Scathing Mage or Worm for Healer?

BKTHNDR

I'm currently running Spell Power Cure as one of my sets for my Templar Healer but can't decide on whether I should stick with Worm or Scathing Mage as my second set. I have 5 pieces for both with some pieces being Divines/Infused but not all. I'm sitting at around 260ish CP and most of my time is spent running veteran dungeon pugs but I'd like to eventually do Trials and vMA.

I see a lot of people saying that Spell Power Cure/Worm is the way to go for starting out higher level endgame stuff but I'm wondering why Scathing Mage isn't considered, as well? The Spell Critical it offers seems extremely beneficial, as well as the set bonus of increased Spell Damage. Magicka management isn't currently an issue, which seems to be the main benefit of running Worm over anything else.

W0lf_z13

i believe worm is considered mainly because of the magicka cost reduction it gives to the group which is a great benefit for those that are mag based

Masel

Try to do trials with wormcult and as soon as you can, switch to infallible aether with a vma lightning and a vdsa resto. As of current update, infallible aether will remain unchanged and BiS for healers.

Thrasher91604

Infallible Aether is sort of wasted on a healer. The third bonus in particular, not to mention the 5 piece minor vulnerability debuff for heavy attacks. Your dps mag users should be running IA and triggering the debuffs, that should suffice.

Julianos or Spell Power Cure will maximize your heals over IA.

Offensive group boni from Spell Power Cure are an option in addition to one of the above if your dps needs help

Defensive boni from Gossamer or Ebon are an option as well if your group needs more defense.

EDIT: This is addition to the option of running worm as described above to reduce magicka costs for your group, assuming you have a heavy magicka group rather than stam damage dealers.

Horowonnoe

BKTHNDR wrote: »

I'm currently running Spell Power Cure as one of my sets for my Templar Healer but can't decide on whether I should stick with Worm or Scathing Mage as my second set. I have 5 pieces for both with some pieces being Divines/Infused but not all. I'm sitting at around 260ish CP and most of my time is spent running veteran dungeon pugs but I'd like to eventually do Trials and vMA.

I see a lot of people saying that Spell Power Cure/Worm is the way to go for starting out higher level endgame stuff but I'm wondering why Scathing Mage isn't considered, as well? The Spell Critical it offers seems extremely beneficial, as well as the set bonus of increased Spell Damage. Magicka management isn't currently an issue, which seems to be the main benefit of running Worm over anything else.

For a healer there are several options out there. Unfortunately none of them are crafted.
As you have already stated - SPC and Worm are considered good sets for a healer and are probably some of the easiest to get, for someone starting out endgame healing. Basically - the sets you are going to be wearing really depend on the group you are in and on the dungeon/trial you are going to heal. It will also depend what the other healer is wearing. Ideally you want to coordinate what you are wearing/skills running so you are not doubling up and synergizing with each other instead of competing.

Both healers will want to wear SPC for sure (because spc only procs on 6 targets), Worm - to give support to mag, also currently Infallible Aether set is good (rip that set next update) and Mending set which is pretty nice. Tell you what, if you wear mending, you will die less, people in your group will die less. Some people also like twilight remedy, however you don't want to run that set say if tank is wearing alkosh since you will be conflicting with the synergies etc.

On top of that, there are several monster sets that are viable for a healer. For example Bloodspawn set or Bogdan or Chokethorn. Basically you just need to find what works for your group and test a few options. And it is totally possible to wear 2pc monster set/5pc/5pc you just need to allocate it properly.

Hope this helps.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

Infallible Aether is sort of wasted on a healer. The third bonus in particular, not to mention the 5 piece minor vulnerability debuff for heavy attacks. Your dps mag users should be running IA and triggering the debuffs, that should suffice.

Julianos or Spell Power Cure will maximize your heals over IA.

Offensive group boni from Spell Power Cure are an option in addition to one of the above if your dps needs help

Defensive boni from Gossamer or Ebon are an option as well if your group needs more defense.

EDIT: This is addition to the option of running worm as described above to reduce magicka costs for your group, assuming you have a heavy magicka group rather than stam damage dealers.

Ebony is a total waste on a healer, there is nothing that helps you heal. Gossemer is marginally better but the 10% on an actual heal is really low chance.

