Curse

Chthon · Oct 22, 2010, 03:30 AM // 03:30

This build's an interesting variant. I'd like to say I invented it, but I didn't. I stole the idea from some random person Varda PUG-ed with when he subsequently pinged me the build and then I tweaked it.

Context: This build is amazing in two scenarios:
1. In a team that already has very heavy prot ability coming off another player. That basically means (a) ER ele, (b) ST rit, or (c) tons of midline damage mitigation (SY!, TntF, EB, Panic, etc.). This build provides the complementary redbarup.
2. Normal mode, where its heal/sec simply outpaces the monsters' damage/sec by a huge margin.
Outside of those two situations, the total lack of damage mitigation and almost-total lack of spot healing make it pretty undesirable. (Don't say I didn't warn you about that.)

Build:
16 Resto, 13 Spawning
RitLord
Recuperation
Rejuvenation
Life
Recovery
Spirit Light/MBS
Signet of Creation
Summon Spirits

Usage:
1. Maintain spirits at all times. (Except recovery if not facing conditions at the moment.) Use RitLord every time you cast a spirit. Use Summon Spirits to avoid needing to recast.
2. Use Summon Spirits to keep Rejuv w/in earshot of people taking damage.
3. Use Life as if it were Heal Party. (Because of the faster recharge from RitLord, casting Life will cause the old Life to die, resulting in a party heal of at least 90.)
4. Use Spirit Light/MBS for a spot heal if needed.

The combined effect of Recuperation+Rejuvenation+Life is that your entire party is under the equivalent of a permanent ~14.5 pips of health regen. Assuming that (1) monster damage is not exceeding 29DPS (after mitigation) and (2) your party's mitigation is good enough to avoid people getting spiked out, all red bars will head towards full without terribly much input from you.

Once you get the hang of it, you'll find yourself spending a lot of time wanding things because the build is so automatic.

Enjoy.

Necromas · Oct 22, 2010, 04:19 AM // 04:19

Spamming life/rejuvenation/recuperation will never keep up with a good direct healing build. Especially since your entire party should not be taking steady and evenly spread out damage. I guess it's your only option though if you want an alternative and just want to redbar.

Chthon · Oct 23, 2010, 04:07 AM // 04:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Necromas

Spamming life/rejuvenation/recuperation will never keep up with a good direct healing build. Especially since your entire party should not be taking steady and evenly spread out damage. I guess it's your only option though if you want an alternative and just want to redbar.

Eh? Let's examine the math on that, shall we?

First, I'm going to assume that by "good direct healing build" you do not mean an ER build. I freely admit that ER's Infuse has far, far more heal/sec than anything else in the game. This thread is about a potential complementary build for the second backline position that fills in some places where ER is weak.

So now, let's look at the passive resto build. Not even counting the heal from Spirit Light/MBS, we've got 8 HPS from Recup, plus 12 HPS from REjuv, plus 9*20/21 ~= 8.6 HPS from Life, for a total of 28.6 passive HPS per party member.

Now, let's look at what my best guess for what you mean by "good direct healing build." I'm assuming this build spams WoH and Patient Spirit (and the rest is either standard hybrid stuff (mostly redundant given the assumption of ER as the other backliner), or e-management, or removal, or inferior healing options that might as well be blank skillslots). Let's assume 14 Healing and 9 DF. Let's further assume that somehow you've got impossible levels of energy and can spam both heals on recharge. Let's also assume that you somehow manage to always trigger the bonus on WoH. With all of those extremely favorable assumptions, WoH heals for 94 + 109 + 29 on a 3.75sec recycle, or ~61.9HPS. Patient heals for 114 + 29 on a 4.25 recycle, or ~33.6 HPS. Add those together and you get 95.5 HPS.

Now, compare. Divide it out and you see that the resto build matches the WoH+Patient build for HPS if only 3.3 people are receiving healing. Now, take away all those favorable assumptions I gave you. Assume the resto build does occasional cast Spirit Light/MBS; assume the WoH+Patient build does not have infinite energy to cast on the recharge; assume WoH does not always trigger the bonus heal. The break even point is going to fall below 3, and maybe even closer to 2. How often do you play any serious zone and not have at least 3 people below 100% hp at any given time?

Which brings me to a bit of a point: If you've already got 5-7 health bars that are always full, you can put Alesia in charge of the backline and still succeed. Build choice is only going to matter when you're facing real pressure, which likely means that everyone is going to be taking some damage, and several people taking quite a lot. In those circumstances, passive resto is going to outheal WoH+Patient by 2::1 or even 3::1.

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But I'm sure thoughtful readers already knew that conclusion without me saying a word. After all, the inherent multiplier in the party healing mechanic gives it an unfair advantage.

So maybe a more apt comparison is to those ubiquitous UA party healing monk builds. These tend to look something like UA+Divine Healing+Heaven's Delight+Heal Party+GoLE. Let's assume 14DF and 13 Healing. Let's also assume that 1GoLE gets used to power 2x Heal Party, which is otherwise not used. Divine Healing will heal for 57*1.57 (ignore the DF bonus because it only goes to the caster himself) on a 16sec recycle, for ~5.6 HPS. Double that for Heaven's Delight. 11.2 HPS. Heal PArty heals for 69*1.57 twice in 31sec recycle, for ~7 HPS. That totals 18.2 HPS. That's only about 2/3 as good as the resto build. From there you could add a spot heal like Patient, and, to the extent that it was superior to Spirit Light/MBS, it would narrow the gap, but probably not catch up.

