A Comprehensive Guide to Stamina Healing in Gold Road.

VeryFallible · September 19

Hello ESO Community!

Two years ago, I wrote a fairly well-received guide to healing on a Stamina Warden. At that time, I had done every DLC Hard Mode dungeon and every vet trial on that Stamina Warden, and I had lamented within the guide that Stamina healing at that time was relegated to only a single class in the game. Thankfully, that all changed when the fire nation att...I mean, when Gold Road dropped.

Gold Road dropped an absolute deluge of options into our laps, including enough support for Stamina healing that you are now able to build a viable Stamina healer on every class in the game. Some are definitely stronger than others (the gulf between Stamarc and Stamdk is...uhh, -noticeable- to say the least), but we are at least at the point where it's an option for every class to try out. I've spent the past two months farming scripts and testing builds on every single class in the game (I've probably spent multiple millions of gold on Grimoires and Luminous Ink at this point!), and I've taken the time to write down all my observations and everything I've learned into a comprehensive guide to Stamina healing in Gold Road, which you can find here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bG6q_4NYQj3Y6myXV3WuEE9g8BiKK_8gwZVl-H_yozY/edit?usp=sharing

My apologies that this is a link to an outside guide, but it's VERY long. I'm going to see if there is the possibility of putting the text in the comments of this post, though!

Now, I know the response to opening this up is going to be "oh my god, that is a gigantic wall of text." And it is - forty-nine pages of it, to be exact. I didn't intend this to be something that anyone sits and reads in one go, but rather a resource that you can bookmark and return to as it piques your interest. I tried to be incredibly thorough and explain to the best of my ability why things work, but that thoroughness does lend itself to length. It might also not all be applicable to you - you might already be an expert on Scribing and not need anything in that section, but the builds at the end might interest you.

I also want to be clear that the suggested builds at the end are just things that I've used that have worked well, but they are NOT me claiming that they are the best possible way to build that class as a Stamina healer. My goal in writing the entire rest of the guide is for people who aren't familiar with this archetype to be able to learn and experiment on their own to be able to actually develop a build themselves rather than just copying one. I've intended this guide to be a resource to learn from, not me telling you what to do.

And that's it for now! I've recently updated the guide with the U44 changes that went up on the PTS, but my plan is to continue regularly updating it with subsequent patches. I think Banner Bearer is really exciting for the archetype, and I'm hoping to see more continued support for Stam healing in the future. ZoS's has pretty clearly indicated over the past two years that they are interested in Stam healing being more viable, and I'm hopeful for the future!

In the meantime, buff Shadow Silk please.

VeryFallible · September 19

1. Stamina Healing Philosophy:

I wanted to get this out of the way first because it’s incredibly important to understand: you are a Stamina healer, but you cannot avoid using Magicka. Yes, Stamina will be your dominant resource pool, and your Stam recovery will be higher than your Magicka regen. Yes, if you’re playing a Warden, something like Soothing Spores, will be your most-used skill. But much like a StamCro might slot Avid Boneyard, there are Magicka abilities that you will have to be accustomed to using. The positive side of using some Magicka abilities is that your Stamina Recovery is regenerating Stamina during those GCDs. I’ll cover some of the Magicka abilities you should expect to unlock in the next section. As a general rule, you’ll see in my sample builds below that I personally restricted myself to three Magicka abilities at max, and in many cases I tried for only two. (This in itself is a huge upgrade from the pre-Gold Road times, when I considered four Magicka abilities the norm for my StamDen healer!)

Additionally, Magicka healers have a lot of abilities that you can cast on a specific area, like Healing Springs. As a Stamina healer, many of your heals are positionally dependent - Soothing Spores hits harder the closer you are to your target, Echoing Vigor is an AoE around you, Ring of Preservation is placed on the ground at your feet. Scribing exacerbated this issue, as the Stamina-based heals it offers are all restricted to 8-meter AoEs. As a result, you need to be comfortable positioning yourself for optimal healing. Thankfully, you’re going to be in full medium armor - the movement speed increase from that is very useful. This IS a downside for fighting bosses with big hitboxes, though - it is hard, for example, to stack your healer and DDs on Ozezan’s butt in Vet SH and still be able to reach your tank with heals.

As a final note, you should remember that all healers - Stamina or Magicka - are better classified as “support.” Yes, your job is to keep your group members alive, but it’s also your job to buff your teammates, debuff the enemies, manage mechanics, provide resources to your allies, and more. This doesn’t stop being your job just because you changed resource pools, and, thankfully, Stamina has a lot of great options for support abilities. This last point is the actual focus of the entire next section of this guide!

So, what do I mean when I call something a Stamina Healer? It means that they will:

Eschew using staves (Restoration OR Destruction) entirely.
Will primarily use MEDIUM Armor on their body sets; if a Magicka set like Olorime is needed, it will be Jewels and Weapons.
Use primarily (but not exclusively!) Stamina to cast its heals, buffs, and debuffs. You’ll find in the next section that I put a limit on my personal builds of 2-3 Magicka abilities (with Energy Orb being one of the two on nearly every class). This is a personal restriction, and there are definitely other, valid ways to build. It’s probably even possible to use something like the Torc of Tonal Constancy and go for a full 50/50 Magicka/Stamina split, but I’ve never tried that.

One final note: I’ve focused my efforts on making Stamina healers, not Stamina hybrids. A lot of Vet DLC Trifectas are more easily completed by eschewing going full healer and instead contributing more to DPS, and there is a lot of potential to do this with Stamina. That’s not my personal preference, and I have not had much time to experiment going that route; farming every affix (and all the gold to support my Luminous Ink addiction) on seven characters has not allowed me the time to do much beyond building straight healers. I likely will experiment with going more of a hybrid route in the future (after Luminous Ink prices drop…which I suspect this post won’t help), but for now I focused on healer builds that can be picked up by all levels of players and allow them to contribute to 4man content.

VeryFallible · September 19

2. Anatomy of a Magicka Healer’s Bar:

If you’re an experienced healer, you might not need this section. Before we get into Scribing, though, I think it’s worthwhile to dissect what goes into your average Magicka healer’s bar setup, because if we understand everything that’s going on we can more readily translate that into Stamina healing.

To do this, I’m going to take a beginner bar setup from Healers Haven for a Magicka Warden:

Fetcher Infection is a 20 second DoT that serves two purposes. First, it’s an Animal Companions skill, which means it gives you 12% Magicka and Stamina Recovery just for being slotted through the Flourish passive AND gives you 4 Ult each cast through the Savage Beast passive. Second, it applies Minor Vulnerability to the target for its duration.
Combat Prayer is the single spell that was the bane of Stamina healers pre-Gold Road. Even Stamina Wardens, who could mimic the healing strength of their Magicka brethren, could not provide the dual buffs of Minor Resolve and, more importantly, Minor Berserk, that Combat Prayer provides. Minor Berserk is a strong 5% damage buff that is occasionally sourced through class abilities, but has largely for the history of ESO been the responsibility of the healer to provide.
Illustrious Healing is one of the strong Heal Over Time abilities on these sample bars; it is Magicka based.
Echoing Vigor is another VERY strong Heal Over Time ability; being Stamina-based, it is a temporary reprieve for the Magicka healer to regen Magicka during that GCD.
Deep Fissure has the same Animal Companion passives that Fletcher Infection does (Flourish, notably, does not stack - it is a flat 12% Stamina/Magicka recovery if you have one AC skill slotted or if you have all six slots full with AC skills), while also providing AoE Major and Minor Breach, which are huge debuffs for AoE damage.
Reviving Barrier is your frontbar ultimate as a big “everything has gone to ***” button while also giving you 10% Magicka Recovery through the Magicka Aid passive.
Elemental Blockade provides a host of benefits compressed into one ability; like Combat Prayer, this was the other main ability Stamina healers missed having. EB does what all AoE DoT weapon skills (Stampede, Volley, Quick Cloak, etc.) do: provide a way to proc your backbar enchant while on your frontbar by providing a source of weapon-based damage while on a different bar from that weapon. Elemental Blockade ALSO provides benefits based on the type of staff your backbar is, with Lightning Staves (proccing the Concussed status and subsequently, Off Balance) being the general choice. This combination of both proccing your backbar enchant AND debuffing enemies to increase damage against them was not offered by any other weapon DoT prior to Gold Coast (spoiler: that has changed!)
Energy Orb: A strong, positionally-dependent AoE HoT WITH upside. Combustion is a great synergy that is essentially a “must have” component of any healer’s kit.
Budding Seeds: In my opinion the most replaceable ability on this list, this is a ground-targeted AoE HoT that importantly provides a synergy to help your teammates’ sustain.
Overflowing Altar: AoE Minor Lifesteal on all targets for passive healing, while also providing a strong emergency heal synergy.
Expansive Frost Cloak: The only (pre-Gold Road) source of AoE Major Resolve in the game to my knowledge, this ability makes your entire team survive more easily.
Aggressive Horn: 10% more Magicka and Stamina for 30 seconds, 20% more Crit Damage through Major Force for 10 seconds. The bread-and-butter support ultimate since the dawn of ESO, it feels like.

So, breaking it down, a Magicka Healer provides:

Four AoE Heal-over-time abilities in Illustrious Springs, Echoing Vigor, Budding Seeds, and Energy Orb.
One spammable burst heal in Combat Prayer.
Five group buffs in Major Resolve, Major Force, Minor Resolve, Minor Berserk, and the Warhorn resource buff.
Three synergies from Budding Seeds, Overflowing Altar, and Energy Orb.
Five debuffs in Minor Vulnerability, Major AND Minor Breach, Minor Lifesteal, and Off-Balance.
One survivability “cooldown” in Reviving Barrier.

In essence, being a healer isn’t just about healing - only five of 10 slots on this beginning bar set up actually heal their target (though an argument could be made for Overflowing Altar as a sixth heal), and I would actually personally cut down on one of those heals for another buff or debuff ability. Healing is about providing group support, both through keeping your teammates alive AND by providing the buffs, debuffs, and synergies they need to excel at their jobs. And while the Stamina Warden of yesteryear could do a great job of mimicking (and possibly exceeding!) the healing throughput of Magicka Healers, it always fell short in two areas:

Ability to provide Minor Berserk.
Elemental Blockade’s ability to compress both proccing your self-buff (backbar enchant) and debuffing the opponent (off-balance).

