Ward ally vs Healing Ward

Nukeyak · May 2014

Which of these two morphs of Steadfast Ward is better overall? On the one hand healing ward the wounded target gets whatever is left over from the shield after six seconds. Could make sense if target at low health is smart enough to retreat and stop taking damage while so wounded. On the other hand ward ally, I always get a full value shield which can essentially double the value of basic steadfast ward. I'm thinking Healing Ward better for pve and ward ally for pvp, but not sure. Any insights most welcome!

Andy22 · May 2014

I used both in vet dungeons and since shields are already of little value i find Healing Ward the much better version.

The 300 dmg shield on yourself often wont even last a second, since no armor/sr mitigation is applied, so the "rare" use as a good offheal is better in my opinion.

The main reason i use the skill as NB healer is, that we don't have a auto target-able heal. So if i'm unsure where my DPS/tank is atm, i can only spam this shield.

So its a last effort heal and sometimes comes in handy right after a heavy boss attack if not all party members stand in ae heal range. So fungal last boss or garg after the ae bash.

The more clever strategy is ofc to pop bone-shield right before such a heavy ae attack, since its one of the best dmg mitigation vs magicky cost skill.

AlienPrimate · May 2014

I use healing ward a lot in dungeons. Not sure which would be better in PVP because I've played very little of it, but for PVE, it saves your allies' lives all the time from near death situations. The added ward on yourself is often useless because you should be trying to not get hit as best you can as a healer and all of you heals affect you, when they won't always hit your allies. Healing ward is very helpful for an ally that gets caught out by themselves and you can't get in range for your panic heals.