Now about healing and my Healer

Auberon1983

He's a MagWarden that has been almost exclusively PvE, though lately I've taken him into Battlegrounds a couple times.

I run 5 pieces of Crafty Alfiq, 5 pieces of Necropotence, and the Rkugamz monster set. Necropotence "procs" with my Netch pet.

Front Bar is Degeneration, Expansive Frost Cloak, Winter's Revenge, Deep Fissure, and Fetcher Infection. Ultimate is Northern Storm

Back Bar is Enchanted Growth, Blue Betty, Budding Seeds, Radiating Regeneration, and Illustrious Healing. Ultimate is Healing Thicket. All skills (both bars) are Rank IV.

I've attached an imgur link. The top picture is without Blue Betty and Frost Cloak active, the bottom is with both active.

Open to any and all suggestions. I mainly like Battlegrounds, IC, and small group Cyrodiil. I'm very excited the healing changes are being reverted.


https://imgur.com/a/4MX6omE

Auberon1983

Update; I have dropped Necropotence for Impregnable Armor. I feel like I really need the extra resources and crit resistance

wheem_ESO

To play a dedicated healer against decent opposition in PvP, I think you really need 5+ heavy armor and a defensive set. For no-CP Battlegrounds, I've been running Pariah, Winter's Respite (active on one bar), Chokethorn, and VMA Resto Staff on a Magicka Necromancer. Overall I think it's pretty decent, but even with heavy armor, the Pariah set, 1h/shield on one bar, and Stage 3 Vampirism for Undeath, it's possible to get exploded by coordinated focus fire from decent players. I can't imagine surviving for very long at all in a high MMR BG with 5-7 light armor and 0 defensive sets, especially not once people figure out that you're healing.

When it comes to skill setup:
1) I'd definitely ditch Degeneration on a Magicka Warden. You'll get Major Sorcery from the Blue Betty, and Degeneration is a pretty worthless ability outside of that buff.

2) I definitely think that Ice Fortress is the superior morph over Expansive Frost Cloak, even after the nerf to Minor Protection. Everyone should really be relying on their own armor buff, and the higher cost is worth it for the healer to reliably have an extra 5% damage reduction.

3) Winter's Revenge is of very limited value on a healer, in my opinion. The snare and area of effect size absolutely pales in comparison to Caltrops, Bombard spam, etc...and a minor ground-based DOT isn't going to help your group land kills. While it can be used as an anti-stealth tool if you aim it well and can afford the cost of repeatedly casting it, that's a task that's better handled by any number of other players and abilities.

4) Fetcher Infection should probably be viewed as a bit of a flex spot. Again, the damage you'll get from it as a healer isn't a huge deal, though the addition of Minor Vulnerability a few patches ago can potentially be helpful. If you're running with someone else that's handling that, though (including potentially through Shock enchants), you could swap the spell out for something else.

5) Deep Fissure has a solid AOE debuff attached, and it can help your group with a bit of burst if you coordinate the timing properly, but I also think this can be viewed as a flex spot. It's not that it's necessarily bad or anything, just that your group might already have access to the debuff, and you might have a hard time making it count with timing and aiming as a dedicated healer - just depends on the situation at hand.

As for replacement abilities:
1) Nature's Embrace is fantastic. The amount healed has been nerfed since I last played Magicka Warden, but it can be great for repositioning, and is still a solid HOT for both you and your target.

2) Living Trellis is another spell that's quite good, and it can even be spammed to get the burst heal that triggers whenever it "expires." That might not be the #1 option to reach for in order to save someone from burst damage, when every GCD absolutely matters the most, but it's still a solid amount of healing for the low amount of magicka that it costs.

3) Overflowing Altar from the Undaunted Skill line offers teammates a really great burst heal from triggering the synergy, and the Minor Lifesteal is also pretty handy - especially when there are a lot of DOTs being thrown around. There are times that the aforementioned synergy can save them when your active casts can't; they're taking huge damage while you get CC'd, or they end up LOSing you, etc...Anytime that you're not actively taking too much heat, make sure you have a fresh one of these down - it can make a really huge difference.

4) Energy Orb will do a bit of healing, but more importantly offer your teammates a solid synergy for helping keep their resources up. I haven't personally found a good way to work this into my own healing setup, but I still think it's pretty worthwhile if you can find the bar space and sustain the resource cost.