As I go through this guide, I’m going to to use the above breakdown as a guideline for how we want to build Stamina healers. I’m going to look for having one spammable burst heal, multiple ways to heal over time, and a similar number of buffs, debuffs, and synergies. I won’t necessarily be looking to always provide the same buffs and debuffs, as different classes excel at different things. Thanks to Scribing, though, we will be centering every build around a means to provide Minor Berserk!

VeryFallible · September 19

3. Scribing!

In the before-times,Stamden and Stamarc were the only truly viable stamina healers. There were a ton of useful non-Magicka skills in the game that any class could use: Echoing Vigor and Ring of Preservation for healing, Bone Surge and Overflowing Altar to provide useful synergies, and Razor Caltrops and Venom Arrow as debuff/control skills (as well as the very situational Charging Maneuver and Silver Leash) all allowed most classes a skeleton of abilities that they could then fill out with some class skills.

Unfortunately, while those skills + class skills could be used to build something that passably resembled a healer build, it was sort of like baking a cake but forgetting to add the sugar to it. Aesthetically they might have appeared to be a stamina healer, but if you tried to play that way it would become immediately clear that something was missing. Ring of Preservation + Echoing Vigor are a GREAT combination if you’re running a triple DPS + one tank comp and you need a little bit of healing to keep your well-coordinated DDs alive, but it doesn’t offer the same raw healing output as a dedicated healer. Stamdens were able to complement these two with my favorite ability in the game, Soothing Spores, and then Arcs came along and got their entire suite of core healing abilities as able to scale with Stamina. Both of these classes got access through their healing trees to something the other five lack: a strong, spammable, healing ability.

Additionally, there were some notable issues with Stamina healing as a support in general. Stamdens got access through their class to some amazing buffs/debuffs, like Minor Vulnerability through Growing Swarm, AoE Major Resolve through Expansive Frost Cloak, and once-upon-a-time provided Major Breach’s physical equivalent Major Fracture through Subterranean Assault. Unfortunately, while a Stamden’s healing output could compete with a Magden’s, it’s ability to support its team fell behind. Soothing Spores lacks the Minor Intellect/Endurance granted by its Magicka counterpart, AoE Major/Minor Breach are restricted to Magicka-based Deep Fissure now, and while Purge is rarely an ability you need to have equipped all the time, the fact that cleansing debuffs was solely doable with Magicka meant that Stam healers often had to overcompensate on fights that needed a Purge. Most damning of all, though, was that Stam healers lacked the major Minor buff that was only available to a whole group through a single restoration staff skill but which every single group assumed they would have access to: I am talking, of course, about, Combat Prayer’s Minor Berserk.

5% extra damage isn’t exactly the end of the world - lacking it didn’t stop my teams from clearing things like Gryphon Handler and Pinnacle of Evolution with me healing on a Stamden. But, it IS hard to sell people on a build when it is missing one of the generally assumed buffs for all group content in the game. As much as I could sing the praises of my Stamden’s ability to heal the incoming damage in some of the hardest content in the game, it was always frustrating that without Minor Berserk it never felt like it could contribute as much as its Magicka counterpart.

Scribing has changed ALL of the above. Smash, Vault, and Torchbearer all now offer Stamina-based heals/shields, and TWO of the above offer Minor Berserk as an Affix Script as well! Meanwhile, there are also three great weapon-agnostic skills in Wield Soul, Soul Burst, and Trample that provide every class with stamina-based skills that can be Affixed to provide very strong debuffs. Finally, while Sword and Shield and Dual Wield’s unique skills don’t offer Stamina-based team healing, they also offer unique signature scripts that increase the level of support your Stamina healer can provide.

Note: The next mini-section in my linked guide is about unlocking scribing, but I did not include this here as there are multiple other guides on these forums about how to do that. That section of my Google Docs guide DOES review how valuable I think the different scripts are, so if you're interested it's worth checking out. Instead, I'll go straight into analysis of what scribing skills will benefit you. I'm going to hide my comments about each skill in Spoiler tags just to shorten the length of the post.

3b: Putting it all together

The very first thing you need to consider is what healing Grimoires you want your stamina healer to use. There are three Grimoires where the healing/shielding Focus Scripts come with a Stamina cost instead of Magicka. For the Affix scripts I’ll list the version of the buff they give as well, as a given affix might give a minor version of its buff on one grimoire, and a major version on a different one; as of U43, all Major buffs from scribing skills last 10 seconds and Minor buffs last 20. The three Stamina-healing scribing Grimoires are:

Smash:
Focus: Healing, Damage Shield
Signature: Sage’s Remedy, Druid’s Resurgence, Class Mastery
Affix: Minor Berserk, Minor Expedition, Minor Vitality, Minor Force, Major Savagery and Prophecy, Major Brutality and Sorcery

Starting off strong, I personally believe Smash is the single biggest addition to Stamina healers in the game. This is an 8-meter conal AoE that either shields or heals allies, leaves a HoT on them, and gives them Minor Berserk (you could technically run one of the other three, but I think Berserk is the default best choice by a longshot here.) This is your shorter range Combat Prayer on a Stamina healer.

I’ve personally liked using it with Damage Shield over Healing as the Focus Script, but I don’t think you can go wrong with either. A bonus for Damage Shield, in my opinion, is that it gives you a great visual indication on your party’s health bars of whether they actually got hit by the skill and thus received Minor Berserk. That said, if you’re running this as Warding Smash, I think you want to make sure you have either Healing Torchbearer or a healing spammable from your class (Wardens and Arcs). Warding Smash will do you no favors keeping tanks alive through heal check mechanics that are becoming ever more present in DLC dungeons! Regardless of which option fits your build best, I Smash itself is why I feel that the default best frontbar option for Stamina healers is Two Handed!
Suggested build: Damage Shield OR Healing, Sage’s Remedy, Berserk.

Vault:
Focus: Healing
Signature: Sage’s Remedy, Druid’s Resurgence, Class Mastery.
Affix: Minor Berserk, Major Savagery and Prophecy, Minor Expedition, Major Evasion, Major Brutality and Sorcery, Minor Intellect and Endurance, Minor Force.

If Smash didn’t exist, Vault would be the single biggest addition to Stamina healers in the game. I do think it’s -slightly- worse than Smash, so I rate it second best…but still, an INCREDIBLE addition. The reason I think it’s slightly worse than Smash is that it’s not really “spammable” in the same way in moments where intense healing is needed. Not only does it physically VAULT you backwards (which is way fun, but not always useful), but repeated uses within a short period of time become prohibitively expensive. I like this more as a burst heal on my backbar that leaves a strong HoT and a good buff. Speaking of which, this is a good moment to mention that the Sage’s Remedy affix doesn’t overwrite itself if applied by two different skills - you can have both a Smash HoT and a Vault HoT active at the same time!

Speaking of buffs, you have a collection of absolute bangers here…and more freedom to use them if you’re using Warding or Healing Smash on your frontbar with Berserk. Savagery and Prophecy, Brutality and Sorcery, and Force are all sourced from really common skills/consumables, so I’d stay clear of them. Expedition is good (though more on speed later!), and Intellect and Endurance is the minor version, which is a useful buff that is NOT replicated by potions. My personal pick here is Evasion, which I believe is the first skill-based source of AoE Major Evasion in the game. 20% reduction from AoE attacks is absolutely huge when it’s riding on a Heal-Over-Time that you want to keep up anyway!
Suggested build: Healing, Sage’s Remedy, Evasion

Torchbearer:
Focus: Healing, Generate Ultimate
Signature: Druids Resurgence, Gladiator’s Tenacity, Crusader’s Defiance, Class Mastery.
Affix: Major Savagery and Prophecy, Minor Resolve, Minor Evasion, Minor Vitality, Major Brutality and Sorcery, Minor Heroism

Torchbearer gets a bad rep…and it’s kind of deserved. I am VERY high on Smash and Vault, much less sold on Torchbearer. That two second channel time is just brutal. That said, it IS a Stamina-based heal, so it is worth considering. It’s also not a -bad- heal; I took it into an unplanned vSS on my Stamplar and healed Ice Cages and Navi heal check just fine with it, but it does feel a bit on the slow end. If I was planning to do HM Lokkestiiz, I don’t think Torchbearer heals hard or fast enough to do double cages and would likely opt for Healing Smash instead. This is just some anecdotal data to give you an idea of the sort of output you can expect!

Thankfully, while the base skill can be a bit annoying, the Signature and Affix scripts it brings are decent.The Signatures are the big focus: Gladiator’s Tenacity reduces damage taken by everyone in your (short) cone, which somewhat makes up for the fact that each swing of the torch does less overall healing than a normal spammable. Crusader’s Defiance, meanwhile, turns Torchbearer into the ONLY Stamina-based group Purge effect in the game!

In terms of Affix scripts, this is the only one of the three heals that gives access to Minor Heroism. Minor Resolve, Minor Evasion, and Minor Vitality are all nice buffs that provide some measure of improved survivability, but Minor Heroism is an INCREDIBLY strong damage buff, and this is one of the first ways in the entire game to provide it in an AoE.

On a final note, if you’re playing a character who doesn’t need an extra Stamina-based heal, the Generate Ultimate effect is essentially another Minor Heroism itself. It’s a much more niche skill, but generating a combined 3.25 ultimate per 1.5 seconds to every party member it hits every time you use it is nothing to scoff at. I use this on my Stamina Necromancer healer as the thing I spam during low damage phases, allowing me to build Colossus SIGNIFICANTLY faster.

Suggested build: Healing, Crusaders Defiance, Minor Heroism

That’s it for the three core healing skills we can get from Scribing. I’d imagine every single Stamina healer will use at least one of these three, and I’ve used all three together on multiple classes. Heals alone, though, don’t make a healer. Many Stamina healers will get support skills through their classes, but Scribing opens up some incredible options as well:

Trample:
Focus: Physical, Disease, Stun
Signature: Assassin’s Misery, Hunter’s Snare, Thief’s Swiftness, Class Mastery
Affix: Minor Cowardice, Major Heroism, Major Expedition, Off Balance, Minor Vulnerability, Major Savagery and Prophecy, Major Brutality and Sorcery

Trample is the Stamina version of Elemental Explosion - too clunky to use in a DPS rotation due to the annoying cast time, but very useful as a group support ability. It’s nice that it’s aesthetically cool too, summoning your actual mount to charge forward and deal damage.

Focus Script-wise, it’s a “pick your poison” option between whether you want to deal Physical or Disease damage; it will largely be dependent on your class. I included Stun here just for completeness, but I would never choose it myself and will leave any other CC Focus Scripts off future abilities, as you don’t want to accidentally cause mobs to go CC immune and prevent the tank from being able to pull them.

