Bergzorn's lazy healer

Bergzorn

Welcome to Bergzorn's lazy healer build guide. This is a build for casual players that want to pull their weight, e.g. for normal dungeon runs using the group finder. If you get a good group, you will throw them some heals and have a smooth run. If you get a bad group, no need to ragequit. You can be the stability anchor, keep everyone alive, tank the bosses, have some fun.

The build is very forgiving, both in playstyle and requirements. If you want to progress and refine your skills, this build is not for you since it uses some crutches that will not let you progress as well as other playstyles. The general goal of the build is to get your healing power to a reasonable level, and then add survivability and maybe a little group support. You will not do a lot of damage.

Class: Sorcerer. This is kind of important because of the Matriarch. You can use another class, but you need an on-demand burst heal for other players.
Race: Any race will do. Mine is a High Elf.

Gear:

1 x Oakensoul ring. This is a requirement for the build, as it gives you a lot of buffs. But it's a bit of a crutch...

5 x Back Alley Gourmand. This is a good overland set (easy to get) and boosts your healing quite a bit.

5 x Mark of the Pariah. This is an overland set (easy to get) and one of the best defensive sets in the game.

1 x Earthgore. The 4% healing done is great for the build, but not a must have.

Weapon: Restoration staff (obviously) with a weapon damage glyph and Precice trait. Enchantment and trait are flexible, but this is kind of optimal. Improve this to gold.

As for the armor weights, I prefer 5/1/1 light. But this is not a must, every type of armor does something useful for you. Armor traits should be all Divine. Jewellery trait should be Infused with spell damage enchantment. You could use totally different stuff (apart from Oakensoul), as long as you end up with similar stats as given below. Armor and jewellery quality should be purple.

Skills and Skill points:

You should unlock all passives that do somethingh for you. Skill points are easy to get. 64 points in magica makes the most sense to me.

Required skill 1: Radiant regeneration. Great player-bound heal over time (HOT).
Required skill 2: Illustrious Healing. Great ground-based AOE HOT.
Requird skill 3: Summon Twilight Matriarch. Very strong burst heal for two teammates.

This leaves you with two flex slots and an ulti slot. I like to slot Blinding Flare for Major Protection and Mystic Guard (see below). But you could also slot some utility or damage skills. As ultimate, I use the Charged Atronach to help with trash pulls. That guy is a beast!

Champion Points: Use CP to modify the build to your liking. It won't make or break the build. Increased crit healing and damage is nice, increased healing over time is nice. Don't waste CP on recovery, you don't need it.

Food, potions, Mundus: Food is a must have (even without Back Alley Gourmand), it gives so much for so little cost. You want max health + max magica food. I use tri-stat food. The extra stamina doesn't hurt, but the main reason is that it lasts 2h instead of 1h. You should have som magica potions ready for situations where you need to spam the matriarch heal but can't heavy attack for some reason. Thief as Mundus is great for the build, but others will do too.

Stats to aim for: Priority one is decent healing. You get this mainly through spell damage, critical chance and critical healing done. Second priority is survivability. You get this mainly throug armor and a decent health pool. My approximate stats (overland) are

30k max magica, 27k max health, 17k max stamina, low recovery on all 3
4500 spell damage, 50% crit chance, somewhere around +80% critical damage and healing done
around 5k penetration and around 22k armor (at full health)

Tooltip healing values (without major mending and without glyph proc) are 16k for Radiant Regeneration, 30k for Illustrious Healing and 14k for the matriarch.

Gameplay:

Basics: Keep Radiant Regeneration up at all times. Throw down Illustrious Healing whenever neccessary, it should be up 100% during boss fights. Keep an eye on your teammate's health bars, and if they go below 50% or so, use the Matriarch. Whenever you are not doing anything else, heavy attack something for a bit of damage, great magica return and a few seconds of Major Mending.

If you follow my recommendations, your healing output with RR and IH alone will be strong enough for most encounters on normal difficulty. And this is where the fun starts, you have plenty of time to do something else. You can stand around in nasty AOEs. You can mock the 2500cp pro tank who is doing his random normal dungeon by throwing Mystic Guard at him. You can use Mystic Guard on the squishy 1000k DPS who queued as fake tank and keep them alive while they melt the whole dungeon. Or you can keep the cp50 newb alive while they learn the ropes. If there is no tank, you also can slot Inner Fire and taunt bosses. If you don't ignore hard hitting mechanics, you can easily tank every dungeon boss on normal difficulty. Just don't forget that you are no one-person-army, you still need your teammates to kill stuff.

dmnqwk

This should be called 'Bergzorn's guide to working way harder than is necessary'.

A better idea would be:

Be a Nightblade and spam Funnel Health or Sap Essence - dps fun while you heal!
Be a Dragonknight and use Obsidian Shard because the group is 55m ahead of you because you were watching Netflix and didn't see them move but luckily there's a mob 28m ahead of you to bounce the shard off.
Be a Warden and leeching vines once every 10 seconds on someone so everybody lifesteals!
Be a Necromancer and cast Spirit Healer every 16 seconds.
Be any class and use Healing Ward cos there's no targetting required.

You can be a one person army if you're a Nightblade or Warden because your heals do multiple things!