Warden health-based healer

RiskyChalice863
RiskyChalice863
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I’m thinking with the Scalebreaker patch, you’d be able to do a fun Warden health-based healer. It wouldn’t work well in PvE, but I think could work well in BGs.

The idea would be to pump up max health (through stats and also gear like Green Pact and Plague Doctor) and then use Polar Wind as a sort of Breath of Life on steroids. I’m pretty sure you could easily push 60k health in no-CP even without using many glyphs on increasing health. Now that Polar Wind will heal for 25% of max health to an ally, that would make your heal on Polar Wind an extremely strong heal (both on you and an ally). You could then supplement this with Lotus Blossom—which is agnostic to max resources, will proc Toughness on you and allies, and will proc Nature’s Gift and major mending fairly easily. You also could use an ability that puts minor lifesteal on people—whether that’s Leeching Vines or Force Siphon. And you could use a monster set that adds healing—such as Troll King. That would be your healing.

In order to support your team, you’d probably want to then focus on four things: crowd control, sustain, group buffs/debuffs, and survivability.

In terms of crowd control, gripping shards would be a reliable group immobilize that would also proc minor maim very often and actually do good damage since it scales off of health. You could slot Turn Undead as well, which would be a good CC ability and use stamina—which is probably helpful for sustain—or you could slot Elemental Blockade. Use Permafrost as an ultimate for more group CC, though it won’t do a ton of damage.

Sustain would be really key here. Pumping up max health means you won’t have much max Magicka, and you’ll need Magicka to keep healing. But you’d have a lot of mechanisms for sustain. You’d take Blue Betty. Slotting Blue Betty would trigger the Warden’s recovery passive. Nature’s gift would proc a ton from your healing. You’d go Argonian (which makes sense for the max health and healing buff anyways). You could stack heavy armor with restoration staff to get massive Magicka regen from heavy attacks. Heavy armor would also give you sustain from Constitution. And if you need more sustain, it’d just be a matter of using sustain and/or max resource glyphs.

In terms of group buffs/debuffs, you’d want to take Expansive Frost Cloak. Elemental Drain or Force Siphon would be good and obviously not tax your resources at all. Permafrost gives your team major protection. And you could go Bone Shield for the group shield synergy.

Survivability would obviously be high by virtue of pumping up health and being in heavy armor. But you could take Bone Shield for a massive health-based shield (could use Absorb Missile as well. You’d lose the group value, but gain some extra benefits for yourself). You’d have Frost Cloak. You’d be minor maiming the enemy team a ton. You could go Race Against Time, Channeled Acceleration, or Bird of Prey to get mobility. Shimmering Shield would be fantastic too. Blue Betty spamming gives a slight heal and a cleanse. And, of course, Polar Wind would self-heal you massively every time you use it on anyone else. You’d be very hard to kill.

I don’t think this is ridiculously strong or anything, but you’d have the potential to have a ton of healing output with high sustain, on a character that is super tanky.
  • Iskiab
    Iskiab
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    Maybe after the patch builds will change enough where this is feasible, but I’ve tried high health builds and didn’t find them effective.

    This issue is mitigation is better at countering burst then high health. You’d think the % health scaling with high health would help more then it does, but I found I fell behind against bleeds and dots and it felt like I couldn’t catch up.

    Interestingly when I played around with %health heals I found it best to focus on crit and %healing. Health % heals can crit and are modified by % healing modifiers.

    I was thinking I’d try high health builds after the patch as a way to counter burst, with healing output going through the roof high health might be attractive again, I only tested it on live. I still wouldn’t try being too lopsided, maybe aim for 27k instead of 22-23k in pvp, and like you said sustain will be key.
    Edited by Iskiab on July 27, 2019 11:38PM
    Looking for any guildies I used to play with:
    Havoc Warhammer - Alair
    LoC EQ2 - Mayi and Iskiab
    PRX and Tabula Rasa - Rift - Iskiab
    Or anyone else I used to play games with in guilds I’ve forgotten
  • RiskyChalice863
    RiskyChalice863
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    Iskiab wrote: »
    Maybe after the patch builds will change enough where this is feasible, but I’ve tried high health builds and didn’t find them effective.

    This issue is mitigation is better at countering burst then high health. You’d think the % health scaling with high health would help more then it does, but I found I fell behind against bleeds and dots and it felt like I couldn’t catch up.

    Interestingly when I played around with %health heals I found it best to focus on crit and %healing. Health % heals can crit and are modified by % healing modifiers.

    I was thinking I’d try high health builds after the patch as a way to counter burst, with healing output going through the roof high health might be attractive again, I only tested it on live. I still wouldn’t try being too lopsided, maybe aim for 27k instead of 22-23k in pvp, and like you said sustain will be key.