The Signature Scripts are more interesting. Assassin’s Misery applies three statuses, with Sundered being the most interesting as it will apply AoE Minor Breach to anyone it hits. Overall, though, I think you’re better off with Thief’s Swiftness, which leaves a unique 15% movement speed buff (which seems to stack with Minor Expedition). It isn’t a huge boon, but any ability that applies more than one buff or debuff per cast is worth considering!

In terms of DEBUFFS, I think Minor Vulnerability will be your default option - 5% extra damage to every creature it hits. That said, there are a LOT of Minor Vulnerability sources in the game, many of them being class-based. Wardens, Necros, and Arcanists all apply Minor Vulnerability through abilities that are generally in their rotations, so while this is a debuff I think your team always wants access to it IS also one that you can consider skipping and assuming it will be brought by someone else.

Because of the omnipresence of Minor Vulnerability, my ACTUAL default choice would be the Heroism Affix script. While this is a self-only buff, I think it’s still worth considering as a group support ability. This is also the only skill-based source of unconditional Major Heroism in the game that I am aware of. Combined with Minor Heroism from Torchbearer you’ll be generating 4 Ultimate every 1.5 seconds, or 160 every minute. That is a huge increase to the amount of War Horns, Colossi, or Atronachs that you can cast in a given dungeon (or even a given fight). Major Heroism is just such an incredibly strong buff, and powering out your support ultimates IS ultimately a group buff.
Suggested Build: Disease Damage (or Physical damage depending on class), Thief’s Swiftness, Heroism

Wield Soul:
Focus: Physical Damage
Signature: Druid’s Resurgence, Class Mastery
Affix: Major Breach, Major Cowardice, Major Maim

Wield Soul does not bring with it a ton of options - you HAVE to run Physical Damage, and unless you’re on one of the few classes that can get something out of your Class Mastery you also have to run Druid’s Resurgence. Breach as an affix is useless considering your tank should be bringing that anyway, which leaves two good debuffs as the only real thing to choose between. Based on this spreadsheet, Cowardice is at its best in normal content when the enemies have lower Weapon/Spell Damage. It’s still fine in Veteran content, but I’d prioritize the flat 10% damage reduction off Major Maim because it’s consistent across content.
Suggested Build: Physical Damage, Druid’s Resurgence, Maim

Soul Burst:
Focus: Physical Damage
Signature: Class Mastery, Hunter’s Snare, Anchorite’s Potency
Affix: Minor Breach, Interrupt, Minor Maim, Magickasteal

Soul Burst is similar to Wield Soul in that it gives us very few options in Focus or Signature slots. Anchorite’s Potency is probably the best, as more ultimate is always nice…just be prepared to chew through stacks of Soul Gems. Hunter’s Snare is fine once your enemies are grouped up, but can be annoying for your tank if you use it prematurely and slow down the things they’re trying to put in place. Class Mastery is…Class Mastery. For Affix scripts, AoE Minor Breach isn’t bad. Magickasteal and Interrupt both have their place, but are going to be more team and build composition dependent.I think the real easy choice here is Minor Maim, though it’s worth noting that I rarely ever use Sundering Burst over a class based support skill.
Suggested Build: Physical Damage, Anchorite’s Potency, Minor Maim

And finally, there are two more weapon abilities worth considering! I save these for last because they require giving up either Smash or Vault in order to use, which means they’re going to be much harder to bring in a default build. The bonuses they offer ARE worth considering, though.

Throw Shield:
Focus: Multi-Target, Physical Damage
Signature: Lingering Torment, Druid’s Resurgence, Class Mastery, Knight’s Valor
Affix: Off-Balance, Interrupt, Major Maim, Major Cowardice

I think Multi-Target is strictly better than Physical Damage, as it applies your affix to multiple targets. For Signature Scripts, there are two directions to go: Knight’s Valor makes Shield Throw a Bash ability, allowing you to both interrupt and proc Off-Balance (though notably, not on demand Off-Balance like the affix script is - it requires the enemy to be casting to proc OB). Much more interesting to me is Lingering Torment, which gives Sword and Board something it has always lacked: a way to proc their weapon enchant on their backbar, which every other non-Restoration Staff weapon had. Notably, this procs a -smaller- enchant than most backbars given that it is tied to a one-handed weapon. That said, Endless Hail and Stampede don’t apply debuffs to their enemy, so you eschew a larger glyph for the ability to debuff your enemies.

For Affix scripts, I think this is one area you consider Cowardice over Maim. You’ll be hitting a lot of adds with this because of the Multi-Target Focus Script, and adds tend to have lower Weapon/Spell Damage than bosses. This will be removing a significant portion of their damage, leaving less for you to actually heal. Flat 10% damage reduction through Major Maim is also incredible though, so there is literally no wrong answer here. I also really like Off Balance here, effectively turning Shield Throw into a Physical version of Elemental Blockade (AoE damage that procs a weapon enchant and Off Balance).
Suggested Build: Multi-Target, Lingering Torment, Major Cowardice

Traveling Knife:
Focus: Physical, Poison, Bleed, Multi-Target
Signature: Assassin’s Misery, Warrior’s Opportunity
Affix: Off-Balance, Minor Vulnerability, Minor Maim, Minor Lifesteal

Traveling Knife is probably my favorite of the scribing support options, as you can build it in two very different ways depending on what you’re hoping for. I think Multi-Target is the default best Focus script because of its ability to apply Signature and Affix scripts to multiple adds, but Physical/Poison/Bleed are decent single target options - in particular, Poison synergizes particularly well with Dragon Knight due to its ability to proc your Combustion passive.

Signature is where things get REALLY interesting. Both of these scripts provide unique debuffs, which combine with the Affix scripts to mean that you’re providing two debuffs per skill use. Warrior’s Opportunity gives a debuff that makes the enemy take 8% more martial damage for five seconds; if you know that you’re running with double stamina DPS this is without a doubt the best option. If this is the case, I’d run it as your front bar spammable to try and maximize uptime, since it only lasts 5 seconds. For pugging, I think Assassin’s Misery is the better option, as Warrior’s Opportunity gets completely wasted if you end up with double Magicka DPS. Assassin’s Misery is a really strong debuff in its own right, increasing the chance for all of your DDs to apply status effects by 100% for 10 seconds. Both of these are absolutely tremendous debuffs, and if you can get away with not using Smash/Vault I would almost always look to Traveling Knife next. Assassin’s Misery + Poison is also a great combination for a stam DK healer, giving an even higher chance for Combustion to proc.

For affix scripts, I’m becoming a broken record: Minor Vulnerability is great, Minor Maim is ALSO great but -slightly- less so (as a general rule, you tend to want to buff group damage more than debuff enemy damage). I also like Minor Lifesteal as an option if you have those other two supplied already; just know that it doesn’t stack with Altar, which a lot of pug tanks run.
Suggested Build: For ST frontbar: Poison, Warrior’s Opportunity, Minor Vulnerability
For MT backbar: Multi-Target, Assassin’s Misery, Minor Vulnerability

VeryFallible · September 19

3c. Update 44 changes.

U44 updates are a bit thin in the scribing department, but what IS there is worth looking forward to. First up is the new scribing Grimoire.

Banner Bearer:
The most exciting part of the U44 update is the new Banner Bearer skill, which is described in the preview post as: “Banner Bearer is from the Support Skill Line and allows you to throw a banner on your back, leading the charge with an AoE buff to your group’s abilities that match your chosen Focus. No matter what shape your party takes, this new Grimoire will ensure you can give your allies the support they need!”

Now that the PTS is up we have some idea as to what BB will look like. Please note that since I’m a console player I haven’t had the chance to actually play with it yet, so my understanding of it is based on the tooltip. If you’d like to read about actual play experiences with the skill, this is the official feedback page on the ESO forums! As it currently exists, Banner Bearer is a toggleable skill that significantly reduces your Magicka, Stamina, and Health Recovery in exchange for a unique (and STRONG!) AoE buff based on the Focus Script. Those Focus Scripts are:

Physical Damage (Increases Martial Damage by 6%, reduces recovery by 33%)
Magic Damage (Increases Magic Damage by 6%, reduces recovery by 33%)
Shock Damage (Increases Direct Damage by 6%, reduces recovery by 33%)
Flame Damage (Increases DoT Damage by 6%, reduces recovery by 33%)
Multi-Target (Increases AoE Damage by 6%, reduces recovery by 33%)
Immobilize (Cleanses yourself of snares and immobilizations, makes you immune to them while active, reduces recovery by 40%)
Restore Resources (Reduces the cost of non-Ultimate abilities by 8%, reduces recovery by 33%)
Mitigation (Reduces damage taken by 6%, reduces recovery by 33%)

.

You then, of course, get to further modify Banner Bearer with signature scripts. Currently, it looks like most of these scripts are self buffs only, though it is of course still the PTS and there is no guarantee that remains. For Signature Scripts, you get:

Class Mastery

Sage’s Remedy (Heals for 407 every 2 seconds)
Warmage’s Defense (Grants a damage shield every 3 seconds for 3 seconds that absorbs up to 700 damage.)
Druid’s Resurgence (Increases Health, Magicka, and Stamina Recovery of other group members by 139.)
Thief’s Swiftness (Reduce the cost of Sprint by 22%.)
Crusader’s Defiance (Reduce the effectiveness of negative snares by 30%)
Wayfarer’s Mastery (You count as being in a PvP area for Battle Resurrection, reducing the time it takes to resurrect another player.)
Cavalier’s Charge (Increase your Weapon and Spell Damage by 6 for every 1% bonus Movement Speed, up to a max of 450.)

Personally, my hope is that the Sage’s Remedy and Warmage’s Defense skills due get applied in an AoE, as they’re just the sort of small healing or shielding over time that would really round out Stamina healing builds. If they don’t, I’m going to default to Druid’s Resurgence, as it is the only script that clearly benefits the rest of your group in PvE.

Finally, we of course get to apply Affix Scripts. Nothing I’ve read indicates that these aren’t applied in the AoE around you, and that’d be -really- silly design if it was the case. As such, we’re assuming they do apply to your entire party! Those scripts are:

Savagery and Prophecy (Major)
Resolve (Minor)
Berserk (Minor)
Brutality and Sorcery (Major)
Protection (Minor)
Courage (Minor)
Heroism (Minor)
Intellect and Endurance (Minor)

I am interested in a whole bunch of these - for Warden and Arc, the Berserk script allows them to free themselves from the shackle of Two Handed/Bow and go with whatever weapons they feel like. Minor Courage is cool too, since the only other Scribing skills that apply it in an AoE are Mender’s Bond and Soul Burst, both of which only provide it through Magicka-based Focus Scripts. Really, though, every one of these are a banger option.

