For healers - which gear sets do you use in tough encounters?

jane_01215 · March 2021

Hello healers

I don't know if this means I am a bad healer. Most of time I run SPC+Worm's Raiment+Earthgore for my sorc healer. But when we suffer multiple group wipes, I usually switch to Ebon+Olorime+Chokethorn in 3 light/1 medium/3 heavy combination. I heard from many people telling that Ebon or Chokethorn are just bad choice for healers but they somewhat work for me. Does that mean I am a bad healer? Which gear sets do you use when you or the group needs extra survivability? Or do you stick to main sets and survive by other means? Curious to know how other healers handle tough situations because I always play healer and thus have near zero chance to watch how they play.

Thanks

Starlight_Whisper · March 2021

Hits, earthgore and gosmber

Starlight_Whisper · March 2021

There's a lot of strange monster combination healers use. Chokethorn is normal compared to that

CP5 · March 2021

On my necromancer, if I don't feel confident with the group running Hanu's with Vastarie's Tutelage, to help making clutch recoveries go a bit easier.

khyrkat · March 2021

I play only healers (have pet sorc dd because its fun but it's a side project). Rarely switch sets, I rely on reactive gameplay and skills I have mostly from class trees. I play with class themes as much as I can.
My main healer is nightblade (earthgore, treasure hunter, hollowfang - blood mage theme).
Warden - nature theme; alfiq, winter's respite, rkugamz. I might switch alfiq to spc but with alfiq I have over 40k magicka, with over 2k regen I never run out so this might not happen. I keep over 2k regen on all my healers.
Templar - holy healer of course, I call him faceroll healer because it's just so easy to do the job. Spc, mother's sorrow, nightflame.
Necromancer - spc, julianos, nightflame. Least played for now as I'm thinking about more thematic sets for him.
Next one will be dragonknight with flame/shielding theme.
I have no issues healing vet dlc hm on my healers unless the group overall struggles. See, it's not that it's your or tank's or dd fault only, it's a group play and everyone contributes. Unless the tank is paper magicka dd with range taunt, dd's are cloned builds without any understanding of skills and rotation or you have two destro staves with one class heal, it should be fine. I'm sick and tired of healers being blamed for every wipe. Play with mechanics, do your job as I do mine and run will be smooth. I will buff you, shield you, debuff boss, provide resources, just kill stuff and tank please face the boss away from the group

Overall first trash pull will tell you if the group is ok or the dungeon will be painful. Tanks not focusing big mobs, not stacking mobs in one place as much as they can so dd can throw their aoe, dd struggling with killing, dd nearly one shot by simple mobs. Stuff like that. If the group struggles most likely it will be all elements not working well together. You can't heal one shots. You can't heal stupid, persistently standing in stupid and crying for heal. As a healer main for years in many games I sort of trained myself in watching things from every possible perspective and trying to predict what may happen so I can decide between quick burst heal and shield, depending on situation and time, or maybe those HoTs I set up are enough. This does not apply to content I am new to and learning, of course, but knowing base game mechanics overall helps. And sure I make mistakes, we all do. But I don't believe it has as much to do with set as it has with right skills in right moment, situational awareness of all group members and overall group coordination. Sets may help but won't do the job for you.

GreenHere · March 2021

The short answer is, it depends. (And no, you're not a bad healer! You're learning, and going out of your way to get better at your role; you're already better than a lot of healers by that metric alone, imo.)

It's kind of dictated by how my homies are dying, or how the group is stalling. More often than not, the solution I personally go to when the going gets tough is to equip one set to further increase my own sustain so that I can absolutely spam any/all skills to keep people alive and never worry about running out of resources, and equip another set to increase the damage of the group. Usually people are dying because there's not enough damage, or they're doing something they shouldn't be -- giving damage shields or adding 8% more armor for them won't often solve that.

But I seldom deviate from my typical setup; which is to increase group damage as much as possible (SPC, Powerful Assault, etc.), and just pump out a constant stream of minor HoTs (Lifesteal, Orbs, Radiating Regen, etc.) & synergies while I'm doing as much DPS as I can to keep things from getting dire in the first place. YMMV

Ebon is a decent choice -- but be aware that if the tank is already wearing it, that 5th piece bonus is wasted; Ebon cannot stack.

Amber Plasm (or whatever more potent/selfish sustain set of your choice) is a good pick if your sustain is the issue. (I've never much liked Worm, personally.) Pairs well with a Master's and/or Vateshran resto staff... and/or monster sets like Sentinel or Symphony; since more sustain can be the make-or-break difference for your allies as well. (Both staves can be obtained pretty easily in Normal DSA/Vateshran, so don't be afraid to get em if you haven't already!)

