I was just about to post this exact question. There are so many options and every class/race combination is reputed to be able to heal (which probably makes such a guide harder to write).

Having been a very effective healer on another MMO, I assume that will be my role eventually here as well. I'm just having a hard time grasping how it will be done. I have no mouse cursor and can't imagine running around the battlefield and placing my reticle over party members to target them for heals. At the same time, I haven't yet found a targetted healing spell or ability.

Granted, I'm still very low level and still learning how to run around and kill things. I'm just trying to be proactive and learn ahead of time.

There are pretty many ways to heal in this game as any class can do eg resto staff healing. The choice you have to make is pretty easily how you can be most sufficient in using armor and other passives to support you in your task. I found healers not "gamechanging" so far, as a bad player will be dead no matter if healed or not.
There are pretty nasty possible combinations thinkable and viable as sorc healer (resto staff) or even NB healer (resto staff).

So far I agree with Muehlhousen. Healing isn't "hard" in this game, but DPS and Tanks have a different and heavier learning curve. Heals specs in this game (all of them) CANNOT heal through damage that is supposed to be blocked, interrupted, etc. players still have to utilize those solo mechanics to survive a group battle.

the best way to look at healing in this game is that it's more of a support role, in addition to healing. It doesn't mean that healers aren't needed...go into a group area without heals and your dead. but it means that the healers responsibility isn't just heals.

As an example, Ill often keep silver shot (fighters guild skill) on my healers bar. when not healing, it's a fast easy way to assist in damage and CC (it knocks down daedra and undead) for the group.

another example for the Templar is Restoring Aura (increase radius morph) is a great support spell for your tank and DPS, who rely on Stamina to do damage (as well as block and interrupt those nasty attacks!).

Also, aside from the templars instant heals, most healing is based on HoT's rather then instant heals, so being proactive in this game is a must. no reactive huge insta healing saves in this game! plenty of shielding abilites though, so those will often be your last minute save for a tank or DPS till they get their footing...and till your HoT's have time to tick their health back up.

so if i were to add any tips to this list, in addition to the above, it would be: use heals based on their passive bonuses rather then just their actual healing. most heals have morphs that offer passive boosts. examples are: Grand Heal (Resto Staff) that can return mana. Good to use when your getting low. blessing of Protection (Resto staff tree) has a morph that increases party damage. BoP also increases armor and spell resist. So good to use when you want to reduce incoming damage on the party (like right before a big Boss AoE cast). or perhaps use it right before a big burn phase...stuff like that.

And any class can heal...really. some classes have skills that are particularly suited for it as they have trees that boost their own heals outside of the resto staff tree (NB and Temp as examples). but my main healer atm is my sorc, and they can put out quite a bit of healing potential due to their passives in their own skill trees that help with magick and power.

For info regarding Magick and Stamina/health:

Biggest issue you need to be aware of are the overcharge rules. they are a bit whonky and not intuitive, but the basics are: stats are compared to other stats you have, and when one stat is too high compared to the others, it's overcharged. easy to do at times depending on your level and gear, so keep a close eye on those, and switch things out as needed to avoid the overcharge syndrome.

Or just pop a potion of a different stat. so if your magicka is overcharged, pop a stamina and health potion to buff those, helps out allot from what I hear (still haven't tested that myself, so going on what I've researched). Other then that. having decent magicka is important as it improves your heals and attacks that use magick. having good health is simply a survival necessity. and stamina is a toss-up...you wont' use it allot, but it REALLY sucks to run out of stamina just as a big nasty casts an AoE, and your right in the middle of it! so don't neglect it. especially if you slot a stamina ability so you have an option once your magik runs low.

Hope this info helps!

You've already gotten some great advice in this thread. To answer your questions:

- All regen functions as a flat number (seen in your character screen) which is added to the appropriate bar every 2 seconds. So if your character has a Magicka regen of 60, you will get 60 Magicka added to your bar every 2 seconds. You do regen during combat. I have not actually seen it regen slower than out of combat, but I haven't been looking for that either. Can anyone confirm/ refute this? Regen is halted when charging up a skill. So if you're casting a spell that has a 2 second cast time, the cost will be pulled from your bar immediately and during charge, you will not regain Magicka. Regen will resume once the spell fires.

- Opinions on this seem to differ in the forums. However, I personally tend to prefer a focus on the Magicka pool as that does buff the effectiveness of your spells and thereby increases the healing you can dish out. I typically rely on cost reduction passives and jewelry and certain set pieces that give you a big return on Magicka when you need it. The Warlock set is great for this. Once per minute when below 33% Magicka, you get essentially 33% Magicka back. That's enough to chug a potion and be back to a nearly full bar in no time.

- I rely on Resto staff heals a lot as they have some great HoT. Resto heals are in general preventative, whereas your Restoring Light heals are more reactive (Restoring Aura, Cleansing Ritual, and Rune Focus being the obvious exceptions but I think of those more as buffs than heals). Lingering ritual (a HoT morph for Healing Ritual is great for keeping a group up. But it has a long cast time, during which you can be interrupted. Make sure you don't have aggro and try to position yourself behind a friendly meat shield before casting. Also try to position yourself amidst your allies because it is an AOE heal. I use Rushed Ceremony sparingly. It's costly and somewhat unreliable due to 'smart heals'. It's a good 'oh-***' button as long as it hits who you want. In general, you're going to have to move around a lot. Many of your skills are AOE heals and as such you're going to want to be nearer to the front so that you can heal everyone. In that much more vulnerable position, you're going to have to kite and block and interrupt along with everyone else.