All of that said, it does look like there are some downsides to Banner Bearer. The most obvious is that significant recovery reduction, but there are ways to build to mitigate that. It also has to be double barred to stay active, which of course limits your other skill options. Finally, the AoE is short ranged, at 8 meters…which is a limitation you’re already used to working around as a Stamina healer. Despite those limitations, though, expect this to be an absolute staple healer ability next patch!

New Scribing Focus Scripts:
Banner Barrier is definitely the most exciting change coming next patch, but it’s not the only one! We also get 14 new applications for Focus Scripts.

Vault - Bleed
Smash - Poison
Elemental Explosion - Physical Damage
Traveling Knife - Frost
Wield Soul - Flame Damage
Wield Soul - Disease Damage
Wield Soul - Bleed
Soul Burst - Disease Damage
Soul Burst - Flame Damage
Soul Burst - Bleed
Ulfsild’s Contingency - Shock Damage
Ulfsild’s Contingency - Bleed
Torchbearer - Frost Damage
Trample - Frost Damage

Of these, the Soul line getting extra damage types is nice. They’re currently stuck at just Physical Damage currently, but both Bleed and Disease synergize well with other classes. Vault and Smash also got fun new damage types, with Smash’s Poison damage being particularly exciting for Dragonknights since it is currently limited to only two skills (and one of those is Vault

). Unfortunately, I’m fairly certain that if you’re a stamina healing Dragon Knight and you want to run Smash or Vault as their healing versions and not the Poisonous type.

Elemental Explosion getting Physical Damage is actually somewhat interesting. It goes entirely against my “Stamina healers don’t use staves” mantra, but this could be a fun option if you’re willing to look past that. This is of course assuming the Physical Damage Focus Script comes with a Stamina cost, which is true for every other class in the game. This is mostly exciting because Elemental Explosion gets Minor Brittle as an Affix Script, which is an actually huge debuff.

The other exciting one to me is Ulfsid’s Contingency getting Bleed, which should be the first Stamina costing Focus Script for that skill. I wish it had better options for Affix scripts - I’d KILL for Brittle to be added to it! - but Magickasteal, Minor Breach, and Minor Vulnerability in an AoE are not terrible. It is at least another support option, though!

VeryFallible · September 19

4. Other Useful Skills

Most of the time, your bars are going to be dominated by Scribing and class skills. I won’t be going into class skills here (but I’ll note some exceptions later during my sample builds section). Beyond class skills, here are some important generic skills to consider picking up.

Venom Arrow:
Not much to say about this one, but if you’re going to be running Vault you should definitely unlock Venom Arrow - it’s essentially Stamina’s Crushing Shock. An interrupt is always useful to have!

Hidden Blade:
I think both of the morphs to this ability have merit - one teleporting you around the battlefield, the other hitting multiple targets. You’re ultimately unlocking this for the base ability, which is theDual Wield equivalent of…Venom Arrow and Crushing Shock. Note that for both Venom Arrow and Hidden Blade you’re rarely keeping them as a staple on your bars, but having them unlocked is important for when you’re in a fight that NEEDS an interrupt.

Deep Slash:
Is this ability useful enough to warrant running Sword and Shield? No, it is not. But if you’re in the market for Shield Throw, this is free AoE Minor Maim. I like the fact that this combos pretty well with Multi-Target + Major Maim on your Shield Throw, giving you AoE 15% less damage from enemies. It’s definitely a “10th slot” skill where you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for utility, but you could do worse.

Dizzying Swing:
If Deep Slash was scraping the bottom of the barrel, Dizzying Swing is picking up the barrel’s splinters. In a pre-Scribing world I used this occasionally when I knew my DDs had Exploiter and I needed a way to proc Off-Balance on demand, but I was never happy to do so. I’d be even less happy to do so now.

Drain Vigor:
This is not one I’ve tried myself (I’m more Team Jacob than Team Edward, if you catch my drift), but I’m intrigued by the prospect. Yes, the Magicka cost is a big ask, but 30% of your Stamina back over 3 seconds is a huge boon. I like this the most for DKs, whose Stamina generation is otherwise entirely tied up in proccing Poisoned and using War Horn. Most other classes have their own class-based stamina sustain abilities that synergize with their passives, so I’m not as sold on them using Drain Vigor.

Ring of Preservation:
Pre-Gold Road, this was one of the premier Stamina heals in the game. It is still a GREAT heal combined with both Minor Endurance and Minor Protection. For coordinated teams that know how to stack on a boss’ butt and burn, this is an incredible tool in your arsenal. Most pug DD have a tendency to play Dance Dance Revolution with the boss even when there’s nothing on the ground to avoid, though, which is why I consider this a good toolbox skill but not one you’re regularly going to default to on your bars.

Overflowing Altar:
A healer staple for as long as I can remember, Overflowing Altar is a workhorse ability. It’s never the thing you’re overly excited to put on your bar, but it provides a useful debuff in Minor Lifesteal and provides a potentially life-saving synergy. You always want to have this one available, even if you’re not always using it.

Shadow Silk:
I’m mentioning this one here with the caveat of saying: don’t use this currently. Any ability that provides a synergy piques my interest, but this one just doesn’t do enough beyond the synergy. The reason I’m including it? Between the fact that it deals Poison damage and the synergy it brings, this is one debuff away from being a usable skill, particularly for Stam DK. If they gave this spider Minor Vulnerability, or even something significantly lower tier like Minor Cowardice, I could see an argument for slotting it.

Bone Surge:
Ring of Preservation 2.0! Bone Surge is an incredible skill due to its strong synergy, granting 6 allies a 30% damage shield and Major Vitality for 6 seconds. My only gripe with it is that the synergy is very close range, so you need to be stacking effectively to use it. If you can accomplish that stacking I think this is always worth considering, but if you’re anticipating a bunch of movement there are generally better options.

Energy Orb:
I’ve covered this one already elsewhere in this guide, but Energy Orb is seen as basically mandatory on healers. For Stamina healers it offers all the same benefits (heal-over-time, incredibly good sustain synergy) while also giving you some Stamina regeneration time while you cast it.

Razor Caltrops:
AoE Major Breach that can proc Powerful Assault. In Gold Road there are way more powerful options than this for group utility, but it is nice damage and AoE Major Breach is useful for speeding through trash.

Charging Maneuver:
This is an incredibly niche option, but if you’ve ever farmed Zen’s Redress in Lair of Maarselok you’re going to be very glad you have this one. I’d spend the skill points to unlock this if you’ve leveled Assault up far enough to do so, but I would not bother specifically leveling Assault just for this.

Aggressive Horn:
If you’ve gotten this far into this guide, I’m assuming you’re familiar enough with ESO to know why I’d advise picking up Aggressive Horn on your healer. You can skip this on a Necro, generally (and I personally prefer Atronach to War Horn on my Sorc healer, though I’m not sure which is actually numerically better).

Mystic Guard:
This is useful to have unlocked for specific mechanics, like guarding dragon tanks in vSS. It’s another niche support ability, but you’ll be happy to have it when the fight calls for it. Keep in mind it needs to be double barred to work effectively.

Reviving Barrier:
Your frontbar “oh @$*&” button. You never WANT to use this over War Horn, but having the option to do so is important. Sometimes, things go to hell and Barrier is the only thing standing between you and a wipe. You’ll be happy you have this when that happens!

Echoing Vigor:
I was going largely in skill-line order, but I skipped over this when I did the rest of Assault so that I could end the section with it. Why? Because this is one of the best heals in the entire game, AND it’s Stamina based. Strong HoT, 15 seconds long, Stamina based, procs Powerful Assault…Echoing Vigor will never leave your bars as a Stamina healer! This is your first priority to unlock, possibly even before Scribing!

VeryFallible · September 19

5. Gearing your Stamina Healer

One of my absolute favorite parts about playing a stamina healer is that we get to use Medium Armor on our body, with all the juicy crit and weapon damage bonuses that come with that. Unfortunately, that also means that your set options tend to be a bit limited, as Zenimax hasn’t added too many medium support sets into the game. This section is going to largely be copied from my 2022 guide, though there ARE new sets and I’ve added updates where applicable!

Body Sets:

These should all be Divines with stamina enchants, though a consideration can be made for Infused on your larger pieces.

Powerful Assault:
This is the de-facto stamina healer set. Normally run on weapons and jewels by your tanks, you get to put this on your body. (Or, if you want to get really spicy, you can run it on one bar and use a different set on your other weapon.) You’re already running Echoing Vigor because it’s just a great HoT to begin with, which means you’re guaranteed to be proccing this every 15 seconds. As an additional bonus, Razor Caltrops and Aggressive Warhorn both also proc this. Added bonus? Since it’s rarely used on the body and normally confined to weapons and jewelry, body pieces of PA are generally very cheap on guild traders. I got an entire set in Divines for less than 25k (XBox-NA) when I was first gearing.

War Machine:
Another great one-barrable OR body set, this will mostly be confined to use in four man content (as most trial groups will have your other healer in Roaring Opportunist/Jorvuld’s Guidance). This is especially good in groups that are built for maximizing ult generation, particularly with tanks who are in Drake’s Rush/Arkasis’s Genius. Combos really well with Assault providing Major Heroism and Torchbearer providing Minor Heroism.

Hircine’s Veneer:
The Worm’s Raiment of Stamina, this set might have been useful in 2018. You probably have this filled out in your collections already because it comes from one of the easiest dungeons in the game, but I wouldn’t really bother reconstructing it. There are better options.

Grisly Gourmet/Kinras’s Wrath:
Both of these are damage-focused sets with a group support component to them. If you’re doing something like a 3DPS/1Tank speed run through a dungeon where you’re providing some limited off-healing, I can see them both having a place. As a general rule, though, they’re not going to be as useful as the above three.

Kagrenac’s Hope:
Only worth mentioning because it’s the closest thing any crafted set has come to being a support set, and since it’s craftable you can make it in medium armor. Don’t feel bad skipping this one, though.

Apocryphal Inspiration:
Major Fortitude, Major Endurance, and Major Intelligence are all great buffs that…should be brought through potions and not have an entire 5-set wasted on them. Including this here for completion, but I’m not actually endorsing it. Ironically, this would almost be usable if it brought the Minor versions instead!