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None of this is to say that this resto build does not have shortcomings, merely that failing to out-redbar direct healing builds is certainly not one of them.

Bandwagon · Oct 23, 2010, 03:13 PM // 15:13

What mods would you recommend? Furthermore at first glance, adding Recup, Recovery, Life and Rejuv with the capacity to spam rejuv (since you brought summon spirits) looks energy intensive, how does your energy hold up for spot healing / MBaS cleaning? I would have thought since your spamming spirits that Boon of Creation in non-enchant strip environments would outshine the relative energy gain of Signet of Creation.

Chthon · Oct 23, 2010, 05:34 PM // 17:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bandwagon

What mods would you recommend?

Hardly matters since you've only got 2 spells on the bar. Take your pick between HCT/HRT resto mods, HCT/HRT all mods, and +e mods.

Quote:

Furthermore at first glance, adding Recup, Recovery, Life and Rejuv with the capacity to spam rejuv (since you brought summon spirits) looks energy intensive, how does your energy hold up for spot healing / MBaS cleaning?

1. Energy is fine.

2. You're not spamming. Recup, Recovery, and Rejuv last for a very, very long time at rank 20 Resto. Rejuv has so much hp that it rarely burns itself out before dying of old age. Life may get recast on its shortened recharge if you need the heal, but it's relatively cheap.

3. You don't really need to spot heal most of the time. I generally sit around and wand things or recycle life. Spot heal mostly gets used if whoever's providing prot fails and someone's health gets knocked too low to safely wait for Life to come around again. (Reminder: If you want to take this build into serious HM, it needs to be partnered with serious mitigation (ie ER or ST).)

4. Recovery makes MBS really unnecessary in most places. I'd generally bring Spirit Light unless you're facing a condition-crazy zone like SoO.

Quote:

I would have thought since your spamming spirits that Boon of Creation in non-enchant strip environments would outshine the relative energy gain of Signet of Creation.

SoC is 11/21 ~= 0.52 e/sec.
Boon is ((5*No_Spirits_Cast) - 10)/47 e/sec.
The break-even point is ~6.92 spirits in 47 sec (or ~7.9 spirits in 56.4sec with a 20% enchant mod). So Boon would be superior to SoC if you cast at least 7 spirits in 47 sec (or 8 spirits in 56.4 sec w/ 20% enchant mod). Do you cast spirits that frequently? No, not with this build. Recuperation, Recovery, and Rejuvenation all last way too long to really benefit from Boon.

MegaVolti · Oct 25, 2010, 03:09 PM // 15:09

I really like the idea but I'm wondering why you picked this elite.
You said yourself that you barely have to re-cast spirits so the 50% faster cooldown is wasted. Are those 4 extra attribute points on their own really worth using the elite slot for?
Why not use Xinrae's Weapon for some more active healing and protection (so you don't have to wand that much

) or maybe even Preservation when it has to be all about passive healing?

Xenomortis · Oct 25, 2010, 03:52 PM // 15:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by MegaVolti

I really like the idea but I'm wondering why you picked this elite.
You said yourself that you barely have to re-cast spirits so the 50% faster cooldown is wasted. Are those 4 extra attribute points on their own really worth using the elite slot for?
Why not use Xinrae's Weapon for some more active healing and protection (so you don't have to wand that much

) or maybe even Preservation when it has to be all about passive healing?

Rit Lord boosts the power of these spirits considerably and puts them on a quick recharge should they get nuked.
The Restoration elites are pathetic. SLW is probably the best candidate, but both are questionable. Preservation is a waste, WoR is laughable, questionable with Recovery and outright inferior to Life Sheath, Xinrae's is similar but not useful enough for me to really care.
With this setup, I'd use Soul Twisting after Rit Lord, depending on energy load.

The problem I have with this sort of bar in general is that I really don't have the ability to do anything when shit hits the fan. Rit bars in general are quite limited, only really having spot heals (they're good, just limited) and I don't think I really gain enough in areas where it might matter to merit the investment.

Master Fuhon · Oct 25, 2010, 06:45 PM // 18:45

This build doesn't adress the main problem I've seen with Ritualist healing, which is dealing with spikes and triage situations. The best "I don't have a clue what's going on so I need to defend everyone" healer skills in the game are Aegis and massive burst party heals, not stable Heal-per-second. The math you included about monk party healing does not reflect the fact that a monk can come back from falling behind on party healing (maybe he was dealing with spike victims), and you are counting on Life procs to do what a monk can do on command. The only reason I would run a passive resto rit is if I were really lazy.

A spike will not be as complicated as something coming from pvp, but what makes a monk so good is that he can preprot a pve spike (Shield of Absorption, Protective Spirit, Seed of Life) and heal the damage (Dwayna's Kiss + heal boosters, Word of Healing). Any healer also has to compare with Ether Renewal Infuse (ridiculous spike damage healing) or Imbagon support (ridiculous passive pre-prot).

