I've often spoken of my love of healing classes or builds, but I haven't been doing a ton of it lately for various reasons. However, on a recent whim, I started devoting points to the Necromancer Deck, a Lumie healing build (AR/Blood). Over the weekend, thanks to the double points boost, I was able to complete the entire last section I needed for the Deck and got the outfit.
Since I have been participating in the Gilded Rage event and I don't have many healing pieces, I didn't think to implement this new healing build until last night after having gotten a little bored.
What a difference! Even though I wasn't grouped up with anyone, I was able to target folks who needed it (ctrl+tab) and use my leeches and barrier healz to good effect. The other awesome thing was that—able to heal myself—I died only once. And that was because Goldzilla moved after stunning me, and I got caught in the second AoE, as well. The fight was more exciting because I was constantly healing defensive targets and then switching to new ones, rather than focusing on Goldzilla's sloooowwlllyyyy diminishing health bar. I went through two battles with this build before calling it a night. Afterwards, I felt that I'd contributed more effectively to the fight, even though I saw no one specifically thank me or anything in chat.
What was the truth? I need more healing gear. It doesn't really matter to me, I felt better about myself, happy in a role I love filling.
What a difference! Even though I wasn't grouped up with anyone, I was able to target folks who needed it (ctrl+tab) and use my leeches and barrier healz to good effect. The other awesome thing was that—able to heal myself—I died only once. And that was because Goldzilla moved after stunning me, and I got caught in the second AoE, as well. The fight was more exciting because I was constantly healing defensive targets and then switching to new ones, rather than focusing on Goldzilla's sloooowwlllyyyy diminishing health bar. I went through two battles with this build before calling it a night. Afterwards, I felt that I'd contributed more effectively to the fight, even though I saw no one specifically thank me or anything in chat.
What was the truth? I need more healing gear. It doesn't really matter to me, I felt better about myself, happy in a role I love filling.
I've really only ever healed using Fist, but I'm told that if you're doing Assault Rifle healing that you need about a 50/50 ratio of Attack Rating to Heal Rating for maximum effectiveness, with your glyph stats heavily weighted to Hit and Crit, with about 300 Crit Power to boot.
ReplyDeleteFor myself on the "blingzilla" runs, I'm using a Blood/Elemental rdps build, but I've replaced my utility buffs with heals instead, so I can heal myself and also do some AE heals if necessary. Just had to pop on 2 healing talismans to make it worthwhile while not dropping my dps too badly.
Yeah, I have just a couple healing talismans, which is one reason I stuck with Assault Rifle for DPS in addition to the heals. I need to do more research into getting an effective load-out for Necro.
Delete4096 char limit. Oki, this will be a two part posting. :)
ReplyDeleteIndeed, AR healing with reasonable gear goes a long way. On the 50/50 ratio, i would say that's true as long as you have rather low gear. When your gear improves, more AR actually starts to outweight HR. When healing in NMs, i usually run with only about 1200 HR, only in the Ankh, to get stronger Reap and Sew, i use the head healing talisman and a heal rating anima, to get well over 2k HR. (Different NM dungeons encourage / require different kinds of healing. I found no way to do SH without blood, consider AR essential for Ankh and would never use AR for HE. )
On the glyphs i dare to correct Magson, though. Proper glyphs for AR-Healing focus on Hit and Penetration.
Depending on your philosophy, you might go for all hit and penetration or stop with them once you reach about 700 in each of them and then add a little bit of critical. This split is due to diminuishing returns, so some people just want to reach the point where they reliable hit, without wasting any potential, other people claim that especially higher penetration rating still is very good for AR healing, as the little bit of crit rating and power you still could get is less helpful than more penetrating hits and thus more healing through this additional damage.
On the given number "700", you have to keep in mind that different bosses have different values for block and evade and depending on which fights a healer knows his "perfect number" varies. Some healers claim that 600 on both is enough, but i found that number lacking for some fights. Other AR healers claim that 800 on both is necessary. I did not really need that yet (but got in in the meanwhile, anyway), as it could very well be true that some fights which i have not done yet require the additional hit and penetration rating. And to clarify why you actually need them that high, just consider what happens to the healing you do when your hits are blocked or evaded and your damage is reduced a lot.
