Heal Tanking (get any in any group you want)

Americanfunguy

I'm not very good at explaining why I do what I do, but I have been doing this for about a total of 6 months now, and I figured that its time I share this build and what I have discovered with it. But I would like to give a special thanks to @Tylerburlingame for being my original teacher and the one who got me started on heal tanking.

The idea of heal tanking (in my opinion) is mostly to control the flow of damage, and heal though it instead of mitigation. But lets get to the build which can be very cheap.

*updated with Dark Brotherhood*

Cool thing about heal tanking, is any race can do it, but this guide is geared for Templar. I will give my top three races however.

1. Breton: Max Magicka is great and the defense is great. The 3% reduce cost on spells is a bit poor in my opinion but it is there.
2. Imperial: Max Health, max Stamina, thats two major resources as a heal tank you don't want to run out of.
3. High Elf: Max Magicka and bonus regen is amazing for a heal tank, but upon switching to Breton I preferred the resistance.

*Note*
What I would consider the least optimal races for this build are Bosmer and Khajiit

My gear and why I have it

Here you go for a 5/1/1 bonus, with the 5 in Heavy Armor
5 piece Kageranace Hope: it gives health, magicka, magicka recovery, and spell damage. As well as a quick rez in case something goes south and someone dies. Best templar set in the game in my opinon.
2 piece Engine Guardian: restores resourcess and becomes a free heal + stamina upon death.
2 piece Seducer: provides magicka regen
And a resto staff: this can be trash, vMA or master.
Traits: sturdy on small pieces, infused on the larger pieces.
Glyphs: All tristats if you can afford it/have the Hakejio. If not then go Healthy on the small pieces, and Robust on the larger pieces.
Finally the the jewlery: 3 piece willpower, Healthy neck, Robust rings, pretty cheap, all with Magicka Regen.

My bars and why I have them

Main tank bar
Structured Entropy, gives hp and spell damage
Inner Rage, its your taunt
Repentance, the main source of your stamina
Breath of Life, main heal
Channeled Focus, helps maintain mana and keeps your resistance up
Empowering Sweep, this is a great ult for tanking trash pulls, and gives you the aedric spear passives for tanking/healing crits

Resto back bar
Healing Springs, great for healing in trash fights
Blazing Spear (this morph is very important) helps you gain agro on mobs in trash pulls due to dot
Rapid Regeneration, lazy heal and I have a maelstrom staff (CAN BE SWAPPED FOR RADIANT OPPRESION/GLORY, I know some templars can't go without it, and this is the place to put it)
Breath of Life, main heal, in case something goes wrong I have on both bars
Ritual of Retribution, as a heal and damage over time, this pisses off trash mobs to get their agro on you
Agressive Warhorn, use on boss fights when able to help your dps, the faster the dps the better off you are (CAN BE SWAPPED OUT FOR NOVA)

Attribute points: for strict heal tanking I went 10 into Health and the rest into Magicka

Champion Points:
41 in Magician
74 in Arcnaist
52 in Shadow Ward
(Distribute green points as you feel necessary based on your race)
100 in Blessed
67 in Elfborn
30 in Hardy
80 in Quick Recovery
57 in Heavy Armor Focus
(Depending on your race you may want to take out of Quick Recovery and place more points into Spell Sheild)

And for Mundus go with Atronach

And for rotations:

Trash mobs

Start off by taunting about half of the mobs, and applying Channeled Focus. Afterwards, throw down Ritual of Retribution, then use Healing Springs and Blazing Spear, go back and forth between the two, until mobs start dying. This is where it becomes easy, just swap to your tanking bar, and spam Repentance.

*Note*
Most dungeons fights without bosses I would call trash fights, there are some exceptions on places such as vWGT and vICP where there are mobs who can one shot your dps. For these situations simply stay on your main bar and keep these mobs that can kill your dps taunted, followed with Breath of Life and Repentance spam.

