endgoal is that you want your healing spell to restore most or all of the damage sustained, without going over. If a character is missing a couple hundred hitpoints, I'll throw them a lesser vigor or cure light wounds. If they're missing a thousand and have terrible hamp, I'll toss a heal, a regenerate, or both. The main thing is make sure you're healing effectively, but not wastefully.

[Tlorrd]

Healing Aura:
This I don't use on my druid as it's a cleric ability, but I do have a cleric alt that plays with it some. Personally I'm not a fan, as even with incredible spellpower it doesn't heal more than 400 or so, at which point it really just exists to charge healing bonuses.

It doesn't heal you over 400 or others? It is great for charging up radiant servant capstone ... my healing aura at cap will heal me on a crit for over 1000+ and it crits quite often. Between aura and consecretation, renewal and CLW and MCLW ... I hardly every need to heal over those spells. But radiant servant with no max caster level to heals is very strong.

[Blastyswa]

It doesn't heal you over 400 or others? It is great for charging up radiant servant capstone ... my healing aura at cap will heal me on a crit for over 1000+ and it crits quite often. Between aura and consecretation, renewal and CLW and MCLW ... I hardly every need to heal over those spells. But radiant servant with no max caster level to heals is very strong.

400 base, with crits at a decent multiplier for over 1000. There's also the issue of the reaper debuff, which makes healing aura particularly weak on self in reaper content. In EE content I never had to use much more than just mass vigor spam all over the place, and even in low level reaper I typically don't use more than what you've described, swapping aura for resurgence and renewal for vigors. Moving to higher skull difficulties, or for raids, I've found that alternating between more heals becomes important for keeping everyone alive. Personally, anyone can keep themselves alive on a healer. It takes a decent healer to toss healing around all over the place and keep people alive, but it takes a very focused healer to keep alive even the characters with low defenses that decide to run off.

[Eryhn]

it depends a bit on what sort of build you run but i feel aura is definetly not useless in reaper.

if you stand in the back and the range and casters stay close to you, while you throw single target heals at tank and melee up front, any ranged/magical returning damage your archers and damage casters suffer will be mitigated by your aura, especially if you use a quickly dropped consecration/burst to top it out.

if you are on a tanky front line healer, aura + consecration is nice for the melee and certainly at least somewhat reduces the cycle speed of casting self heal spells to stay topped of - and yeah as already mentioned, if running in unyielding, when further adding cocoon and renewal ... pretty SP efficient

[Tlorrd]

Avoiding aggro and not dying is important. If the healer can take more than one hit (Preferably 3-4) then they have a much better chance of staying alive. Of course, not getting targeted is even more important for staying alive. Making certain not to run ahead of the tank (Or whatever DPS is in the party if you don't have a real tank) is important, as well as trying to stay out of the range of AoE attacks. Having high saves means less chance of getting stopped, while maximizing HP and PRR can allow you to take a few hits. Personally, to facilitate this, my druid uses a shield offhand and a throwing axe with affirmation in the mainhand. The temporary hitpoints increase survivability significantly, and having the PRR and the option to "turtle up" by blocking is great for survivability.

Don't forget diplomacy and related enhancements like fade into the weave.. you can be surrounded by a pack of mobs, drop a diplo and they'll just walk right by you. That is even stronger than going from 200 PRR to 225.

[Tlorrd]

Gear for healing is pretty simple; you want maximized positive spellpower and maximized positive critical chance. It's also helpful to have high positive critical damage if you can get any (Scion of Celestia is a good place to get a little, an LGS piece can also be useful). Healing amplification can be incredibly helpful for self healing. Personally I'm a fan of using some type of competence bonus like iron mitts, +50 tier 2 bonus on LGS, and a mysterious remnant item, as well as crown of summer. Aside from that you just need spellpoints and investment in defense (or offense if you decide to incorporate DPS to the build). The actual breakdown on my druid is PDK, with 17 enhancement points in the tree for hamp, 8 points in vanguard for deflect arrows, 10 points in Nature's Warrior for Flight (+10% stacking dodge action boost, bypasses dodge cap) and 2 ranks of the crocodile enhancement (50% reduction in damage for 8 seconds, powerful emergency boost). 13 points are in Stalwart Defender for +20% HP, and the rest are put into season's herald. Feats are put into throwing speed, shield boosts, metamagics, and mental toughness line, for faster affirmation proccing with my LGS throwing axe, shield boosts for PRR, metamagics for better casting, and mental toughness line for spellpoints. Deific Warding and Epic Damage Reduction is 20 PRR and 10 MRR, and another 20 when taking damage. Scion of Celestia is used for +150 HP and +30% positive crit damage. Epic Destiny is Unyielding Sentinel, for significantly increased defense and SLA resurrection, as well as Light the Dark for emergency healing.

A couple notes from the cleric side of things which are similar to what you do for druid ...


Positive Spellpower and Criticals
- Radiant servant in effect gets 1.5 positive spell power per AP spent in the tree (1 positive and 0.5 universal that stack). Also when splashing into Divine Disciple 1 AP gets you 3 universal spell power ... so imo the most enhancement based positive spell power per AP spent one can achieve is via Cleric with Radiant servant and universal spellpower of divine disciple.
- Slavers 185 positive, LGS Stacking 224, and CC insightful for 79 and splash in various other named item boosts.
- Crit chance: 27% from slavers or 23% from CC, mental toughness line and interrogation and magical training will give you +9%, and Orb of Golden Death gives 5% insightful, nad enhancements will give 6-10% more. So with empyrean magic you can achieve a standing crit chance of ~ 61%.
- Crit damage: +35% from LGS, +30% from Scion of Celestia, and don't forget +20% from Wellspring feat (this is especially good with cleric aura since you activate wellspring and then with all your boosts in place activate aura and for the next 90 sec your aura with the above benefits from +85% spell crit damage on top of 1000+ spell power. That is where aura really shines. Since wellspring has a 3 min cooldown, you are using it every other time you refresh your aura which ain't too shabby.

[Tlorrd]

For spellpoint effectiveness, you want to make certain your heals are matched to the HP you need the player to regain. If you throw 10 quickened heal spells, it'll cost around 400 spellpoints at cap. Casting 10 full metamagic cure serious wounds spells will cost well over 500 spellpower. Casting 10 no meta cure light wounds spells costs about 50 spellpower. Personally, I keep the cure wounds line of spells and the vigor line of spells completely unmetaed on my druid, allowing for cheap healing in lesser priority situations. Quicken is available to toggle for bad situations. Regenerate and Heal are used with quicken at all times, so that they can be used for effective emergency heals.

On top of what you mentioned ... healing and mass healing that are DOTs are very good at saving spell points.

Druids excel at this with their mass regenerate and mass vigor.

Clerics have their aura and in epics they have consecrate for mass DOT healing. Also while not a DOT, Positive energy burst uses turn undead and is good for a quick burst heal.

[Bjond]

Player 2-Use Reincarnate and Resurrection

Bit of a necro, but I found that one hilarious. LOL Amplication + 10!