New to ESO, Healing Thread

Swiller · March 2014

I have not played in Beta, and am trying to do some research on healing.

As a Templar, is it worthwhile to be a healer without using the restoration staff weapon? I am also wondering heavy v light armor, if the armor bonus from heavy armor outweighs the mana restoration and mana cost reduction. It seems pretty obvious that you would go light armor + staff in PVE, assuming you have a tank with you, I am more wondering about PVP.

nerevarine1138 · March 2014

You do whatever feels best. I had no problem healing without a restoration staff in beta, and I think it would actually be redundant to stack healing skills with resto staff skills (except for passive bonuses).

Inversus · March 2014

If you're a healer, you'll probably find more light armour more useful as you won't need to be as survivable as a healer, but you will certainly want magicka perks in order to keep those heals coming.
And restoration staff is also useful as a healer. Templar has some good heals, but a healer is even more effective if you take advantage of both healing skill lines - that's the advantage of a templar healer over a sorc healer, access to both skill lines.

Of course survivability is always useful, but personally I think magicka perks outweigh the heavy armour - although you might go 5 light/2 heavy for some extra armour.

Swiller · March 2014

I was thinking about doing some sort of armor combination as well. Can sorc be healers as well? Or can anyone be a healer with the restoration staff, and sorc just benefit the most due to them relying on mana already?

ElliottXO · March 2014

With a restoration staff any class can heal.

Resto staff + light armor = most efficient
Resto staff + heavy armor = manageable but pointless
Templar + light armor = perhaps not manageable after recent patch

We had this discussions on tamriel foundry. You need the restoration staff for the magicka recovery with heavy attacks. Templar heals cost too much magicka after the recent patch to replace a restoration staff healer.

dannomite82 · March 2014

For PvP, there's more flexibility to give up output for survival. After all, what good is output, if you're targeted first?

Zargorius · March 2014

One of the most important things in ESO is to remember that yo ucannot count on the healer saving your butt continuously.
You need to mitigate damage through buffs, shields, blocks and dodges. The healer is a support character, he cannot heal you continuously all the time as he will run out of magicka fast and you will wipe.
The whole team needs to work intelligently and make healing as much unnecessary as possible.

SirPuppingtonVonHat · March 2014

Swiller wrote: »

I was thinking about doing some sort of armor combination as well. Can sorc be healers as well? Or can anyone be a healer with the restoration staff, and sorc just benefit the most due to them relying on mana already?

@Swiller‌ Sorcerers can be extremely effective healers due to Surge and Dark Exchange. Because the healing abilities with the resto stave are based partially on weapon damage, Surge increases the magnitude of each heal, and Dark Exchange allows the Sorc Healer to almost never run out of mana.

You can read more about it from someone who knows more about this subject here.

MistryssNite · March 2014

Most of my characters are/have been Templars/Healers in eso. Two of them use a bow, at the moment. I have also had some with destruction staves and some with swords. I haven't used the resto staff outside of the Wailing Prison. The skills definitely make the resto staff nearly worthless, for me at least. I am unsure about armor, as I just wear what I find.

Lazarus_Long · March 2014

If you want to be a templar

Swiller wrote: »

I have not played in Beta, and am trying to do some research on healing.

As a Templar, is it worthwhile to be a healer without using the restoration staff weapon? I am also wondering heavy v light armor, if the armor bonus from heavy armor outweighs the mana restoration and mana cost reduction. It seems pretty obvious that you would go light armor + staff in PVE, assuming you have a tank with you, I am more wondering about PVP.

To answer your question, yes. I have not played a templar but I party with them and they can heal very well without a staff. If you believe in min/max you don't want a staff unless you go sorcerer. If you don't believe in it then you can pack more heals into your build by using the staff. The templar skills scale off of stamina and staff skill scale off of mana. As far as armor goes, my sorc healer wears a mix of all three armors in order to help avoid soft caps. That might change later when my alchemy skills get good enough to drop the medium for more heavy.

The most important question to ask yourself (IMHO) is if you could pick any tools to put your toon's toolkit what would they be? Because you can pick any tool.

illogicbh · March 2014

When I played templar in beta, it got easier to heal as I increased in level, but one of the things I really wanted more of was mana restoration. So I would not use heavy armor, but that is just me. You could always enchant heavy armor with mana restoration. Restoration staff helps a ton too.

Shimond · March 2014

Lazarus_Long wrote: »

To answer your question, yes. I have not played a templar but I party with them and they can heal very well without a staff. If you believe in min/max you don't want a staff unless you go sorcerer. If you don't believe in it then you can pack more heals into your build by using the staff. The templar skills scale off of stamina and staff skill scale off of mana. As far as armor goes, my sorc healer wears a mix of all three armors in order to help avoid soft caps. That might change later when my alchemy skills get good enough to drop the medium for more heavy.

Can you clarify the bolded further? All the Templar healing skills cost magicka, so I'm not sure what you mean.

Dragonetti · March 2014

Shimond wrote: »

Lazarus_Long wrote: »

To answer your question, yes. I have not played a templar but I party with them and they can heal very well without a staff. If you believe in min/max you don't want a staff unless you go sorcerer. If you don't believe in it then you can pack more heals into your build by using the staff. The templar skills scale off of stamina and staff skill scale off of mana. As far as armor goes, my sorc healer wears a mix of all three armors in order to help avoid soft caps. That might change later when my alchemy skills get good enough to drop the medium for more heavy.

Can you clarify the bolded further? All the Templar healing skills cost magicka, so I'm not sure what you mean.

I believe he means that you would be gimping your Templar to put a lot of points into magicka, as your other skill lines rely on Stamina. As opposed to being a Sorc healer and stacking Magicka to aid your heals as well as other skills.

Shimond · March 2014

Dragonetti wrote: »

I believe he means that you would be gimping your Templar to put a lot of points into magicka, as your other skill lines rely on Stamina. As opposed to being a Sorc healer and stacking Magicka to aid your heals as well as other skills.

All class skills cost Magicka. I'm still confused, are you saying that increasing Stamina buffs the Magicka costing abilities in classes? I realize you would be 'gimping' weapon damage but this is a thread about healing (and resto staff uses Magicka as well).

Lazarus_Long · March 2014

All class skills cost Magicka. I'm still confused, are you saying that increasing Stamina buffs the Magicka costing abilities in classes? I realize you would be 'gimping' weapon damage but this is a thread about healing (and resto staff uses Magicka as well).

@Shimond There were several in depth discussions about this in beta, but the threads were all wiped out so I can't go quote from original sources. What I read was that all Sorcerer class skills and all Staff skill scaled their effectiveness off of Magicka while all other class and weapon skills scaled their effectiveness off of Stamina. However I don't believe that you could have any skill at a rank appropriate for your level and be gimped by by your stats.

Like I said before there are soft caps in place to prevent you from becoming over powered. This was one of the talking points in a lot of min/max threads I read. If you really want a definitive answer you could track down someone who was on the PTS for beta and talk with them about it, or perhaps start a thread in this forum.

Shimond · March 2014

Thanks for the response Lazarus, I was fairly set on testing it with a few characters tonight to see for myself (since googling gives nothing really but guesses/assumptions which is all I had to begin with). That seems a little backwards to me to have something use two different stats like that, but perhaps that's some kind of complicated balancing attempt if it works that way.

Shimond · April 2014

As a follow up to this, Templar healing skills scale off magicka. I'm fairly sure their damage skills do as well, as increasing stamina one point did not have any impact on my damage skills.