Curse

Entropius · Jun 27, 2005, 04:48 PM // 16:48

I'm new at the game: I just now ascended, so I don't claim to have extensive high-end experience. This is (for now) a PvE build, but might be able to be adapted for PvP.

However, I've been using a strange healing build for the last few missions with great success (several tanks have said "Damn, who needs primary monks?", and a primary monk asked me in disbelief "How do you heal for so much?"), and thought I'd share it. My group just *steamrolled* Thirsty River, with me as the only healer -- and with only five people. Here's the build I've been using... comments?

Max healing prayers, remaining points go in Energy Storage

Staff: anything that provides a bonus to enchantment duration

Orison of Healing
Infuse Health
Healing Breeze
Ether Renewal {E}
Vigorous Spirit
Aura of Restoration
*wildcard*
*wildcard*

Several components of this build combine to give you huge amounts of healing power.

1) Infuse Health is your big gun, able to take a tank from near dead to full. It has no cooldown and casts in 1/4 second, making it not subject to interruption. The only drawback, of course, is that it costs you half of your health.

2) Aura of Restoration, Healing Breeze, and Vigorous Spirit give you a constant trickle of health as you cast spells (+46 health for a 10-energy spell), meaning that you don't have to stop and spam self-heals on yourself after you infuse.

3) Ether Renewal is really the key to the build. I have enough enchantments already (Breeze, Aura, Spirit, and Ether Renewal itself) that it has a huge effect. It does two main things:

3a) When the party is getting hit hard, Ether Renewal gives you massive amounts of life (+68 health per spell, in addition to Spirit and Aura) every time you cast a spell. This lets you regain the health you're spending on Infuse without having to take time off from healing the other party members, and lets you self-heal yourself with Orison for 60+11+68+18=157 health when you need a boost.

3b) Ether Renewal gives you, effectively, unlimited energy. Assuming you cast five spells while it's active (sometimes I can manage six), you get a total kick of 80 energy (and 390 life). This lets you keep spamming your spells, which in turn makes Aura of Restoration and Vigorous Spirit give you more life, which lets you cast Infuse when you need to. It's a set of skills that feed on each other.

4) All the spells in the build are low casting-time (nothing over 1 second, and Infuse and Aura are 0.25 sec), so you can cast lots of spells when Renewal is active.

One of the wildcard spots can be used for your favorite res (I like Vengeance); I'm still trying to find something good for the other slot. Stuff that I've tried is:

Heal Party. This build specializes in healing one person who's getting absolutely mauled; Heal Party can help save an entire group from AoE damage or similar. The 15 energy cost isn't a problem, and in fact can be a benefit with Aura. However, the two-second casting time is.

Heal Area. This makes a decent self-heal for when you've just cast Infuse (heals 151+35+11=187 rather than 60+18+11=89 for Orison), but is of limited utility elsewhere since I usually stay put and spam spells rather than run up to people and heal them.

Zealot's Fire. Since I spam so many spells, this is a decent source of free damage, plus it is yet another enchantment to feed Ether Renewal.

Mending. This can give me yet another trickle-heal for use with Infuse plus an enchantment to feed Renewal, and is the first thing I tried. I didn't like it much (ran out of energy all the time), but that might have been because I was new at the build and didn't spam Ether Renewal like I should have.

Other skills that sound like they could be interesting: Armor of Earth, a ward, Reversal of Fortune, or some Elementalist harassment spell like Gale, Blinding Flash, or a snare.

What do you folks think?

Edit: I just tried this in the random 4v4 arena with a new PvP char.

My equipment sucks, so I had a minor rune of vigor, a minor rune of earth, a 14% enchanting wrapping, a +19 life wrapping, and an earth hat. Ran armor of earth/vengeance for the two wildcard slots.

First round we slaughtered them. They couldn't get past my healing.
Second round we slaughtered them. They couldn't get past my healing. There was the following exchange on chat:

Opponent: "Your warrior sucks."
Me: "Well, he never died."
Opponent: "Yeah, well, Terra [me] must be using some kind of hax."
Me: "Yeah, infuse health hax."
Opponent: "That's only heal other; you were doing it to yourself somehow!"

(Several times two of the warriors would run after me and try to stomp me flat, getting it through their thick Warrior skulls that I was the reason the things they beat on didn't die. Ether Renewal, Aura of Restoration, Vigorous Spirit, Armor of Earth, and Healing Breeze on myself, and spamming Orison == no thanks, warriors.)

Third round our warrior dropped, leaving me, an Earth nuker El/Mo, and a ranger against a monk and three warriors.

The El/Mo and the ranger initially ran around when the warriors chased them, making my life difficult as a healer. They eventually figured out that if they stayed put, I would heal them.

... and I did. Constantly. They'd beat on one of us for a while, and then go beat on me for a while, and then go beat on someone else for a while, and couldn't kill us. Then the ranger said "Forget this, I can't do anything with all three of them on us", and dropped -- even though he wasn't near dying.

The other Elmo and I stayed there and fought, him casting offensive spells (and WoH sometimes), and me healing. We stood there for about 3 minutes, with the other Elmo at one point taunting the other team about their inability to kill him.

Finally I screwed up and hit Infuse rather than Ether Renewal when I was at 16 energy, leaving me with under 10 energy, half health, and no way to get energy back. I died.

Granted none of the teams we faced had a dedicated shutdown mesmer. There was one guy who tried to mess with me a bit with energy drain skills, but he got chased off quickly. However, this build -- with my initial experience -- looks promising.

Mercury Angel · Jun 27, 2005, 05:44 PM // 17:44

The problems arise when you need reliable spike heals when Ether Renewal is off.
Actually tried this myself a while back.

You might want to toss in Heal Other or Dwayna's Kiss (Cast some enchantments on the ally then throw Dwayna's Kiss on them) for a bit more spike healing while Ether Renewal is off without having to sacrafice half your health, which you have to recover from before doing again.

With the source of nigh-infinite energy, you may want to go with Light of Dwayna because it's re-useable, permanent, and fast to cast. (And it's really not all that uncommon to resurrect 2 allies in one casting.)

Glyph of Sacrafice + Restore Life is another nice mode of resurrection in a tight spot. Instant cast, and one quick heal makes them as good as new.

Healing Seed is a nice healing enchantment, for all that you can't cast it on yourself.

Entropius · Jun 27, 2005, 05:55 PM // 17:55

I thought about running Dwayna's Kiss (as a replacement for Orison on other people) and Heal Area (for myself). That takes an extra skill slot (so either Vengeance or Armor has to go), and will heal the warriors beating on me in addition to myself.

At least in the 4v4 arena and in PvP (yes, I'm new), I could still get away with casting Infuse as a spike heal when Renewal is down. With Armor of Earth I really don't care if they beat on me -- between the constant heal from Breeze/Aura/Spirit and casting Orison on myself, I heal myself quickly enough.

Hmm, Light of Dwayna. I don't have that one yet, but it's worth considering. The attraction of Vengeance is that they come back with full life and mana. I don't want them back alive; I want them back alive and fighting.

Glyph and Restore Life sounds wonderful. I'll have to try that once I get Glyph.

Healing Seed at first glance doesn't look that great, since 1) it takes too long to cast, and 2) it's mostly useful to save one guy who's getting beaten on something nasty. Spike heals on other people are what the build does best already.

Tuon · Jul 14, 2005, 10:00 AM // 10:00

Almost exactly the same build I came up with here

http://forums.gwonline.net/showthrea...79#post3587679

In many ways, i bet that's how most e/mos are gonna be worked soon.