How do you do your Mass Heals in the Shroud Pt. 4 (and/or 5)

[Farayon]

A lot can be said for the Quickened Heal, Mass - with Cure, Mass Standby for its efficiency.

However, that works for groups with enough HP and survival skills to survive the round.

Metamagic costs
Empower Healing - 10
Empower - 15
Maximize - 25
Quicken - 10

Base to Everything possible ON
Cure Light, Mass 25 - 85 SP
Cure Moderate, Mass 35 - 95 SP
Cure Serious, Mass 40 - 100 SP
Cure Critical, Mass 45 - 105 SP
Heal, Mass 50 - 70 SP

Fixed.

[darkzane]

sadface @ all these posts that include dealing damage

healer != dealing damage

Don't bring "healers" to the Shroud. Bring Divine Casters, preferably melee capable ones with enough HP to fight, keep DP up, and be their own anchor for mass cures/heals.

On my FVS I melee with dual holy silver outsider bane scimitars while keeping divine punishment up and casting mass heal on cool-down. If people are taking heavy hits and failing saves I have maximized cure light mass and cure moderate mass I can spam in succession. Also lets me re-cast recitation and holy aura for the saves boost.

In the "new" shroud I spot heal people with heal and heal scrolls when they scatter after the blades come in. Haven't been in a group that has all moved together out of the blades. It would be nice to be able to use mass cures for that.

It bugs me when I see melee with the poison symbol over their head in there. Pit fiend venom does CON damage, potions are cheap and last as long as the fight.

My gimp 10 base con melee FVS
http://my.ddo.com/character/sarlona/nisotak/

[Meat-Head]

{quote}I stand in the middle (until blades come in), and cast Mass Heal centred on myself every cooldown.{quote}
I disagree with this on so many levels. *shrug*

Metamagic feats on: Quicken, Empower Heal (and usually Maximize too)
1) Designate an anchor
2) Cast Cure Moderate Mass or Cure Critical Mass when one of them starts to get low.
3) Begin casting Mass Heal when the Mass Mod/Crit is finished
4) One or two cycles of this and that usually satisfies a round of Harry's attack chain.
5) If only one person is low and everyone else is full (such is the case with a good tank and smart party) just send a single-target heal to bide some time. (When s*** hits the fan, use your cure spells to inject some quick health, creating a buffer for your Mass Heal casting time.)
6) Wait for melee to get low again
7) Goto Step 2

Spamming Mass Heal is a complete waste, IMO. It is just used as a means to limp an incompetent/inexperienced healer along through the quest without having to teach him anything about healing. It is not a strategy that should be used by competent healers. It makes me sad inside every time I see people do it.

Harry usually has spurts where he doesn't really do much melee damage and heals aren't needed at all for 5-10 seconds. Even with a mediocre PUG group, sp conservation is not an issue if you just pay attention to how fast the party is taking damage. *Time your heals to harry's attacks and minimize over-heal.*

I can't say that this strategy will work for Clerics, because I don't have one. But, I imagine you could use Cure Light/Mod Mass instead since Cleric heals generally do much more. I have solo-healed a PUG on part 4, Normal Shroud (after our other healer died very shortly after starting) post-U12 without any problems. I have over 3k sp, but IMO that is something any descent healing-specd FvS should have.

Just my two cents.

WHAT?!

There are a number of things I need clarification on here..

1. Why not use mass heal? Isn't the most efficient heal/sp spell in addition to taking away things like poison?

2. How do you get over 3k sp? Did you max Cha? If so, what's your strength, con and wis? Did you build SPECIFICALLY for healing? Did you take Mental Toughness? Past lives?

3. Why not go in with melee and self-target AOE heals? I don't do it atm. But I totally understand it. You don't end up wasting sp on self-healing since you're healing EVERYONE.

Although I AM skeptical of some of what you said. I really would like to learn if I'm missing something here.

[darkniteyogi]

Spamming Mass Heal is a complete waste, IMO. It is just used as a means to limp an incompetent/inexperienced healer along through the quest without having to teach him anything about healing. It is not a strategy that should be used by competent healers. It makes me sad inside every time I see people do it.

Actually, when i was on my first Cleric, after my 2nd shroud run with more casual / less geared players, (about 6 months ago) we failed, and I asked everyone for tips on healing.. and the instruction given to me by more than 1 experienced player and even experienced healer was to spam heal Without stopping.
That healer didn't really run out of SP as much as me, thinking back.

I always assumed i was doing the right thing, even if i was always wasting alot of SP.

So i was given hasty advice.

[sirgog]

When three people are at 300/650hp, casting a 60SP Mass Heal that massively overheals is much, much, MUCH more SP efficient than casting a 100-ish SP Max-Empped Mass Cure Critical that doesn't overheal but brings everyone to ~575/650.

