Dragon Knight or NightBlade Healer

Ionlan · April 2019

Hello guys, I’ll keep it short. Don’t have the time to play both, and i want to kill some free time untill necromancers arrive.

Which do you think is more suited for healing, more fun, interesting, pros and cons?

Not interested in the meta healers and I will play mostly as a casual with some pvp, doungeons, maybe some easy trials. Thank you.

giantpixie · April 2019

I personally prefer dk it’s a different kind of healer where rather than healing in the typical sense your kind of trying to prevent damage through sheilds and then healing the difference

Vietfox · April 2019

Both are nice but i especially love the burst heal from healthy offering.

Iskiab · April 2019

NB’s nice, but I’ve never tried DK. People mentioned that DK tanks uses a lot of the DK healer abilities and they don’t stack.

Mrsinister2 · April 2019

Nb healer is really fun I've done a ton of vet hard mode dlc stuff on mine and was very surprised at how well it worked.

Tons of Hots and an enormous burst heal in the nightblade kit all work together very well. I ran jorvalds and spc on mine to keeps major buffs up longer. The tank was constantly pulling massive amounts of mobs to make it "fun" for me to heal and the nb got it done every time.

Silver_Strider · April 2019

NB and DK have drastically different playstyles for their healers.

NB focus more on HoTs when it comes to their heals, with Malevolent Offering for those "Oh $#!&" moments. You focus on keeping up Funnel Health and Refreshing Path as much as possible so as to make the health cost of Malevolent Offering negligible. It's allows for more DPS uptime since you worry less about teammates needing as much healing

DK healing is a bit more dynamic, at least IMO. Igneous Shield isn't something you should maintain 100% of the time as tempting as it is with the Major Mending. Keep Cauterize rolling as often as possible since it does great healing on its own but it requires more micromanaging since it has 5 second intervals so you'll have to learn to balance between it and Obsidian Shard for your main burst healing skills. Obsidian Shield should be used for large burst hits to help cover some of the damage while making your heals stronger for the recovery of the difference.

Can't really say which one is more fun but I am a little more partial to DK healing as of late since NB isn't as useful after all the nerfs its had recently.

exeeter702 · April 2019

Both are fun.

Dk healing is a bit harder as their oh *** heals are not as fast as matriarch, offering or bol. But obsidian shard has a realy fat tool tip and fully buffed, cauterize easily exceeds 9k. For casual content, rapid regen + ash cloud is solid, with cauterize running in the backround and obsidian shard for emergencies you are covered. Beyond that its the standard loadout of combat prayer and orbs if needed.

Major mending via fragmented shield allows for almost 100 percent uptime on paper, but sustaining that cast every 6 seconds can be tough. Now as to the issue that players often bring up regarding a dk healer overriding a dk tanks obsidian shield, well technically yes, the tanks sheild mitigates more due to the sheild scaling off of max hp, something a dk healer is not in high demand of. However to be absolutely honest, the actual window for which this would be an issue is very marginal. For example, the dk healer really only wants the major mending and mountains blessing ult gen so they are not going to be casting this any more than once every 6 seconds (if they are smart) and in moments of raid wide aoe cleave, dk tanks generally hit this a few times over the course of a few seconds to cushion the damage going out to everyone. The dk healer will likely have his/her major mending up for moments like this so the actual overlap is at worst a second. And no, DK tanks hitting their own shield to survive a tank buster is not a thing. You will almost never see a dk tank die because a dk healer took over the shield resulting in a one shot of the tank.

As far as pvp goes, dk healers are in a rough spot, the speed ofntheir burst heals is still a bit too slow and their sustain is pretty rough.

Naga shaman is an excellent set for dk healers.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · April 2019

I think you can probably make the argument that DK is actually a better healer than NB on paper for certain types of content, which might seem a bit counter intuitive. Although you might run into some redundancies if your tank is also a DK, which is pretty common. That said, I would much rather "Heal" on my NB. The beauty of NB healing is that you can treat it very much like a DPS rotation (and pump out a fair amount of it) while keeping your group alive (assuming they arent terrible). But that is purely preference regarding playstyle.