The ritualist anti-spike plan can either be Weapon Spell+Wielder's Boon (inferior in PvE to a monk) or buffer spike damage with spirits Recuperation, Rejuvenation, Preservation, Shelter, Union, Displacement) + cast big healing spell (Mend Body and Soul, Spirit Light, or Spirit Transfer). Now, I have not listed two unique functioning skills yet: the first is Life. I didn't list Life, because you can't just use the math you used (Life 180 heal/~21 seconds = 8.6 HPS) against spike. It works that way against non-threatening pressure, but against spike the math changes to 0 HPS for 20 seconds, 180 HPS for 1 second.

The second skill I didn't list is Spirit Light Weapon, because the question matters: Are you taking a full spirit build to do something that is more efficiently dealt with by Spirit Light Weapon? I guess another way of saying it is: If you don't know where a PvE spike is going to hit, so as to need stabilizing regen on everyone, then you and your team are doing it so wrong, that you are going to need either an Imbagon, ER Infuse, or Unyielding Aura. With Spirit Light Weapon, you can maintain it on 2.5 people with that spec, and they would be getting 32 healing per second as a buffer and you could have a lazy man's Spirit to give HPS on top of that. If you have 3 or more people getting spiked in PvE, I can almost guarantee you that someone is standing in AoE (although sometimes they manage to pull 3 melee onto separate casters in pugs, like untanked Urgoz Thorn Wolves, which is a 100% wipe if you can't mitigate them), and you would be better off with Seed of Life in general.

Now the 'triage' is basically the situation where everyone is taking some kind of damage and you have to determine who is decompensating the fastest to prioritize using skills on them all. For example the Skelk who hang out in caves use Necro degen and Bull's Charge Warriors, and the pug you are in would possibly be tanking none of the warriors. The flaw with Ritualist skills is that Spirit AI flunks the triage (Rejuvenation, Preservation) cannot recognize vamp weapon degen or safe health sacrifice usage through degen. In fact, I think this build makes the triage harder, because now you are relying on one skill with a 1 second cast and 4 second recharge.

Chthon · Oct 26, 2010, 01:07 AM // 01:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

This build doesn't adress the main problem I've seen with Ritualist healing, which is dealing with spikes and triage situations.

Absolutely right. But it's not meant to. It's meant to partner with an ER ele or ST rit (or a ton of stacked mitigation on the midline) that prevents a spike/triage situation from happening in the first place.

Think of it as akin to a party-wide 55 build. Your mitigation heavy partner caps the damage with PS/PRotBond/Shelter and then you outheal all the damage that comes under the cap with raw heal/sec.

(It's also a kick throughout much of the NM game where it's heal/sec is just so far ahead of the monster's DPS that you can't lose.)

(If you want a rit build to deal with triage, try Rt/Mo with Spirit Channeling, Selfless Spirit, AoS, PS, Life, some spot heals, and whatever.)

JoeGrogan · Nov 01, 2010, 09:16 PM // 21:16

Quick question - do heroes run this build well? Or have you got a hero variant that they do run ok?

FoxBat · Nov 01, 2010, 11:56 PM // 23:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeGrogan

Quick question - do heroes run this build well? Or have you got a hero variant that they do run ok?

Heroes can't help but activate non-ritual skills while ritual lord is up, and you aren't going to have the energy to spam a bar full of spirits without non-ritual emanagement. So unless you are happy with just life, rejuv, and maybe recovery, it's generally going to be crap.

Xenomortis · Nov 02, 2010, 12:12 AM // 00:12

When you move around a bit, their energy plummets. They don't get Summon Spirits remember.
This also means they can't stop the spirits from getting nuked.

JoeGrogan · Nov 02, 2010, 12:46 AM // 00:46

What about a soul twisting variant for heroes, or does it not work without the extra +4 towards attributes with Rit Lord?

I've got no problem with the no summon spirits for heroes to stop them being nuked as can flag to the backline, but do you need the health also that summon spirits gives too?

FoxBat · Nov 02, 2010, 01:44 AM // 01:44

Heroes are nice with soul twisting, but the benefits of that are more limited on a resto bar. You will have 24/7 rejuvenation, but life and recup won't get any better (although recup will move around better). There's also potential positioning issues, rejuv only covers earshot so you have to be sure most of your party hangs in it. It's a useable template but far weaker than the one outlined here.

Chthon · Nov 02, 2010, 02:00 AM // 02:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeGrogan

Quick question - do heroes run this build well? Or have you got a hero variant that they do run ok?

Not really. Hero AI messes up with RitLord. Also, no Summon Spirits makes for a huge increase in energy costs.

If you want a rit hero backlining, you might as well use a ST build. The hero AI can do that job reasonably well.

FyrFytr998 · Nov 20, 2010, 09:01 PM // 21:01

I've had some relative success tinkering around with the ST Rit hero with Shelter, Union, and Displacement. I do have to micro though to make sure Shelter is put up before Union.