Looking for a Healer Build

[lvillanueva5]

Hi all. I've been scouring the forums looking for a healing druid build. I come from WoW where I play...well...basically healers. I have a group of 4 RL friends that have brought me over to DDO and am looking to fill a healer/support roll for my group. Any links to Healing Builds would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!!!

[HastyPudding]

For your first time playing, a Druid probably isn't for you. If you want support, you'd be better suited to a Cleric or a Favored Soul. I've seen people who have played this game for years, and then they play a Druid and they're horrible at it.

That being said, Druids don't come into their real supportive aspects until mid-late game. Early on you're little more than a glorified dps; even caster druids don't come into their strengths until mid-game and spend the first 10 levels or so as a melee. And even then, late game Druids can't compare to a healing-specced Cleric, in my opinion. When it comes down to it, Druids are the ultimate hybrids; you can heal, but not as well as a cleric or even a Favored Soul, and you can melee, but not as well as Fighters, Monks, or Barbarians, and then you can be a decent tank, but not as well as a Paladin, and you can cast offensive spells but not as well as a Sorcerer, and you certainly don't have the crowd control abilities of a Wizard.

I know a thing or two about WoW (although I never played it, just watched a brother-in-law from time to time), and you might be expecting some overpowered heal-over-time spells. Druids just don't have that kind of capability in DDO, or at least from what I've seen. A Cleric's positive energy aura is just as effective as the majority of a Druid's HoT's.

I'd suggest a Cleric for your first time, or at least a Favored Soul. Since Druids came out, I've seen maybe 4 real healing-specced ones, and only one of them was worth mentioning.

[Anihsod]

with all due respect hastypudding couldn't be further from the truth where druid support is concerned. I came over from wow also .. playing a resto/feral there ( anihsod ). I also play a Cleric. The biggest difference is .. Cleric's can heal better but are weak in damage, druids can't heal as *easily* but do a lot more damage and have good crowd control.

low level Vigor is your rejuv and cure XXX wounds is your nourish. later on regeneration is your regrowth and mass vigor is your wild growth. still later heal is your HT and mass reg.

It's important to remember that in DDO you are as much a dps as a healer, and druids are as much cc/dps as they are healers. There is a huge huge HUGE misunderstanding in ddo currently concerning druids. A lot of " druids are pure hybrids but don't do anything very well". It's completely inaccurate.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=389292

That's a recent thread by a druid who's focused on healing .. his build is included on the 2nd page of the thread.

Builds in ddo aren't even close to the cookie cutter approach in wow, there's a LOT of room to customize according to play style, goals, etc.

If you'd like i'll post my build ( currently slacking off at work ) and maybe offer some suggestions on spell selection, etc.

[Sleepy_Mexican]

with all due respect hastypudding couldn't be further from the truth where druid support is concerned. I came over from wow also .. playing a resto/feral there ( anihsod ). I also play a Cleric. The biggest difference is .. Cleric's can heal better but are weak in damage, druids can't heal as *easily* but do a lot more damage and have good crowd control.

low level Vigor is your rejuv and cure XXX wounds is your nourish. later on regeneration is your regrowth and mass vigor is your wild growth. still later heal is your HT and mass reg.

It's important to remember that in DDO you are as much a dps as a healer, and druids are as much cc/dps as they are healers. There is a huge huge HUGE misunderstanding in ddo currently concerning druids. A lot of " druids are pure hybrids but don't do anything very well". It's completely inaccurate.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=389292

That's a recent thread by a druid who's focused on healing .. his build is included on the 2nd page of the thread.

Builds in ddo aren't even close to the cookie cutter approach in wow, there's a LOT of room to customize according to play style, goals, etc.