I really like Torug's Pact + Infused Weakening enchants -- IF your problems are coming from a specific enemy that you can reliably debuff. You're tankier, and you can use a buffed-up, 100% uptime Weakening enchant to noticeably cut down the damage being dealt to the whole group at once. (This won't help much if non-enemy mechanics or multiple enemies are causing the problems, though.) Pairs well with whatever source of Maim, Cowardice, or other "reduces target's damage by X" type sets/bonuses you have at your disposal. Making vicious bosses hit like sissy toddlers is always a viable strategy when it's just one enemy standing between you and victory.

Then there's the obvious "when you do [thing], create a healing puddle / heal nearby allies / give off like totally righteous healing vibes man" type sets. Winter's Respite, Draugr's Rest, Troll King, et cetera, et cetera. Or the hybrid-y ones like Hiti's or Almalexia's Mercy that kind of do a mixture of the above.

If Area of Effect damage is causing the headaches, Gossamer is pretty great for solving that.

Also, don't dismiss what are typically considered damage sets! Mother's Sorrow, Julianos, Hunding's Rage, Leviathan, etc. can give a significant boost to your raw healing power, while simultaneously boosting any damage you're doing!

Mix and match to taste / as appropriate, basically!

GreenHere · March 2021

Also also, don't worry too much about the finer details of healing when you're starting out. You can skip supplying every buff and debuff under the sun, sending every synergy at the exact right moment, etc. when you're earning your stripes. You'd be surprised how much of the game you can get through by doing nothing but pumping out unnecessarily beefy heals, and just standing around watching what's going on so you can learn. Some people might gripe, but don't sweat it too much; you need to get comfortable with the flow of fights, and pacing your casts and whatnot before moving on to doing all the "required" elite stuff that many people assign to healers. Find your sweet spot where you can cast your abilities without sustain being an issue, and you can keep allies vertical through anything that isn't a hard-kill mechanic or whatever. Move on to the rest after getting the basics down, ya know?

To put it another way: in the beginning, you should be absolutely way over-sustaining your own Magicka (or Stamina, but I assume you're a magicka healer) and over-healing the absolute crap out of your allies. Then you gradually tone down the sustain until you find where you have juuust enough to never run out, but not have wasted excess; and put that now-freed-up build potential into boosting your allies' sustain! Then you do the same thing with your raw healing power -- tone it down til you find the point where no one ever really is below ~75% health for more than a second or three, then just pour those extra resources into buffing allies and/or debuffing enemies. Boom! You're now a top 20% healer, easily.

Then just start working in all the synergy-providing skills (if they're not already in your setup), Major/Minor buffs, damage dealing/boosting skills, anything that can non-verbally signal where your allies should focus/stand, & anything else you can think of to help your group, and you're climbing up the ranks quickly. After you get your own setup & skill worked out, it mostly just comes down to experience and familiarity with the content you're running.

jane_01215 · March 2021

Thank you so much for awesome replies. There are many sets mentioned that I ignored so far or simply didn't know about. Now wondering how long it's going to take until I have all of them but that's another story. Thanks again.

GreenHere · March 2021

Sorry to haunt your thread @jane_01215 , but here's some more info for ya (and others who wind up here via google / searching for healer advice):

If you're looking to tinker around with builds, but don't wanna have to farm everything just to see what it'll look like, you can either get into the PTS (if you're on PC and have drive space to spare) & experiment in-game and/or you can use this handy UESP Build Editor tool to see what builds will look like "on paper".

Here's a build I've been messing with in the UESP tool, as an example: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=323524

- It's buffed up entirely by the gear worn & skills slotted (meaning, no potions or external buffs of any kind), but you won't always have all those buffs up at once. But the buffed-up stats are a good & accurate indication of the upper potential of the build. (Read: I didn't cheese it by adding buffs you won't normally get.)
- You won't be doing much damage yourself with this build, but it ought to make your team mates do quite a lot more than they usually would.
- The crit chance is super low, but crits shouldn't really be too important with that setup. The raw healing is plenty high for most/all content.
- It only uses 150CP (though you should obviously be CP160 before farming gear!), since I got lazy decided that leaving it "beginner" friendly was best. (aside from set choices)
- The gear is not the easiest to get, but you can buy the Powerful Assault stuff with gold, and SPC is easy enough to farm on normal difficulty; Symphony may be harder to get, depending on group availability/capability.
- Substitutions can be made for various concerns: Sentinel instead of Symphony (10x easier to get), Master's staff instead of Vateshran (to be able to provide sustain help to the tank too, since Vate's beam will never reach a properly-positioned tank), different skills for different situations (I bought but didn't slot most of the ones a healer will ever need/want), can change Mundus bonus for more sustain/healing/damage, etc.