The reason IA is worn on a healer is that healers are the only ones that ought to be heavy attacking, as unless you have a heavy lightning staff build in the group, it is a DPS loss for a DPS to do a heavy attack every ten seconds. But this will all change in the next patch, since all look lightning damage will have a chance to proc concussed and that will have the same 8% damage bonus as IA.

So right now it is looking like one healer will have a choice on what to wear in trials, if the other healer is wearing worm+SPC already.

On the topic at hand, the reason you don't see scathing mage in healers hands is that it is hard to keep up and does nothing for the team, beyond the higher heals. There are much better sets that provide more group utility, as have been covered in this thread already.

Thrasher91604

The extra health from Ebon helps the party, but there are probably better choices.

Heavy attacks are also useful for restoring magicka for sorcs, so healers aren't the only ones heavy attacking.

Qbiken

Infailable WILL be useless with next patch. But worm all the way

Rev Rielle

Healing Mage I've found extremely useful in places, especially in pledge challenges to help those fragile dps survive potential one-shots.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

The extra health from Ebon helps the party, but there are probably better choices.

Heavy attacks are also useful for restoring magicka for sorcs, so healers aren't the only ones heavy attacking.

If your DPS are heavy attacking, then you are not supporting them enough, via eledrain, orbs and worm in the case of sorcs.

Asardes

Ebon Armory should always be worn by the tank. It's a heavy armor and healthy jewelry set - only arcane neck exists as a named drop. There's no point in gimping the healer with this set. As for scathing mage, the uptime on healer is very low, since it does not proc from heals. Scathing mage works best on classes that rely on direct damage a lot - I run it on sorcerer and it procs pretty often from LA/HA, first tick from DoT skills, frags, curse etc. On a healer it can only proc from heavy attacks and abilities which do damage, like luminous shards, but it's pretty much useless. Usually both healers run SPC, because the bonus is limited to 6 people, and then one wears Worm Cult, because most DDs in trial groups are magicka builds, while the other wears Infallible Mage or Twilight Remedy, for the damage buffs. Roar or Alkosh can work on tank, if you can find jewelry and 2 small pieces, but most of the item bonuses are useless on a tank. Better put that set on a melee DD, paired with NMG, for maximum target debuffs.

akl77

I like worm with spc better

Masel

Infallible aether remained unchanged to this date, it still applies on every tick of heavy attacks, despite the patch notes saying otherwise (it only notes sunderflame and wise mage). I tested it with someone from the NA server and will verify it as soon as the EU chars are copied.

So the only reason why it would become useless is if you can get a nice uptime on concussion. In trials that might be possible if enough sorcs were in a group or healers were running charged staffs with shock glyphs on them. I usually run the heavy attack build with infallible aether in our groups so in that case, healers should rather run worm or twilight remedy.

Thrasher91604

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

The extra health from Ebon helps the party, but there are probably better choices.

Heavy attacks are also useful for restoring magicka for sorcs, so healers aren't the only ones heavy attacking.

If your DPS are heavy attacking, then you are not supporting them enough, via eledrain, orbs and worm in the case of sorcs.

If your dps are dying because you're spending resources on eledrain and orbs, then you are not healing enough.

Also if most of your dps is coming from stam builds then worm won't help them much.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

The extra health from Ebon helps the party, but there are probably better choices.

Heavy attacks are also useful for restoring magicka for sorcs, so healers aren't the only ones heavy attacking.

If your DPS are heavy attacking, then you are not supporting them enough, via eledrain, orbs and worm in the case of sorcs.

If your dps are dying because you're spending resources on eledrain and orbs, then you are not healing enough.

Also if most of your dps is coming from stam builds then worm won't help them much.

If your DPS are dying because you are casting a free skill or one that will give you magic back as well, then you are a bad healer. As a temp, you ought to have at least 2 hots going at all time. Worm does help stam as well, as it saves you magic meaning you as a healer has more sustain and can give more shards. I run with less then 1k mag regen in 4 man dungeons and have no trouble healing.

Thrasher91604

Giving majicka back doesn't heal.

Try veteran trials for a real test.

Asardes

The amount of healing needed varies considerably across groups. In some if you hit combat prayer, put ritual down, then cast rapid regen/mutagen a few times to hit all, you can even forget you have BoL on your bar. In others you have to spam BoL every 2 seconds and they still die like flies, then it's not the healer's fault.