Stamina Warden Healer – Hircine’s Assault

Armor Types

Gear and Item Set Info

The sets we're using here are Powerful Assault, Hircine's Veneer, and Agility.  Powerful Assault is the stamina equivalent of SPC, while Hircine's Veneer is the stamina version of Worm.  This gives us a ton of sustain with Bull Netch and a nice buff that everyone can benefit from.  Powerful assault is only being used on the bow bar, as its 5-set only applies to assault abilities - in this case, Echoing Vigor, so you don't need it on both bars.  This lets us get a 2pc of Agility when we swap bars for some extra stamina.   

A possible alternative would be to run a 5pc of War Machine on the backbar instead of Hircine's Veneer and use Sentinel of Rkugamz.  This would also require you to swap the ultimates and use Enchanted Forest to proc Major Slayer.  This isn't as strong as Warhorn for damage boosts, but it increases personal damage.  It also drops your sustain and your team sustain, but Sentinel at least helps your melee group sustain.

Bow: Powerful Assault with Powered and Weakening Enchant.

Restoration Staff:  Agility with Powered and Berserker Enchant.

Jewelry: 2pc Hircine's Veneer with Robust and Weapon Damage enchants, 1pc Agility with Robust and Weapon Damage enchants.

Armor: 4pc Powerful Assault in Divines, 3pc Hircine's Veneer in Divines.  Enchants should be health on chest and shoulders, stamina on everything else.

I'll be updating this in Summerset because of set bonus changes.

General Info

Playstyle/Strategy:

This is a very close-range, highly mobile healer.  Instead of sitting in the backline, you're going to be somewhere in between melee and ranged.  Positioning is important, so communicate with your team and use your insane movement speed to reposition yourself as needed.  Stay within 15 meters at all times of your teammates, and get used to quickly rotating your character to fire Soothing Spores on low HP targets and keep track of teammmate positions.  They're not always going to be in front of you.  If you have to reposition quickly, roll, switch to bow bar, and sprint.  You'll be at the other side of the arena in moments.  If you have to break your buff rotation to save someone try to keep Lotus and Netch up at least, but feel free to swap bars for a Vigor cast.

Strengths:

Puts out surprisingly strong HPS with high sustain and a powerful burst heal. 

The rotation is easy and simple.

Movement speed is extremely fast due to medium armor passives and 5 seconds of Major Expedition when rolling on the bow bar.  This allows you to reposition very quickly and easily, especially with your massive stamina pool.

Healing abilities give teammates and yourself 10% bonus HP, making your HP jump to 20k most of the time in combat.

Full medium armor gives you surprisingly high defense - over 20k to all resistances with Expansive Frost Cloak.

Bull Netch and Green Lotus give high weapon damage and weapon critical.

Weaknesses:

Healing is very positioning-dependent.  You heal primarily in a 15-meter radius instead of a cone, and targets beyond 20 meters are out of range.

This build is heavily reliant on light attack weaving, and requires a two block cancels on the backbar.

I put buffs/debuffs into another section as it's fairly complex.

No barrier spell since you're a magicka-based character.

Buffs:

Team buffs consist of Powerful Assault (which stacks with SPC), 12% stamina regen for up to 12 targets within 28 meters, Major Protection/Ward for 6 targets, weakening on bosses, Major Breach on trash mobs, minor lifesteal, and minor magickasteal.  The buffs a magicka healer gives to the party that this doesn't are Combat Prayer, Orbs, and Concussion procs.  If you decide to use a Destruction staff instead of a restoration staff, or put a lightning enchant instead of berserker on your restoration staff you can apply Concussion.  However, with the recent nerfing of Concussion so far below ground that it's hanging out in the 9th circle, I don't consider that worth using.  Orbs are intended to help the melee DPS and tank maintain stamina.  Hircine's Veneer does far more for a melee group than Orbs could ever do.  However, it's of less use for tanks as they can't regenerate while blocking.  Sentinel of Rkugamz can give massive stamina regeneration for the melee group, but until Summerset that'll require losing Hicine's Veneer on the main bar, which is unacceptable.  With magicka potions you can keep some uptime for Combat Prayer, but not very much.

TL;DR:  The main detriment you have is the loss of full Combat Prayer uptime, which is partially mitigated by the fact that PA stacks with SPC in a trial setting.

Flex skills:

On the bow bar, Draining Shot and Poison Injection are flex spots.  Either one can be replaced with whatever you prefer or what suits your needs.  Subterranian Assault can be swapped for Cutting Dive if you like. 

On the resto bar, Efficient Purge is a flex spot.  Combat Prayer or Energy Orb are possible options, but you don't have enough magicka to cast them more than once per rotation, so magicka potions are required to maintain them any decent amount.  Feel free to put anything you want here. 

You also have the option of using a Lightning Staff and replacing Force Siphon with Weakness to Elements.  This gives higher Vigor uptime because of the faster backbar rotation, but you lose minor lifesteal and the powerful Restoration staff passives.  You may decide to slot in Wall of Elements for the concussion proc if you go this direction.

Food/Potions:

Food should be Dubious Camoran Throne for bonus HP, Stamina, and Stamina Regen.  Potions depend on the situation.  Weapon power potions are of limited use due to Green Lotus and Bull Netch, but the Major Endurance is helpful.  If you need to use Efficient Purge frequently or another magicka skill, then Tri-restoration or magicka potions can help you cast more of these.  Switch out potions depending on your personal needs for the particular fight.

Mundus Stone:  Ritual gives the highest HPS by a long shot with this build.  You can swap out for Warrior if you want to deal more damage while healing.

Rotation:

resto bar => netch => block cancel => ice armor => lotus => block cancel => LA => force siphon => LA => bow bar => vigor => LA => shalks => LA x4 => vigor => LA => shalks => LA x4 => vigor => LA => shalks => LA x4 => vigor => repeat

It's important that you don't LA (light attack) weave on the backbar until Lotus is up.  If you don't wait, you'll be unable to get the Berserk bonus on your Vigor after the barswap.  Damage from the resto staff is negligible since you're a stamina build and your Lotus has worn off by this point.

This rotation can be changed depending on circumstances.  For simplicity, I'm going to call the (Vigor => LA => shalks (subterranian assault) => LA x4) section the mini-rotation.  Feel free to toss in any other spell after shalks in the mini-rotation, just know that you have to do 2 less LAs whenever you do so.  Technically you could time your shalks and netch to be 8 seconds apart and only have to do 2 shalks casts on the bow bar to get the ultimate regeneration and get 2 extra lotus procs, but that's less damage and makes timing a lot harder.  If you don't care about ultimate regeneration at all and just want higher HPS, you can do LA x7 in the mini-rotation and remove everything but Vigor.

If you're using a lightning enchant on the resto staff for concussion, weave between every ability and bar swap on the backbar to apply more concussion.  Consider cutting off your last mini-rotation early by doing only 1 or 2 light attacks and weave for the lotus procs. 

If you're using destro staff, use a lightning enchant and replace Efficient Purge with Wall of Elements and Force Siphon with Weakness to Elements.  Add Wall of Elements to the second mini-rotation with a bar swap and attack weave every ability on the backbar.  This is so you don't burn out your magicka you use for buffs.

Champion Point Tips

These will be updated later, once I look back at my current setup.

Build Rating