5) Race Against Time or Mist Form can be extremely useful for counteracting root/snare spam and not getting locked down. Nature's Embrace might be enough for at least some situations, though, at least if you have a really mobile teammate or two. It won't actually remove the root or snare, so you may have to spam your vine a bit in order to successfully reposition. 'Course, it's worth mentioning that the Vine had a tendency to bug out on me in Cyrodiil back in the day; there were a number of times that I got teleported backwards after a really long "pull" failed for some reason, which usually dropped me right into the midst of an enemy zerg.

6) Lotus Blossom isn't bad. The extra spell critical can be nice on burst heals, and as a healer you'll probably heavy attacking with a resto staff fairly regularly, so the extra heal that can trigger from that also isn't bad.

Edit:
Woops, I forgot to mention Polar Wind, which can be a really excellent heal if your hit points are high enough. You'll just need to judge by the tooltip compared to other options available to you, and keep in mind that the range on it is 12 meters. That said, it heals you and an ally, so can be extremely good after being hit with a big AOE burst with multiple people needing immediate healing.

exeeter702

wheem_ESO wrote: »

To play a dedicated healer against decent opposition in PvP, I think you really need 5+ heavy armor and a defensive set. For no-CP Battlegrounds, I've been running Pariah, Winter's Respite (active on one bar), Chokethorn, and VMA Resto Staff on a Magicka Necromancer. Overall I think it's pretty decent, but even with heavy armor, the Pariah set, 1h/shield on one bar, and Stage 3 Vampirism for Undeath, it's possible to get exploded by coordinated focus fire from decent players. I can't imagine surviving for very long at all in a high MMR BG with 5-7 light armor and 0 defensive sets, especially not once people figure out that you're healing.

When it comes to skill setup:
1) I'd definitely ditch Degeneration on a Magicka Warden. You'll get Major Sorcery from the Blue Betty, and Degeneration is a pretty worthless ability outside of that buff.

2) I definitely think that Ice Fortress is the superior morph over Expansive Frost Cloak, even after the nerf to Minor Protection. Everyone should really be relying on their own armor buff, and the higher cost is worth it for the healer to reliably have an extra 5% damage reduction.

3) Winter's Revenge is of very limited value on a healer, in my opinion. The snare and area of effect size absolutely pales in comparison to Caltrops, Bombard spam, etc...and a minor ground-based DOT isn't going to help your group land kills. While it can be used as an anti-stealth tool if you aim it well and can afford the cost of repeatedly casting it, that's a task that's better handled by any number of other players and abilities.

4) Fetcher Infection should probably be viewed as a bit of a flex spot. Again, the damage you'll get from it as a healer isn't a huge deal, though the addition of Minor Vulnerability a few patches ago can potentially be helpful. If you're running with someone else that's handling that, though (including potentially through Shock enchants), you could swap the spell out for something else.

5) Deep Fissure has a solid AOE debuff attached, and it can help your group with a bit of burst if you coordinate the timing properly, but I also think this can be viewed as a flex spot. It's not that it's necessarily bad or anything, just that your group might already have access to the debuff, and you might have a hard time making it count with timing and aiming as a dedicated healer - just depends on the situation at hand.

As for replacement abilities:
1) Nature's Embrace is fantastic. The amount healed has been nerfed since I last played Magicka Warden, but it can be great for repositioning, and is still a solid HOT for both you and your target.

2) Living Trellis is another spell that's quite good, and it can even be spammed to get the burst heal that triggers whenever it "expires." That might not be the #1 option to reach for in order to save someone from burst damage, when every GCD absolutely matters the most, but it's still a solid amount of healing for the low amount of magicka that it costs.

3) Overflowing Altar from the Undaunted Skill line offers teammates a really great burst heal from triggering the synergy, and the Minor Lifesteal is also pretty handy - especially when there are a lot of DOTs being thrown around. There are times that the aforementioned synergy can save them when your active casts can't; they're taking huge damage while you get CC'd, or they end up LOSing you, etc...Anytime that you're not actively taking too much heat, make sure you have a fresh one of these down - it can make a really huge difference.