If you'd like i'll post my build ( currently slacking off at work ) and maybe offer some suggestions on spell selection, etc.

hey there, i have been searching for a druid healer build and there is absolutely NOTHING to be found. The closest i got is your link but it's giving me yee good ol' 404 error so i can't use that (the build was probably outdated anyway but hey, it was something). My question right now is, could you please be so kind to help me out with a build for healer druid? be my hero please ; - ;

[Roland_D'Arabel]

Here is a link to a build by a very skilled and knowledgeable player. While not specifically healer oriented, the build and the thread should provide a wealth of knowledge to work with:

Gingerspyce

[Belgarath22]

Here is a link to a build by a very skilled and knowledgeable player. While not specifically healer oriented, the build and the thread should provide a wealth of knowledge to work with:

Gingerspyce

Yep, this is a good and fun build to play (caster-healer-quasi-tank)

[lvillanueva5]

Anihsod, I would love a link to your build. I've tried a cleric build and to be honest, didn't much like it. Got bored with my Monk, left DDO for like...a really long time and decided to come back before MoP hits. I get that in DDO, you're not a healbot like in WoW, but I do want to focus more on Healing/Support than anything else and damage where I can.

Just to give you some insight on what I play, in WoW, I have a Holy Pally, Holy/Disc Priest, Resto Druid, Resto Shaman and a Mage. As you can tell, I really really like healing. LOL I don't mind doing DPS as well, but I'd like to have the ability to offer hots since we run a group of 5 and can only bring in one healbot.

[Anihsod]

in wow i played everything but shammie. The only way you sacrifice healing by doing damage on a ddo druid is mana management... but it's often better in ddo to use the mana to cc or dps than it is to heal. DDO druid / fire spec'd can cast a AE cc that knocks things down ( earthquake ), cast a ae around himself that does fire damage and moves with him, stand in the middle of the cc and burn things up while they are laying on the ground while swinging a paralyzing weapon, cost is under 100 mana. If you were just healbotting a group of melee without any cc .. you'd probably spend more than that 100 mana on healing.

[HastyPudding]

with all due respect hastypudding couldn't be further from the truth where druid support is concerned. I came over from wow also .. playing a resto/feral there ( anihsod ). I also play a Cleric. The biggest difference is .. Cleric's can heal better but are weak in damage, druids can't heal as *easily* but do a lot more damage and have good crowd control.

low level Vigor is your rejuv and cure XXX wounds is your nourish. later on regeneration is your regrowth and mass vigor is your wild growth. still later heal is your HT and mass reg.

It's important to remember that in DDO you are as much a dps as a healer, and druids are as much cc/dps as they are healers. There is a huge huge HUGE misunderstanding in ddo currently concerning druids. A lot of " druids are pure hybrids but don't do anything very well". It's completely inaccurate.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=389292

That's a recent thread by a druid who's focused on healing .. his build is included on the 2nd page of the thread.

Builds in ddo aren't even close to the cookie cutter approach in wow, there's a LOT of room to customize according to play style, goals, etc.

If you'd like i'll post my build ( currently slacking off at work ) and maybe offer some suggestions on spell selection, etc.

Things must be different on your server, because on Arggo I haven't seen many druids that knew what they were doing at any level, and I very, very rarely see a druid acting as a full-time healer. Most druids I've seen that are casters have damage comparable to a wizard; I don't see any massive output like a sorcerer, but there's obviously still damage there. That being said, if there was a choice between a druid and a sorcerer joining the party and I needed a damage caster, I'd pick the sorcerer.

I still stand by what I said; if you want a true healer, a cleric is the way to go. I'll reserve judgement on FVS when their Beacon of Hope PrE eventually comes out, but they still make good healers. But if an evoker FVS and a druid would want to join my party, I'd pick the FVS over the druid, because the FVS can heal almost as well as a cleric without relying on HoT's and still dish out high amounts of damage. For healing, what it comes down to is how much you can save somebody; healing 500-1500 damage in a single heal is vastly more useful in saving your team mates in trouble than healing 60-100 hp every couple seconds.

By all means, make a support druid and heal to your heart's content, they're hardly useless. But, I haven't seen a druid act solely as a raid healer. Back-up healing, a druid is awesome to supplement the clerics and FVS so they're not constantly dishing out large heals, but for a difficult quest or raid, I'd pick a cleric/FVS as the 'primary healer'.

