A few questions for HEALERS. I'm in desperate need of your counsel.

[Kane]

In every MMORPG my main is a tank. I'm always in high demand because in MMORPG's most people don't like to tank. However, in this game it seems like Healers are the least played class. I can always find tanks, but often times my random groups have to wait for a healer.

So I'm thinking about switching from tank to healer because of how few healers there are in this game. I have a few questions:

1. Does the Wand need to always be your main weapon or should it be your secondary weapon? I've seen so many youtube videos where healers equip the Wand as their main weapon and I've also seen other videos where they equip the wand as their secondary weapon. I've seen builds where people go Sword and Shield as their main weapon and wand as their secondary weapon...and then watch multiple guides where the wand is the main weapon and sword and shield is their secondary weapon. That's confusing. Like for tanking I use a Sword and Shield as my main weapon and Greatsword as my secondary weapon every time.

2. Is Wand + Bow the only viable option for healing?

3. How is Wand + Dagger and Wand + Greatsword in PvE and PvP?

4. How is Wand + Crossbow? I thought this would be a good combo since they are both mid range weapons.

5. Is Wand + Staff still good? Do you need to have the staff as your main weapon?

6. How does healing work? I know that you have one heal that you can use on 1 party member and another AoE heal...but do the curses or other DoT's provide any healing as well? Is it just the single target and AoE heal or are there more?

7. Are the majority of your abilities Wand abilities, 50/50, or are the majority of your abilities another weapon type?

8. I use both a keyboard and Xbox controller. So In a party I see that you can select which party member you want to heal from the party list. It's easy with a controller because you just hold down the left trigger and select your target with the Directional Pad, but how does that work in large scale PvP? I know that in the settings window there is an option to target with your analog stick/mouse (crosshair) who you want to heal. Is that option needed for large scale PvP or are there more names added to the list and maybe a number showing you their distance away from you?

This healing stuff is a little confusing. Any help you can provide will be appreciated.

[j0bee]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9szes1C93WE

[Lv01 Magikarp]

There are builds on https://metabattle.com/tl/TL_Builds that you could have a look at, they might help.

[Kyutaru]

The main hand thing is about Mastery bonuses. You only get the Mastery bonuses for the weapon currently equipped. So that will be your main hand 90% of the time. The offhand will only get its mastery bonuses when actually casting.

This is why mana regen or cooldown reduction are probably bad picks to get for your offhand but great ones for your main hand.

Bow gives you an additional aoe heal over time so it's considered the ultimate healing build.

[Darth_Angeal]

Pretty much every combination is viable in this game, it´s just a matter of your own playstyle and preference.

PvP-wise you probably don´t want to play "melee-heal" and crossbow doesn´t offer huge "pluses" to wand gameplay-wise. Bow has more range and a HoT while staff will come with a huge manapool, escapes, a friendly hook and DoT-abilities. That´s why those 2 might be a better choice to go for since you´ll normally get focused down and extra-range, slows, escapes whatever will do a lot.
And yes... healing + damaging can be mana-hungry, so the staff got some extra-comfort compared to other weapons where you´ve to pick mana-traits for your armor.

GS or sword / shield + wand is pretty much tankheal or better said paladin. It´s the second choice to go if you don´t want to play the fulltank GS + sword / shield.

Healing isn´t that big of a deal, it´s a tab-target MMO. Click on a member and heal it... since you can target e.g. the tank and the boss simultaneously, you can damage the boss and your healing will go on the tank.

There are also options that your character runs automatically in range or always focus the target etc. in the menu, but they can be contraproductive aswell at certain mechanics.
For example you can instacast your healing-zone on your target instead of placing it somewhere freely with your mouse.

If you want to know more about the skills themselves, then just pick a wand and read / practice i guess. Again... pretty much everything is viable and it´s a matter of preference. There´ll always be a meta ofc, but it doesn´t mean that it fits your own playstyle or is actually fun to play.

[PixelTricks]

1. Does the Wand need to always be your main weapon or should it be your secondary weapon?

Doesn't really matter for healing but for dmg you want to make sure your combo weapon doesn't have a dmg difference when in secondary.

2. Is Wand + Bow the only viable option for healing?
No, use dagger, crossbow also. Staff not so much because of cooldowns.


6. How does healing work? I know that you have one heal that you can use on 1 party member and another AoE heal...but do the curses or other DoT's provide any healing as well? Is it just the single target and AoE heal or are there more?
You can use the heals and your party , just self target.
Curses add to healing where the damage you do with a curse is converted to how much is healed which is another healing skill. The only downside with curse is it isn't a quick kill, so in solo it isn't the best.


7. Are the majority of your abilities Wand abilities, 50/50, or are the majority of your abilities another weapon type?
I played wand, bow in EA and would always start the fight with a curse then use bow for dmg, using the healing created by the curse dmg later in the fight.

8. I use both a keyboard and Xbox controller.

I only use keyboard so can't help with that.

[Kane]

Originally posted by j0bee:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9szes1C93WE

Wow his videos are way better than the other videos I watched. Thanks! Also, thank you to everyone else that replied. I read all of the comments and appreciate your help as well.

