Guide to Healing in Dungeons and Trials

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The primary intent of this guide is to help beginners get there foot in the door to healing. I have successfully healed every 4 Man Dungeon in the game at the highest difficulty level but by no means do I claim to be an expert at healing. A healer is actually the most important part of successful dungeon and trial groups. It is impossible to dodge all damage. The primary goal of the healer is to increase group DPS.

This is fairly straight forward and accomplished by healing to offset incoming damage. Generally a mixture of proactive and reactive heals work the best. This is typically achieved with a mixture of DOT (heals) and instant heals. Often times I will begin applying DOT healing before the engagement starts. I personally don’t like slow building heals. If it has a cast time other than instant, I am not typically going to be using the skill to heal with in a 4 man dungeon. This is the reason you will not see me using some of the Templar skills. The one exception I make to this is force siphon but before I apply this I will make sure I have DOTs up on the group and no one is in danger.

Like the DPS the healer should generally block, dodge roll, and move to avoid unnecessary damage and wasting resources. The vast majority of the time a healer dies the group will follow shortly afterwards (i.e., dead group = 0 DPS). There are some instances where you will actually stack and just heal through the damage; it is important to know the mechanics of the fight.

This is where most healers fail in group play and on harder dungeons. It is astonishing how many healers don’t run resource regeneration skills. I can easily lose 2-5K DPS on my magicka night blade if a healer is not helping with resource regeneration. Are you still going to be able to complete most any dungeon? Sure. It will just be more painful and take longer. It is much easier for a healer to work resource regeneration buffs into your skill rotation than an actual DPS changing their rotation.

This is the absolute last priority for me as a healer. IF YOU ARE DEALING DAMAGE AND SOMEONE IS DYING YOU ARE DECREASING THE GROUP DPS. In an end game group, I will have time to do straight DPS in most 4 Man dungeons but the vast majority of my DPS in a typical run is incidental (shards for resource regeneration) or during execute.

Don’t be afraid to ask a healer to run a specific resource regeneration skill; most good healers will change up skills to work with your build. Unless you are the tank, it is generally not a good idea to stand in the “RED” shaped AOEs and expect the healer to keep you alive. Don’t draw aggro and then walk the mob over the healer. It is extremely difficult to heal a group that is spread out all across a dungeon; know how to position your character to both minimize damage and keep close. You should know the range of a healer. If you are running FTC and you see the healers bar go off color this means you are not going to be receiving heals.

This is one of the best heals in the game (PVP and PVE). Healing springs is the morph you are going to want. This is both an area of effect (AOE) and DOT(healing over time :: not damage in this case). If you are in the AOE you will get magicka back. This is always on my bar.

This is a good heal in 4 man dungeons and I keep this on one of my flex spots. I use the Mutagen morph but both morphs are fairly useful for this skill. This is a DOT and I typically apply this before an engagement begins and reapply later.

The morph you will want to choose is Combat Prayer. This is an instant AOE heal and buffs the group damage. This is a straight line AOE so group positioning matters. This is a flex spot skill that I will run depending on the situation.

Both morphs are useful. I have this leveled but honestly I rarely use this on my healer.

This provides health and magicka for your allies as they attack the target. Most trial groups will be running this AND elemental drain. This will take some of the resource burden off both your DPS and Tank as they fight. With this skill you may not see huge HPS or DPS for your character but the group’s sustained DPS will seriously increase. I prefer Elemental Drain because of the cast time but I will use this skill on request.

The morph you want is Elemental Drain this restores Magicka for elemental damage done and debuffs the target. Most good healers will run this skill if you ask nicely if they are not already running it. Like Force Siphon, this skill will greatly increase the groups sustained DPS. The advantage to this skill is it is an instant cast skill. This should be a default skill for your healer.

This restores Magicka and does damage when allies activate the synergy. You should have this leveled for challenging group content.

Morph Repentance… FREE heals and stamina when things die. This is great for trash pulls or boss fights with lots of adds. You will be a stamina users best friend if you apply this correctly during fights. Generally you want to hit repentance as things die and not wait to the end when everything is dead. This also greatly benefits the survive-ability of magicka classes who have little to no stamina for blocking, crowd control (CC) break, and dodging. For single target boss fights I will use this as a flex spot and swap in another skill.

Morph Luminous Shards or Blazing Spear. I personally use Luminous Shard as it restores two resources. This ability also will trigger the undaunted synergy passives. This ability does a decent amount of damage as well. This is a ranged ability so it is easy to drop on other players from a safe distance. This ability is primarily used to keep the tank alive and topped off on stamina since stamina does not regenerate when blocking.

Significantly, less useful post DB but you should still probably level it as a flex spot fill in.

This helps with resources and buffs damage. Most trial groups will run 2-3 Aggressive War Horns and rotate through application (tank and heals) as this does not stack. I actually use this as my ultimate in most group dungeons.

The morph I use is Solar Prison although both are good. This decreases damage to the group (easier to heal in stack situations) and does damage. The synergy is fairly powerful as well. It is extremely common for healers to be running this as one of their ults in trials to mitigate group damage.

This was nerfed to near pointlessness in PVP; however, it is still good in some situations in PVE in 4 man dungeons. I try to have this up on Molag Kena during the last 30%.

What class do you have to be to heal? The simple answer is you can heal with any class and I have run dungeons with all four classes as the healer. The best class over all for healing is the Templar. It is extremely difficult for any other class to compete with the Templar’s resource management and dedicated skill line to healing.

Attribute Points and enchants are all going to be magicka; however, you should have enough health that you are not going to die all the time (increase health if you are dying). If you are doing pure healing you are going to focus on the healing portions of the champion point system. I would recommend searching on Tamriel Foundry in the Theorycrafting section if you want optimal distributions.

Best in slot for a healer is divines Spell Power Cure (SPC). In trials best in slot is probably SPC and Worm. Healing is fairly forgiving in terms of gear you can heal sufficiently with most crafted sets (Jualianos, and Kagrenacs are pretty common). I am currently running twice born star on my healer and it is working fine. As a healer you are going to most likely run a 5 light, 1 medium, and 1 heavy gear set up to get the undaunted bonuses (nice to have some of the other armor passives as well). Gear is fairly forgiving for a healer. All armor skill lines are maxed for the bonuses on my healer.

Trial Healing

Trial healing is slightly different then healing a dungeon.  The main difference is the amount of players you need to heal which will determine the healing spells that need to be used.  Spells like rapid regen, mutagen, BOL, and ward ally all starting losing effectiveness.  There are three primary types of formations to deal with in trials as a healer.

1. Loose Stack: Players align within the radius of a healing springs while keeping about 3 meters apart to avoid stacking harmful AOEs.  The healers can now cover the entire party in healing springs.  This is important because a healer can stack 3 healing springs on top of each other while block casting.   Typically my healing springs are going to hit between 4-6K per tic; which means that stacking three is going to produce 12-18K in instant healing.  Most DPS run between 16K-18K health.  If you stack ritual of retribution as well then I am instantly healing every one in the party to full health.
2. Tight Stack: Players stack in one spot normally winds up being about a 3 meter radius.  Same healing strategy as above.
3. Multiple groups: Players will stack in multiple groups.  This is probably the hardest to heal.  This is going to be some combination of skills depending on how damage is hitting the group.