Bard Healing

[Bardicus]

To Anthios, Maddmatt, and the rest of you running your bards as primary healers in endgame content a few questions:

1) What is your typical healing strat? Alternating Maximized Mass Cures with the occasional Heal scroll?

2) Are you able to heal most 6-man epic content?

3) What does your healing setup look like? Do you just use clickies and pots for Ardor or do you prefer wielding Skiver or the like?

Thanks!

[maddmatt70]

To Anthios, Maddmatt, and the rest of you running your bards as primary healers in endgame content a few questions:

1) What is your typical healing strat? Alternating Maximized Mass Cures with the occasional Heal scroll?

2) Are you able to heal most 6-man epic content?

3) What does your healing setup look like? Do you just use clickies and pots for Ardor or do you prefer wielding Skiver or the like?

Thanks!

1) Well in general my healing style is very topping heavy i.e. I like to keep the melee close to max hp, but with rabiez vs. my bard hangover I play differently.

-With rabiez I will let their hp get lower because I want to make sure to melee as much as I can. What I will do is throw a non quickened mass cure spell in battle and/or cure critical on a healing target with spell points. I will use scrolls more out of a battle, although if I have to go in more healing mode I break out heal scrolls to heal or alternate between mass cure spells and scrolls. If I am in a raid and not meleing, but healing I will alternate between mass cure and scrolls. I had quicken instead of improved critical pierce for the longest time and just swapped to improved crit pierce on Rabiez recently so still testing it out in a sense.
a) I like to wear superior potency 6 at all times so I have the warchanter tower set currently although I am working on switching my gear with rabiez. Ardor pots seem like sort of a hassle and I like a more fluid style going from healing to melee without worrying about drinking a pot.
b) I have the maximize feat with rabiez at all times.

-With Hangover I am very much more of a topper although I will cc with her a fair amount and use a dreamspitter. I will use scrolls and mass cure spells and cure ciriticals and heal scrolls depending what is required and needed in a give quest.

It is probably less optimal for me to do so, but I prefer not to manufacture epic dynasta falcuttas and dual wield those on Hangover while I heal and do some cc. I just prefer a more old school spellsinger character with her and only melee with the dreamspitter, but concentrate on buffing, healing and cc. I never ever run her with a cleric/fvs and sorc/wiz if I can help it is just to boring to do so.

I think and predict there will be alot more characters like hangover in the future who solo healing parties with the tier 2 spellsinger enhancements. She is just a basic level 20 drow spellsinger with maxed charisma.
a) I wear the epic chainmail coif on Hangover which grats sup potency 7.
b) I have the empower healing feat on Hangover and also quicken, but I rarely have quicken on.

2. I have soloed healed every single 6 man epic quest on either rabiez or hangover. Just last week I soloed epic devils assault on hangover twice. On many quests bards are better healers then cleric/fvs due to reduction in quest completion time and the higher dps making the quest easier. One example is the into the deep in the red fens I prefer healing with my bards in there.

[BoBoDaClown]

To Anthios, Maddmatt, and the rest of you running your bards as primary healers in endgame content a few questions:

1) What is your typical healing strat? Alternating Maximized Mass Cures with the occasional Heal scroll?
Mass Cures- I try to wait for my MCMW timer if possible. Heal Scrolls more so than mass scrolls.
2) Are you able to heal most 6-man epic content?
Yes - although party make up counts.
3) What does your healing setup look like? Do you just use clickies and pots for Ardor or do you prefer wielding Skiver or the like?
I use sup ardor clickies. Quicken. Maximise. Empower Healing.
Thanks!

.

[Reock]

Im 13 right now so can't say on how i'd handle epic content but at the moment im rolling kell sora set so dont bother with ardor clickies , tend to hold a magi item and various wands for my mainhand. I keep cure type wands for when my Sp is getting low or i just want to conserve sp for major battles, tend to roll my heal spells from strongest to weakest untill the strongest has cooled down and can be used again - always trying to keep people 90% or better on hit points. Just got mass cure light wounds so not used it yet but im sure I will use it more often then most in many dungeons. I thought about picking up mass cure mod scrolls but the cost seemed prohibitive in the long run, as it is every time some ****** charges repeatedly into traps it can cost me well over 650pp just to pick them up if no shrines are handy.

[Darkrok]

My experience with a lot of the epic content (obviously not all of it) is that what you have is short bursts of damage when things aren't mass held followed by longer periods where they are. I think bards are ideally set up for those situations as our only heals cast very quickly compared to fvs/clerics that might be using the higher mass heals/cures. It's not an epic but I've solo'd the Shroud before after the single-healer dc'd and had no issues - and that's before I TR'd to Spellsinger from Warchanter. Never tried to heal an epic yet as I don't run them often and when I do they're always with guildies and we have a ton of healers at cap but from what I've seen of them I could. The harder epics might be a different story but on most of the ones I've seen any player that can umd a heal scroll and a mass cure mod scroll could heal it. I know my experience is with things considered to be the 'easy' epics though (Bargain, Von1, etc) but you've made me curious about how hard the healing gets in some of the harder epics.

[kaleid0star]

I run epic P Carnival a lot and I have no problem healing there. I usually cycle through the two masses and use the single targets for extra. I use heal scrolls in between and wands when we're out of fights.

I've found it easier healing since the release of SS II PrE. Now sp isn't such a big issue.

[Anthios888]

I heal scroll single-targets, and quickened/maximized mass cures on the party while meleeing. Using scrolls now prevents deaths later if the party needs burst healing due to something going wrong or more difficult monsters.

Cure critical is the "oh **** button" if I'm on scroll timer or need a quick top off on someone.


If I'm "healbotting," I stand back with Staff of the Petitioner (reduces costs by 10%), put on anything to reduce spell point cost (Gloves of the Glacier). The main example I can think of is epic velah.

I always keep superior ardor 6 on via clickies (random drops and amrath belts). If I was really uber, I'd have an eardweller for the really tough healing spots, like Epic Lailat.

I use a healing lore item as a flex swap or static depending on what kind of gear I have at the time. I actually just am getting ready to TR my healing warchanter to pick up some past life love.

Anything possible to get mana for free. A few ideas: Torc, concordant opposition, vile blasphemy, archivist's necklace, eardweller bugs, twisted talisman, spell storing ring (or epic if it existed -- bard would get it first).

I guess it takes some practice. It's easy to blow your bar pretty quickly. But you can do everything you need with a bard if you learn how. Oh, and Displacement now is often better than heals later.

Hope this is what you're looking for.