TLDR: If you are more of a damage focused player in general, I would choose nigthblade. If you really want to play a utility roll, in perhaps a more unique way, DK for the win. Of course, warden and templar will serve you better, but guessing you know that.

exeeter702 · April 2019

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Of course, warden and templar will serve you better, but guessing you know that.

No actually, not really. The only drawback there is one less synergy that both dk and nb can produce. Which is mainly a weakness for alkosh uptime in end game pve content. Outside of that any of the 5 healers is equally as intuitive and in no way strange or complicated. As far as actually healing throughput, each of the 5 are equally matched. Then it just becomes shards vs orbs which is a separate discussion with pros and cons itslef.

FleetwoodSmack · April 2019

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

I think you can probably make the argument that DK is actually a better healer than NB on paper for certain types of content, which might seem a bit counter intuitive. Although you might run into some redundancies if your tank is also a DK, which is pretty common. That said, I would much rather "Heal" on my NB. The beauty of NB healing is that you can treat it very much like a DPS rotation (and pump out a fair amount of it) while keeping your group alive (assuming they arent terrible). But that is purely preference regarding playstyle.

TLDR: If you are more of a damage focused player in general, I would choose nigthblade. If you really want to play a utility roll, in perhaps a more unique way, DK for the win. Of course, warden and templar will serve you better, but guessing you know that.

^This. Though I do find some situations where NB ultility works (Consuming Shadows for instance, or the shade teleport if it works to bounce back and forth, or various debuffs). While it works, it's certainly not BiS and adds somewhat of a different mechanic flavor depending on what content you're doing and what you feel you need to run, and of course what kind of group you're running with.

NB healing was the most fun I've had playing a healer. Especially in PvP. Those hatetells are amazeballs.

Iskiab · April 2019

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

TLDR: If you are more of a damage focused player in general, I would choose nigthblade. If you really want to play a utility roll, in perhaps a more unique way, DK for the win. Of course, warden and templar will serve you better, but guessing you know that.

I know the options presented are DK or NB, but I thought I should chime in that I’ve found that I have more dps on my Templar than NB.

Once you’ve slotted all the required skills for pve; orbs, combat prayer, refreshing path, ele drain, etc... there isn’t that many slots left for dps, and even if you use funnel the damage is low.

For aoe trash pulls Sap Essence is great, but so is shards spam. I’ll usually pull about 30k on a NB and a bit more as a Templar. For ST Templar wins too because of shards and the execute, I’ll be maybe 8-10k for NB and 10-12k on templar. I use IA and orlorime, so medium/heavy attacking is required, and dots are more beneficial then DD abilities since healing always has priority over doing damage. This of course also depends on how much healing your group requires.

Anyways, point being if you’re a dps oriented healer Templar >
NB so that’s really not a reason to choose NB. Same goes for pvp.

Grianasteri · April 2019

Ionlan wrote: »

Hello guys, I’ll keep it short. Don’t have the time to play both, and i want to kill some free time untill necromancers arrive.

Which do you think is more suited for healing, more fun, interesting, pros and cons?

Not interested in the meta healers and I will play mostly as a casual with some pvp, doungeons, maybe some easy trials. Thank you.

I have a nightblade/healer hybrid. Though I have not played the character for quite a while now. 1 bar for healing, 1 bar for damage, with a sprinkling of buffs between them. Support line also has some useful healer skills to consider. Its possible to heal effectively making use of the resto staff and a few night blade skills. The ultimates can be morphed to be really quite OP, massive massive group heals available, 1 of them also doing damage. The damage dps is of course well under par, but its fun to switch between healing and damage, which is the point.

Ionlan · April 2019

Thank you for the replays guys, cheers!

FrancisCrawford · April 2019

Besides what's been said above about templar healing, I'd add that Purifying Light gives both nice damage and nice healing.

