Healing build

K, i'm a noob to this game recently left WoW. I've come to recognize how important healers are, and i wanna be a healer not just to be important, but i feel i'll enjoy this type of game. However, i'm not sure i wanna be a primary healer. Is there such a thing as a secondary ro back up healer, or is there a way to be a good healer with high armor for more survival?

Right now i'm looking at elem/monk for the great healing and extra energy elem offers. But is there a casting class that does a lot of damage and will allow me to also heal? like Mes/monk or something of that sort?

If you're main focus is going to be around healing, i would definetly recommend being a Monk primary. Why? You dont lose the healing bonuses from runes and helmets, and you also dont lose your primary attribute of divine favor, which also adds to your healing power by providing a healing bonus to all the skills you use. This way, you can heal your entire party more efficiently then you would with an Ele primary.

If however, you want to do some damage, go off the monk class unless your in pvp and really feel like being a monk doing some dmg(smiting monk, but keep it secret =P..but generally you would want SoJ).

Also, all the other classes can do some pretty good dmg (warrior however being the most easily countered, even with them having condition/hex removal). However, its also important to note how you want to do the dmg and if you are in pvp or not. For example, a N/Me PvE will most likely be very different from a N/Me Pvp due to their different roles. Do you want to doom other monks with dmg? Arcane Echo+Backfire can do it (although you have to remember everything can be countered). Rangers are very powerful spikers and can do some hefty interupts that can cause a large amounts of trouble, although mesmers specialize in spell interupting.

The thing is, you have to choose a style you want to play, and explore all the combos. Who knows, you might find a combo that no one else uses and works for you.

You could try an E/Mo. You can't really do damage at the same time as being an effective healer, but you could still do one of them fairly well.

There are two interesting builds I've come across that both do damage and heal effectively.

The first goes like this:

Mo/E
11+1 Smiting
12+4 Divine Favor
remainder+1 Protection

Reversal of Fortune
Draw Conditions (or Mend Ailment)
Divine Intervention
Smite Hex
Zealot's Fire
Glyph of Renewal {E}
Divine Spirit
Res Signet

Basically, you sustain Divine Spirit constantly with Glyph of Renewal, then use Reversal and Draw/Mend to trigger Zealot's Fire and heal people with your Divine Favor boost. ZF will spread a fair bit of damage around indiscriminantly, and is pretty good for pressure builds.

The other is quite different:

E/Mo

10/11 Healing
10+3 Energy Storage
10/11+2 Air Magic

Ether Prodigy {E}
Heal Party
Lightning Orb
Lightning Strike
Some more healing stuff (area, infuse, kiss/orison, seed, glyph of lesser energy, etc)
Res sig

Basically, you alternate between helping spike people using your lightning skills and spamming heal party. As a spike counter, you can run infuse + area.

An alternate version of this character might run fire instead of air and run rodgort's (+ fireball) for attack spells, or deep freeze + burst, or something.

I use an Nec/Mo for my faction farmer and it's fun, works in PvP and PvE pretty well.

I switch up some skills depending but:

Life Transfer
Life Siphon
Vampric Gaze
Blood renewal
Heal Other
Infuse Health
Strip Enchantment/sometimes hex cure Veil
res sig

is my usual lineup.


People get critical of it but I get 10k faction in a night with it in the randoms and I can't remember the last night I haven't made it to teams with the build.

16 blood/12 healing/3 Soul Reaping

Quote: Originally Posted by knava

Hmm try a N/Mo with Infuse health and Grenth's balance if you want to do damage, and heal people for a lot of health.

Basically, you'll want to wait with Grenth's balance until one of your teammates is taking a lot of damage and needs a big heal.. Infuse him and then find a target and do Grenth's balance. It should deal a lot of damage if done properly.

Quote: Originally Posted by Kabale

To add to what Shwitz said, even as a N/Mo, you'll be a primary target quite often. The only things that will take the focus off you will be monk primaries, and mesmers, and the mesmers may not take priority depending on the builds they're running. I've seen enough builds like the one Asdar gave running around in comp arenas that they're one of my primary targets since I know how much of a pain in the butt they can be to deal with once things get going.

The best advice I can give, is that if you want to be a healer, focus on that, and leave the damaging to be done by the rest of your team. A dedicated healer is one of the most valuable assets a team can have, and in most cases, doing anything else will take away from thier ability to heal.

My suggestion would be to play as a dedicated healer until you learn the ins and outs of all the spells/skills in the line, and once you're proficient with that specific task, branch out and experiment with different builds. By the time you learn your primary job well, you'll be familiar enough with other skill that you'll have an idea of what might work together and what won't. You'll also know what prevents you from being able to do your job, and add the skills to counteract the things opponents use on you.

Oh my god.

Healing really is a full-time job. Take your eyes off the party's health for a second to pick a target and cast an offensive spell, and someone on your side could very easily die. Guild Wars is very much about specializing in one job and doing only that, allowing the other characters in your party to cover your weaknesses with their specialties. This is doubly true for healing, I think.

El/Mos work well as healers for about the first half of PvE. At low levels, you can manage fine. But you'll get to a point where you just can't keep up with the damage nearly as well as a Monk can, because of that extra 30-40 healing they get for free on every heal with high Divine Favor. Sure you have twice the energy, but you will have to spam your spells harder (burning through that extra energy) to hopefully keep up with the damage, and once you do empty, your energy regen doesn't help as much as a monk's energy regen, because of their more efficient heals. At that point, I switched to Protection or Prot/Earth defense and did quite well.

The only primary class I can see working even close to as well as Monk for a healer near the end of the game is Necro. Soul Reaping is a great energy engine, so you could afford to spam heals pretty hard for a long time. But even then, since each heal isn't as powerful, it will be easier for your opponents to just too massive of damage for you to keep up through your own casting times.

Quote: Originally Posted by knava

I agree, E/Mo is more of a spammer than a potent healer, having a massive energy pool compared to DF means you have to make up for it with either more heals, or better spells (better use of the enegry) not to mention, having ether renewal with a few enchants on you lets you go super spammer for a while.

and it's definitely newb, not noob. I'm so glad to not have you saying noobish things like "I want the best healing build" which translates into: "I'm lazy and don't want to think."

You, on the other hand, are one of few newbs who actually know the correct way to use this board.