@merryblues‌ Also remind her that the heavy attack of the resto staff regens mana and counts as dmg done. She should be doing that anytime she's not healing and she won't have to worry about not doing enough damage, and it helps a lot w/ mana management.

Edit:

10% mana back to be exact:

http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/24onbq/til_healing_staff_heavy_attacks_restore_10_magicka/

why am i commenting at 2am...

adding to the great points form others...

i'll try to explain my healing style but i might post a vid showing it later as well.

- before tank runs in -> i pop rapid regen on everyone
- after tank engages ->illustrious healing on his area

IMPORTANT NOTE: DoT ticks can crit.

- based on the situation, swap out to weapon 2 and drop extended ritual to take advantage of healing bonuses passive (focused healing)
- ALWAYS attack with resto staff if you are not healing. this greatly helps your magicka flow
- i'm ALWAYS mobile and trying to position myself in the middle of the group (as safely as possible of course). rolling and whatnot to dodge things

So I recently healed a couple of vet dungeons and as people have said in the topic already, it does also depend on your tank and dps making sure they're blocking and dodging enemy abilities too. But the dungeons went really smooth, here's the ability bar I had:

1: Honor the Dead (Your "Holy S**t" heal if someone takes a massive hit.)
2: Healing Springs (Keep this up, you also gain magicka for each ally affected.)
3: Blessing of Restoration (Forward linear aoe heal, keep this up on the tank every 8 seconds since it also increased Armor and Spell Resistance.)
4: Healing Ward (A good way to mitigate damage a strong hit or to give you chance to heal, it's a shield that's stronger (up to 300%) based on the allies health.
5: Biting Jabs (Helps with bosses that have DPS checks (such as Bloodspawn in Spindleclutch.)
U: Solar Prison (I did used to have the healing ultimate, but never used it.)

On some fights where heavy AoE damage is frequent such as last boss of Splindleclutch (the vampire that rushes to everybody in the party and deals heavy damage) or Bloodspawn, I maybe replace Healing Springs with Ritual of Rebirth (Healing Ritual Morph).

To say what they all do:

Honor the Dead
Single target heal that heals a nearby wounded ally. If the target is under 50% you gain back some of the spell cost over 8 seconds. This a smart healing ability, the game looks at who has the lowest health and targets them automatically

Healing Springs
Ground Target AoE healing, you need to manually place the AoE. Heals all allies in the area every 1 second for 3 seconds. You gain Magicka for every ally affected.

Blessing of Restoration
Heals allies in front of you, affected allies gain Armor and Spell Resist for 8 seconds. This is a frontal linear aoe.

Healing Ward
Puts a shield on the player with the lowest health in front of you and heals them. The shield is stronger up by 300% the lower the health. They also get healed for 100% of the shield remaining strength when it expires.

Biting Jabs
Good DPS ability from Templar and knocks back an enemy on the last hit, good if you have a mob on you.

Solar Prison
Enemies in the area deal 30% less damage for 9.6 seconds and take damage every 1 second. An ally can also activate Gravity Crush which deals damage and stuns all enemies in the area. Nice dps + damage mitigation ability.

Ritual of Rebirth
Heals nearby allies, heals self for an additional 30%. This is a strong AoE ability with a downside of having a cast time. Only useful when you know that are heavy aoe damage on fights.

TheSunAlsoRises wrote: »

how effective do you find blessing of restoration? I found the effects negligible on trash mobs and given i'm usually in a PUG, I refrained from using it to save mana for pure heals.

plus those 8 seconds seem to go by much too fast.

I prefer the Combat Prayer morph. 8% damage bonus to all affected allies for the win!

It may be just a wild duck (or whatever you call it), but I have this nagging suspicion that while you gain damage-count from lopping HoTs from the Resto-staff on someone (and them DD'ing mobs), you do NOT do so from using Templar Class abilities, regardless of what you use.

I've been running various templar builds and when I've whipped out a resto staff from time to time, I do indeed seem to get loot from mobs I haven't touched myself. But if I heal only with my templar abilities, I get nothing..

Again, this may just be me having paid attention at the wrong times, when something bugged out. But I honestly wouldn't be surprised to be right on target.

On that note, I sent one templar through the main mission with the Lyris Doppleganger the other day. I had the real Lyris with me and for some reason, when I tried healing her with templar abilities, they would always heal my char (regardless of how damaged she was), whereas resto staff abilities would auto-target her correctly. At least for that char and that run, it held true for the entire run. (Which made everything much harder, since the HoTs were worthless in the Tharn fight)

Whether that was/is a bug for just that char or not, it none the less confirms that there are at least some mechanical differences between how templar heals and resto heals target and function, since otherwise they couldn't bug out this way. (I could be wrong on that)

So it wouldn't be a long stretch to think that such differences may also be true in terms of what I've mentioned earlier in the post.

I'd love some dedicated healers to throw in their experiences with this, if they have actually observed either the same or the opposite. (Please, only post such experiences, if you have actually tested it yourself.)