Healer role - doing it right?

Bitter_Apple21

Only second post. I have a CP780 Warden Healer, that was a respec from a DD. Running SPC and Crafty. Doing pug dungeons mostly to learn (not DLCs yet), and been running them on Vet the last week or so. I am finding - and this might sound strange - but the role seems easy, even on the vet dungeons. I am taking it as an personal issue if any member of the team dies and I have to resurrect them. So, I am wondering if I am missing something. I have Elemental Drain, Fetcher infection, Warhorn and Combat prayer and use them often (probably too much but I have not yet learned to read and use the screen countdown symbols yet - and have lots of magicka). I remember as a DD that the DLC dungeons are a bit harder and longer, and have tried a couple as this healer, but I am not part of any guild so I cannot learn or try trials.
Am I missing something to add to the role?

SpiritKitten

Bitter_Apple21 wrote: »

Only second post. I have a CP780 Warden Healer, that was a respec from a DD. Running SPC and Crafty. Doing pug dungeons mostly to learn (not DLCs yet), and been running them on Vet the last week or so. I am finding - and this might sound strange - but the role seems easy, even on the vet dungeons. I am taking it as an personal issue if any member of the team dies and I have to resurrect them. So, I am wondering if I am missing something. I have Elemental Drain, Fetcher infection, Warhorn and Combat prayer and use them often (probably too much but I have not yet learned to read and use the screen countdown symbols yet - and have lots of magicka). I remember as a DD that the DLC dungeons are a bit harder and longer, and have tried a couple as this healer, but I am not part of any guild so I cannot learn or try trials.
Am I missing something to add to the role?

You need to join a guild so the raid leaders can advise you about what works for different situations. A generic build you might want to try is SPC on body, Hollowfang on jewelry and staffs. Also Winter's Respite instead of Hollowfang depending on situation. Get Sentinel and Symphony of Blades monster sets. These are basic gears that will help you out. Put resto on front bar and lightning on backbar.

As a warden healer myself, I slot thicket/war horn on my ulti slots. For basic heals always have combat and radiating regen available on resto bar. wall of elements and healing combustion on backbar. The other slots are situational-dependent.

One of your most important roles beside healing is buffing the group with sustain and +dmg. Slot the appropriate skills to make that happen. Don't forget stamina needs sustain too, so if wearing hollowfang try adding some other stamina sustain group buffs to the skillset.

In regards to healing normal dungeons...my build for that is front bar heals, back bar dmg. For some dlc/vet, need more heals. I switch using the armory in those situations.

Bitter_Apple21

@SpiritKitten - Thanks. Forgot to mention, the monster set I am running is Sentinel of RK, but I had been reading that some websites are recommending Blades. I guess for me the point you are making me think about is not just the "healing" or the damage support i.e. drain/fetcher, but the magicka or stamina buff. Had not considered that before. But am I missing something on the assessment that the non DLC dungeons - for a healer - are "easy"? Or is it the randomness of the group i.e. if I pickup CP1000+ characters on a vet dungeon, my role is almost not needed?

Fennwitty

Bitter_Apple21 wrote: »

@SpiritKitten - Thanks. Forgot to mention, the monster set I am running is Sentinel of RK, but I had been reading that some websites are recommending Blades. I guess for me the point you are making me think about is not just the "healing" or the damage support i.e. drain/fetcher, but the magicka or stamina buff. Had not considered that before. But am I missing something on the assessment that the non DLC dungeons - for a healer - are "easy"? Or is it the randomness of the group i.e. if I pickup CP1000+ characters on a vet dungeon, my role is almost not needed?

I'm making a lot of generalizations here, your experience will always vary based on the people involved.

Currently, and especially in PUG groups, you're run into very experienced players who have built themselves to be very self-sufficient.

Puggers are often used to so many bad healers they don't even rely on the healer to do their job anymore.

If an experienced player dies, they were likely not paying attention and failed a mechanic.

Add to that, self-healing is currently very easy at the moment since it often scales with the same resources and +damage modifiers that the damage skills do. If I max out my DPS with a mag sorc, any mag heal I slot is going to be massive.