To get reliable healing you even have to have higher hit and penetration ratings than the average DD. If a DDs attacks are unreliable, most fights just take a little longer. (There are timed bossfights where taking too long wipes you, but many encounters in NM are not on a timer. ) If the AR-healers attacks are unreliable, then so is his healing, resulting in frequent wipes. Even if you critically hit on a blocked hit (yes, that can happen), you don't heal for much. So yes, if you by chance hit, are not blocked and your high critical rating kicks in, the AR healer with focus on critical delivers a massive healing spike. Unfortunately both experience and Murphy show that this healing spike usually happens when the tank is close to full health and you don't need it. On the other hand, when the tank just took a big hit and is below 30% health, you will experience several evades and blocks and your healing suffers.
This is why AR healing was looked down by many when the game was new. Healers at that time went to the old "and healers need crit" route and were unreliable, while the more "traditional" fist and blood healing worked well with that philosophy. Only when AR healers caught up and reached sufficient hit and penetration ratings, they got reliable enough to actually work as healers and are welcome on the job since then.
As a sidenote, with equal QL gear fist healing can heal for much more than AR healing, so when gear quality is low, fist is to be prefered. Only when your gear gets better and you reach a point where more healing simple not helpful any more, the additional damage component of AR starts to shine. I always see the fists overcapacity in Hell Eternal NM. Due to all the reflect shield mechanics in there, which while not completely disallowing AR healing still make it a bit tricky, i rather use fist healing in there. My personal record is to do a little over a full cycle of the macarena dance cycle between two fist healing rotations. :D
And on AR healing at the golems: yes, i sometimes, rarely, see somebody using blood or fist healing there. I yet have to find out why, as AR healing is the perfect choice there. For fighting the golems i finally made a setup which actually includes Leech Therapy and Leeching Frenzy and the change pays off in numbers. Out of curiosity, i started ACT (a combat log parser) during the golem fights. In my old setup, i had to work hard to stay among the top 5 healers of most golem fights. With these changes, it rarely happens that i am not number 2, which translates to the player with the most healing done.
ReplyDeleteThe healer #1 is always the golem. His leech attack gives him insane healing numbers, as many people never move out of it but rather just take the damage. I wish more players would see that the golem during the run of a fight heals for well over its maximum health. The worst fight i had a log upon, the golem healed for almost three times its health, so would people actually avoid the leech effect, killing it could be rather quick business, instead of the eternal fights we currently have.
Thank you very much for the thorough explanation. I need to look at my glyphs again, but I think I have quite a bit of HR, a result of preparing for "Eye of Horus." While keeping several attack pieces, I added a couple healing pieces and Signets last night, at least one of which proc'd on crit heals.
DeleteI hadn't originally planned on taking this character in a healing direction, but my standard group deck is as much buff/debuff support as it is straight DPS. No reason not to get a couple healing decks together as well. Your advice here is very helpful in that regard. If you don't mind, I'd like to borrow your words for my Protips page, properly credited, of course.
I think that the vast majority of players do not even realize that Goldzilla's donut-shaped AoE is a leech, even though its title is Anima Leech. I have gone both ways in trying to avoid it vs. just healing myself through it.
Feel free to use what i wrote in your tips. Though, while what i wrote might be helpful, the real "pro" leech healing guides can be found on the TSW forums. They don't only discuss the ratio of AR to HR and what glyphs to use, but also give a good analysis of which actives and passives to combine for best effect.
DeleteThe people who wrote those guides on the forums are the ones who actually did the hard work. I mostly use the numbers they found out and only do a little before/after testing for myself whenever changing something, so all my work is personal optimisation. Thus crediting me for this basically falls short, i might be one of many power users of their knowledge, but i am not one of those who figured all the details.
Got it. I'll look up the links to the forum threads then, as well.
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