4) Energy Orb will do a bit of healing, but more importantly offer your teammates a solid synergy for helping keep their resources up. I haven't personally found a good way to work this into my own healing setup, but I still think it's pretty worthwhile if you can find the bar space and sustain the resource cost.

5) Race Against Time or Mist Form can be extremely useful for counteracting root/snare spam and not getting locked down. Nature's Embrace might be enough for at least some situations, though, at least if you have a really mobile teammate or two. It won't actually remove the root or snare, so you may have to spam your vine a bit in order to successfully reposition. 'Course, it's worth mentioning that the Vine had a tendency to bug out on me in Cyrodiil back in the day; there were a number of times that I got teleported backwards after a really long "pull" failed for some reason, which usually dropped me right into the midst of an enemy zerg.

6) Lotus Blossom isn't bad. The extra spell critical can be nice on burst heals, and as a healer you'll probably heavy attacking with a resto staff fairly regularly, so the extra heal that can trigger from that also isn't bad.

Edit:
Woops, I forgot to mention Polar Wind, which can be a really excellent heal if your hit points are high enough. You'll just need to judge by the tooltip compared to other options available to you, and keep in mind that the range on it is 12 meters. That said, it heals you and an ally, so can be extremely good after being hit with a big AOE burst with multiple people needing immediate healing.

All reasonable suggestions. But this is essentially turning yourself into a zero damage, zero lethal potential, heal bot. For mid to large scale cyrodil pvp endeavors, that would be fine, despite those types of pvp scenarios often demand less individual performance. For bgs, unless you are trying to heal glass cannon builds on your team that have nothing in the way of self defense, you really want to have some from of pressure to assist in kills.

exeeter702

Auberon1983 wrote: »

He's a MagWarden that has been almost exclusively PvE, though lately I've taken him into Battlegrounds a couple times.

I run 5 pieces of Crafty Alfiq, 5 pieces of Necropotence, and the Rkugamz monster set. Necropotence "procs" with my Netch pet.

Front Bar is Degeneration, Expansive Frost Cloak, Winter's Revenge, Deep Fissure, and Fetcher Infection. Ultimate is Northern Storm

Back Bar is Enchanted Growth, Blue Betty, Budding Seeds, Radiating Regeneration, and Illustrious Healing. Ultimate is Healing Thicket. All skills (both bars) are Rank IV.

I've attached an imgur link. The top picture is without Blue Betty and Frost Cloak active, the bottom is with both active.

Open to any and all suggestions. I mainly like Battlegrounds, IC, and small group Cyrodiil. I'm very excited the healing changes are being reverted.


https://imgur.com/a/4MX6omE

I would strongly move away from raw max stat sets. You need a good defensive set and a good sustain or supplemental healing set.

Since you like bgs and small scale, which I also prefer, you want to avoid being a vegetable heal bot. Small scale groups tend to build for self sufficiency, and healers in small scale actually have to play well and know how to switch to offense when the moment allows it. Frankly as far as I'm concerned a healer with zero damage is dead weight for tight small groups.

Auberon1983

exeeter702 wrote: »

Auberon1983 wrote: »

He's a MagWarden that has been almost exclusively PvE, though lately I've taken him into Battlegrounds a couple times.

I run 5 pieces of Crafty Alfiq, 5 pieces of Necropotence, and the Rkugamz monster set. Necropotence "procs" with my Netch pet.

Front Bar is Degeneration, Expansive Frost Cloak, Winter's Revenge, Deep Fissure, and Fetcher Infection. Ultimate is Northern Storm

Back Bar is Enchanted Growth, Blue Betty, Budding Seeds, Radiating Regeneration, and Illustrious Healing. Ultimate is Healing Thicket. All skills (both bars) are Rank IV.

I've attached an imgur link. The top picture is without Blue Betty and Frost Cloak active, the bottom is with both active.

Open to any and all suggestions. I mainly like Battlegrounds, IC, and small group Cyrodiil. I'm very excited the healing changes are being reverted.


https://imgur.com/a/4MX6omE

I would strongly move away from raw max stat sets. You need a good defensive set and a good sustain or supplemental healing set.