    You could have pretty high resistances with this too, though. I’d foresee using heavy armor. You’d use Frost Cloak. The Frozen Armor passive would actually be pretty strong since you’d probably be slotting all but one Winter’s Embrace skill (not all necessarily on one bar, but still you’re probably looking at 1500-2000 extra physical and spell resistance from that passive). You could potentially take the Frost Cloak morph that gives you minor protection. Permafrost would give you major protection when it’s being used. And you’d be chilling people a lot with Gripping Shards, which is effectively 15% resistance from minor maim. Not to mention blocking projectiles with Shimmering Shield.

    I think there’s an open question regarding which weapons to use. Frost staff, Resto staff, and sword and board are all good choices and have their pluses and minuses. But obviously frost staff and sword and board give even more resistances in the form of extra block mitigation.

    I’d also foresee slotting an HP-based damage shield, which would be big here. And if you used Channeled Acceleration or Race Against Time or even Deep Thoughts, you’d get a 5k damage shield while blocking.

    You could even use The Lady Mundus stone, though it’s probably better to use Ritual, Lord, or even Atronach.

    I guess my overall point is that I think there’d be a lot of damage mitigation here.
  • RiskyChalice863
    RiskyChalice863
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    I’ll also note Invigorating Drain as another good ability for this build. The heal is based on missing health, so it could be huge on a health-based build. The cc is good. And vampire gives extra sustain.

    Corrupting Pollen would be another good ability. The heal is delayed and wouldn’t be super high since it’s Magicka-based, but it’d still do some healing, and the defile is very good.

    Anyways, though, I think the biggest thing with this build would just be sustain. Your healing output would be really high and you’d be super tanky as long as you could maintain resources but your maximums would be low. You’d honestly want crazy high magicka recovery. I think you can get very good sustain though. Get buff food that provides max health and helps with sustain. Go Argonian. Use Blue Betty. Keep an animal companions ability on each bar (probably Blue Betty and Deceptive Predator). Keep Lotus Blossom up and light attack to keep Nature’s Gift going. You actually probably don’t need to completely dedicate everything to pumping health up and can put some recovery or cost reduction glyphs on. Absorb Magicka glyphs on weapons. I like the idea of using Force Siphon or Elemental Drain for sustain since they’re helpful to the team anyways. Maybe go vampire for the sustain (though I’m not a huge fan of non-existent health recovery on an hp-based character). And use plenty of heavy attacks, especially if you’re using a resto staff. I’ve not yet tested all of this, but I think this could work. You basically spec for nothing but max health and magicka recovery (with Stam recovery coming incidentally from being Argonian and from some Warden passives).
  • Iskiab
    Iskiab
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    I’m not sure if this is a deal breaker for your build, but I’m planning on testing out symbiosis in the next patch as a stamwarden healer.

    Even with melee weapons the light and heavy attacks become ranged, and while the base light/heavy attack damage sorta suck as a magicka class they’re a lot stronger as Stam because of weapon damage modifiers. Using dw I’m able to get up above a 3k heavy attack heal per second with no-CP, which will be awesome for sustain since it returns magicka. I went dw for the wp and crit buff (both great for healing) but I don’t know if that will work for your build.

    S&B is also a great choice because of the wp buff. With a little adapting it should be strong, aoe snare and minor protection will allow the use of Chudan freeing up a skill slot.
    Edited by Iskiab on July 28, 2019 2:33AM
    Looking for any guildies I used to play with:
    Havoc Warhammer - Alair
    LoC EQ2 - Mayi and Iskiab
    PRX and Tabula Rasa - Rift - Iskiab
    Or anyone else I used to play games with in guilds I’ve forgotten
  • RiskyChalice863
    RiskyChalice863
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    Iskiab wrote: »
    I’m not sure if this is a deal breaker for your build, but I’m planning on testing out symbiosis in the next patch as a stamwarden healer.

    Even with melee weapons the light and heavy attacks become ranged, and while the base light/heavy attack damage sorts suck as a magicka class they’re a lot stronger as Stam because of weapon damage modifiers. Using dw I’m able to get up above a 3k heavy attack heal per second with no-CP, which will be awesome for sustain since it returns magicka. I went dw for the wp and crit buff (both great for healing) but I don’t know if that will work for your build.

    I thought about this, but I think it wouldn’t work because my understanding is that the interaction between Lotus Blossom and Mend Wounds is bugged in the sense that you sometimes don’t get the Lotus Blossom healing. And you’d need Lotus Blossom to be working in order to trigger certain important Warden passives. It’s something I want to test out, though, because I’ve only heard that the interaction is bugged, rather than having tested it out myself.

  • WrathOfInnos
    WrathOfInnos
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    What's a "healer"? This concept seems foreign and strange in Scalebreaker patch.
  • Iskiab
    Iskiab
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    What's a "healer"? This concept seems foreign and strange in Scalebreaker patch.

    Only in PvE dungeons, in trials and pvp should be really solid with these changes. Just a concept for now but it looks like it’ll be strong:

    https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=165192
    Looking for any guildies I used to play with:
    Havoc Warhammer - Alair
    LoC EQ2 - Mayi and Iskiab
    PRX and Tabula Rasa - Rift - Iskiab
    Or anyone else I used to play games with in guilds I’ve forgotten
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