Shot to Life: Raydra's Guide to PvE Healslinging v2.0

NO LONGER MAINTAINED AS OF 12/04/14!

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Updated 11/11/14: Updated for Defile!

Glossary:

C(x) - Charge (x)
CC - Crowd Control
CD - Cooldown
FS - Focus Stone
GF - Gather Focus
HPS - Healing Per Second
HOT - Heal Over Time
HS - Healing Salve
HT - Healing Torrent
RB - Reduced Burden
RoP - Runes of Protection
SFD - Surge Focus Drain
SP - Support Power
SS - Spell Surge
T(x) - Tier (x)
VB - Vitality Burst
VP - Void Pact
VS - Voidspring

Raydra's Builds:

These are the core of the builds I personally use and are here to give a healslinger some foundations to fall back on.

My core AMP build for all LASs listed leaves us with 2+ points free. My personal recommendations would be to either go Critical Severity II or Focus Cost II depending upon whether you have focus issues or not.

Raid Healing LAS

This build leaves 9+ ability points to play with. My recommendation is to invest either in HT or VS.

Tank Healing LAS

This build leaves 1 ability point to play with. My recommendation is to throw it in HT or RH depending upon whether you want a little more burst or a little more stability.

Veteran LAS

This build leaves 14+ ability points to play with and one LAS slot. For the slot I'd recommend using VS or HS if you'd like more healing over time, RoP if you'd like an emergency button, or GF if you are having focus issues. For the points just experiment with whatever you like and keep what works for you.

How to Heal:

Raid/Veteran:

Stay surged to take advantage of Power Surge, use T8 C1 Vitality Burst (which won't consume spell power) and Voidspring, weave in C2 Sustains when that isn't enough, and done. Salve can be useful on the odd fight (such as Kuralak), and maybe we'll have to snipe someone with Healing Torrent or Runes every now and again, but for the most part this is all we have to do to pump out enough numbers to see our group or raid through. Healing this way we don't run out of spell power (unless something goes horribly, horribly wrong) either and it's extremely focus efficient.

Tank:

Tank healing is a little more involved as we'll be regularly casting more abilities while weaving in and out of spell surge. Since many of said abilities are not smart casts we also need to be mindful of positioning. The crux of this LAS is to spam RH and use HT as needed while burning RoP on cooldown and maintaining as close to 100% uptime on HS as possible for our tanks.

For managing spell power you're going to want every HS you throw out to be surged. Aside from that surge whatever RoPs you can while maintaining a pool of at least 50 spell power to fall on for emergency situations.

Sustain we used to assist with raid healing. It's so powerful that even in a tank healing build it's ideal to run it and help out with raid heals as needed. If you or your raid leader is 100% confident in the existing raid healers you can replace it with Regenerative Pulse or Astral Infusion.

Focus Management:

Surge Focus Drain:

What may not be immediate to a fresh healslinger is being aware that casting a surged heal that is not a charged ability will apply Surge Focus Drain. SFD is a debuff that consumes 18 focus over three seconds. On top of other focus issues if SFD is thrown about carelessly it will severely impact your longevity in a fight. When you do trigger SFD know that it only refreshes, not stacks. You can throw out 2-3 (non-charged) surged heals at a time and clip focus drain from each successive cast.

Gearing for Focus:

Getting 12/12 Serenity through the Focus Regen or Life Giver rune sets, as well as picking up a pair of Torine Lifecaller Epaulets (or another piece of gear with the Reduced Burden special) makes focus management trivial. These should be your first two goals as a fresh healslinger with an emphasis on Reduced Burden.

Building Your Own:

Primary AMPs:

These are the AMPs I consider mandatory for every build.

Support Power III:

Increases support power by 2.5% per rank, up to 7.5%. This is a no-brainer. An extra 7.5% SP for a mere 3 AMP points is insanely good.

Clarity:

Using an ability grants a 10% chance to reduce focus costs by 20% for 4s. Clarity triggers extremely often, giving us healslingers a huge chunk of focus efficiency to help offset SFD and high-cost heals.

Healing Torrent:

Unlocks the Healing Torrent ability. See "Healing Torrent" in the LAS section.

Healing Aura:

Using an SSed ability causes you and 4 allies within 35m to restore (x) HP/s for 5s. Mileage will vary depending upon play style, but free, passive healing is very hard to give up. A footnote: this tooltip is misleading, the ability must consume spell power for Healing Aura to trigger.

Critical Hit III: 

Increases critical hit chance by 2% per rank, up to 6%. An extra 6% crit is a huge chunk of throughput and will help trigger specials/rune sets. Another no-brainer.

