Nightblade healer question?

Slater_Reed · July 2015

So iam a vet 4 khajiit nightblade on ps4, running a DW crit dagger stamina based build, and recently i have been wanting to switch out to a healer or mag based build, so i tried the bloodmage nightblade healer build only to find my self on a dungeon struggling to heal with siphons, and even with resto staff abilities, spamming the abilities and running out of mag. Just to be clear i had resto staff quite lvled with passives, i was lvl 10 vamp, wearing light armor with the 3 first passives unlocked, and i tried following the guide to the letter, from skills to passives etc... My questions is, am i missing something? What am i doing something wrong? For instance, funnel health would heal pretty much nothing, i know its a Hot but even so not even over time would do anything... Help apreciated, thank you.

Nestor · July 2015

NB's do not have much of a heal if your Stamina Focused. Even with a Magic Focused NB, Siphon can only do so much but is much better. So, the first question to ask is, are you Magic or Stamina Focused?

Leeching Strikes and Steel Tornado seems to help but I still have not found an effective way keep my NB alive other than hoping a potion will keep me up during a fight.

Aett_Thorn · July 2015

It seems like the OP made the switch already to a more magika-focused build, so that should be helping a bit.

I would ask if the OP switched his attributes as well, so that he has few points, if any, into Stamina, and most into Health and Magika. Also, OP, are you using any set items that help with either +Max Magika or magika regen?

As a Nightblade healer, you are going to have to plan on having access to only HoTs and no burst heals. As such, you will need to be a bit more proactive with your heals. You want to make sure that you are applying most of your effects before your team takes damage, and then know that they have the effects on them. Funnel Health and Regeneration are long-duration skills, so you shouldn't need to spam those too often. I would say that mainly you should be spamming just Grand Healing (morphed into Healing Springs to get some magika back in teams).

Also, I would recommend Consuming Darkness as your Ultimate, since it will reduce the damage taken of your team by 30% if they are standing in it, which will help lower the need for heals.

Nestor · July 2015

Aett_Thorn wrote: »

It seems like the OP made the switch already to a more magika-focused build, so that should be helping a bit.

Siphon is pretty decent with a magic focus, so the OPs statement about it not doing anything made me wonder.

Slater_Reed · July 2015

Aett_Thorn wrote: »

It seems like the OP made the switch already to a more magika-focused build, so that should be helping a bit.

I would ask if the OP switched his attributes as well, so that he has few points, if any, into Stamina, and most into Health and Magika. Also, OP, are you using any set items that help with either +Max Magika or magika regen?

As a Nightblade healer, you are going to have to plan on having access to only HoTs and no burst heals. As such, you will need to be a bit more proactive with your heals. You want to make sure that you are applying most of your effects before your team takes damage, and then know that they have the effects on them. Funnel Health and Regeneration are long-duration skills, so you shouldn't need to spam those too often. I would say that mainly you should be spamming just Grand Healing (morphed into Healing Springs to get some magika back in teams).

Also, I would recommend Consuming Darkness as your Ultimate, since it will reduce the damage taken of your team by 30% if they are standing in it, which will help lower the need for heals.

Hi, thanks for the quick response, to answer your questions, i switched atributes to the following, 42 on mag and 10 on health, plus iam not using any specialized equip sets, just regular light armor with health enchants since i focused til now on med armor craft and have no traits on light armor, but i believe i could have one made by a guildie, but iam using acessories for mag. Also, in case i see my self failing on NB heal build, how should i work out a more dps mag based build with NB?

rb2001 · July 2015

Pick up a healing staff.

Nightblade siphons are supplementary to healing staff abilities. Use them to keep heals on yourself and allies in addition to the healing you are outputting via Healing Springs and, for burst healing, you can use Blessing of Restoration. Healing Ward will be your goto to protect the lowest person (may or may not be yourself) and give you time to use the other abilities.

Kerioko · July 2015

Craft you a set of 5 Seducer and 3 Torug's Pact. Next, Make sure all 3 of your jewelry pieces are enchanted with spell cost reduction. This will get it to where funnel health costs less than 500 magicka meaning you can spam it forever.

A good starting set-up with duel resto is:

Bar 1: Funnel Health, Mutagen, Healing Ward, Siphoning Strikes, Inner Light, Veil Of Blades

This is your primary healing bar and will heal almost any situation. Cast mutagen twice every 20 sec then spam funnel health with light attack weaves. You will stay topped off with magicka and stamina due to siphoning strikes.

Bar 2: Sap Essence, Refreshing Path, Healing Springs, Siphoning Strikes, Inner Light, Soul Siphon

This your buff and burst heal bar. When needed, stack your group, cast sap and path for damage and mitigation buffs, then spam springs while block casting. Use Soul Siphon for large burst heal when needed.

This is not a complete end-game set-up, but it is good enough to heal any vet dungeon to get you used to the NB healing rotation. Once you get good with resource management, swap your gear for some 4 martial knowledge, 4 healer's habit, and 3 Torug's Pact. You can then also swap out siphoning strikes for things like combat prayer, purge, or other fight dependent skills.

This gear set-up will work very well for magicka dps as well.

A starter DPS rotation (you can do this with resto staves, but flame destro and duel wield is optimal):

Bar 1: Single Target --> Funnel Health, Crippling Grasp, Entropy, Merciless Resolve, Inner Light, Meteor

Bar 2: Execute and AOE --> Sap Essence, Refreshing Path, Impale, Siphoning Strikes, Inner Light, Soul Harvest (or Veil of Blades)

DPS Rotation --> Buff with Resolve every 20 seconds, use entropy then crippling grasp every 8-10 sec so it benefits from Might of the Guild passive. Spam funnel health + light attack weave in between...use meteor on cool down and swap and spam impale for execute. For AOE, trigger siphoning attacks as needed, cast refreshing path every 10 sec, spam sap essence for AOE damage and buff, use impale on low health targets. Running soul harvest will help boost ultimate regen from trash fights.