Basalt-Blooded Warrior:
This is a very interesting option for Dragonknight only. I don’t think it’s worth using over group support sets, but Major Heroism is a very strong buff, as is 14% strong Healing/Damage Shield. I like thematic sets so I’m including it, but this is not a true endorsement.

Phoenix Moth Theurge:
I am -so- glad they added another set that is clearly designed for stamina healers to the game, I just wish that it was ever so slightly better. If it gave Minor Berserk and Minor Courage it would be among the top sets in the game, competing with Olo/SPC/PA/War Machine. Minor Force is just not appealing considering how easy it is for everyone to bring it themselves. What I DO like about this set is that it’s an overland set and thus very easy to get, making it ideal for beginners.

Reawakened Heirophant:
This feels like a solid B-tier set to me, and is Arcanist specific. If you can build and use up 3 Crux every six seconds, it’s permanent Minor Heroism and Major Protection. I’m more keen on the second part of that, as Minor Heroism can be sources much more easily through scribing abilities.

Jewels/Weapons:

For weapons, I choose to use Precise on my frontbar with a Stamina Drain enchant, though an argument can be made for Powered. For backbar, I use Infused. I switch enchants on my backbar based on content and group composition, but have used Crusher, Berserker, and Magicka Drain.

For jewels, I use Robust primarily. I used Triune for a time, but between the health line on Powerful Assault and the Maturation passive, I was regularly hitting over 25k HP in parse food, which is excessive. With Robust I’m generally sitting over 40k stamina with Warhorn up, which is a pleasant place to be. I use full Weapon Damage glyphs, but your mileage may vary - experiment between Weapon Damage and Recovery glyphs to find what sweet spot of throughput vs. sustain work

Spell Power Cure/Olorime:
If you thought you could escape wearing SPC as a stamina healer, think again. A consideration should be made for Olorime (especially since so many of your heals are better if your DD stack), but regardless of which you choose, you should be running a source of Major Courage. It’s just that good of a group buff. And don’t be scared by the double lines of maximum magicka - you have enough mag abilities that your magicka pool will thank you.

In many ways, the list can stop there. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve removed SPC or Olorime while healing. However, I also run with dedicated groups where I know the other healer won’t be running it, so here are some slightly worse options to consider if your other healer is adamant about wearing SPC/Olo themselves. Additionally, you can also use any of the above body sets on jewels/weapons if SPC/Olo is taken.

Way of Martial Knowledge:
Martial Knowledge seems like a shoe-in because the debuff is great and it procs when you’re using your primary resource…but this is the sort of debuff that you want to keep up the entire fight, and staying below 50% Stamina on a Stamina healer for an entire fight is hard. It’s an option, just not an ideal one.This also combos well with Pearls of Ehlnofey, which is a nice plus.

Curse Eater:
In my opinion, this is one of the best sets to have access to as a stamina healer. Purge is your Achilles Heel, as it costs a ton of Magicka and the fights where you need a purge generally need you to do it frequently. This set will only be useful on specific fights (Hunter Killers in vHoF, second stage of vBRP, etc.), but the fights where it’s good it excels.

Healing Mage/Gossamer
These are both magicka-heavy light armor sets that reduce the damage your team is taking. As a general rule, buffing your teammate’s damage is better than reducing their damage taken, but these are both adequate options. There are some fights in the game, like Hard Mode Lord Falgravn, where Gossamer is suggested for a team just trying to clear for the first time. I’ve personally not tried Hard Mode Kyne’s Aegis yet, but if that is something you’re considering Gossamer might be worth pursuing.

Twilight Remedy:
If Barbed Trap (and to a lesser degree, Channeled Acceleration) didn’t exist, this set would actually likely be very strong. This might actually be a decent option for pug four-man content where you can’t be sure that they’ll be bringing their own Minor Force, but in that sort of content you’re likely the only healer and SPC would be better anyway.

Monster Sets:

Symphony of Blades:
Your bread-and-butter monster set, Symphony of Blades equates to about 200 resources/second per ally over the course of a fight. It’s very strong, and generally my first choice to use. That said, it is generally a harder set for newer healers to get; if you’ve not been able to clear vDepths of Malatar yet, an acceptable replacement would be…

Sentinel of Rkugamz:
It’s nowhere near as strong as Symphony, and the positioning on the Dwemer spider that spawns can be very annoying. That said, it’s better than many of the “trap” monster helms that drop from base game dungeons. You don’t need the extra healing that comes from sets like Chokethorn, Nightflame, or even the DLC set Earthgore, and it’s better to get into the practice of wearing a buff set early.

Troll King:
While I normally don’t endorse healing sets (you have MORE than enough healing through abilities alone), Troll King has a really unique way of providing that extra healing. Since it gives bonus health recovery rather than straight healing, Troll King is useful for specific mechanics that debuff healing received but don’t debuff health recovery, like Z’Maja’s Baneful Mark in vCloudrest.

Magma Incarnate:
Most likely the hardest set to get for a new healer, this comes from the relatively new DLC dungeon The Dread Cellar. This set is a very niche set, as it requires your tank not running Claw of Yolnahkriin, which is generally a staple tank set. You’ll almost never use this in 12 man content, but it will see use in 4 man dungeons, especially if you have tanks running the more recently meta ult generation builds like Drake’s Rush/Arkasis. On an important note, you do have to be cognizant of how you can proc this set as a Stamina Warden, as most of your heals are AoE. Here are some ways I’ve tested that work:
The heal from the Warden passive Bond with Nature, so as long as you refresh your Growing Swarm while not at 100% HP you can proc MI (assuming 15 seconds has passed since your last proc).
Polar Wind procs MI, but I don’t generally think that’s a good enough reason to use PW.
On a very random note, Ring of Preservation procs Magma Incarnate. I’m unsure if this is a bug or intended.

Archdruid Devyric:
I think there are a bunch of generically better monster sets, but if you can proc this on cooldown it’s pretty decent. I think it’s particularly good on a Necromancer running multiple ult generation buffs, as you can intersperse this with Colossus for really good Major Vulnerability uptime.

Earthgore:
Not much to say about this one. If you need more healing output it’s probably the best healing monster set in the game…but you don’t really want to devote a monster set to healing.

Ozezan the Inferno:
I am not particularly keen on itemizing for survivability over maximizing group damage…but if you’re going to go that route, this is one of your absolute best options. The armor this gives stacks with Resolve, giving a not insignificant boost to your resistance. It’s also essentially a permanent 6% increase to healing - the combination of these two makes this a VERY potent survivability monster set.

The Blind:
Included for completeness, but this is another set that falls victim to the fact that Minor Force is as widely distributed as full-size Snickers in the rich part of town on Halloween.

Mythic Items:

For one of our final notes in gearing, mythic items ARE an option; however, they’re generally strictly inferior to a monster set. Thankfully, Stamden Healers can use Powerful Assault/Olo or PA/War Machine, both being options where you can frontbar one five piece bonus and backbar the other, which allows you to also use a monster set and a mythic item (and a single piece of the Trainee set). Here are the decent mythic items for Stam healing.

Death Dealer’s Fete:
Traditionally a damage dealing mythic, DDF has some utility for a Stamina healer. The extra Stamina is great, the extra Magicka is helpful, and the Health is nothing to sneeze at. I think there are better mythics for group utility, though. This is your go-to selfish mythic, but I don’t generally advocate for selfish gearing on support characters.

Pearls of Ehlnofey:
I didn’t rate this mythic particularly high when I wrote my original guide, but that was when it had its release stats and required you to stay below 30% of your Stamina to proc. Its current incarnation is 3 ultimate when under 50% Stamina, which is significantly better. This requires some juggling of of your sustain to manage so that you stay in that 50% sweetspot as much as possible, but is likely your default choice.

Spaulder of Ruin:
260 Weapon and Spell Damage is great, and you already want your allies to be around you. Losing 280 Stam and Mag recovery in a four man (and 420 in a 12 man!) isn’t ideal, but you can likely gear around that. I’d be MUCH higher on this if it went in anything other than your shoulder or head slot; it’s a great buff, but you lose out on other great buffs from your Monster Set to use it.

Torc of Tonal Constancy:
The exact opposite of Spaulder, this is also a selfish mythic. This is a good choice if you’re struggling with sustain, though the vast majority of the time it’s just going to be an extra 450 stamina recovery. I think it’s worth farming to have as an option, but I’d lean towards any of the three above first.

Cryptcanon Vestments:
This one is a bit niche, but given the amount of ultimate you can generate through Scribing (Major Heroism from Trample, Generate Ultimate Focus Script on Torchbearer) it is at least worth taking a look at. I think I’d be most interested in using this on a Nightblade, as they get fast ultimate charge through their passives and no more interesting ultimate option than War Horn. I’m still not convinced by it, though. Aggressive Horn really is that girl.

Stormweaver’s Cavort:
Full disclosure: I have zero experience with this one; I don’t think I have even unlocked a single lead for it. I think that despite this easing up your Stamina concerns by no longer tying your Sprint/Dodging to it, it overburdens your Magicka. I am VERY interested to hear if other people have tried using it, though!

The Saint and the Seducer:
I wish I liked this more than I do. The idea behind it is really cool, and the icon is one of the best in the game. Unfortunately, the Major buffs it provides are mostly irrelevant to you, and the only Minor debuff you can’t provide through Scribing affixes is Brittle. The nail in the coffin is that it’s a shoulder item, precluding you from using a monster set.

Weapon Sets:

Unfortunately, support weapon sets don’t really exist for the stamina weapons. I would absolutely love for ZOS to introduce a set of arena weapons that actually altered abilities to be more support oriented - for example, a bow that made Acid Spray heal allies rather than harming enemies, or a two hander that restores resources in an AoE around you when Momentum ends. Until ZOS makes some design changes, though, stick to Monster Sets and Mythics.

VeryFallible · September 19

6. Race/Mundus/Champion/Consumables

I’m going to copy a lot of this section from 2022! If things were updated since then I’ll mention it, but for the most part these have stayed the same. I think the biggest change will be to Mundus use.