Power Surge:

While under the affects of SS increases assault and support power by 8.6%. A lot of builds allow a healslinger to stay surged for the entirety of the fight or near to it. Having an extra 8.6% SP basically for free? Yes, please. Even if your play style calls for you to largely keep SS off having that extra SP to help deal with spike damage is a worthwhile investment.

Focus Stone:

Using GF grants a FS for the next 3 minutes. On use FS restores 100 focus, (x) HP, and 10 spell power. With proper gearing and management FS is a very powerful tool that can guarantee you practically limitless longevity in a fight. It has its drawbacks in being tied to GF but they're far outweighed.

Cooldowns III:

Reduces CDs by 5% per rank, up to 15%. More Sustain, VS, VP, GF/FS, RoP, etc. etc. Way too good to skip for any conceivable build.

Secondary AMPs:

These are the AMPs I feel may be worth investing in depending upon situation or play style.

Augmented Armor:

Landing a heal on an ally affected by Affinity, RoP, or HS increases their armor rating by 8% for 10s. If you make heavy use of any of those abilities this AMP will be worth investing in. Otherwise there are other options that may be more useful.

Burst Power:

Landing a critical heal generates 6 spell power, can only occur every 6s. Burst Power has the easily realized potential to net you an extra 60 spell power every minute. Mileage will vary with play style but I never go without it.

Holy Roller:

Using a unique support ability within the last 10s increases SP by 1% for 10s, stacks 7 times. A healslinger doesn't regularly rotate through many healing spells within a 10 second period, so you won't see the maximum value from this AMP. Regardless, I've heard this AMP get so much flak but it's still powerful enough to take. To put it in perspective at the time of this post just keeping up my usual combo of VB and Sustain while SSed makes the difference between 2822 SP and 2878. Hard to say that isn't worth 4 AMP points, and it only gets better with gear.

Void Pact:

Unlocks the Void Pact ability. See "Void Pact" in the LAS section.

The best way to reach Void Pact is by taking Dash Regeneration III, CC Resilience I, and Evasive Manoeuvres. Reorient sounds good, but the tooltip is misleading in the fact that you must be dazed to gain the 40% endurance. That won't be happening often enough in dungeons or raids to warrant taking it over other options.

Homeward Bound:

Once per minute taking damage that would kill you instead places you in the void for 4s. If you've gone down to Void Pact this AMP may be worth considering. It sounds quite powerful, and sometimes is, but you must consider how many times it will actually save you. Shifting into the void won't do much good when somebody just blew you off of X-89's platform. Much like Void Slip this AMP also requires solid observational and anticipatory skills, lest you be reduced to playing telegraph roulette when you come back out.

Last Picks:

These are healing AMPs that you can spend points on where there's no better options.

Focus Recovery I-III:

Increases focus recovery rate by 0.1 per second. At III this line of AMPs will give you 1 focus every 3.33s. It's a very poor investment and should only be taken if you're having focus issues and have exhausted all of your other options.

Focus Cost I-III:

Reduces focus cost of spells by 2% per rank, up to 6%. If Clarity and GF/FS are not enough to manage your focus, or you'd like to rely on GF/FS less, Focus Cost may be worth investing in. It's important to note that these stack with Clarity making your focus cost reduction as high as 26% when Efficiency is running.

Critical Severity I-III:

Increases critical hit severity by 4% per rank, up to 12%. If you don't have a better use for your AMP points building into Critical Severity can give you a very small but consistent boost to HPS.

Saviour:

Landing a heal on an ally below 30% HP grants a 10% chance to restore an additional (x) HP every 2s for 4s. The healing provided by this AMP is significant and can save a DPS or two from time to time, but you have absolutely no control over who or when making it highly unpredictable and unreliable.

Why Not Desperation?

You're going to want either Focus Stone or Desperation, we simply don't have the need for both, so let's compare.

Desperation generates 200 focus over 8s once every 2 minutes when your focus is below 100. Let's talk advantages. Desperation will save you the LAS slot, will activate on its own, and will not impose any negative effects. The bad? Your focus has to sink dangerously low for you to see any benefit from this AMP.

GF/FS on the other hand will give you 160 focus every 48s if used on CD, so in terms of potential focus recovery it's a clear winner. On top of this GF/FS will grant you 28 spell power in tandem, once again every 48s if used on CD. GF/FS offers you total control allowing you to burn GF when Diminish hurts least and using FS whenever thereafter, so with good timing the Diminish is completely manageable.

In short I just feel that as far as PvE is concerned GF/FS does everything better. It's safer, it's controlled, and it returns more though at the cost of an LAS slot.