Boss fights

Almost every boss fight is the same, taunt the boss, throw down Channeled Focus and Structured Entropy. Use Breath of Life about every other second, even if no one appears to be taking damage (this is case someone does take damage while you cast, so the can be healed within half a second instead of sitting there with only 4k hp for 2 seconds while it may take you to notice). If the boss walks away or does not attack you for more than a second as a part of the fight mechanics, put down Ritual of Retribution and Rapid Regen, along with using Warhorn for you dps. And ALWAYS ALWAYS REPENTANCE YOUR DWEMER SPEARS AS THEY COME UP, keeps your stamina in a good spot c:

Some base stats for you to achieve would be (unbuffed without food)

1. 22k Magicka
2. 17k Health
3. 14k Stamina
4. 200k + resistance (physical and spell)
5. And 1.7k Magicka regen

I have show other people how to heal tank previously and they have tested out things on their own, but personally I have found the best healing and most reliable resource management with this set up. Feel free to test and let me know what you guys come up with!

I will keep this updated with tricks and tips as I recall them, message me here or ingame if you have any questions @americanfunguy, best of luck.

GilGalad

You should add some information concerning the armor types (5 light / 1 med/ 1 heavy?), attribute points and the jewelry enchants. Apart from that your build has some flaws:
1. You don't apply the major resistance debuffs (pierce armor would be the better choice for tanking bosses), which is a huge DPS loss
2. You can't apply elemental drain, so the DDs have to do it, thus loosing DPS
3. You don't use any dawns wrath skill frequently to activate the minor spell dmg buff (purifiying light!)
4. You don't have necrotic orbs for groups magicka sustain
5. No Spellpower cure
6. No combat prayer
7. Only minor dmg potential

While the first point is really important, the other ones depend on your group. Tank and healer are usually responsible for helping out with the resource management. If you are running mainly with stamina builds they will be happy thanks to the engine guardian and repentance, but magicka builds playing with 2x Kena might have sustain issues in longer fights.

My suggestions would be:
- Drop Kagrenacs and use Spellpower Cure
- Move repentance on the resto bar instead of the 2nd breath of life. Don't taunt half of the mobs, just taunt the ones that do heavy hits, mainly spam blazing spear and heal with rapid regen, Purifiying light and repentance.
- Drop healing springs for combat prayer

In general I would aim for a higher magicka, since your repentance scales of magicka and stamina management is the only real issue on a Templar tank.

I personally play my healtank differently with a combination of the light armor shield and puncturing sweeps for boss tanking. Therefore I am specced for more dmg with all magicka enchants and arcane jewelry with 3x Spellpower. Worked in all dungeons, even in ICP...

Just another thought: have you ever tried heal tanking on a stamina build using the aoe Virgor morph (15m radius!)?
Using 5x powerful assault, 3 agility, 4 night mother you can push your vigor up to 4K krits. If you have a group that manages to stay in 15m range that's a great alternative to magicka healing. You also have access to good aoe CCs like caltrops and debuffs like heroic slash.
While stam NBs and DKs will perform best thx to their resource management, this will even work on a stam Templar or Sorc.

Shaiba

Cool thing about heal tanking, is any race can do it, but the class is limited to Templar.

Wrong. I do it on my NB.

GilGalad

Shaiba wrote: »

Cool thing about heal tanking, is any race can do it, but the class is limited to Templar.

Wrong. I do it on my NB.

Sorcs can do it too (shields, Twilight). With DKs its a bit tricky but also possible (burning embers, ingeous shield. ...)

Shaiba

Gil.Galad wrote: »

Sorcs can do it too (shields, Twilight). With DKs its a bit tricky but also possible (burning embers, ingeous shield. ...)