Since you like bgs and small scale, which I also prefer, you want to avoid being a vegetable heal bot. Small scale groups tend to build for self sufficiency, and healers in small scale actually have to play well and know how to switch to offense when the moment allows it. Frankly as far as I'm concerned a healer with zero damage is dead weight for tight small groups.

I went ahead and dropped Necropotence for Impregnable Armor. I have a couple other sets, mostly complete, that I can drop Alfiq for. I know Mother's Sorrow is in demand (I've helped a couple Guildmates get the set lol), I could look into that one. Heck, I've even been tinkering with the idea of building a pure PvP healer from scratch, maybe a MagBlade or MagSorc to also provide better damage output.

exeeter702

Auberon1983 wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

Auberon1983 wrote: »

He's a MagWarden that has been almost exclusively PvE, though lately I've taken him into Battlegrounds a couple times.

I run 5 pieces of Crafty Alfiq, 5 pieces of Necropotence, and the Rkugamz monster set. Necropotence "procs" with my Netch pet.

Front Bar is Degeneration, Expansive Frost Cloak, Winter's Revenge, Deep Fissure, and Fetcher Infection. Ultimate is Northern Storm

Back Bar is Enchanted Growth, Blue Betty, Budding Seeds, Radiating Regeneration, and Illustrious Healing. Ultimate is Healing Thicket. All skills (both bars) are Rank IV.

I've attached an imgur link. The top picture is without Blue Betty and Frost Cloak active, the bottom is with both active.

Open to any and all suggestions. I mainly like Battlegrounds, IC, and small group Cyrodiil. I'm very excited the healing changes are being reverted.


https://imgur.com/a/4MX6omE

I would strongly move away from raw max stat sets. You need a good defensive set and a good sustain or supplemental healing set.

Since you like bgs and small scale, which I also prefer, you want to avoid being a vegetable heal bot. Small scale groups tend to build for self sufficiency, and healers in small scale actually have to play well and know how to switch to offense when the moment allows it. Frankly as far as I'm concerned a healer with zero damage is dead weight for tight small groups.

I went ahead and dropped Necropotence for Impregnable Armor. I have a couple other sets, mostly complete, that I can drop Alfiq for. I know Mother's Sorrow is in demand (I've helped a couple Guildmates get the set lol), I could look into that one. Heck, I've even been tinkering with the idea of building a pure PvP healer from scratch, maybe a MagBlade or MagSorc to also provide better damage output.

I could offer magblade pvp healing advice as I have been doing that for as long as eso has been live. They are by no means weak by any stretch of the imagination.

Auberon1983

exeeter702 wrote: »

Auberon1983 wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

Auberon1983 wrote: »

He's a MagWarden that has been almost exclusively PvE, though lately I've taken him into Battlegrounds a couple times.

I run 5 pieces of Crafty Alfiq, 5 pieces of Necropotence, and the Rkugamz monster set. Necropotence "procs" with my Netch pet.

Front Bar is Degeneration, Expansive Frost Cloak, Winter's Revenge, Deep Fissure, and Fetcher Infection. Ultimate is Northern Storm

Back Bar is Enchanted Growth, Blue Betty, Budding Seeds, Radiating Regeneration, and Illustrious Healing. Ultimate is Healing Thicket. All skills (both bars) are Rank IV.

I've attached an imgur link. The top picture is without Blue Betty and Frost Cloak active, the bottom is with both active.

Open to any and all suggestions. I mainly like Battlegrounds, IC, and small group Cyrodiil. I'm very excited the healing changes are being reverted.


https://imgur.com/a/4MX6omE

I would strongly move away from raw max stat sets. You need a good defensive set and a good sustain or supplemental healing set.

Since you like bgs and small scale, which I also prefer, you want to avoid being a vegetable heal bot. Small scale groups tend to build for self sufficiency, and healers in small scale actually have to play well and know how to switch to offense when the moment allows it. Frankly as far as I'm concerned a healer with zero damage is dead weight for tight small groups.

I went ahead and dropped Necropotence for Impregnable Armor. I have a couple other sets, mostly complete, that I can drop Alfiq for. I know Mother's Sorrow is in demand (I've helped a couple Guildmates get the set lol), I could look into that one. Heck, I've even been tinkering with the idea of building a pure PvP healer from scratch, maybe a MagBlade or MagSorc to also provide better damage output.

