Blackwood Healer Notes

 

Better late then never >...>

Overall: It was a great patch for warden and templar healers. Wardens got better chance to proc bleed, while templars got overall adjustments to make them on par with wardens again. A special note to cp passives that synergizes cleansing ritual and that while purging allies it can proc heal passive. For pvp, healing reduction means best move on from troll king, also check to make sure stats add up to 39k magicka for some healing sets.

Notes:

Companions was the big drop from this patch. For healers they can add so more dps in overland adventures or enjoy having a tank with you for prefect support comb!

• Fine (green), superior (blue) and epic (purple) quality companion equipment with traits are obtained from monster drops throughout the world, particularly from bosses.
  • This equipment can be traded so it can be bought and sold on the market. 
• Equipment above white quality also comes with companion-centric traits:
• Quickened (Cooldown Reduction)
• Prolific (Ultimate Generation)
• Focused (Critical Strike Chance)
• Shattering (Penetration)
• Aggressive (Damage Done)
• Soothing (Healing Done)
• Augmented (Ability Buff and Debuff Duration)
• Bolstered (Reduce Damage Taken)
• Vigorous (Max Health)

From personal experience you want cooldown reduction to make the post out of at least tanks companions. I would assume you want to mix it up Augmented and cooldown reduction for healer

• Each companion has a unique associated non-combat perk which benefits you while active. 
  • Mirri's Expertise: Treasure Chests found through Treasure Maps and in the Overland have a 30% chance to provide additional loot from hidden compartments. The treasure from these hidden compartments may contain additional gold, sellables or recipes.
  • Bastian's Insight: Potions looted from chests and monsters have a 30% chance to be improved by Bastian's Insight. 

The potion one is nice for random dungeons adventures and of course chest one is a must.

Sets

• Stone-Talker’s Oath – Light
• 2 – Adds 129 Magicka Recovery
• 3 – Gain Minor Aegis at all times, reducing your damage taken from Dungeon, Trial, and Arena Monsters by 5%.
• 4 – Adds 129 Magicka Recovery
• 5 – Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka (Perfected only)
• 5 – Your fully-charged Heavy Attacks place a soul bomb on your target that charges as the target takes damage. After 10 seconds, the bomb explodes, restoring 5% of the damage received as Stamina and Magicka, up to 2240 Stamina and Magicka, to 12 group members within 16 meters of the explosion. This effect can occur every 10 seconds.

This replaces hollowfang for majority of people. It's also unbalanced and providing more resources then kyne's wind another resource set.

• Saxhleel Champion – Heavy
• 2 – Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka
• 3 – Gain Minor Aegis at all times, reducing your damage taken from Dungeon, Trial, and Arena Monsters by 5%.
• 4 – Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina
• 5 – Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina (Perfected only)
• 5 – When you cast an Ultimate ability, you and up to 11 group members within 28 meters of you gain Major Force for 1 second for every 15 Ultimate spent, increasing your Critical Damage done by 20%. You must be in combat to gain the effects from this set.

This set is mostly used by tanks, but Necro healers only have been finding this useful with atro + major force + Master architect.

• The following sets now scale off of your Max Magicka or Stamina, whichever is higher:
• Draugr's Rest's heal
  • This set now ticks every 2 seconds instead of 1.
• Hiti's Hearth's heal
  • This set now ticks every 2 seconds instead of 1.
• Oblivion's Edge's heal

More options for those wierdos stamina healers (sorry >..>) 

• Hollowfang Thirst: Reduced the Magicka restored from this set to 1750, down from 2523.

We all know it deserved this nerf. It still has minor vitality attached to it so good set for times.

• The following sets now scale off of your Max Magicka or Stamina, whichever is higher:
• Chokethorn's heal
• Earthgore's heal
• Nightflame's heal

• The following sets now scale off of your Max Magicka or Stamina, whichever is higher:
• 
  
• Twilight Remedy's healing
• Draugr's Heritage's heal
• Trinimac's Valor's damage and healing
• Winter's Respite's heal
• The heal now ticks every 2 seconds instead of 1.

• The following set now scales off of your Max Magicka or Stamina, whichever is higher:
• Almalexia's Mercy's heal

Stamina healer options and also sets that you need 39k magicka or stamina to get full effect.

The following sets now scale off your Max Health:

• Battalion Defender's heal

Next move for Tank healers. It's a buff for them.

• Almalexia's Mercy: Fixed an issue where this set healed for its intended full value each tick, rather than over the duration. This will result in a significant reduction of this set's power, as it was never intended to acquire the godlike powers of Almalexia herself.

Missed Opportunity... as I had this set since my noob days. Nothing much to say, but I guessed it deserved nerf.  

