Advices on Templar Healer

magnusthorek · April 2016

I've created a Templar prior the TG Update aiming to be a DPS but also ready for healing. When I DPS, it's flawless, even I'm just a VR4. Today I decided to give it a shot as healer in veteran Darkshade Caverns,. Three times I did and it wasn't bad, but it could be better. Each round we had like 3-5 deaths, which I think it's not so bad considering I'm still learning.

I can't say if someone else was off-healing hardly or not, but I think it's safe to assume that they were, we all do it in case healer get screwed. I didn't notice too much drastic HP reduction so, although I think it would certainly help having some CPs in Blessed, I think it's not necessarily mandatory for most of dungeons.

My rotation was dropping an Extended Ritual on the floor, calling Rapid Regeneration and alternating Healing Springs (which is kind of hard to aim properly and benefit from the magicka returning) and Ritual of Rebirth on bosses. On trashes, I used more Breath of Life than the former as it's faster. Every once in a while I repeated the process mostly instinctively as I can't handle all monitoring (HP meters, buffs, debuffs and timers) very well yet.

I wasn't scaled, it seems people don't really know how to do it properly yet (me included) so I had much less magicka and was forced to heavy attack sometimes, specially during the pack of automatons. This caused one of the DPS to die, in all fights, it was the same person (diferent for distinct groups, though).

Also, I noticed that I'm not very supportive to stamina players in the group though, as my Repentance is in my main bar and game is "wonderful" when changing bars is needed. Because of this I doubled the Breath of Life in my main bar as backup. Radiant Destruction, Puncturing Sweeps and Inner Light and I was done, unable to slot shards.

Not that it was too much needed, I have the feeling that someone esle was throwing them but I felt less effective than I could be so I would like some advice.

wayfarerx · April 2016

magnusthorek wrote: »

I wasn't scaled, it seems people don't really know how to do it properly yet (me included) so I had much less magicka and was forced to heavy attack sometimes, specially during the pack of automatons. This caused one of the DPS to die, in all fights, it was the same person (diferent for distinct groups, though).

This is the most important thing: if you run out of magicka everybody dies. Sustain is king for healing, so you should try and set up your gear and skills so that, with occasional potion use, you will never run out of juice. Heavy resto attack is okay but now that we get major mending from templar passives I try to avoid it if I can.

Other than sustain it's all about heals / buffs / group sustain. Practice makes perfect when it comes to keeping all those up continuously.

Methadone_Man · April 2016

The light armor skill morph called Harness Magica is a great skill for a healer. It not only shields you from magic-based damage but also restores some magica to you.

Similarly, using the Chanelled Focus morph of the Templar and doing your best to stay in the rune as long as possible will not only give you extra spell and physical resitance, but also restore a good amount of magica to you. And its cost is very reasonable.

Another option is to put Purifying Light on your main bar and apply it to several enemies when not needing to do any emergency heals. This does some damage and creates a small point of healing that remains on the ground, giving some health back to enemies.

But your overall setup seems to be on the right path. Keep the two heal-over-times (Rapid Regeneration and Extended Ritual) and then apply on-demand heals as needed, and activate Repentance every 3 corpses. When I run as healer, I usually skip the puncturing sweeps. It takes a decent amount of magica and only heals myself. It's not a good option for the healer. I find that Purifying Light, although less damaging than puncturing sweeps, also offers a heal and is much less costly in terms of resources. For boss fights, there is less corpses so Repentance is not as useful. You can temporarily swap out Repentance for something else like Dark Flare or Radiant Destruction during a boss fight.

Also, with the new update to Inner Light, you can consider just running it on your main bar. The one that you do most of your heals. Personally, I always use the Luminous Shards. So useful.

My healing setup is:

Front Bar Resto staff: Repentance, Purifying Light, Breath of Life, Healing Ward, Inner Light.

Back Bar Resto staff: Harness Magica, Luminous Shards, Flex spot (possibly Channeled Focus, Redundant Breath of Life, Healing Springs, or Dark Flare), Rapid Regeneration, Purifying Ritutal.

Each fight is different, so I may switch things around as needed. There are times when I go with healing springs more. Especially when the group is close, healing springs can be very efficient in terms of magica cost and magica regeneration. But in highly mobile fights, your Healing Ward and Breath of Life are more useful.

And I use quite a bit of heavy attacks from my staff in between re-applying the HoT and Purifying Light. Basically, if my team is buffed and purifying light applied and noone needs an emergency heal, I hold down on right trigger to do heavy attack.

Kelces · April 2016

If you can afford it, I would really recommend you put some CP into "blessed", just to be sure. But of course, it's up to your feeling about it.

Further I suggest using Radiant Aura, that's what I always use, so you don't depend on corpses. Especially when there is a boss without adds. Casting healing springs gives you a second to throw a spear to the tank, more stamina there. Eventually you'll have to get a feeling for aiming properly, that's essential as you probably know. It pays off hugely concerning magicka-sustain.

I never really used rapid regeneration, because it only hits two targets. Maybe another ability could prove more useful. But maybe I'm wrong.

If you are trying to be offensive here and there aswell, it might be better to get used to playing a pure healer-setup. As soon as you get comfortable with keeping up your magicka, I would go forward with picking offensive abilities. One thing to start with may be volcanic rune, that way you have some additional recovery and an additional CC.

puffy99 · April 2016

Yeah put harness magicka on- it is a awesome Defensive skill and if the boss is somewhat stationary and you have focus down you can do a lot of damage with shards/P Light in between the chaos. Maybe try just slotting BoL once on your healing bar or experiment it on the DPS bar so you don't have to switch.