Using anything other than Mass Heal is burning SP fast. Sometimes you need to do it, but don't pretend it's efficiency.

[GermanicusMaximus]

Mass cure serious or light are better than moderate because we only get 3 level 6 spells, and they need to count. Disregard that advice if for some reason you did not opt to play The Master Class.

The Master Class isn't gimped to only being able to slot 3 level 6 spells.

[Khuul99]

I primarily use mass heal with DP in between and use the mass cures as a patch up if needed.

I must say that to me not useing mass heal is more of an inexperienced way of healing. To me that indicates that the healer don't trust their ability to judge when to start the mass heal and instead just spams the insta cast mass cures and blows away tons more mana.

An experienced healer uses minimum of mana to heal and uses the rest of the mana to do damage and other utility stuff.

[ice584]

WHAT?!

There are a number of things I need clarification on here..

1. Why not use mass heal? Isn't the most efficient heal/sp spell in addition to taking away things like poison?

2. How do you get over 3k sp? Did you max Cha? If so, what's your strength, con and wis? Did you build SPECIFICALLY for healing? Did you take Mental Toughness? Past lives?

3. Why not go in with melee and self-target AOE heals? I don't do it atm. But I totally understand it. You don't end up wasting sp on self-healing since you're healing EVERYONE.

Although I AM skeptical of some of what you said. I really would like to learn if I'm missing something here.

1a. I'm DEFINITELY not saying not to use Mass Heal, I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear. It is a "required" spell, and as you mentioned, also helpful to get rid of things like poison. What I'm saying is that SPAMMING it on every cooldown is a waste. You will frequently be overhealing and often healing when it is not even needed.

2a. Good CHA and some basic end game gear. I'm still using the Sora Kel set for example, so don't think I'm talking Epic gear here. Your standard sp build for Greensteel gets you 600sp, coupled with Mental Toughness / Improved / and 30+ CHA you can get there pretty easily. I had over 3k sp on my first life. With my second life I dropped CHA a bit snice I have the past life. If you know what role you will play in the party, why not build for it? Second life I think my starting stats were 12/12/14/8/16/16.

3a. If you are the party's healer, why wade into melee? The party is depending on you to keep them up and every sp you spend on DPS (or time swinging your sword) means the DPS has that many fewer sp for heals or that many more chances that you'll be swinging your sword when s*** hits the fan. By staying on the outside of the group, I rarely take much damage. Usually the free CLW from capstone keeps me at full health during the fight, every now and then I may toss myself a heal if I get caught hard by a blade. Besides, with casters tossing out 2k damage in a single spell, Barbs swinging for 100+ damage on normal hits and 700+ on crits, my 40-50 DPS from DP is rather moot.

In the end, I'd rather finish the raid with 1k sp knowing that if the other healer had DCed I could've still gotten us through it by myself, than failed completing because I was spending sp on DPS and the other healer DCed or ran out of sp. It's sad how frequently that happens. Playing a healer is really all about mitigating risk.

[gavijal]

1a. I'm DEFINITELY not saying not to use Mass Heal, I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear. It is a "required" spell, and as you mentioned, also helpful to get rid of things like poison. What I'm saying is that SPAMMING it on every cooldown is a waste. You will frequently be overhealing and often healing when it is not even needed.

2a. Good CHA and some basic end game gear. I'm still using the Sora Kel set for example, so don't think I'm talking Epic gear here. Your standard sp build for Greensteel gets you 600sp, coupled with Mental Toughness / Improved / and 30+ CHA you can get there pretty easily. I had over 3k sp on my first life. With my second life I dropped CHA a bit snice I have the past life. If you know what role you will play in the party, why not build for it? Second life I think my starting stats were 12/12/14/8/16/16.

3a. If you are the party's healer, why wade into melee? The party is depending on you to keep them up and every sp you spend on DPS (or time swinging your sword) means the DPS has that many fewer sp for heals or that many more chances that you'll be swinging your sword when s*** hits the fan. By staying on the outside of the group, I rarely take much damage. Usually the free CLW from capstone keeps me at full health during the fight, every now and then I may toss myself a heal if I get caught hard by a blade. Besides, with casters tossing out 2k damage in a single spell, Barbs swinging for 100+ damage on normal hits and 700+ on crits, my 40-50 DPS from DP is rather moot.

In the end, I'd rather finish the raid with 1k sp knowing that if the other healer had DCed I could've still gotten us through it by myself, than failed completing because I was spending sp on DPS and the other healer DCed or ran out of sp. It's sad how frequently that happens. Playing a healer is really all about mitigating risk.

I disagree with you I must say. First of all I think that a healbot is waste of party slot. If you doing dps and heal mobs/boss will die faster and you will spend less mana on healing, quest raid will be done faster. Second why to take Mental Toughness when u can hit over 2600 sp easly with only 14 starting charisma ?