Combat

• The following abilities will now deal purely Bleed Damage rather than Physical Damage or a mix of Physical and Bleed Damage.
• Bloodthirst (morph of Flurry)
• Carve (morph of Cleave)
• Cutting Dive (morph of Dive)
• Pounce and morphs
• Trap Beast and morphs
• Twin Slashes and morphs

If interested in using minor mangle debuff in bleed then this is good news for wardens! Another support tool got stronger in arsenal. Reminder that physical damage also has a chance for minor breech too, so many sure you add your cp for status effects and use charge staff for the most support!

The Battle Spirit passive now also reduces your Health Recovery by 50%.

• Minor Lifesteal and Magickasteal: Both of these effects have received significant backend adjustments to how they operate, fixing many cases where the caster of the effect would change contexts. They now are considered to be sourced from the caster of the effect, rather than the target of the effect.
• Minor Lifesteal will now exhibit the following behavior:
• Healing Done from the caster of the effect
• Healing Taken from the triggerer of the effect
• Critical Strike Chance and Bonus of the triggerer of the effect
• It will continue to not proc events such as healing caused as it is a procced event.

• Restoration Staff
• Blessing of Protection:
  • Fixed an issue where this ability could force you to cast the ability in directions that were not where your cursor was pointed.
  • Fixed an issue where the visuals from this ability and its morphs lasted longer if you had the Dark Veil passive unlocked. The light shall no longer try to flush out the dark when unintended.
• Panacea: Fixed an issue where this Ultimate and its morphs were not labeled as healing abilities on their initial cast.
• Steadfast Ward
• Ward Ally (morph): Fixed an issue where the ally targeting shield was not considered a Restoration Staff ability.

Notes: Bug fixes

Undaunted

• Necrotic Orbs:
  • This ability and its morphs now tick once every second, rather than every half second.
  • Increased the damage per tick of this ability and the Mystic Orbs morph by approximately 16%.
  • Decreased the travel speed of the orb so it's easier to land multiple ticks on low mobility enemies. This will be an overall DPS loss, getting these abilities closer to other AoE DoTs in power. Note these will still be stronger than most other DoTs due to having higher variance of performance, especially in high mobility in encounters.
  • Fixed an issue where the AoE size of the synergy from this ability and its morphs were 7 meters instead of 8 meters.
    • Healing Orbs (morph): Increased the healing per tick of this morph by approximately 38%. This will result in less total healing overall but will still be stronger than most other AoE HoTs due to its mobile nature.

Notes: Orb nerf was justified and still all on healers bars.

• Item sets that proc events that deal damage or heal now scale similarly to abilities, based on specific stats, which will now be called out in the tooltip. Check each section to see which sets scale with what! The following scaling methods are currently available, which may expand or change in the future:
• Damage focused proc-based events will scale with the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.
  • You must have 6,574 Weapon or Spell Damage to reach the original value of many sets.
• Healing focused proc-based events will scale with the higher of your Max Magicka or Stamina.
  • You must have 39,901 Max Magicka or Stamina to reach the original value of many sets.
• Tanking focused proc-based events will either scale with your Max Health, and in some rare cases, will use the higher of your Physical or Spell Resistance.
• You must have 43,968 Max Health or 30,680 Physical or Spell Resistance to reach the original value of many sets.

Notes: I don't understand why we went into direction of stacking resources. Still have yet to see healers with 40k magicka naturally without buffs. 

• Ring of the Pale Order:
• Increased the amount of healing done from this set to 20% of your damage done, up from 18%.
• This set now loses 4% of its value per group member you are with. This means if you are alone it will stay at 20% but reduce to 8% if you are in a group with 3 other players, and 0% when with 5 or more other players.
• Removed the heal cap from this set.

Notes: I won't be convinced next time such a set pops up! Set was a plague for healers and glad it got nerfs. It's still used in dungeons though unfortunately but at least trials it's gone for good.

Classes

Necromancer

• Grave Lord
• Boneyard:
  • This ability and its morphs now lasts 10 seconds in total instead of 10.5 seconds.
  • The synergy from these abilities now heal the synergy activator rather than the caster of the synergy source.
• Death Knell: Reduced the amount of Critical Chance granted from this passive to 2/4% per Grave Lord ability slotted, down from 5/10%.
• Bone Tyrant
• Bone Totem: Reworked the base operations of this ability’s rank up progression to result in the same values at Rank IV, but with less decimal places along the way.
• Agony Totem (morph):
• The synergy from this morph, Pure Agony, now has a 6 person target cap rather than hitting unlimited targets.
• Fixed an issue where the final tick of this synergy's damage was not amplified its own Minor Vulnerability source.
• Fixed an issue where the damage also caused hit reactions, despite being a Damage over Time effect.
• Notes: Mostly bug fixes or slight adjustments. One thing to take note of is that less critical bonus. Still useful in the patch that killed everyone's critical.
• 
  