I had been dinking around with the Build Editor mostly for my own porpoises, but figured I'd finish up the build a bit & share it here too. I hope it helps!

jane_01215 · March 2021

@GreenHere No you are not haunting at all. Thank you for your kind advice. I didn't know I could experiment with various item sets in PTS without farming. I'll definitely try it.

GreenHere · March 2021

jane_01215 wrote: »

@GreenHere No you are not haunting at all. Thank you for your kind advice. I didn't know I could experiment with various item sets in PTS without farming. I'll definitely try it.

Coolio!

The "pro tip" for that is: When you get onto the PTS, click create a new character, and be sure to choose the "Maximum Level" character template from the dropdown menu in the upper left! That'll give you an inventory chock-full of containers that have most sets in the game within, along with a bunch of other stuff.

Can't tell you how many times I've goofed and forgotten to choose the template on the PTS, and had to start all over after creating a character, haha. It's a pain if you forget at the start.

Reverb · March 2021

Assuming you mean 4-man dungeons and not trials, I usually start with SPC and a damage set. It the group turns out to need more heals and support I go through a progression of changes and will try Troll King and Jorvuld first, Then go with Sanctuary or Hollowfang with SPC and Earthgore

Vevvev · March 2021

I typically keep the same sets on (SPC, Hiti, Symphony) but I change out the abilities. Offensive abilities get changed out for more heals, slow running heals get replaced with burst heals, and I'll probably even slot healing ward to emergency heal people to.

QuebraRegra · March 2021

Starlight_Whisper wrote: »

There's a lot of strange monster combination healers use. Chokethorn is normal compared to that

I might run CHOKETHORN for some auto heals for the group if I get stunned, or am otherwise busy... Not perhaps meta and situational, but it helps. Dat green glo though.. I have to apologize.

Starlight_Whisper · March 2021

QuebraRegra wrote: »

Starlight_Whisper wrote: »

There's a lot of strange monster combination healers use. Chokethorn is normal compared to that

I might run CHOKETHORN for some auto heals for the group if I get stunned, or am otherwise busy... Not perhaps meta and situational, but it helps. Dat green glo though.. I have to apologize.

Might even be better then earthgore in pvp now too. 😂 Let me tell you though, back when people actually did SO trial it definitely made life easier cause it's always procing.

If we had real heal checks besides like last boss in dark shade carvens two last biss then this set wouldn't be as looked down as it is.

Dojohoda · March 2021

I am appreciating this thread. My healer has been shelved for a long time and I have been looking into getting it geared for healing PVE group content.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · March 2021

SPC and Worm is a great stock combo to wear for just about any 4 man content, unless running with a bunch of stam DPS, in which case, you could do better than worm.

Bad healer, no. The fact that you are willing to carry multiple gear sets and ask questions puts you ahead of most healers in a groupfinder.

I do question your other set choices. Things may change next patch, but I dont like going away from 5 light armor because you lose spell crit that helps heals (your really dont care about the spell pen you get as well). Ebon is really more of a tank set, and my guess is that extra bit of health you are getting for your group isnt really turning the fight.

Think about what you have Worm (boosts group resource management) and SPC (boosts group DPS). I wont get too much into monster sets as its rare they will make/break an encounter. First off, I think its hard to beat that combo for just about any 4 man content. If something is just overwhelming your ability to keep your group alive, I would first look to drop the DPS set (SPC) in favor of something a little more selfish. Even something as simple as Kagrenacs or Seducer might be better. I would hesitate to drop Worm (again unless you have stam DPS), because that is going to make it easier for your DPS and Tank to fend for themselves if they need to for some reason.

Healers that only worry about a groups health bar arent very good healers, but that said, it is still the number one priority. The more difficult the encounter, the more you need to focus on just that task. The best way to generally build for that is your own personal magic sustain (and the sustain of your group), because most heals hit harder than they need to in PVE content to begin with.

Truthfully, I think adjusting your skill bars is more important than adjusting your gear for difficult fights.

Steel-256 · March 2021

Olorime + Sanctuary + Symphony. Olorime buffs group with damage, Sanctuary increases your healing for the entire group and Symphony will replenish your groups lowest person's Magicka or Stamina depending on what they are using the most. Really helps out even on the tanks.