LAS:

Runic Healing:

Runic Healing was previously a cheap and reasonably powerful tank heal if you can regularly afford to take advantage of its stationary bonus. After Drop 3 it has become a cheap and very powerful tank heal. The T4 is significant in fights with consistent incoming magic damage, and it gets an extra 5m to its range at T6. The T8 bonus is too heavy an investment for the few moments where it's useful, so I'd advise skipping it. Taking this between tiers base through 7 in 5-man content is a good choice, and a number of raiding healslingers run it at low tiers to help out on tank healing during breaks in raid damage. Surge this as little as possible, or ideally not at all.

Runes of Protection:

Runes of Protection is great for situations where the full absorb will be consumed. As such it is a good choice when tank healing and for fights like Kuralak that have heavy, predictable group damage. It's also a great emergency button due to being instant cast. I'd recommend keeping RoP at base unless you really have nowhere else to spend your points. Surge this if you can afford the cost.

Vitality Burst:

I would have to say that Vitality Burst is our most powerful heal overall. The T4 bonus will combo into other heals beautifully, then there's the bugged T8. Currently the C1 triggers the bonus, and not just over 3 seconds but 4 giving C1 an extra tick. This a massively focus-efficient heal, but each tick on each target also causes your AMPs, rune sets, and specials to trigger. Throwing out a steady flow of SSed C1 VBs will actually gain you focus over time with 12/12 Serenity and RB. It will also cause very high uptime on Clarity, specials like Rage and Concentration, and almost guarantee full value out of the Burst Power AMP.

Astral Infusion:

Providing a nice burst of healing up-front with a HoT component Astral Infusion is a good option when tank healing, but there are more versatile options in our arsenal. The T8 bonus is nice but requires too heavy an investment. If you take it keep it at base/low tiers and save it as an emergency button. Surge it as much as possible.

Healing Salve:

HS has always felt like more of a PvP ability to me. It has its moments like Kuralak where group damage comes in steadily, and it can definitely be used to great effect when tank healing. If you're going to take this for PvE going up to T4 is a great choice as it practically doubles the healing potential. Surge as much as possible.

Dual Fire:

Dual Fire is a decent ability to take when you over-gear content and can afford to take a more potent heal off of your LAS. This is mostly due to its T8 bonus which will grant your party a bit of damage boost via strikethrough. The healing, while not inherently poor, doesn't measure up to other options, and the damage while non-zero is still very insignificant. I wouldn't recommend surging this at all as, again, the reason to take Dual Fire is strictly for the buff/debuff.

Healing Torrent:

Healing Torrent is our only reliable burst heal. Take care to recognize that it's applied to targets when they're hit by the projectile rather than inside the telegraph when the cast finishes. In other words: Healing Torrent is a skill shot. It's already great at base, but you can tier it up to 4 to get some synergy out of HS and/or VS if you don't need the points elsewhere. You should not need to use HT often enough to warrant the T8 so I'd advise running this at T7 at most. Surge this if you can afford the cost, just be careful with the debuff. Combined with SFD it can really do a number on your focus bar.

Voidspring:

Voidspring is a great way to get steady, reliable group healing, though its healing value is relatively low. Its high uptime and target cap make it a fantastic way to help keep your group stable. As with any ground-targeted AoE you want to be mindful of timing and positioning, casting it when and where it will get the most healing done over its duration. It's tier bonuses and scaling are lacklustre, so there's nothing wrong with keeping VS at base. Surge if you can afford the cost.

Regenerative Pulse:

Where to start with this one. Regenerative Pulse's design is highly impractical and risky. If one were to tier it up to 8 and could consistently trigger the T4 bonus I could see Regenerative Pulse being a very powerful tank heal, but with the concept of an LAS slotting a heal that's unreliable at best doesn't feel like a good decision. If you're going to take this it should be with the intent of tank healing, so tier the sucker up to 8 and get that OP bonus. The cooldown is so low and the cost so efficient that I would not recommend surging this at all. Save it for something big like a HT.

Sustain:

An argument could be made that Sustain serves little purpose in veteran content, but it is one of if not the most useful raid heal in the game with it's charge, low cooldown, and tier bonuses. I've seen a lot of healslingers advocate never surging it, but in a raid environment it is our most powerful heal, so why would you not want it to benefit from the Power Surge AMP? Play around with it for veterans and see what suits your playstyle, but taking it at T8 for raiding is absolutely a must.

Gate:

Our only gap closer. Raids tend to consist of highly mobile fights, so it may get a lot of use in that environment. In dungeons and adventures you can easily afford to save the LAS slot for something else. The interrupt portion of Gate is largely irrelevant to a healer. Generally speaking we should have no place on the interrupt order.

Void Slip:

Void Slip's primary use is as a CC break but it has a couple of tricks you can do with it. You can slip into the void at low health, buying you a few seconds to heal yourself before jumping back into the fray. You can also use it when you're low on focus to break combat and eat. I'm sure there's more so feel free to get creative!