I could offer magblade pvp healing advice as I have been doing that for as long as eso has been live. They are by no means weak by any stretch of the imagination.

I'd absolutely love some advice on it, thank you

wheem_ESO

exeeter702 wrote: »

All reasonable suggestions. But this is essentially turning yourself into a zero damage, zero lethal potential, heal bot. For mid to large scale cyrodil pvp endeavors, that would be fine, despite those types of pvp scenarios often demand less individual performance. For bgs, unless you are trying to heal glass cannon builds on your team that have nothing in the way of self defense, you really want to have some from of pressure to assist in kills.

On the contrary, it's usually only when your group outclasses the competition that the healer is able to contribute a meaningful amount of damage. There can be some specific exceptions, as I mentioned above with regard to Deep Fissure; properly timing that with your group's burst attempts can certainly be helpful. But as a general rule, the only way you'll be "going offensive" on a healer build is if you're up against opposition that is either weak, unorganized, or both.

My own Magicka Warden setup(s) are an example of this. From Morrowind's early access until Elsweyr's early access it was my main character, and I typically played a sort of "hybrid" damage/healing build. Reaching ~1m scoreboard damage and healing each wasn't unheard of in games that lasted for the full 15 minutes. It was overall quite solid when solo queueing, though 1v1's and securing kills in group fights were obviously both problems. But the instant you try to take such a build into all-premade games, the power of that playstyle drops off immensely.

So far as I can tell, every single team in the recent PC-NA Battlegrounds tournament event had 1 player that was primarily set up the way I described in my previous post: as a dedicated healer with very minimal offense available in their build. Trying to play something akin to my old Warden as the "dedicated healer" for a team would simply result in your group being bullied and repeatedly farmed as each of the other teams tried to race for the largest number of kills.

Auberon1983 wrote: »

I went ahead and dropped Necropotence for Impregnable Armor. I have a couple other sets, mostly complete, that I can drop Alfiq for. I know Mother's Sorrow is in demand (I've helped a couple Guildmates get the set lol), I could look into that one. Heck, I've even been tinkering with the idea of building a pure PvP healer from scratch, maybe a MagBlade or MagSorc to also provide better damage output.

I wouldn't advise using Impregnable in the current patch. An enormous percentage of players are using Malacath and can't crit against you anyway, so the 5-piece set bonus doesn't offer anything against them. This is also a big part of the reason that the Transmutation set isn't really used on healers anymore (it was nerfed a while back as well, though without Malacath being a thing I think it'd still be a solid set). It doesn't hurt to have some armor with the Impenetrable trait still, but I wouldn't dedicated a 5-piece set bonus to countering crits these days.

Off the top of my head, I think Pariah is probably the best overall defensive set for healers, which is why I went with it. You could also potentially make the Swift set work, so long as you have a heavy sustain/healing set to pair it with. Perhaps something like Coldharbour's Favorite or Armor of the Seducer would work? I haven't tried that.

Gossamer is another worthwhile set to have available for some team compositions. Some people will have easy access to Major Evasion on their own, but this set is very helpful for those who don't. I wouldn't consider it a replacement for your own defensive set, especially if not already wearing 5+ heavy armor, but it's nice to be able to tone down Dawnbreaker bombs a bit.

Pauwer

I play monster set symphony of blades/earthgore/troll king. Then spc paired with curse eater/transmutation/gossamer.

This is guild group setting. Does not work in random groups, if they don't stick to crown.

Wolfpaw

The two builds I use atm.

IceWarden
Nord
Impen & armor big pieces
All tri-stat
Sugar Skulls or Citrus filet
1Chudan or 1Skoria Heavy
Winterborn/Icy Conjuror
Malacath inf/spell dmg
Frost staff x2 pen
Bb Vateshran frost staff
Pen Mstone
40H24M

Support
Nord
All tri-stat
Impen & armor big pieces
Sugar Skulls (I sit 20k stam~)
Bloodspawn Heavy
Gossamer/Transmutation. Warden is the only class that can trigger these two sets on your group prior to entering combat with Maturation passive/Regeneration.
Resto/shield
Mag regen Mstone
24H40M

The support build is not very fun in deathmatch & domination, the icewarden is though.