It's not the raw Heals Per Second that are wanted most of the time, but ongoing steady healing and more importantly various buffs and debuffs. Aggressive War Horn does give some resources but the main thing is the +Crit damage major force. That's the type of ability looked for in healers and tanks nowadays.

Elemental Drain, Fetcher infection, Aggressive Warhorn and Combat prayer have in common that they include buffs or debuffs on enemies.

Healers typically contribute some damage as well. Many dungeons my healers can go 15-20% of the total group damage because I know in each dungeon not a ton of my time needs to be spent on the healing part. (In very inexperienced groups even 50% damage ><).

It's trials and vet DLC dungeons where you'll feel real demand on your attention.

When you heal for new players, they do tend to need a lot more burst healing.

EDIT: P.S.: In an ideal world, one of the DPS characters will take care of handling the raise of a single party member, so you can continue to focus on keeping the tank/group alive instead of basically doing nothing while the raise channels.

Certainly are times you'll want/need to raise also as the healer but the DPS characters are typically on raise duty if only 1 player goes down.

SpiritKitten

Bitter_Apple21 wrote: »

@SpiritKitten - Thanks. Forgot to mention, the monster set I am running is Sentinel of RK, but I had been reading that some websites are recommending Blades. I guess for me the point you are making me think about is not just the "healing" or the damage support i.e. drain/fetcher, but the magicka or stamina buff. Had not considered that before. But am I missing something on the assessment that the non DLC dungeons - for a healer - are "easy"? Or is it the randomness of the group i.e. if I pickup CP1000+ characters on a vet dungeon, my role is almost not needed?

Yes, like I mentioned, for normal and some DLC dungeons, my build is front bar heals, back bar dps. I am doing dps most of the time and if the group gets into trouble I swap bars to heal, then go back to dmg. I like to run sentinel and winters on these runs so that the healing is mostly done with procs so I can focus on dmg.

Bitter_Apple21

@Fennwitty Thanks. I had not thought about that point - the nature of PUG would have any one person not necessarily wanting to rely heavily on the support team. Interesting. I know on my DD toons - Magplar and Magblade - to your point, I actually do spend time in a battle processing the skills that will self heal i.e. Channeled Focus and Siphoning Attacks, while I am dealing damage. Now as the healer, that might be the cause of why it seems somewhat like I can do more - cause the PUG characters are self healing at the same time as I am healing them. I try to watch the health bars a lot and so far, either cause of me or them, they are rarely below 75% or so. I know that I am processing the healing a lot - almost as fast a rotation as a DD (except everyone moves so much, I have to move the circles sometimes), so between the constant barrage of healing and their own self heals, that might be what I am experiencing. Would I then guess that in a more focused team i.e. trials or an actual guild team, there would be less self reliance and more relying on the other team members? If nothing else, it would free up slots on the bars for more damage dealing skills.

Fennwitty

Bitter_Apple21 wrote: »

@Fennwitty Thanks. I had not thought about that point - the nature of PUG would have any one person not necessarily wanting to rely heavily on the support team. Interesting. I know on my DD toons - Magplar and Magblade - to your point, I actually do spend time in a battle processing the skills that will self heal i.e. Channeled Focus and Siphoning Attacks, while I am dealing damage. Now as the healer, that might be the cause of why it seems somewhat like I can do more - cause the PUG characters are self healing at the same time as I am healing them. I try to watch the health bars a lot and so far, either cause of me or them, they are rarely below 75% or so. I know that I am processing the healing a lot - almost as fast a rotation as a DD (except everyone moves so much, I have to move the circles sometimes), so between the constant barrage of healing and their own self heals, that might be what I am experiencing. Would I then guess that in a more focused team i.e. trials or an actual guild team, there would be less self reliance and more relying on the other team members? If nothing else, it would free up slots on the bars for more damage dealing skills.

Well with base game dungeons, very often the damage comes from mechanics which are avoidable (giant AOEs with obvious tells, etc.) so players who've done those a lot will simply not be taking much damage at all. They step out of the abilities, roll dodge, block etc.

Vet DLC and trials tend to have much more hard-to-avoid damage.

In any content, most DPS players will keep at least one 'emergency' heal available. In organized groups they won't typically use it except for ... emergencies.

