Arcanist
Putting all the tentacle jokes aside for a moment (also, yuck and
), Arcanists come with a balanced healing toolkit and offer group-wide Minor Courage, Minor Intellect, Minor Endurance and Minor Evasion along with ST Minor Vulnerability and ice-staff independent Minor Brittle to enemies. This gives them a well-rounded buff toolkit for PvE, comparable to existing classes but giving more flexibility to raid itemisation. Powerful counterplay heals, on-demand shields, snares and group portalling also make them a potent option for offensive counterplay in organized PvP.
Herald of the Tome
▫️ Fulminating Rune: Casting this skill grants 3 allies a strong damage synergy. Only slot it if you have barspace and your group does not require any additional support as Arcanist DDs use this skill for its damage.
▫️ Recuperative Treatise/Inspired Scholarship: Slotting this on any bar grants you Major Brutality and Major Sorcery. While you normally get those buff through potions or through Igneous Weapons from a DK tank, it can be helpful for pugging easy content to save up some gold. Generating Crux as a healer is nearly impossible this way because you will likely not use class damage abilities.
Fated Fortune [Passive]: Extra critical healing when generating or consuming Crux. Not very useful due to specifics of Crux usage on a healer, but a nice bonus. Skip if you’re short on skill points.
Harnessed Quintessence [Passive]: Grants you extra Spell and Weapon Damage every time you actively restore Magicka or Stamina. Works well in conjunction with Minor Magickasteal, so keep up your Blockades!
Soldier of Apocrypha
Gibbering Shelter [Ultimate]: Great option for a frontbar ultimate for activating the Wellspring of the Abyss passive. Provides better sustain bonus than Barrier unless you spec for extremely high Magicka Recovery numbers.
▫️ Cruxweaver Armor: Auto-generates Crux when you take damage once every 5 seconds while also giving yourself Major Resolve and applies Minor Breach to enemies nearby. While a Warden should provide Major Resolve in trial content, it can be still useful in dungeons for its extra armor and penetration on enemies that hit you. Must-have for PvP as it provides you with huge amount of resistances.
▫️ Rune of the Colorless Pool: Your main debuff. Applies Minor Vulnerability and Minor Brittle (the only source of Brittle which does not require an ice staff or access to Scribing to be active) to your target with only one skillcast. Only one required in the group, so coordinate with your other supports.
Wellspring of the Abyss [Passive]: Grants extra Magicka, Stamina and Health Recovery for each Soldier of Apocrypha ability slotted. It is a significant sustain boost, so make sure to have one of the active skills from this line on your frontbar.
Circumvented Fate [Passive]: Your minor class buff - Minor Evasion, reducing damage to you and allies from AoE effects for 20 seconds after casting an Arcanist ability.
Implacable Outcome [Passive]: Grants 4 ultimate every time you consume Crux. You will likely not activate it on cooldown due to specifics of Crux usage on a healer. Read more on Crux below
Curative Runeforms
Glyphic of the Tides [Ultimate]: A situational defensive/buff ultimate that provides your group with Major Protection, a unique 200 Weapon and Spell Damage buff and healing allies inside the AoE. The Glyphic spawns with low Health that first has to get healed to 100% to get maximum effectiveness. While it is inferior when compared to Aggressive Warhorn by itself, it’s still a good Ultimate to use as long as Major Force and Warhorn’s unique 10% resource increase are covered or your group needs can utilize its defensive powers for additional safety (on Ansuul or Falgravn for example).
▫️ Evolving Runemend/Audacious Runemend: A strong single target heal. Useful in some fights which require such kind of ability, for example for healing tombs in vSS Lokkestiiz fight. Generates Crux.
▫️ Chakram of Destiny: Applies a shield to 4 allies per cast and generates Crux. Has smart targeting but does not proc Pearls of Elnhofey. A second cast on the same people will increase the shield strength by 30% as long as their old shield is still active.
▫️ Tidal Chakram: Applies a shield to 4 allies per cast and applies a HoT if it can consume Crux. It consumes all stacks of Crux in one cast with it’s heal strength scaling with the amount of Crux consumed. Additionally, it has smart targeting but does not proc Pearls of Elnhofey even when applying its HoT. Generally it’s not worth using unless very specific scenarios like healing frost bombs in vSE (mind, you loose the extra healing from the Healing Tides passive) or using it in 4 man content, as it will require you to use a different skill to generate Crux and has smaller target cap than conventional healing over time abilities.
Chakram Shield conclusions:
- Chakram Shield’s strength depends on the caster’s max Magicka or Stamina, whichever is higher.
