Heal Master

I didn’t think it possible based on the craptastic amount of healing that the SwordMaster tactics actually bring in (32 a tick and 45 a tick) but I actually think I’ve been able to build a heal master (when you want to be of course). The thing is you won’t get credit for your blessing of heaven healing in scenarios, but if it did show up I think you might see healing numbers in the 50K area or so, not bad for a defensive tank. Who knows, it could be much higher, its too hard for me to tell (I wonder if a mod would track that as healing for me, hmmm). In any case back to the topic at hand, its quite enjoyable in pve and sometimes in pvp, to be able to heal as a tank.

The spec is full Hoeth, taking everything except calming winds tactic (obviously you can do this before full Hoeth but this is when I’ve actually tried it so its hard to comment on using it earlier). Calming winds I skipped because I wasn’t sure (and still can’t tell) if the extra disrupt is even all that good. Reports on the forums are that high int classes negate it altogether anyway. So I took the rest, Bolstering Enchantments (heal tactic), AA (extra armor and disrupt), PoH (Bubble, super useful for absorbing damage while you are healing yourself), Blessing of Heaven (other heal tactic), Whispering Winds (lowers your cool down on PoH so you can use it in each cycle a few times and/or lowers your aoe knockdown to once per cycle for extra damage).

You can play with your gear, but if I go full defensive gear I can gather up a massive amount of enemies with this spec 35+ and then kill them all at once. Sure it’s a little slow since my damage is low, but its way faster than say putting on damage gear and killing them a few at a time for sure. If I put on my strength gear but leave on 1h sword and shield I can gather a little less but kill them all faster so it’s a slight tradeoff and I haven’t determine which is faster, but I have determined that one can level up quite fast this way, and its super fun to have that many mobs beating on you and not being able to kill you before you kill them all. Makes you feel pretty darn powerful hehe.

So here is what you do, equip your gear and put on the tactics Bolstering, Blessing of Heaven, and Rugged. Gather up the mobs while hitting them with EB>WoH>PoH>WoH rinse and repeat till you have a nice pile (start small until you get used to the idea). You can toss in a Gusting Wind if you feel you are taking too much heat, however I like to keep them pretty close and not let them wander off so I usually don’t. Then when you do have them all nice and lined up in a pile around you position them in front of you and start whacking away. PoH when its up as your opener, almost always WoH for your second attack (though if you feel you are getting crushed you can throw in an Eagles flight every third chain or more to keep you going, I usually don’t have to). Gusting Wind for your finisher when its up, when its not up hit whispering wind to lower the cool down on your PoH and your Gusting Wind.

That’s it, I got half a level from 36-37 last night in just a few hours (I was rested though). Also I was doing it in a pq with a ton of mobs so was getting the completion bonus, not sure if that was slowing me down or giving me extra but was doing it to try and get a gold bag (not sure if you can get one on easy pq’s hehe). Tactics can be experimented with, I’m going to try replacing Rugged with PE for more damage and see how that works out. In the end you just have to balance how many you can take on and at what speed. It is truly remarkable to be able to take on that many at all by yourself though, enough so that I thought I would share. Later if I have time I think I will write down the actual heal and damage numbers or load a mod so I can see what kind of healing per second I’m doing and what kind of dps as well. Whats nice is with all the blocks/parrys/dodge/disrupts plus PoH absorbs the heals even though small add up fast since a lot of the damage you aren’t taking in the first place. Also with really high armor you are taking a pretty small amount of damage from pve mobs.

In PvP this also works to an extent, however players can/will burn you down a lot better as they can cc you, disable you, and do a lot more damage than the mobs in general. Its still pretty fun though, usually can only take about 4 people on though and they will kill you eventually (sometimes faster than others). Have made some pretty nice stands using it though, guarding a location for quite some time till help comes. The best part about the whole thing is being full Hoeth I can swap strait out into my Str gear (2her or 1h up to me), change my tactic sets to EA, PE, +anything else, and do some pretty impressive damage. Makes for a lot of fun.