Sweeps/Focus/In Light/Shards/RO/Prison (DW)
Pur Light/Harn Mag or Rep/In Light/HS/BoL/(Open slot Ult)

This is my go to setup for healing/DPS with 4 or 5 Seducer or Transmut/Juliannos and Willpower, Skoria or EGuard.

xerasia · April 2016

Lots of good advice on abilities so I won't add to it (although I will echo using shards in dungeons for your stam folks) but wanted to agree and expand on the post about magicka regen.

Look into crafting (or having someone) craft some set armor for you. Seducer, mentioned above, gives great regen and you can't beat Kagrenac's for a healer's set. I personally use 5 pieces Kagrenac's 4 Magnus' gift, and willpower jewelry. Coupled with the atronach mundus (mag recovery) and one of the wrothgar recipes that gives max health and mag regen my regeneration is up around 2300. I rarely, rarely run out of magicka.

If you're still having trouble getting your regen up, you can use regen enchants on your jewelry.

TL;DR

- Regen is key for healing
- Look at using Atronach as your mundus
- Look at using armor sets that offer max and regen for magicka
- Sink some champion points into blessed and elfborn in the apprentice tree
- Make sure you've put skill points into your light armor passives

Good luck! It can be a tough row to hoe as a healer, especially in PuGs where they have no problem blaming the healer for failure!

magnusthorek · April 2016

Yesterday I healed my first dungeon as a dedicated healer. It was a normal one (Blessed Crucible) but we had only one RNG death in he last boss. Considering I'm still VR5 and was using a DPS gear/CPs it wasn't bad.

Not bad I'd say. The hardest part was understand the accent of the player requiring shards in TS >.<

driosketch · April 2016

If you're going to DPS on your main bar consider dropping repentance for shards. If you are talking tank support, swap sweep yor shards as you may be keeping out of melee range in this case. Basically, your stamina DPS should be able to manage their own stamina with potions and gear. If they're struggling, you'll either need to get them to adjust or pull back on DPS to provide more support.

me_ming · April 2016

First of all, healing springs is only good if you're are non-templar healers and for trials. Maybe in some cases, like last boss in vFG or that kwama boss in vDC. Other than that it is not optimal to use healing springs; 1. because most dungeons requires mobility and people being more spread out, 2. you optimize the skill when everyone is spread out, you will run out of magicka if you spam the hell out of it, because you will not be gaining significant magicka if you only heal 1 or two of your allies (read tooltip please). Second, Purifying Ritual Morph is better than Extended Ritual, because other classes don't have cleanse (unless they use Purge, which is less likely the case). Third, I do not ever recall any good/better templar healers that run Ritual of Birth. BoL (despite it's nerf) is still best compared to the burst of Ritual of Birth. Fourth, why double bar BoL?

Personally my main skills for templar healers should be BoL, Repentance, Blazing Spears and Channeled Focus. Repentance is really a no-brainer, it's free, it heals (and it crit heals too) and you keep your stamina users sustained. Not only that Repetance gives you magicka regen which you need. I have used Luminous Shards in the past, but seeing that now it's important for Templar healers to have DPS as well, I rather use Blazing Spear. Combat Prayer personally, is still a good skill. Siphon Spirit if you have a magicka-build ally (or if your magsorcs/nbs doesn't know how to sustain their own magicka). Inner Light for crit healing. Purifying Light for single target bosses (I use this to make sure my tank gets heals). Purifying Ritual works well with BoL, plus (as mentioned before) when allies use the synergy it cleanses them. Channeled Focus and Harness Magicka will keep your magicka sustained. The problem with healers I've been running with when I DPS (especially in vCoA), is that they do not use Harness Magicka, which is a shame because that will keep them alive and sustain their magicka. If you ever PvP, get Barrier, Barrier is waaay better than Remembrance. My ultis are Nova (for damage mit) and Barrier. I slot Barrier and Repentance on the same bar to get more magicka regen, as I have the Support Skill line passive Magicka Aid. I go up to 2.7k magicka regen. Another thing is I use Dawn's Wrath abilities every now and agian, mainly Purifying Light (for more healing) or Reflective Light (for AoE damage), Dark Flare (for healing debuff to enemies), but mostly to provide major sorcery to my allies.

I remember you. If I'm not mistaken you were the sorc in vWGT who thought it was best to tell me how to heal. lol. I found that funny. First of all, if you're a sorc your Harden Ward is better than any of the wards I can cast to you (well, maybe with the exception of Barrier), so use it. Second, I used Siphon Spirit a lot in that run, if you have problems with magicka still it's really your issue. You're using Destro staff right? Use Elemental Drain. Lastly, well, I already explained why Healing Springs isn't optimal in dungeons that require mobility, so I will never use that skill there. Lastly, ask Rak how I heal. He knows.

Totalitarian · April 2016

I run Dual-Wield and Restoration Staff, but keep a Destruction Staff in my bag.

Restoration Staff:
1. Rapid Regeneration
2. Illutrious Healing
3. Proximity Detonation (Flex Slot)
4. Repentance
5. Purge
U. Barrier

Dual-Wield
1. Breath of Life
2. Puncturing Sweeps
3. Dampen Magic
4. Radiant Destruction
5. Purifying Ritual
U. Shooting Star

I currently run rather poor gear: 5 Seducer, 2 Vicious Death, and 3 or 4 Magnus' Gift.

I run a lot of Support Skills for the 10% magicka regeneration per skill slotted on my Restoration Staff Bar, for sustain.

If the boss calls for it, IE: vICP bosses, I switch to a Destruction Staff, and will switch my flex slot around to my Destruction Bar, and slot a skill (Force Pulse or Destructive Clench).

It's a surprisingly solid build that allows for quick clearing of mobs and sustain.

Of course, this is just a sample of how a good healing build looks. The secret to a good one is finding one that feels very natural and comfortable to you.