Healing with no Proc Sets

On February 15th, for a duration of three weeks, Cyrodiil will have all non-flat set bonuses disabled. The forums thread with the official post can be found here. At the same time, healing limitations for group-only will be reverted, and you’ll once again be able to heal everyone around you.

What this means to you as a healer is that you will not be able to apply effects and group buffs from Curse Eater, Transmutation, Gossamer, Prayer, Combat Physician, Worm, Spell Power Cure, and the plethora of other group buff sets that have traditionally been the healer and supports’ responsibilities. You also won’t be able to use healing monster sets such as Earthgore, Nightflame, and others.

This gives healers an opportunity to build for optimizing healing output, rather than have their value split between output and the value inherent in applying heals (from proc sets). In order to set up your build, you need to understand and consider the value from each of the flat stats that you can get from gear during this period:

  • Maximum magicka will let you cast more skills, and increases the output of some heals
  • Spell damage increases the output of some heals
  • Magicka recovery will fill your magicka pool faster, letting you cast more skills
  • Critical strike chance will increase the size of the heals that critically strike

The difference between how maximum magicka and spell damage affect the value of a skill will depend on that skill. The best method to confirm how your build is affected is to get naked, and add gear that applies only one set bonus, then look at the tool tip for the skill. Swap that gear for something that gives a different stat, and look at the tooltip again. The difference in both tool tips may be different for each skill, as not all skills scale similarly. If you want to min/max, you should figure out what is best for the skills that you cast most. If you don’t want to spend all that time, my tendency is towards maximum stat over spell damage – though please note that this won’t necessarily be the best case for your own build!

Sets

Following are the sets (from the list posted on the forums) that are healing-relevant, with a note about why you should consider them. Note that you may still use other sets that provide 2/3/4 item bonuses, though it is currently unknown if percentage based bonuses will work (such as 4% increased healing done or received).

Sets with 5 piece bonuses that are active:

  • Amber Plasm is the best choice for magicka recovery.
  • Crafty Alfiq is the best choice for max magicka.
  • Fortified Brass is the best choice for defence.
  • Impregnable is a solid choice if fighting opponents with high critical strike chance and damage. It mitigates 25% of extra critical strike damage.
  • Law of Julianos is a well rounded set with critical strike chance, max magicka, and spell damage.
  • Mother’s Sorrow is the best choice for critical strike chance.
  • Shacklebreaker is a well rounded set giving both magicka and stamina recovery, max stat, and damage.

Sets with 3 piece bonuses only:

  • Grace of the Ancients provides max magicka.
  • Trainee provides all three max stats, and if you need more health then using just 1 piece can be helpful.
  • Willpower provides max magicka and spell damage.

Sets with 1 piece bonuses only (during the testing period) are as follows. Note that there are other monster sets that provide only one stat (such as spell damage instead of both spell and weapon damage). I’m listing only the ones that provide both as more stats feels better, even if you don’t really use them.

Champion Points

For most pure healing builds, you’ll likely put 100 points into each of Blessed (extra healing) and Elfborn (extra critical healing). Most of the rest of your CP will likely remain the same, though with raw stats and likely more critical strike chance on your opponents, adding points into Resistant and ensuring that all of your armour has the Impenetrable trait will likely be helpful.

Builds

There are going to be many schools of thought for builds. Depending on your role and responsibilities for a group, or what you want to accomplish when solo, you can pick and choose any given combination. Note that as always, I advise that healers run five light armour, one medium armour, and one heavy armour maintaining 5 / 1 / 1 for armour and Undaunted passives. Without Spectre’s Eye or Gossamer procs available that provide Major Evasion, magicka builds may want to run two swords in order to cast Quick Cloak. Note that stamina builds will run Shuffle.