[Such755]

With my poor 2k SP pool I manage to easily solo heal that part (And part 5) by using mass heals, quickened, empowered heal.
I almost spam those as fast as possible, and if I need to heal but the timer is still up, I use mass moderate - maximized, empowered, empowered heal, quickened.

[Meat-Head]

1a. I'm DEFINITELY not saying not to use Mass Heal, I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear. It is a "required" spell, and as you mentioned, also helpful to get rid of things like poison. What I'm saying is that SPAMMING it on every cooldown is a waste. You will frequently be overhealing and often healing when it is not even needed.

2a. Good CHA and some basic end game gear. I'm still using the Sora Kel set for example, so don't think I'm talking Epic gear here. Your standard sp build for Greensteel gets you 600sp, coupled with Mental Toughness / Improved / and 30+ CHA you can get there pretty easily. I had over 3k sp on my first life. With my second life I dropped CHA a bit snice I have the past life. If you know what role you will play in the party, why not build for it? Second life I think my starting stats were 12/12/14/8/16/16.

3a. If you are the party's healer, why wade into melee? The party is depending on you to keep them up and every sp you spend on DPS (or time swinging your sword) means the DPS has that many fewer sp for heals or that many more chances that you'll be swinging your sword when s*** hits the fan. By staying on the outside of the group, I rarely take much damage. Usually the free CLW from capstone keeps me at full health during the fight, every now and then I may toss myself a heal if I get caught hard by a blade. Besides, with casters tossing out 2k damage in a single spell, Barbs swinging for 100+ damage on normal hits and 700+ on crits, my 40-50 DPS from DP is rather moot.

In the end, I'd rather finish the raid with 1k sp knowing that if the other healer had DCed I could've still gotten us through it by myself, than failed completing because I was spending sp on DPS and the other healer DCed or ran out of sp. It's sad how frequently that happens. Playing a healer is really all about mitigating risk.

1a. I agree that hitting it even when it's not needed is not wise. There are times I see the damage isn't coming, so I'm pausing to hit mass heal again. But, as sirgog said, even WITH overhealing you're STILL more efficient than cures.

2a. I have no problem with your build. You do what you want. I doubt any raid party is EVER going to dis you for your large SP pool. But, I built to be a divine caster. That meant maxing wis. So, my sp is more like, 2750ish. (32pt build) I'm real comfortable with that amount. If I can't get shroud done with 2700, then someone is doing something wrong I think.

3a. I don't know the numbers for sure, but when you're rockin a sup. brilliance clickie, critting on DPs, you're in range for your archon, AND you have a melee championed to get light vulnerability procs, you're contributing a truckload more than 50dps. I'm not going to compare it to a full barb or something, but it's substantial I think.


I understand your idea of ending with 1k sp. I just don't agree. SOme of that should be used to "punish" Harry if possible. That's just my op obviously.


BTW, I ran a hard shroud last night and we were down 2 major DPS on part 4 (one early death, and one DC which was Axer rocking his sick barb with eSOS) We still owned harry without too much trouble and I think I had 500ish sp left. I was keeping my DPs up and pretty much only using mass heal. except for blade transition times or whatever. It took us about 1.3 rounds give or take. Part 5 was similar but I had maybe 300-400sp left. Only 1 death (bard). I'm real comfortable with that. But, I'm just one dude.

[katz]

before U12 (i've only run shroud once on my healer post U12, so i have no way to make comparisons yet) ON NORMAL i would pick someone in the 500+ HP range and target mass heals on them. in between mass heal casts i would A} keep an eye on life bars and if some of the lower HP people were getting dangerously low pop off a quick mass cure mod (maximize, quicken, emp. heal) and/or B} if things were not too chaotic i would try to keep a DP stack going on Harry.

if i'm needing to throw cures a lot due to a more squishy group i end up losing the rhythm on DP casts, but in a good solid group i can maintain a 3 stack AND heal the group without needing pots on a non-uber 2300SP FvS

[Calebro]

Even though it's been said by many here, do not listen to ice584.
Using heavily meta'd Mass Cures is extremely inefficient. Using Quickened Mass Heal is very efficient.
Pre-U12 the Mass Cures worked just fine. Post U-12, with the changes to Shroud, using Mass Cures will deplete your blue bar too quickly. You will now spend much more SP during the times when Harry isn't in melee. And once he drops, it's very likely that you'll have less people beating on him for a short time, or that those people will be taking much more damage than they were previously. Expect to drink pots if you're going to use Mass Cures in a pug Shroud for anything more than an emergency heal when Mass Heal is on timer.

[Razcar]

sadface @ all these posts that include dealing damage

healer != dealing damage in world of warcraft

fify

[krackythehoodedone]

I use Quickened,Empowered heals with all the healing amps/items/enhancements it is possible to have.