I have been running Argonian NB healer for about a year and its fun to be able to heal a dungeon while sometimes out dps'ing your dps group members. I have healed everything in game with no issue, even off-tanked 100% burn on VDSA final boss and solo'd bloodspawn with 10K+ dps using these set-ups.

rb2001 · July 2015

Kerioko wrote: »

Craft you a set of 5 Seducer and 3 Torug's Pact. Next, Make sure all 3 of your jewelry pieces are enchanted with spell cost reduction. This will get it to where funnel health costs less than 500 magicka meaning you can spam it forever.

A good starting set-up with duel resto is:

Bar 1: Funnel Health, Mutagen, Healing Ward, Siphoning Strikes, Inner Light, Veil Of Blades

This is your primary healing bar and will heal almost any situation. Cast mutagen twice every 20 sec then spam funnel health with light attack weaves. You will stay topped off with magicka and stamina due to siphoning strikes.

Bar 2: Sap Essence, Refreshing Path, Healing Springs, Siphoning Strikes, Inner Light, Soul Siphon

This your buff and burst heal bar. When needed, stack your group, cast sap and path for damage and mitigation buffs, then spam springs while block casting. Use Soul Siphon for large burst heal when needed.

This is not a complete end-game set-up, but it is good enough to heal any vet dungeon to get you used to the NB healing rotation. Once you get good with resource management, swap your gear for some 4 martial knowledge, 4 healer's habit, and 3 Torug's Pact. You can then also swap out siphoning strikes for things like combat prayer, purge, or other fight dependent skills.

This gear set-up will work very well for magicka dps as well.

A starter DPS rotation (you can do this with resto staves, but flame destro and duel wield is optimal):

Bar 1: Single Target --> Funnel Health, Crippling Grasp, Entropy, Merciless Resolve, Inner Light, Meteor

Bar 2: Execute and AOE --> Sap Essence, Refreshing Path, Impale, Siphoning Strikes, Inner Light, Soul Harvest (or Veil of Blades)

DPS Rotation --> Buff with Resolve every 20 seconds, use entropy then crippling grasp every 8-10 sec so it benefits from Might of the Guild passive. Spam funnel health + light attack weave in between...use meteor on cool down and swap and spam impale for execute. For AOE, trigger siphoning attacks as needed, cast refreshing path every 10 sec, spam sap essence for AOE damage and buff, use impale on low health targets. Running soul harvest will help boost ultimate regen from trash fights.

I have been running Argonian NB healer for about a year and its fun to be able to heal a dungeon while sometimes out dps'ing your dps group members. I have healed everything in game with no issue, even off-tanked 100% burn on VDSA final boss and solo'd bloodspawn with 10K+ dps using these set-ups.

Nice post, @Kerioko.

I'll think about this a bit. I'm currently "restructuring" my NB healing build as well.

Edit: I can also vouch for 5-peice seducer set, and I use currently a fairly similar setup what what's mentioned above, and I do just fine.

Slater_Reed · July 2015

Thank you kerioko, aweasome post, ty, will give feedback.

Slater_Reed · July 2015

I have tried the build provided by kerioko, without the gear and in open world situations since iam not able to run a dungeon right now because not all guildies are on. I can that soloing and group healing seems viable, but i seem to die when switching to the 2nd skill bar since i need to go inside the brawl to use sap essence, and maybe iam just not used to it, will try dungeon healing with the gear and see what happens, ty

Nestor · July 2015

I stopped using Sap Essence as it now just gives a 20% buff to weapon damage. Sure, every bit helps. But you may want to look instead at the Crowd Control skills like Refreshing Path, Fear, Shades etc.

Kerioko · July 2015

Nestor wrote: »

I stopped using Sap Essence as it now just gives a 20% buff to weapon damage. Sure, every bit helps. But you may want to look instead at the Crowd Control skills like Refreshing Path, Fear, Shades etc.

To clear up something, Sap Essence gives both Major Brutality and Major Sorcery...Power Extraction (the stam based morph) is the one that only gives weapon damage.

As a NB healer, Sap Essence is vital, as it is our only viable AOE dps without wasting a whole skill bar just to run impulse on a destro staff. Refreshing Path should be looked at, not as a DPS or crowd control skill, but for its mobility and its defense synergy by applying the Shadow Barrier Passive. This extra boost (about 5K armor and spell resist) in defense is what allows the magicka NB to stand in the center of a mob pack and spam sap. As far as Fear, it is an awesome skill when solo or in PVP, but never put in on your bar in group content. You don't help the group if you fear mobs away from the tank or DPS and they have to go chasing them down!

@Slater_Reed, The key to standing in a pack and surviving is to hold block (block casting) while spamming sap essence and casting path as needed to get the shadow barrier passive. I also recommend running 2 heavy (chest, legs) with 5 light armor to make you a little more beefy until you get it down. Also consider dropping vamp, at least until you are able to survive and never get in the red. aside from the fire damage, the lack of health regen means that most of the time you will be sucking heals from your group mates. The only reason I stay Vamp is for PVP because I really enjoy a combo of Healing Ward and Mist Form to turn the tide of battle in a small scale fight!

Slater_Reed · July 2015

Thank you @Kerioko your words are golden, i will take them into action, i have yet to try this out on a dungeon, but i assume i will be able to put them to test today on the daily undaunted pledge with guildies, thank you again for the complex and yet understandable explanation, something many werent able to do, and forced me to turn here for advice, thank you