My DPS rotation on a templar healer generally includes Shards/Blazing Spear, Elemental Blockade, Reflective Light, and Purifying Light. That leaves room for Elemental Drain, Channeled Focus, Mutagen (I run SPC rather than Olorime), Combat Prayer and two others, perhaps both of Honor the Dead and Ward Ally. (And if the PUG is weak one of those gets replaced by Sweeps.)

I can't fit anything as rich for healing/buffing/battery AND damage AND self-defense onto my skillbars for any other class.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · April 2019

exeeter702 wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Of course, warden and templar will serve you better, but guessing you know that.

No actually, not really. The only drawback there is one less synergy that both dk and nb can produce. Which is mainly a weakness for alkosh uptime in end game pve content. Outside of that any of the 5 healers is equally as intuitive and in no way strange or complicated. As far as actually healing throughput, each of the 5 are equally matched. Then it just becomes shards vs orbs which is a separate discussion with pros and cons itslef.

Okay, gonna check the leaderboards for all the NB and DK healers, but I wont hold my breath. Haha. Of course, you can heal just fine on any class. Raw healing is probably the least important aspect of a healer. Sure its their most fundamental job, but raw healing power is never the issue. You can heal just about any piece of content with nothing but resto staff skills, but there are reasons why Templars are meta.

Iskiab wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

TLDR: If you are more of a damage focused player in general, I would choose nigthblade. If you really want to play a utility roll, in perhaps a more unique way, DK for the win. Of course, warden and templar will serve you better, but guessing you know that.

I know the options presented are DK or NB, but I thought I should chime in that I’ve found that I have more dps on my Templar than NB.

Once you’ve slotted all the required skills for pve; orbs, combat prayer, refreshing path, ele drain, etc... there isn’t that many slots left for dps, and even if you use funnel the damage is low.

For aoe trash pulls Sap Essence is great, but so is shards spam. I’ll usually pull about 30k on a NB and a bit more as a Templar. For ST Templar wins too because of shards and the execute, I’ll be maybe 8-10k for NB and 10-12k on templar. I use IA and orlorime, so medium/heavy attacking is required, and dots are more beneficial then DD abilities since healing always has priority over doing damage. This of course also depends on how much healing your group requires.

Anyways, point being if you’re a dps oriented healer Templar >
NB so that’s really not a reason to choose NB. Same goes for pvp.

Yeah, you are probably right about that. I was really comparing NB to DK. I would of course advise anyone wanting to play a healer to roll a templar. My comment about the NB is that you really can play it almost like a standard DPS rotation with just a few tweaks and put out a lot of heals, which I dont think is really true on a DK. If you compare NB to Templar, I think that if you build them to where they are putting out comparable damage by making certain heal vs DPS tradeoffs, the templar is going to do more from a healing standpoint assuming all else is equal. Magplar also has arguably the simplest DPS rotation in the game and mNB is arguably the hardest, and in todays meta, they just arent all that far apart.

Iskiab · April 2019

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Of course, warden and templar will serve you better, but guessing you know that.

No actually, not really. The only drawback there is one less synergy that both dk and nb can produce. Which is mainly a weakness for alkosh uptime in end game pve content. Outside of that any of the 5 healers is equally as intuitive and in no way strange or complicated. As far as actually healing throughput, each of the 5 are equally matched. Then it just becomes shards vs orbs which is a separate discussion with pros and cons itslef.

Okay, gonna check the leaderboards for all the NB and DK healers, but I wont hold my breath. Haha. Of course, you can heal just fine on any class. Raw healing is probably the least important aspect of a healer. Sure its their most fundamental job, but raw healing power is never the issue. You can heal just about any piece of content with nothing but resto staff skills, but there are reasons why Templars are meta.

Iskiab wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

TLDR: If you are more of a damage focused player in general, I would choose nigthblade. If you really want to play a utility roll, in perhaps a more unique way, DK for the win. Of course, warden and templar will serve you better, but guessing you know that.

I know the options presented are DK or NB, but I thought I should chime in that I’ve found that I have more dps on my Templar than NB.

Once you’ve slotted all the required skills for pve; orbs, combat prayer, refreshing path, ele drain, etc... there isn’t that many slots left for dps, and even if you use funnel the damage is low.