I swap between cure mod/ser/crit mass and in normal circumstances i fire off 1 heal every three seconds.

That gets me through most Shrouds with mana to spare. If lag is bad or you are the only healer i increase to 1 every two seconds

Or in extremis i have all 4 mass heals on the hot bar and i can fire off 1 every second,

You can continue to run through the pools as you heal recovering some mana as you go

I dont like Mass Heal very much either it takes far to long too cast when a nice constant supply of smaller heals is a better option.

Any healer with over 2000 SP is not going to have any trouble healing Shroud without using resource

Ahh Edit, I was just reading some of the other post's..this has changed big time since U12 has it?

[Enoach]

3a. If you are the party's healer, why wade into melee? The party is depending on you to keep them up and every sp you spend on DPS (or time swinging your sword) means the DPS has that many fewer sp for heals or that many more chances that you'll be swinging your sword when s*** hits the fan. By staying on the outside of the group, I rarely take much damage. Usually the free CLW from capstone keeps me at full health during the fight, every now and then I may toss myself a heal if I get caught hard by a blade. Besides, with casters tossing out 2k damage in a single spell, Barbs swinging for 100+ damage on normal hits and 700+ on crits, my 40-50 DPS from DP is rather moot.

This point right here helps me better understand you comments, and it sounds to me that you are only barely using 1/3rd of your abilities.

1) I agree if you can't survive the heat don't jump into the fire. However, there are many Clerics and Favored Souls that are built rock solid and the additional DPS from Blade and DP combined with their healing abilities makes quicker work of the boss. Keep in mind that you can keep moving to the backside avoiding the big guns.

2) 40-50 from DP means you are only plying a single Stack, you can stack it 3x. It also means that you are not using the Champion Ability to give the Meatshield who is getting hit anyway the ability to proc a LIGHT Damage Enhancement Curse, DP is not the only thing that benefits from that curse. Learn your spells and abilities they will serve you well.

While I admit I have not yet got up the nerve to Melee in part 4 (U12) - I'm still learning the best method to exit. I will continue to use DP in between Heal, Mass and cure, mass (the fan spell). I will also continue to have my Lesser Maximize cure options available.

[ice584]

I disagree with you I must say. First of all I think that a healbot is waste of party slot. If you doing dps and heal mobs/boss will die faster and you will spend less mana on healing, quest raid will be done faster. Second why to take Mental Toughness when u can hit over 2600 sp easly with only 14 starting charisma ?

I just think that if my 100sp can keep the party up for an extra 10 seconds:

(DPS per party member) * (10 party members) * (10 seconds) > (My DPS per 100sp)

Given the above, I just assume save my sp for heals instead of DPS. Again, just my 2 cents.

[dynahawk]

I would imagine it is easier for someone who is meleeing to keep DP going and stacking as you can keep Harry targeted all the time. Until you get comfortable switching targets it can be intimidating.

I for one have a fear of missing switching back to the melee and centering the mass heal on myself instead. Plus post u12 I worry that my Heal target might have to run off kiting those darn seeker blades and the party misses the heal.

Once I got used to Harry's damage cycles it is much easier to predict when to start the mass heal and I use the cures sparingly.

[ice584]

Even though it's been said by many here, do not listen to ice584.
Using heavily meta'd Mass Cures is extremely inefficient. Using Quickened Mass Heal is very efficient.
Pre-U12 the Mass Cures worked just fine. Post U-12, with the changes to Shroud, using Mass Cures will deplete your blue bar too quickly. You will now spend much more SP during the times when Harry isn't in melee. And once he drops, it's very likely that you'll have less people beating on him for a short time, or that those people will be taking much more damage than they were previously. Expect to drink pots if you're going to use Mass Cures in a pug Shroud for anything more than an emergency heal when Mass Heal is on timer.

...I never said using meta-Cures was most sp efficient. Maybe you're thinking of Enoach's post?
[/QUOTE]A lot can be said for the Quickened Heal, Mass - with Cure, Mass Standby for its efficiency.[/QUOTE]

There is a HUGE difference between SPAMMING Mass Heal and effectively casting it. The former is a terrible strategy IMO, the latter is where you want to be. That's all I was trying to say.

[ghettoGenius]

sadface @ all these posts that include dealing damage

healer != dealing damage

Please dont spread this sort of garbage to new players. Just look at the clerics/fvs spell list and try to type that again. Not to mention their enhancement damage lines. On my cleric I alternate cure mass mod, cure mass serious, mass heal as appropriate with emp heal and maximize ... theres no formula as each group is different. I tend to not use quicken in shroud, but am leaning more towards it with the blades changes. Even then, at 2300 SP I have never run out during a successful run. If I run out it is because the group crumbled and could not recover. As long as im not too bogged down with lag Ill throw DP and harm as much as possible. Crits for over 500 and with irians light pots DP is ridiculous.