So, for healing, I still say cleric; there is just no contest as to who is the most efficient and effective healers in DDO, but if you want a true SUPPORT character, I'd say a bard spellsinger is the way to go. Even healbot clerics can deal decent damage with their spells, but a spellsinger is the ultimate support. Spellsingers tend to be lacking in damage, but they can buff like crazy and still heal well and do excellent crowd control almost as well as an enchantment-focused wizard when well-geared (even better than, in a few rare cases). I've seen shroud and HoX/VoD raids healed by a good spellsinger. Bard spellsingers, however, are vastly more difficult to play than a cleric, FVS, or druid and require a good bit of TRing and gearing to really master the class.


TLDR
I'm not saying druids are a horrible class, they can specialize in anything they want and still be good at it, but there always seems to be a bigger fish.

[Mark2422]

But if an evoker FVS and a druid would want to join my party, I'd pick the FVS over the druid, because the FVS can heal almost as well as a cleric without relying on HoT's and still dish out high amounts of damage. For healing, what it comes down to is how much you can save somebody; healing 500-1500 damage in a single heal is vastly more useful in saving your team mates in trouble than healing 60-100 hp every couple seconds.

If the druid has taken the pos sp enhancements etc, as the fvs would have. The HoT will heal 150-200 every 2 seconds and 500-800 on a crit. Whilst 200 is still a fair less than the instant 500 on the mass heal. You ask how many healers wait until someone has lost 500 hp before they throw mass heal, unless the toon has about 1000 hp. most healers will heal when someone has taken about 30-40% damage, especially if multiple people have. And the one tick of the druid HoT will take people back upto about 75-85% hp even without crits. 2 seconds after that they get the same again and either they are back at full or back to 75-85% after taking more damage which that tick just healed. 2 seconds later the same and then 2 seconds later the same. One of these ticks almost certainly would of been a crit if you have speced for crits, which a healing druid would have. And in that same time, a fvs would have had to cast atleast 2 mass heals because of the ongoing damage.

Now this is a hypothetical situation, and the reality would actually of been different since an experianced druid would have earthquaded the mobs so the party probs would not of been taking any further damage anyway. But the reality for the FvS would have been as described, unless they took over and started kiting the mobs, to the melee's frustration.

I am by no means saying take the druid over the fvs, because there are not many good druids out there and even less heal spec ones with the same level of healer experiance that I have. But don't discount the druid just because you dont consider it capable.

[HastyPudding]

If the druid has taken the pos sp enhancements etc, as the fvs would have. The HoT will heal 150-200 every 2 seconds and 500-800 on a crit. Whilst 200 is still a fair less than the instant 500 on the mass heal. You ask how many healers wait until someone has lost 500 hp before they throw mass heal, unless the toon has about 1000 hp. most healers will heal when someone has taken about 30-40% damage, especially if multiple people have. And the one tick of the druid HoT will take people back upto about 75-85% hp even without crits. 2 seconds after that they get the same again and either they are back at full or back to 75-85% after taking more damage which that tick just healed. 2 seconds later the same and then 2 seconds later the same. One of these ticks almost certainly would of been a crit if you have speced for crits, which a healing druid would have. And in that same time, a fvs would have had to cast atleast 2 mass heals because of the ongoing damage.

Now this is a hypothetical situation, and the reality would actually of been different since an experianced druid would have earthquaded the mobs so the party probs would not of been taking any further damage anyway. But the reality for the FvS would have been as described, unless they took over and started kiting the mobs, to the melee's frustration.

I am by no means saying take the druid over the fvs, because there are not many good druids out there and even less heal spec ones with the same level of healer experiance that I have. But don't discount the druid just because you dont consider it capable.

I'm not saying a Druid can't heal. They have a healing PrE in the making (and so does FVS), anyway and have the only HoT's outside of the Exalted Angel destiny and the cleric aura. I'm saying a cleric can heal effortlessly and a FVS can belt out heals left and right with their high SP. A druid has to really spec in healing to be anywhere close. As the primary healer, I'd pick a cleric or FVS, but as a backup healer, even if not heal-specced, a druid is a major contender with the spellsinger.