[Chuds]

1: i wouldn't worry about what weapon you have equipped till you start getting into your Weapon mastery because that's when it starts to matter, mastery are only active when you are using the weapon.

6: 1000000% NO QUESTIONS ASKED you should be using "Vampiric Contract" Passive.
Most broken passive when it comes to healing in PvE, You heal just under 15% of your damage to friendly target when you attack a cursed enemy.

7: i am a Wand / Bow main - 5 bow skills / 7 wand skills.


Edit: J0bee posted a very good video to introduce you to healing, was the same guide i used, does a very good job of explaining healing in PvE.

[Vellsi]

1.) Was explained above but I will add a bit:
Besides the Mastery Bonus you also have to remember that you can only auto-attack easily from range with ranged weapons. If you go Wand/Daggers and have the daggers out it you have to stand in melee range. Melee hitboxes are tiny in ToL, which then makes positioning more difficult as healer, since you want to cover the entire group with heals and not just stand next to some enemy (while simultaneously dodging and handling other mechanics). If you stand in melee range and face the enemy you also have a harder time of seeing all your party members at once, as you constantly need to rotate the camera, while at the same time never losing the hostile target out of focus.


2.) and 3.) Options beside Wand/Bow are very much viable, too, but you need to understand the trade-offs. I suggest you go to skill planner website or equip level 1 weapons, read the ability tooltips and their specializations, to see what each weapon offers. Also consider the range requirements for each ability/weapon. There's no perfect build, all are situational.

People recommend Bow because it comes with the more heals, the HoT (heal over time), heal/dispel and root/slows (to save a life by keeping an enemy away) but depending on the group composition and engagement scenario you might want specific abilities from other weapons. Darth_Angeal gave a few good considerations above but there are many aspects to consider.

Wand/SnS for example is popular in arena PvP, as the pushes let you push enemies down a ledge or stun them and you have a lot more defense against burst, too.


6.) As with every other ability type, there are single target heals you have to cast onto a target specifically, AoE heals to heal others within range around you or targeted ground abilities with various utility functions.

It's important to read tooltips, as some heals only work on party/group members, so if you aren't grouped with others, you can not get your group healing onto them.

Healing itself is not just about keeping HP up but you also want to remove certain debuffs (which some heal abilities do by default and others after picking a specialization) and give others mana. The latter is very important in lenghty PvE encounters for tanks, as they notoriously struggle with mana regen, and can sometimes help turn the tide in longer PvP battles when the enemy slowly goes OOM while you managed to keep sustain up.

Having CC or mobility abilities is necessary as healer in large and messy situations. You need to save yourself or others regularly, no matter if messy PvE situations or PvP when someone gets dived. It's less of an issue in small-scale PvP like arena, where you have teammates to rely upon and punish anyone trying to dive you.

As you mentioned healing via damage and DoTs:
With Wands it's possible to slot a passive to heal from your damage on dotted enemies. It looks measly on paper but might actually be decent in PvE. DoTs are rather weak in PvP, as burst is what kills a target, not a bit of damage that gets easily out-healed and out-sustained, so keep that in mind.


7.) One can fill all ability slots with healing and CC if so desired - and many healers do exactly that to some extent. In how far that's necessary and viable depends on the content and group composition. By the way, the Wand defensive skill is also a free heal if you parry.

If you have too many healing abilities and the group doesn't need the healing, it's wasted DPS and CC potential. Inversely, if you have too little healing abilities and the group needs more, it's better to have more.


Some general advice on healing:

Healers often fall into the trap of trying to carry bad players and I suggest you avoid that. With ToL's cooldowns on all heals it's not possible to outheal someone who doesn't dodge out of AoE, doesn't know how to parry or is generally bad at PvP. Slot abilities to make your performance and the performance of the group better, do not cater to the very worst of players out there.
Bad players will be naturally filtered out, so they end in groups on their level until they improve (if ever) while better players will stick to each other to pull ahead. The latter is the scenario you should optimize your build for. That doesn't mean you shouldn't spam emergency healing on someone if they mess up but there's a big difference between a mistake a healer could turn around and a constant stream of failure, causing the healer to waste resources (and in doing so might cause the group to fail).


8.) Never used a controller but targeting in PvP is already a mess on mouse and keyboard. Sometimes clicks are seemingly not getting an enemy selected, other times pressing tab when there's only 1 enemy in front of you does nothing - and I'm not sure what the issue is.
Without having played controller I'd still approach this from a theoretical angle though: Targeting hostiles might be difficult, so it's best to stick to things one can reliably land on friendly players, be it direct heals, AoE heals or abilities you can use on the ground or directionally against enemies.


A last word on changing builds: When you level a new character you get a ton of free gear and upgrade currency. This makes it possible to level gear and weapons for that one build but if you were to switch to different weapons and different gear you'd have to grind a lot (it's a p2w MMO after all and they want to entice spending). For that reason I believe it's far easier and cheaper to just level a new character if you drastically change your build and gearing needs - that way you get all the level and quest reward currencies again.