Races:

For race, any of your Stamina-based races are fairly strong, each with their own unique pros and cons:

Redguard - 2,000 max Stamina is a great bonus, and Adrenaline Rush is a strong passive, as it effectively gives you 201 Stamina per second assuming you’re constantly dealing damage. Even as a healer, you should always have some damage happening, so this should not be hard to keep up.
Orc - 1,000 Stamina isn’t as good as Redguards, but 258 Weapon/Spell Damage and a great buff to sprinting are both really strong. 1,000 health is a nice bonus - generally unnecessary, but you won’t be sad to have it.
Nord - 1,500 Stamina is a good middle ground, but that’s really all there is in terms of bonuses. An extra .5 ult/second isn’t negligible, but as a support you’re generally conserving your ultimate for specific callouts or phases in the fight, and any time you’re sitting on an ultimate without using it this racial bonus is being wasted.
Dark Elf - 1,910 Stamina, 258 Weapon Damage. This will definitely boost your healing throughput, but does nothing for your recovery. This is one of my top racial choices for a Stamina healer, and makes it super easy to have a DPS off-spec for those times you don’t want to heal.
Argonian - Life Mender is a good throughput bonus, and considering you still need to throw our SOME Magicka abilities, a boost of 1,000 to both resource pools is actually great. The potion bonus needs to be substantially boosted in order to compete with recovery bonuses from other races, as assuming a 45 second potion cooldown it comes out to about 35 Stam/Mag recovery. It is nice that it comes back as a burst, though!
Wood Elf - 2,000 Stamina, 258 Stamina recovery, and 5% movement speed. Wood elves may not hit the mark for Stamina DPS, but every one of their bonuses is on target for a Stamina healer. They’re not my personal favorite choice, but they’re definitely in contention for being the best one.
Khajiit - My personal favorite choice, Khajiit are built to be hybrid healers, with 85 recovery and 915 resources for both pools. The 12% boost to Critical Healing is the REAL selling point here, though. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s as good in 2024 as it was in 2022. More on that when we get to Mundus, but I am not very keen on building for crit when healing anymore. Khajiit are still the master race in my heart, though…and you know I’m not spending 21k Crowns race changing seven characters any time soon.
Imperial - 2,000 Stamina is great, as is 6% cost reduction. Very solid choice, and the Health bonus is a nice little bow on top. I’d put Imperial as comparable to Wood Elf - Dark Elf has more throughput stats, while Wood Elf and Imperial both give up a bit of throughput for sustain.

The only two races I didn’t specifically cover are Breton and High Elf, which are both a bit more Magickally-inclined than the other races. You could potentially make them work, but with eight other good-to-great options, I’m not sure why you’d try.

Mundus:

There are a lot of solid mundus stone options, and they really depend on what you’re trying to achieve. For each that I’ll review, I’m going to list their bonuses with a full set of golden Divines armor.

Throughput Stones:
When we talk about “throughput” for healers, it means to increase the amount that your heals themselves do. Healing in many ways involves balancing your throughput with your ability to sustain - you can, for example, spam an incredibly costly, powerful heal like Soothing Spore over and over, but you can’t sustain that indefinitely. These stones will all make the actual healing you output stronger.

The Ritual: This is your generic throughput mundus stone, giving a flat 13% bonus to all healing you do. This is just an incredibly solid option; you’re never sad to just have 13% more healing. It’s not the build lynchpin that other options might be, but I would never sneeze at using it.
The Thief: This is your other really solid throughput option - giving about 10% crit rating with full golden Divines body gear - and it gets better the more critical healing modifiers you have. You have a 50% modifier base, plus 8% from Fighting Finesse if you take that slottable. Khajiit gives you another 12% critical healing, for a total potential crit healing of 70%. Annoyingly, most other critical damage modifiers, like both Force buffs and Axe passives only effect damage, not healing, so it’s impossible to reach the amount of critical modifiers that damage dealers can. I am also MUCH less bullish on crit than I was in 2022. The biggest reason for this is that I think Two Handed is the default best frontbar weapon, and there is no Crit Chance bonus in the Two Handed passives. I do think Thief can be a roleplayer in a specific type of build - if you can do something like Khajiit Nightblade Bow/Bow or Daggers/Bow healer, for example. This has gone from being my preferred choice in 2022 to being, in my opinion, the weakest of the four choices now.

Sustain Stones:
Sustain Stones lower the output of each of your heals individually, but do allow you to use heals more frequently. Unsurprisingly, using sustain mundus stones will make your heals a bit weaker…but you can’t heal if you’re out of Stamina. It’s all a big balancing game!

The Serpent: I wasn’t as high on this in 2022 as I am now. A good part of that was just the passive sustain that Wardens get through Bull Netch and Flourish. In 2024, when I look at ALL the different classes, Serpent becomes much more attractive. I like it the most on Dragon Knight, whose sustain is tied to proccing the Poisoned status and giant bursts from the Battle Roar passive when they War Horn. My current rule of thumb lately has been aiming for 2k Stamina Recovery pre-potion buff; I’ve felt very comfortable healing at that sustain plateau. If you’re in the 1600 range without the Serpent mundus, it might be worth giving it a try.
The Tower: This is technically also a bit of a throughput stone. The Tower gives you around 3300 stamina, before any modifiers like War Horn. This is a good, generic choice, providing a small throughput bonus to your abilities and giving you a larger pool of resources to cast them from to help with your sustain, adds to the damage your abilities do, and allows you to block/sprint/dodge roll more. If you’re sitting at a comfortable amount of Stamina Recovery, I think you’ll largely spend time choosing between this one and the Ritual. To me this is the default choice - it’s never a bad Mundus to have.

Consumables:

For potion, I’ve never used anything other than Essence of Weapon Power. Sometimes you can build Major Savagery and Major Brutality into your ability choices, but as a general rule I advise skipping these if they mean giving up group support just so that you can use a cheaper potion. Of course, some classes have these buffs tied into abilities you already want to use - I use Power Extraction on Nightblade for the AoE Minor Cowardice anyway, so I generally stick to Essence of Weapon Critical on that character instead.

In terms of food, there are a number of good choices, and which you choose is going to depend on what you need most.

Lava Foot Soup-and-Saltrice: Also known as Stamina DPS “parse food,” this is just as good an option for you as it is for a DD. 4500 Stamina and 450 Stamina Recovery are exactly what you want from your food. Braised Rabbit with Spring Vegetables: 5400 Health and nearly 5k Stamina. This is a solid choice if you’re feeling pressure on your health. I occasionally use this for no-death dungeon runs, but I generally feel the sustain benefit from Lava Foot far outweighs having an extra HP buffer.
Tri-Stat Food (like Crown Fortifying Meals): Similar to above, you’re giving up a lot of sustain for some otherwise negligible bonuses. You don’t really need extra hit points, and for Magicka I’d generally prefer recovery to max Magicka, as you’ll have significant gaps in between each Magicka ability you cast (which is also why I don’t recommend bi-stat Max Mag/Max Stam food). All of this said, Crown Fortifying Meals are free and given to us like candy, so don’t feel bad using them if you’re just running pledges or your daily random. I would stick to better foods for harder content, but a buff to both your resource pools and a bit of an HP buffer ARE better than nothing!
Artaeum Takeaway Broth: A slightly nerfed Lava Foot Soup-and-Saltrice that spends the rest of its itemization budget on Health, the extra Health and Health Recovery isn’t worth the Powdered Mother of Pearl it takes to craft it. If you’re -really- strapped for hit points you can consider it, but I haven’t yet found any content in the game that requires the boost in hit points.

Champion Points:

I’m going to focus on slottables here, as non-slottable CP progression is pretty standard. These are the slottables I generally think you should go for:

Rejuvenator
From the Brink
Soothing Tide
Swift Renewal

I would stay away from Focused Mending, as you will almost never use single target heals. Cleansing Revival is a good option to have unlocked, as it is useful on fights where Healing Torch’s Purge effect is put to good use, but I’ve also personally never ran into a situation where it felt like something I had to have. Salve of Renewal is an ok option for fights where you have to Purge, as it will buffer your healing done while you’re taking GCDs off from healing to Purge, but it’s similar to Cleansing Revival in that I’ve never felt it was necessary. Enlivening Overflow is one of the best healer CP slottables in the game, but it only scales off Max Magicka at the moment and is useless to us as a result.

I think one other worth considering is Fighting Finesse, but only if you’re building for crit specifically. I also think that if you’re using Warding Smash you should slot Bastion in your red tree, but that doesn’t compete with any of the rest. Beyond Bastion in the red tree I generally slot some combination of:

Fortified
Boundless Vitality
Rejuvenation
Celerity
Expert Evasion

VeryFallible · September 19

7. Stamina Healing Drawbacks

Up until this point I’ve painted a very rosy picture of Stamina healing, but I do want to acknowledge that it has its limitations. I actually think ZoS have done a fabulous job of balancing Stamina Healing - these drawbacks keep it from becoming the meta way to heal, while not being so insurmountable so as to discourage you from playing.

The biggest drawback is range and positioning. This has seemed to be the ZoS design philosophy for Stamina healers for years now - look, for instance, at Soothing Spores, which only hits its maximum potential if someone is within 8 meters of you, or at Ring of Preservation, which requires your team to actively stack on top of you to get its full benefit. Even before Scribing, the focus for Stamina healing seemed to be short range, powerful abilities.

This drawback REALLY shows up in Gold Road. Smash has an 8 meter cone, as does Torchbearer. Vault has a 6 meter radius that emanates around you. While Magicka healers can sit out of harms way and cast their TWENTY EIGHT METER Radiating Regeneration or their 20 Meter cone Combat Prayer, you have to get up close and personal with your party. This isn’t the end of the world because there are so many fights in this game where you already want to be stacked, but it CAN be a challenge. Even a fight like Ozezan in Scrivener’s Hall has to be navigated with care - your AoEs don’t even cover the entire boss’ hitbox, so you have to fight a battle with standing on the tail with your DDs to keep them alive and dipping out to make sure you can HoT up your tank in between the poison cleave.

This is also exacerbated if you’re someone who pugs a lot of content. The short range can be mitigated if you’re running with a group that you know well and who you can direct to stack together, but in random dungeons you often get DDs running around like headless chickens. I was in a vet Bloodroot Forge last night where both of my DDs insisted on standing max range from the boss in complete opposite positions to one another. That would be infuriating as a Magicka healer; on a Stamina healer, it was nearly run-dooming. (The less than 30k combined DPS from the DDs was the thing that REALLY doomed us, but I digress!)

The other big drawback to me is lack of synergies. The main synergy you will provide, Healing Combustion, comes from one of your Magicka abilities, not Stamina. There are a few synergies you can provide through Undaunted abilities, but by and large this is not a strength for Stamina healers. It’s not the end of the world since you provide other really great support, but it IS a weakness of the playstyle.

Next is the smallest problem of all - Restoration staff is a dedicated Magicka healing weapon, while the four weapons you rely on to Stamina heal are all focused on damage dealing. This means that unlike Magicka healers, there are no options for Arena weapons that allow you to support your team better. As I said, this is a small grievance, but one I think about often.