• 
  

Sorcerer

• Dark Magic
  • Negate Magic:
    • The morphs of this ability now tick every 1 second instead of 500ms.
    • Increased the potency of their ticks by 103.3% to ensure their DPS/HPS remains almost the same, as well as fixing an issue where their values were missing rank up progression built into them.
    • Scrolling Combat Text now properly displays successful silences with these abilities.
• Storm Calling
• Bolt Escape
• Ball of Lightning (morph): This ability’s projectile absorption now operates more closely to Spell Wall or other abilities that deal with absorbing/deflecting ranged attacks. This should fix a few issues where it could absorb attacks it shouldn’t have been able to.

Notes: Slight nerfs to both support options sorc healers got.

Templar

• Aedric Spear
  • Spear Shards
    • Luminous Shards (morph): This morph’s synergy now restores full resources for the Magicka and Stamina granted, rather than half of the off stat granted.

• Nova:
• The synergy from this Ultimate and the Solar Disturbance morph, Supernova, now stuns enemies for 3 seconds, up from 2.5 seconds.
• Removed the target cap for the damage, Major Maim, and Synergy Damage + Stun on all versions of these Ultimates.
• Fixed an issue where Major Maim from these Ultimates was applying twice, resulting in more damage reduction than intended.
• Solar Prison (morph):
  • The synergy from this morph, Gravity Crush, now has the proper radius of 8 meters instead of 10.
  • Increased the damage of this synergy by approximately 14%.
• Solar Disturbance (morph):
• Reduced the base cost of this morph to 225, down from 250.
• This Ultimate now ranks up in duration of the Major Maim applied to enemies, rather than damage done.
• Major Maim now lasts 7 seconds at base and ranks up to 10 seconds, rather than 4 seconds at all ranks.
• Cleansing Ritual: The synergy from this ability and its morphs no longer requires you to have a negative effect on you to activate.

• This morph now increases the healing done by 25% and ranks up in healing done by 1.1% per rank, rather than duration (note the duration remains at 20 seconds due to the base ability duration increasing).
• Increased the Stamina restored per tick to 242, up from 240.
• Reduced the base cost to 918, down from 920, to ensure it meets the 15% standard cost reduction of Stamina based abilities. That 2 Stamina may save your life one day, just maybe.

Notes: Target cap of nova no longer exists which makes templar a unique existent damage reduction department. Cleansing Ritual change on it's synergy makes only it only class that can provide to synergies to entire group just via class skills

Warden

• Winter’s Embrace
  • Arctic Wind: Reduced the base heal of this ability and its morphs by 20% and the Heal over Time from this ability and its morphs by approximately 17%.

Notes: Slight nerf

Champion System

Warfare

• Added 6 new stars (or in some cases, returning ones!) in this constellation, 4 of which are in the new and final sub constellation – Mastered Curation. Note that these are all slotted stars.
• Enlivening Overflow: Over-healing yourself or an ally grants them Health, Magicka, and Stamina Recovery equal to 0.5% of your Max Magicka for 6 seconds, up to a cap of 150. This effect can occur once every 12 seconds per target. Singular stage worth 50 points.
• From the Brink: Healing yourself or a target under 25% Health grants them a Damage Shield that absorbs 2200 Damage per stage for 6 seconds. 30 second cooldown per target. 5 stages max, at 10 points per stage.
• Hope Infusion: Healing yourself or an ally under 50% Health grants them Minor Heroism. Duration is based on your Magicka Recovery, granting 1 second every 300 Recovery. This effect can occur once every 10 seconds per target. Singular stage worth 50 points.
• Salve of Renewal: When you remove a negative effect from yourself or an ally, you heal them and allies within an 8 meter radius of them for 1280 Health per stage. 5 stages max, at 10 points per stage.

Now these passives are fun! I want to make a special note on salve of renewel is great with templar passive, but all healers who use purge. In addition, Salve of Renewal Scales with one of old cp passives for free purge. As such, I would pick Salve of Renewal, and whatever name of free purge passive, from the brink for compete protection. 

Misc

Updates to Perfected & Non-Perfected Sets
In Update 30, you can now wear perfected and non-perfected sets in combination with each other. Doing so will grant the bonuses associated with the non-perfected set until you wear all 5 pieces of perfected.

For those not bested by luck gods, here's a chance to mix and match sets from perfect and non perfect versions, while you complete the grind