- The maximum amount of shield anyone can get is 43% of their own Health.
- A healer’s usual stats/setups in raid environment are enough to provide a shield equal to the maximum amount that a DD can receive. (43% of a DD’s Health)
- Since tanks have higher Health and thus a higher cap, they may be able to receive the full value of a chakram shield casted by a healer (although, the DD’s and healers themselves have lower shield value due to health cap).
- Pumping health on a healer does not affect the shield value received by others. It only help your own shield.
- The second, buffed shield from Chakram of Destiny can go beyond the cap of 43% of their own Health.
▫️ Zenas’ Empowering Disc: Your main buff ability. Creates a ground effect and grants allies inside Minor Courage, Minor Intellect, Minor Endurance and Minor Fortitude increasing their Weapon and Spell Damage and buffing their sustain. Recommended over the Reconstructive Domain morph, especially in dynamic fights or fights with a large arena due to it’s “sticky” buff effect. It is affected by Jorvulds’ Guidance.
Healing Tides [Passive]: Grants flat bonus to your outgoing healing for each Crux stack you have.
Hideous Clarity [Passive]: Restores resources every time you generate Crux. Not very useful due to specifics of Crux use on a healer, but a small nice bonus if you have spare skill points.
Erudition [Passive]: Grants significant bonus to your Magicka and Stamina Recovery. Prioritize it over Hideous Clarity and Implacable Outcome passives if you’re short on skill points.
Intricate Runeforms [Passive]: Increases strength of your damage shields and reduces their cost. Applies to shields outside of your class skill lines as well, including Barrier ultimate.
Recommended way to handle Crux
Currently, the Crux system does not offer enough benefits from the active use of Crux for a healer role. It has certain drawbacks on both casual and advanced gameplay style since there are only 2 skills with potentially useful effects of consuming Crux. Let us look at the breakdown for both:
In the casual version I’ll assume active use of the healing beam (because it’s strong, sustainable, easy to use, and looks cool) and not include Pearls of Elnhofey in the build. In that case the main reason to consume Crux would be gaining ultimate points from Implacable Outcome passive and restoring resources to allies with Curative Surge. The ultimate passive is adjusted to give the same gain as other classes - 0.5 ult/s. However, there is no realistic scenario of using it on cooldown with beam without letting other heals/buffs fall off. This is especially important in harder content like 4-man DLC hardmodes with plenty of healing checks or 12-man veteran (or harder difficulties) content. Another option to consume it would be Tidal Chakram, which is fine for 4-man content but lacks in 12-man due to target cap limitation. Additionally, you would need to use another skill to generate Crux, like Runemend (single target, hence useless in many instances) or Cruxweaver Armor (slow and does not work in all encounters). This especially hurts now after hotfix that Crux stacks are no longer permanent and have 30 sec duration only.
In more advanced builds we will assume the use of Pearls of Elnhofey which are still the strongest healing mythic in the game. To make the most use of it we also minimize or do not use healing beam entirely due to its poor synergy with Pearls. It only procs on the cast, lasts 4.5 seconds, and gives 7 ultimate total per cast (4 from passive and 3 from pearls), while just proccing Pearls with other skills with typical 3-4/5 healing casts will yield you 9-12 ultimate on average. Tidal Chakram is a bit better in this regard - even though it does not proc Pearls itself because it consumes Crux to heal and not resources, it is not a loss in ultimate gained. Main problem of this skill lies in target cap and lack of other good sources of Crux.
The only reason to even gain Crux would be for the Healing Tides passive to gain extra healing bonus on fights that require it.
TLDR:
- Healing Springs vs Illustrious Healing: With recent testing we learned that Healing Springs does not smart target on each single tick, but Illustrious Healing does. With this knowledge Illustrious Healing should always be the preferred morph. Read through <#1248427339008839784> for more information.
- To use or not to use Crux is up to you but if you’re using Pearls of Elhnofey we suggest to not bother with it outside of healing intensive mechanics.
- If your partner has group buffs overlapping with you, talk it out to split the work, for example:
- Overflowing Altar only needs to be cast from one support. Either coordinate who casts it or keep it on your bars just in case.
- Minor Intellect/Endurance list of convenience: Arcanist > Templar > Nightblade > Sorc > Warden
- Minor Vulnerability list of convenience: Necro > Scribing: Ulfsild’s Contingency (Growing Impact signature) > Arcanist > Warden > Nightblade
Changelog:
- Echoing Vigor added to staple skills.
- Changed Illustrious Healing to preferred morph.