Finally, the last problem is…the player base. And this is not to insult anyone reading this, as you are clearly at least curious enough to learn about a different way of building your character even if you never plan to do it myself. There are a LOT of players out there, though, who lack a degree of imagination or understanding. I was in a Moonhunter Keep pug a few weeks ago with two very mediocre DDs who saw that I had a Two Handed weapon and decided to repeatedly kill themselves and write insults in chat rather than actually attempt to run the dungeon. Had they opened their eyes, they would have seen that Olorime was constantly getting placed down, that they had HoTs rolling on them at all times, and that I was spamming them with damage shields while they stood in fire, but they had made up their mind from the first pull of the dungeon that I was fake healing.

On the flip side, I’ve also had really positive experiences of people in random dungeons being like “that’s so cool!” or “I didn’t know that was even possible!” The ESO player base is vast, and has a ton of different opinions. I just wanted to caution people who are curious about trying this out that not everyone will be receptive to it, but don’t let the vocal minority influence your decision making. For every dungeon that I have a random DD throw a temper tantrum in, I’ve completed ten with zero issues at all.

VeryFallible · September 19

8. My Wishes for the Future

I, in all honesty, never thought I’d find myself back on ESO. I wrote a “my wishes for the future” section in 2022 that focused on how to change abilities within the classes to make them more appealing for Stamina healers, but when I left the game I was very much under the impression that my dream of all classes being able to heal with Stamina was not ever going to come true. ZoS went in a completely different direction than I had originally suggested, but I ultimately love how they ended up delivering it.

That said, there’s room for improvement! There’s a lot of stuff, particularly in Scribing, that I’d like to see done. One big change in my own mindset from 2022, though, is that I’m not going to advocate for the removal of downsides on Stamina healing abilities; while I would personally love it, overbuffing these abilities too much risks taking them from being a fun OPTION to being a requirement. I want to be able to play viable Stamina healers, but I don’t want people to feel forced to do so. With all of that said, I’m starting off with two ideas from my last guide that I still really like before jumping into a list of updated ones:

Create a new set of weapon sets that actually altered weapons: I mention this up above, but creating a new bow that caused Acid Spray to also heal allies in its cone, or altered Critical Rush so that it instead charged to an ally and critically healed them would provide stamina-based heals that every class would have access to. If that’s too strong, I’d love to see a line of weapon sets that perhaps cut the damage of an ability in half but added a strong debuff component to it!
Add a new weapon or skill line that focuses on support/healing: Crossbow, polearm, and unarmed are all weapons that could have healing morphs. Stamina support would also 100% fit the role of a Bard’s College tree, though with Solitude already existing in the game I’d find it incredibly unlikely for ZOS to return to adding new content there.
Continue adding focus scripts to abilities: U44 promises to add 14 Focus Scripts to 9 different Grimoires, so this is clearly something ZoS is thinking about as well. Poison, as an example, can only be applied to two Grimoires currently - Traveling Knife in Dual Wield and Vault in Bow. Vault you’re generally going to want to use to heal anyway, so if you want to run a Poison spammable it basically has to be Traveling Knife. For a Stamina Dragonknight, you’d love to have the option to add the Poison Focus Script to Trample, Smash, and Shield Throw to have more options. Similarly, I’d love for more weapons to get the Damage Shield Focus Script and have it cost Stamina and not Magicka!
Vault should proc Olorime: This is a very minor one, but every healer that I’ve used backbar bow on needs a second ability on their bar to proc Olorime. This is insane to me, since Vault is you literally shooting an arrow at the ground and then jumping backwards.
Give Trapping Webs a debuff: I mentioned this up above, but Trapping Webs is the forgotten middle child of the Undaunted skill line. A little bit of damage and a mediocre synergy is not good enough to waste a skill slot on. A little bit of damage, a mediocre synergy, and Minor Cowardice, though? At least it’d be a consideration. In addition, I’d love to see more synergies from Stamina-based skills. Undaunted grimoire when, ZoS?
One more weapon-agnostic healing/shielding skill: I would love to be able to run without either a Two Hander OR a Bow, but there just aren’t enough Stamina heals in the game for anyone but Arc or Warden to try that. Hopefully we see a Stamina-based Healing or Damage Shield option on Banner Bearer when it releases - especially if it can apply Minor Berserk as well!
Make a medium armor set that gives Major Courage: Let’s face it - Powerful Assault/Olorime or Powerful Assault/SPC is the right gear setup a lot of the time, and that isn’t terribly fun. Even minimizing the damage of wearing those sets by putting them as your jewels/weapons doesn’t take away from the fact that you’re wearing Magicka Healer gear. It’s ultimately fine, it just doesn’t -feel- fun. I’d love for them to make a Stamina set that allows you to provide Major Courage just like those two sets, allowing you to wear full medium armor sets at all times. My hot take that I know I’ll get pushback about - I’d actually love for this to be Powerful Assault. The fact that PA gives its own, non-named Weapon/Spell Damage buff is so weird to me, and I’d actually love to be able to just go PA/War Machine without thinking about how my team is going to get Major Courage. THAT SAID, that’s my own personal fantasy - I know this would be an overall damage nerf for trials that utilize a healer in SPC and a tank providing PA, so I’m not actually saying it should happen. I’d enjoy it, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right decision for the game.

VeryFallible · September 19

9. My Personal Builds

And so we’ve reached it. After 40 pages (in my defense, there’s a LOT of white space), 15,000 words, and nearly 85,000 characters, it’s time to put everything together into actual builds!

For all of the builds that I make, I want to emphasize that I tried really hard to make every class feel unique. It is REALLY easy to go Two Handed/Bow on every class and be fine with that, but that gets boring after a while. With that in mind, I tried to find ways to build each class to emphasize some aspect of their class fantasy while also being fairly functional. This doesn’t mean these are necessarily the best builds for any class, but I’ve found success on all of them and they’re good jumping off points. Use these to inform the decisions you want to make! Just like earlier with the scribing skills, I'm going to post the links to the builds and then hide my comments on them in spoiler tags just to keep it looking clean.

In terms of the decisions that I made in creating the builds, this is what I generally tried to achieve based on my magicka healer breakdown above::

Four to five healing abilities, particularly HoTs and Damage Shields.
One spammable heal.
One source of Minor Berserk
At least five other group buffs or debuffs.
Two to three synergies.
No more than three Magicka abilities.

Class Agnostic:
We’re going to start off with what I call the “Class Agnostic” build. This is just a generic plug-and-play that you can use on any class.

https://eso-hub.com/en/builds/veryfallible/9d05259a-7463-4439-bd55-3692f6d49e61/generic-stamina-healer-class-agnostic

There’s not a ton to discuss here. I generally default to Symphony of Blades, Powerful Assault frontbar/body, Olorime jewels/backbar, and Pearls/1pc Trainee. I didn’t go through and put in gear for all of the rest of the builds, though I will note if I think there are significant deviations from it.

Skill-wise, it’s incredibly Scribing-centric. I’ve gone over all of the skills above in great detail, so I won’t belabor the point here. You’ve got six scribed abilities, two necessary skills in Echoing Vigor and Energy Orb, a way to proc your backbar enchant, and an extra synergy/debuff in Overflowing Altar.

In all, you bring two great synergies in Altar and Orb, both Major and Minor Maim, both Major and Minor Heroism, Major Evasion, and Minor Berserk. Class abilities definitely will bring this package together, but this is a perfectly decent way to start building on any class.

Arcanist:
[url="http://"]https://eso-hub.com/en/builds/veryfallible/9d05477f-8007-457d-a23a-7bef708d846c/stamina-arcanist-healer
[/url]

Thanks to the nature of the alphabet, these builds will be bookended by the two strongest stamina healing classes in the game: Arcanist and Warden. Arcanist was already a really strong Stamina healer, and in Gold Road it just received more options.

For Arcanist I defaulted to using Dual Wield/Bow, but really any combination of weapons works as long as you have either Bowl or Two Handed somewhere in the build for Minor Berserk. I chose Dual Wield as the frontbar just because I think Traveling Knife is just an incredibly good support skill - I went with Multi-Target, Warrior’s Opportunity, and Off-Balance here since Minor Vulnerability is covered elsewhere in the build.

Beyond that, we have Chakram of Destiny and Audacious Runemend to Generate Crux and Cascading Fortune to consume it. You could drop Audacious Runemend for Healing Smash with the Class Mastery glyph, but I don’t think that’s a wise choice - why give up a 28 meter range heal for an 8 meter one?

Backbar is very generic - Endless Hail for proccing your enchant, Rune of the Colorless Pool for Minor Brittle and Minor Vulnerability, Zena’s Empowering Disc as a way to proc Olorime AND because it’s just an insane buffing ability, Energy Orb, and Healing Vault with Berserk. Unsurprisingly, Arcanist class abilities are strong. Who knew?

Dragonknight:
https://eso-hub.com/en/builds/veryfallible/9d055555-43da-4004-8cec-50b7322703d7/stamina-dragonknight-healer

In the exact opposite direction of Arcanist we have Dragonknight, which…feels like it’s barely viable as a Magicka Healer. (This isn’t TOTALLY accurate - Magicka DKs are perfectly fine for 99% of content in the game - but they do certainly feel lacking when compared with some of the other classes.) After a LOT of trial and error, I settled on the above build. This is by no means the strongest of the Stamina healer builds here, but I do find it enjoyable to play!

First off, I focused on Damage Shields here. I felt like part of the Dragonknight’s class fantasy is that they are the iconic tank class, and so even in their healing I leaned into your team tanking damage rather than just straight healing all of it. Warding Smash is the Minor Berserk enabler, which we combine with Bone Surge on our backbar to provide two strong sources for group damage shields. Rounding out the backbar are default options Energy Orb and Stampede (to proc your enchant), as well as Cinder Storm as an incredibly strong, albeit Magicka-based, healing option.

The frontbar is a little more interesting than some of my other builds, as this is the only Stamina healer that I have Ulfsid’s Contingency on. This is another strong Damage Shield effect (these all stack, importantly!), and I just simply didn’t see any other DK class ability that I thought provided as strong utility. I think the U44 changes to Cauterize will see me drop Ulfsid’s for that ability, but for now it’s fun to have three ways to provide damage shields. (As a reminder, if you run this build, make sure you pick up Bastion and Shield Master in your red CP tree!)