For aoe trash pulls Sap Essence is great, but so is shards spam. I’ll usually pull about 30k on a NB and a bit more as a Templar. For ST Templar wins too because of shards and the execute, I’ll be maybe 8-10k for NB and 10-12k on templar. I use IA and orlorime, so medium/heavy attacking is required, and dots are more beneficial then DD abilities since healing always has priority over doing damage. This of course also depends on how much healing your group requires.

Anyways, point being if you’re a dps oriented healer Templar >
NB so that’s really not a reason to choose NB. Same goes for pvp.

Yeah, you are probably right about that. I was really comparing NB to DK. I would of course advise anyone wanting to play a healer to roll a templar. My comment about the NB is that you really can play it almost like a standard DPS rotation with just a few tweaks and put out a lot of heals, which I dont think is really true on a DK. If you compare NB to Templar, I think that if you build them to where they are putting out comparable damage by making certain heal vs DPS tradeoffs, the templar is going to do more from a healing standpoint assuming all else is equal. Magplar also has arguably the simplest DPS rotation in the game and mNB is arguably the hardest, and in todays meta, they just arent all that far apart.

Agreed. I much prefer healing on my Templar for pve. NB doesn’t shine unless you pvp, where the strong burst healing and having the best healing ultimate in the game matters. NB has been designed to be a burst class; burst dps and healing, and burst healing isn’t important in pve.

ATreeGnome · April 2019

I find DK healing to be more fun than NB healing. Having access to chains, talons, and engulfing flame gives you a lot of utility, especially if your tank isn't a DK. I also think it's just really fun to use Jorvuld's and try to get really high major mending up times.

exeeter702 · April 2019

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Of course, warden and templar will serve you better, but guessing you know that.

No actually, not really. The only drawback there is one less synergy that both dk and nb can produce. Which is mainly a weakness for alkosh uptime in end game pve content. Outside of that any of the 5 healers is equally as intuitive and in no way strange or complicated. As far as actually healing throughput, each of the 5 are equally matched. Then it just becomes shards vs orbs which is a separate discussion with pros and cons itslef.

Okay, gonna check the leaderboards for all the NB and DK healers, but I wont hold my breath. Haha. Of course, you can heal just fine on any class. Raw healing is probably the least important aspect of a healer. Sure its their most fundamental job, but raw healing power is never the issue. You can heal just about any piece of content with nothing but resto staff skills, but there are reasons why Templars are meta.

Iskiab wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

TLDR: If you are more of a damage focused player in general, I would choose nigthblade. If you really want to play a utility roll, in perhaps a more unique way, DK for the win. Of course, warden and templar will serve you better, but guessing you know that.

I know the options presented are DK or NB, but I thought I should chime in that I’ve found that I have more dps on my Templar than NB.

Once you’ve slotted all the required skills for pve; orbs, combat prayer, refreshing path, ele drain, etc... there isn’t that many slots left for dps, and even if you use funnel the damage is low.

For aoe trash pulls Sap Essence is great, but so is shards spam. I’ll usually pull about 30k on a NB and a bit more as a Templar. For ST Templar wins too because of shards and the execute, I’ll be maybe 8-10k for NB and 10-12k on templar. I use IA and orlorime, so medium/heavy attacking is required, and dots are more beneficial then DD abilities since healing always has priority over doing damage. This of course also depends on how much healing your group requires.

Anyways, point being if you’re a dps oriented healer Templar >
NB so that’s really not a reason to choose NB. Same goes for pvp.

Yeah, you are probably right about that. I was really comparing NB to DK. I would of course advise anyone wanting to play a healer to roll a templar. My comment about the NB is that you really can play it almost like a standard DPS rotation with just a few tweaks and put out a lot of heals, which I dont think is really true on a DK. If you compare NB to Templar, I think that if you build them to where they are putting out comparable damage by making certain heal vs DPS tradeoffs, the templar is going to do more from a healing standpoint assuming all else is equal. Magplar also has arguably the simplest DPS rotation in the game and mNB is arguably the hardest, and in todays meta, they just arent all that far apart.