Yeah i don't doubt about that ^^ I don't play those myselft so I couldn't tell about it. I just wanted to make clear that templar isn't required to tank/heal.

raaphor

Gil.Galad wrote: »

You should add some information concerning the armor types (5 light / 1 med/ 1 heavy?), attribute points and the jewelry enchants. Apart from that your build has some flaws:
1. You don't apply the major resistance debuffs (pierce armor would be the better choice for tanking bosses), which is a huge DPS loss
2. You can't apply elemental drain, so the DDs have to do it, thus loosing DPS
3. You don't use any dawns wrath skill frequently to activate the minor spell dmg buff (purifiying light!)
4. You don't have necrotic orbs for groups magicka sustain
5. No Spellpower cure
6. No combat prayer
7. Only minor dmg potential

That was what I was thinking initially but the benefit of this setup is that you can have 3 dd instead of two and it is easier to form a group for dungeon runs.
The setup is interesting enough to try and I just started levelling an Imperial templar 3 days ago.

I don't think this setup works for endgame PVE though.

GilGalad

raaphor wrote: »

Gil.Galad wrote: »

You should add some information concerning the armor types (5 light / 1 med/ 1 heavy?), attribute points and the jewelry enchants. Apart from that your build has some flaws:
1. You don't apply the major resistance debuffs (pierce armor would be the better choice for tanking bosses), which is a huge DPS loss
2. You can't apply elemental drain, so the DDs have to do it, thus loosing DPS
3. You don't use any dawns wrath skill frequently to activate the minor spell dmg buff (purifiying light!)
4. You don't have necrotic orbs for groups magicka sustain
5. No Spellpower cure
6. No combat prayer
7. Only minor dmg potential

That was what I was thinking initially but the benefit of this setup is that you can have 3 dd instead of two and it is easier to form a group for dungeon runs.
The setup is interesting enough to try and I just started levelling an Imperial templar 3 days ago.

I don't think this setup works for endgame PVE though.

It won't work in trials but all 4-man dungeons and even DSA. We used to run vDSA back in 1.6 with a tank-heal templar + 3 DDs when it was not as easy as it is today.

Americanfunguy

@Gil.Galad, you are correct on the fact that I am not giving a lot of trial and high dps based buffs, but I do want to note that when the people I run with pulling 24-34k dps on a single target, and they know how to sustain themselves, that things die to quickly for it to matter. Also you mentioned trying to heal with the morph of vigor, I had a dk do that once, it went so poorly I never even thought about the idea until now. Second off, that heal does not sound that reliable due to the over time effect. What I'm trying to say is if I had a healtank who was doing that, I would trash my second bar and have my own heals there AKA losing more dps.

@Gil.Galad and @Shaiba I have tried it on a sorc before, didn't go to well. Mostly for the cast time that it takes for the twilight if it went down, and that sorcs don't have that magicka regen bonus that templars get from channeled focus.

@Shaiba do you mind if I run with you sometime to see how you healtank on your NB? I would love to see how you do that. Also I edited my post to reflect what I really meant to say (I made this at 1 in the morning) that the guide was made for Templars.

Americanfunguy

@raaphor what is your idea of endgame pve? This does not work in trials, correct, unless I am one of the off tanks. But I did get my deathless/speed/hardmode achievements of vICP and vWGT all cleared on a heal tank group.

raaphor

Americanfunguy wrote: »

@raaphor what is your idea of endgame pve? This does not work in trials, correct, unless I am one of the off tanks. But I did get my deathless/speed/hardmode achievements of vICP and vWGT all cleared on a heal tank group.

I mean the trials indeed

Porska

Cool build, but I heal tank in full light julianos/seducer gear. Basically you just 4 man dps the vets, block heavy attacks, and spot heals when needed.

My champion points are geared towards dps and healing. Templars have enough resistance paired with champ point hardy and harness magicka you can't really go down unless you don't block a heavy attack.

Sweep spam wins all but trials.

Armitas

The OPS build is really convenient to carry around in your tool set. I can't tell you how many times I have had to be the healer and the tank for these gold pledges. If I wasn't able to do both roles it would have been a fail.

Americanfunguy

@Porska

I know some people who do just spam sweeps when they do this, but its not for me. I personally have a difficult time healing if I do that.