Echoing Vigor, Sundering Trample, and Healing Torch are all staple skills for Stamina Healers. Torch acts as your spammable in this build since you’re running Warding Smash on your backbar. I don’t -love- Torch as a spammable, but I’ve gotten used to using it that way.

Speaking of Spammables, I went with Venomous Knife. It is worth noting that the one REALLY appealing part of a Stamina DK healer is that they are the best suited for keeping up one of the best debuffs in the game in Stone Giant, and if you were taking this character into a trial I would definitely eschew Venomous Knife for SG. My own personal experience in four man content was that SG was a LOT of work for very minimal game, so I went with the more consistent Venomous Knife instead. Poison Damage is there for the chance to proc the Combustion passive for more resource return. I wish there were more ways to play into the poison side of the DK class, but the DK’s poison-based class skills lack group utility, and nowhere near enough Grimoires let you add Poison Damage as a focus script.

Necromancer:
https://eso-hub.com/en/builds/veryfallible/9d0540b5-8962-4e60-a759-2a82abc0f334/stamina-necromancer-healer

Necromancer is where things start to get interesting. Necromancers are the iconic ult generators in the game, so I -really- leaned into that side of the class. We have some generic scribing skills - Healing Vault with Evasion on your back and Healing Smash with Berserk on your frontbar. Our Magicka Slots are used up on (to no one’s surprise) Energy Orb, Unnerving Boneyard (AoE Major Breach AND Minor Vulnerability!), and Spirit Guardian (which is mainly there to proc the very strong Undead Confederate passive.) Endless Hail, Braided Tether, and Echoing Vigor round us out as strong abilities you want on your team.

The REAL strength of this class, though, comes in Glacial Colossus, and that’s what we’re playing towards for the rest of our abilities. We start off with the generically good Trample with the Disease damage glyph, which synergizes with the Necromancer’s preferred damage type and Major Heroism. Then to get Minor Heroism, we’re running HEROIC Torch, not Healing Torch. Heroic Torch gives you ultimate on every swing of the torch, and when combined with both Major and Minor Heroism you can build Colossi in 45 seconds to a minute. We might not be spamming abilities like your DDs do, but I guarantee you you’ll have downtime in fights where you can get away with swinging Torchbearer to build up your ult! Overall, the entire goal of this Stamcro healer is to just get your team blowing ults as much as possible and providing incredible Major Vulnerability uptime!

While I don’t specifically go over gear in the builds I linked (though I’ll likely go back to edit those as some point to include them), I do think you should opt for Decisive on your frontbar. You’re going to be gaining a ton of ultimate with this build, and Decisive makes it build even faster. I also default to Powerful Assault/War Machine on this build (though War Machine/Olo would also be fine!) You’re going to provide REALLY solid Major Slayer uptime with all of the ultimate you can generate!

Nightblade:
https://eso-hub.com/en/builds/veryfallible/9d0543cf-7577-4138-87e7-ebaccce2afa9/stamina-nightblade-healer

Probably unsurprising due to how its risen in the ranks of Magicka healers, but Stam Nightblade is currently my absolute FAVORITE healer to play in the game right now; honestly, it’s been feeling on the same level as Stam Arcanist and Stam Warden to me. I’ve personally been running it as Bow/Sword and Shield with Healing Vault on my frontbar, but you could pretty easily run it with any weapon combination as long as you make sure you have one way to provide Minor Berserk.

Thematically, this build really plays into the Siphoning class fantasy of the Nightblade. Sundering Soul provides Major Cowardice while Power Extraction gives the minor version. I like to pair this with Olorime backbar and the Magma Incarnate monster set to provide Major and Minor Courage, which makes it feel like you’re drawing out the power from your enemies and giving it to your allies. Refreshing Path is a really strong Magicka-based heal that also gives insane buffs in Major Expedition and Minor Endurance and Minor Intellect. I also personally opt for Lotus Fan as my third Magicka ability because it provides Minor Vulnerability as an AoE, but if you want to run as many Stamina abilities as possible Ambush is only slightly worse. Siphoning Attacks provides you some nice Stam regeneration, and your backbar is rounded out with Shield Throw, which both procs your weapon enchant through Lingering Torment and procs Off Balance, doing a very decent Lightning Staff impersonation. You also could switch Lotus Fan to your backbar and Power Extraction to your frontbar to unlock the Siphoning Passives - the only reason I don’t do this is that using Healing Vault and following it up with a Lotus Fan to get back into position is a REALLY satisfying gameplay loop!

The final thing to note is the frontbar Soul Harvest. You can easily switch this out for Barrier if you need, but this does give you some ultimate if you get the killing blow on monsters. I also like the critical rating that it provides! Speaking of Critical Rating, this is the only character that I opt to run the Thief Mundus Stone on. I actually lean fully into Crit in this build since I know that I have basically guaranteed access to Minor Savagery. Between both Savagery buffs, Thief, and Precise on my frontbar, the Stamina Nightblade sits at about 50% crit self buffed. I then opt to run Fighting Finesse and Khajiit (the best race in the game!) for the nice 20% extra Critical Healing. This is by no means the default best way to run Stamblade healer, but I think it fits the class fantasy incredibly well!

Sorcerer
https://eso-hub.com/en/builds/veryfallible/9d054b8c-01cb-4e1d-a80d-48d70121553a/stamina-sorcerer-healer

Sorc, unfortunately, falls into the same problem of Dragonknight for me - I want to like it a lot, but I just don’t think it has enough class-based utility to truly distinguish itself from just the generic, class-agnostic build. So much Sorc utility is tied specifically to Magicka-based skills that it’s hard to find things within the class that really add to a Stamina healing build. My favorite version of this build in terms of class fantasy actually utilized Twilight Matriarch with Class Mastery scripts on three scribing abilities…but the Sorc class mastery is just horrifically undertuned for actual healing utility. If the heal and duration were both doubled it would be a useful script, but I see no reason to use it now otherwise.

For Sorc, we leaned into two abilities hard: first is Charged Atronach as the backbar, War Machine ult. We want to build it fast to really maximize that Major Berserk uptime! We have a number of great ways to do this - Trample giving Major Heroism, Healing Torch giving Minor Heroism, and Sundering Soul/Sundering Burst both using the Anchorite’s Potency Signature Script (and giving both Major and Minor Maim as a bonus!) One thing to note with Anchorite’s Potency: I went through about 150 Soul Gems in the course of three pledge. The ult generation is very strong, but only you can decide if you’re comfortable with a soul gem addiction to fuel it!

The second half of this build revolves around Power Surge, since its a Sorc healing ability that medium armor-wearing Stam healers are uniquely poised to take advantage of. This is why I’m running Precise on the frontbar and the Thief stone. Ideally you also want to run a frontbar weapon that gives crit passives (Dual wield or Bow), but I really didn’t like the feel of how this build played without Warding Smash. Beyond these choices, it’s mostly generically good Scribing/Stam heal abilities, as well as Dark Deal as a really fun way to sustain your Stamina.

Templar:
https://eso-hub.com/en/builds/veryfallible/9d051067-8b74-4391-bca3-077772f49b0f/stamina-templar-healer

The interesting thing about my Templar build is that it’s relatively untested in four man content, but it’s been my go-to for pugging vet Trial content currently. In terms of class fantasy, I wanted to lean into the Sacred Ground aspect of the Templar by going with a lot of effects you can stand in - you get the really strong Extended Ritual as one of your few Magicka-based abilities, and the equally potent (but much smaller in size) Ring of Preservation, as well as Stampede to position yourself around the arena. I also emphasize this “stand in one place” aspect by using Olorime on the backbar, but that’s not unique to the Templar.

Sundering Knife on your frontbar is just incredibly good utility. For trial the Minor Vulnerability might be a bit wasted, but you’re really bringing it for the Warrior’s Opportunity “8% more martial damage for 5 seconds” debuff. Sundering Trample is used on most of my Stamina healer builds because Major Heroism is just great, but while it feels somewhat out of place on a Sorc it feels completely within the Templar’s class fantasy to use.

To me, the most fun ability in this build is Repentance. Now, the reality is that Radiant Aura is of course better for group support, and there is nothing wrong with running that morph over Repentance. To me, though, there are very few things in the game than running through a four man dungeon as a healer and just keeping your Stamina near 100% because you get to slot a sustain ability that clearly was intended for DPS. If that’s not your class fantasy, though, just run with Radiant Aura (or lean in even harder to the Sacred Ground side of things and go with Restoring Focus!)

Warden:
https://eso-hub.com/en/builds/veryfallible/9d053dfb-16ca-43dd-b3ab-0609953a7451/stamina-warden-healer

We come at last to the end. Like the Arcanist, Warden was already a perfectly fine Stamina healer pre-Gold Road, and Scribing just made it absolutely top tier. Central to Warden’s performance is the fact that Soothing Spores exists, which is just truly a phenomenal Stamina healing ability and one I wish more classes had analogs of. I run it with Healing Vault and Echoing Vigor on my frontbar as supplemental Heal-Over-Times, but Warding Smash would also be a great option. Trample seems right at home in a class that summons animals to attack, and we round out the frontbar with Growing Swarm. Ironically this is now at base a worse source of Minor Vulnerability than most Scribing abilities offer, but you want it for the Animal Companions passives like Flourish and Savage Beast. Alternatively, if your Magicka can support it and your group has another means of providing Minor Vulnerability, you can slot Deep Fissure instead for AoE Major and Minor Breach!

The same Shield Throw setup from the Stamblade applies, allowing the Warden to provide a bootleg version of Lightning Staff benefits. Ice Fortress remains the only group AoE Major Resolve skill in the game and thus feels like an auto-include. I personally like the Ice Fortress morph more than Expansive Frost Cloak because all of your other abilities are short range anyway, so why not get Minor Protection as well? I’d also consider running something like Ozezan as your monster set if your group doesn’t need Symphony, allowing you to provide over 10k armor to your group on your own. There’s then a TON of potential options for your last backbar slot - Ring of Preservation for fights where you need to stack, Overflowing Altar as a default good ability, Soul Burst as an option for AoE debuffs, Budding Seeds/Ulfsid’s Contingency as Magicka based heals/shields - it truly is “pick your poison.” What I’d REALLY love is for Shadow Silk to be good enough to make picking here, as it really fits the Stamwarden aesthetic completely. Unfortunately that ability is currently garbage, so I went with Ulfsid’s as it provides a decent Damage Shield and AoE Minor Resolve, allowing you to really lean into the Warden as the healer that makes the rest of your team significantly tankier.

And that's it for this guide! If you have any feedback, questions, or comments please do not hesitate to post them. I'm happy to help!