1) I clearly specified precisely why templars are meta. Perhaps read the thread.

3) likewise, referencing HPS serves only to isolate the point, only fools use healing throughput as a justifying metric for viable healing so im not sure why you stuck to that as some kind of rebuttal. Heaing among all 5 of the healers are roughly equal. Removing that factor for clarity's sake lets you then focus on the key points for which class a or b is better than c or d in the heaking role.

2) the op is not looking at the top 3 percent scors board runs.

Mathematically, it is objectively false to state "obviously" templar and warden would be a better choice for the op. And inwould dare argue, however bold a statement, that the current incredibly niche community of top 3 leader board guilds are moreso sticking to the familiar as opposed to the leaderboards being indicative of only what works for said scores.

Iskiab · April 2019

exeeter702 wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Of course, warden and templar will serve you better, but guessing you know that.

No actually, not really. The only drawback there is one less synergy that both dk and nb can produce. Which is mainly a weakness for alkosh uptime in end game pve content. Outside of that any of the 5 healers is equally as intuitive and in no way strange or complicated. As far as actually healing throughput, each of the 5 are equally matched. Then it just becomes shards vs orbs which is a separate discussion with pros and cons itslef.

Okay, gonna check the leaderboards for all the NB and DK healers, but I wont hold my breath. Haha. Of course, you can heal just fine on any class. Raw healing is probably the least important aspect of a healer. Sure its their most fundamental job, but raw healing power is never the issue. You can heal just about any piece of content with nothing but resto staff skills, but there are reasons why Templars are meta.

Iskiab wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

TLDR: If you are more of a damage focused player in general, I would choose nigthblade. If you really want to play a utility roll, in perhaps a more unique way, DK for the win. Of course, warden and templar will serve you better, but guessing you know that.

I know the options presented are DK or NB, but I thought I should chime in that I’ve found that I have more dps on my Templar than NB.

Once you’ve slotted all the required skills for pve; orbs, combat prayer, refreshing path, ele drain, etc... there isn’t that many slots left for dps, and even if you use funnel the damage is low.

For aoe trash pulls Sap Essence is great, but so is shards spam. I’ll usually pull about 30k on a NB and a bit more as a Templar. For ST Templar wins too because of shards and the execute, I’ll be maybe 8-10k for NB and 10-12k on templar. I use IA and orlorime, so medium/heavy attacking is required, and dots are more beneficial then DD abilities since healing always has priority over doing damage. This of course also depends on how much healing your group requires.

Anyways, point being if you’re a dps oriented healer Templar >
NB so that’s really not a reason to choose NB. Same goes for pvp.

Yeah, you are probably right about that. I was really comparing NB to DK. I would of course advise anyone wanting to play a healer to roll a templar. My comment about the NB is that you really can play it almost like a standard DPS rotation with just a few tweaks and put out a lot of heals, which I dont think is really true on a DK. If you compare NB to Templar, I think that if you build them to where they are putting out comparable damage by making certain heal vs DPS tradeoffs, the templar is going to do more from a healing standpoint assuming all else is equal. Magplar also has arguably the simplest DPS rotation in the game and mNB is arguably the hardest, and in todays meta, they just arent all that far apart.

1) I clearly specified precisely why templars are meta. Perhaps read the thread.

3) likewise, referencing HPS serves only to isolate the point, only fools use healing throughput as a justifying metric for viable healing so im not sure why you stuck to that as some kind of rebuttal. Heaing among all 5 of the healers are roughly equal. Removing that factor for clarity's sake lets you then focus on the key points for which class a or b is better than c or d in the heaking role.

2) the op is not looking at the top 3 percent scors board runs.

Mathematically, it is objectively false to state "obviously" templar and warden would be a better choice for the op. And inwould dare argue, however bold a statement, that the current incredibly niche community of top 3 leader board guilds are moreso sticking to the familiar as opposed to the leaderboards being indicative of only what works for said scores.

Agreed. If HPS was important NB would actually get used. I think NB’s the highest if people stand in refreshing path.