  • The super-high output crit build: 5 Mother’s Sorrow / 5 Law of Julianos / 1 Grundwulf / 1 Slimecraw. This build will provide very high output with very high critical chances. You will probably need to use magicka recovery on all three jewelry, and may want to swap monster sets to also have recovery if you find that you can’t manage your resources.
  • The super-regen build: 5 Amber Plasm / 5 Shacklebreaker / 1 Chokethorn / 1 Shadowrend. This build will provide the most magicka recovery to spam spells. If you’re used to being a purge or cleanse spammer, then this is the way.
  • The balanced high output build: 5 Mother’s Sorrow / 5 Crafty Alfiq / 1 Chokethorn / 1 Shadowrend. This build will provide a solid magicka pool, approximately 50% critical strike chance (with mage light on your bar for major buff), and reasonable recovery.
  • The max stat build: 5 Crafty Alfiq / 3 Willpower / 2 Trainee / 1 Domihaus / 1 Swarm Mother. This build will provide the largest magicka pool for high output and continuous casting. Your recovery will suffer, so ensure that you heavy attack when possible and that your group leader gives you recovery periods.
  • The solo build: 5 Fortified Brass / 5 {Shacklebreaker or Amber Plasm} / 1 Domihaus / 1 Swarm Mother. This build provides reasonable defence, reasonable recovery, reasonable stats, but doesn’t excel at anything. I believe that many will end up running this combination unless they are in a min/max group.
  • The small (5-6) group build: 5 Crafty Alfiq / 5 Shacklebreaker or Amber Plasm / 1 Domihaus / 1 Swarm Mother. This build provides reasonable output, sustain, and lets you tower hump with the best of them while in a magicka build.
  • The fighting ball groups build: 5 Impregnable / 5 Shacklebreaker or Amber Plasm / 1 Chokethorn / 1 Shadowrend. This build provides more critical damage resistance (as it is expected that ball groups will orient towards more critical damage), along with more magicka recovery to be able to cast more healing and purges/cleanses.
  • The do whatever the heck you want build: 5 of any relevant set / 4 of any other set (that has a 5-set bonus disabled) / 3 of yet another set such as Willpower of Trainee.
  • The ugly naked vampire build: There used to be a player on PC/NA who we referred to as “The Ugly Naked Vampire”. He didn’t do much, but he made us laugh. Remember that this is a video game, and should be fun. If it gets too frustrating, it may be a good time to take a break from the game and appreciate everything else in your life.

In some of these, there’s a debate to be had between Shacklebreaker and Amber Plasm. There is value in both, with the deciding factor likely to be how easy it is to get. Shacklebreaker is craftable, so you can get it in any weight and any slot easily enough, whereas Amber Plasm needs to be farmed in an irritatingly long dungeon and I’m sure we all know the pain of looking for one specific weapon that just won’t drop after over 100 runs.

Stamina Warden

I sometimes play a stamina warden healer. What I’m thinking about right now for that is:

  • 5 Leviathan / 5 Hunding’s Rage / 1 Domihaus / 1 Swarm Mother. If there are any stamina recovery challenges, I’ll swap one of the monster set pieces for 1 Bloodspawn. This build provides very high critical strike chance, and with the associated champion points, should be able to pump out similar raw healing numbers to any magicka healer build, with even better survivability.

Conclusion

Please keep in mind that these are my current thoughts, and they are subject to change on a minute to minute basis. If you’d like to chat about any of this, or just chill/lurk watching as others do, you’re welcome to join us on the Just Chill Discord.

Version History

  • Version 0.1 – 2021/02/10 @ 10:00am (Initial request for comments).
  • Version 0.2 – 2021/02/10 @ 2:00pm (Because Steve is lazy and doesn’t want to farm).
  • Version 1.0 – 2021/02/10 @ 2:30pm (Posted link to forums).
  • Version 1.1 – 2021/02/10 @ 4:20pm (Added Impregnable as an option – thanks Alendrin, and added the fighting ball groups build).
  • Version 1.2 – 2021/02/10 @ 5:00pm Ugly naked vampire.
  • Version 1.3 – 2021/02/10 @ 6:40pm – Added Stamina Warden.