In PUGs because of not really knowing what they'll get a lot of players are quick on the trigger to use their emergency heals, and may also be using sets and skills with built-in healing components. They won't wait to see if you're going to heal them, they'll trigger a heal at 80% or less just to keep pushing on.

Tanks (real) will also be self-healing a lot of the time and proactively using damage shields. Not so much an issue of trust (though there is that) but their main job is staying alive regardless of whether the healer's there.

It's the trials and harder DLC that simply do so much damage that the continual self-heals can't keep up. And where the fights are so long that players need to conserve their resources carefully and choose 'do I do more damage or do I heal myself'?

Speaking mainly as a tank I will not let myself get below 80% as a general rule, and at that threshold I burst heal if I have the resources.

However -- ideally I won't need to spend resources 'topping myself off' because the healers are providing continuous amounts of health. That lets me use my magicka and stamina for positioning mobs, keeping up buffs and shields, and just giving me more mental leeway to pay attention to the fight instead of myself.

Fennwitty

The reason we all try to stay well above 50% health is the sheer amount of damage that can come in harder content.

A stray hit from a boss will two-shot the typical DPS or healer -- if not outright one-shotting them instead. Bosses can do literally 40k+ damage at a time even if you're blocking. And that's not counting whatever else adds and special effects are happening.

So there's not room for more than one mistake generally.

Bitter_Apple21

@Fennwitty

Thanks. Between what you are saying and some other questions I have posted (dungeons scaling stats and "learning to tank"), the sense I am getting and had not truly considered previously, is that for the tank and healer roles, you really only get tested as a support (and therefore as a team), at the higher level vet DLC dungeons.

I started ESO as a Warden DPS about a year ago - then morphed into healer about a month or so ago- and then created a Magplar and Magblade as my dedicated DPS. As mentioned, been testing the healer (and started wondering if it was truly needed in base PUG dungeons), and then created and been working up a tank (same thing, although recently - lvl 35 - I started seeing what someone said is the weakening of the dungeon generated scaling buff on low level characters).

Ran the healer thru some vet base dungeons and one or two vet DLC dungeons, and to a point that I picked up somewhere, it is not your gear, etc, it seems to be about managing or learning the mechanics, as these can "one shot" you. I think it was Vaults of M, that someone was outside the shield (at the end), I was inside the shield, did not realize what the shield was, and stepped out to try to resurrect them. I was wiped, and did not realize why until I researched a bit. That forced me to consider, at the higher level dungeons the simple reality that in a situation like that, wait for the outside shield damage to end than then resurrect. That aspect of understanding the mechanics only comes when the consequences are severe and need to be understood to work thru the game.

That drove the point home for me about how you only truly learn - not just test yourself but learn - at the higher level dungeons

the flip side of that is, at the lower levels, all it seems you can do us train yourself on using your tools, but the proof of using them correctly does not happen in these lower dungeons.

More learning to do.

ixthUA

For dungeons.
Symphony of Blades is a very good monster set for healer.
SPC has no alternatives.
Stone-talker, Powerful Assault or Master Architect as a second set.
I use bear as ultimate, it does good DPS.
A lot of veteran dungeons can be healer with only 1 skill, the rest of the bar can be for DPS. For example Echoing Vigor is usually enough for 80% of time. Jelly for spell power and magicka recovery.

fiender66

Prayer Shawl is also not a bad set (but I use it as part of a defensive build on mag dds).
Lately, I see a lot of green spheres, so Sanctuary is appreciated (again?).

What others above have said is correct, IMO: namely, you have to adjust your behaviour/skills according to the group you are in, this especially for pug situations. A squishy and inexperienced dd does not look for boost, but wants to stay alive

Bitter_Apple21

@fiender66

Thanks. RIght now, I am running SPC and Crafty. Crafty mostly for the magicka bump. Having only recently shift the character from DPS to Healer, I

1) had the crafty gear from an earlier ESO event and
2) wanted to make sure that - while I was figuring out how to play a healer - I always had that resource to pump out stuff.

However, I have been collecting the Sanctuary gear, and been giving thought to running a few dungeons with that on to see how it "fits".