Purify:

A slinger's only cleanse. Purify is often useful, sometimes almost necessary, in dungeons. It's never a bad idea for your veteran LAS. On the flip-side it's nigh useless in a raid environment.

Gather Focus:

A very lacklustre ability on its own, but shines when paired with the Focus Stone AMP.

See "Focus Stone" under the Primary AMPs section and "Why not Desperation?" for info.

Void Pact:

I consider VP mandatory for all raiding slingers. It doesn't have a target cap, so while the CD may be long you can hit your entire raid with it. It's also a great way for a healslinger to justify their raid spot as its feasible for us to run it at T8 but inconceivable for DPS to. Can't bring the tank heals a medic can? OP espers smoking you in raw HPS? Bring T8 VP to the table and you'll always be able to squeeze in.

Affinity:

Generally Affinity is not as useful as other options, though this ability can see good use if you have the Augmented Armour AMP or if your tank is not receiving sufficient healing in a given raid or dungeon.

Gearing:

Generally speaking our current stat priority looks something like this:

Support Power > Insight > Critical Hit > Moxie > Critical Severity > Brutality

Now since insight feeds into milestones which grant support power exclusively things aren't always so straightforward. Make sure that if you are giving up insight for raw support power and losing a milestone in the process that it adds up to a net gain. In the same vein be aware of how close you are to your next milestone as you may be able to replace a bit of raw support power with insight pushing you to your next bonus for, again, a net gain.

Placing focus recovery rating in the middle of all this is a difficult task as you only want as much as you need and no more. I've heard you want to be in the ballpark of 3.5-4 focus/sec (with specials and rune sets) to have a comfortable amount of recovery, but don't take that as gospel. Keep it simple: if you observe that your focus recovery is inadequate for your playstyle and you've already acquired 12p Serenity and RB prioritize recovery rating between insight and critical hit.

Runes:

The strategy is simple: first reach a 12/12 Serenity bonus using the stat priority listed above, then continue following the stat priority afterwards taking care not to lose your 12/12 bonus.

Keep in mind you can only have one of a rune with the same element, from the same set, and with the same stat increase in one piece of gear. Say a piece of gear has three life slots. Placing a basic Rune of Insight in each of them will render the second and third runes null. However, you can place a basic Rune of Insight, a Focus Regen Rune of Insight, and a Life Giver Rune of Insight to maximize stat gain. As a disclaimer: doing so may inhibit your ability to reach a tier bonus. I advise prioritizing set bonuses until 12p Serenity.

Secondary Sets:

Once you've reached 12p Serenity, or if you can attain another set without stealing from it, these are our other sets of value. They don't do much for us at all, but they still do something.

Scatter Shots (PvP):
Landing a critical hit deals an additional (x) magic damage that spreads to 3 foes within 6m. Landing a critical heal restores an additional (x) health that spreads to 3 allies within 6m.

Surge Bank (Class):
Increases max spell power by 6/9/11.

Team Player (General):
Increases support power by 16/24/32 and grants a 25% chance to restore an additional (x) health when landing a heal on an ally that is below 30% health.

Useless sets are not so useless!:

A trick I'd advise using in your runing strategy is placing runes from otherwise useless sets strictly for the stat gain. For example: if you have a piece with triple water slots and you know you'll need two of those to maintain your Serenity bonus, what do you do with the third? Your first instinct may be to use a non-set rune for Insight, but did you know the Crystalize elder set actually has a support power rune for water? There are other sets that you can take advantage of, too, like using Focused Surge to rune double insight in a piece with two fire slots.

If you don't want to sift through all the sets to find out how you can game things give the RuneMaster addon a download. It'll do the legwork for you in addition to helping you plan out your runes. Say, that segues awfully nice into...

Recommended Addons:

Nameplates:

By adjusting plate size and information displayed, as well as cleanse alerts and other fancy features, nameplate addons can provide a much better healing experience. Whether it be Opti, Steady, nPrime, or whatever else, I encourage you to play around with different nameplate addons and see what you like best.

AuraMastery:

AuraMastery is a great tool for tracking all sorts of information from cooldowns, buffs/debuffs, resources, you name it. Check out my auras in the next sub-section or implement your own!

Metres:

I use metres to compare myself to past reports or encounters. Whether it's GalaxyMeter, NexusMeter, OdysseyMeter, or even WildStarLogger I like to see what abilities and strategies are working and which ones are not.

Interruptor:
"But Raydra!", you say, "You said healers shouldn't be called to interrupt!". Why yes, yes they should not. However Interruptor is also a very handy tool in the healslinger's arsenal. It automatically picks the highest ranking creature and will display their casts in a nice, big, accurate bar. You can time your casts and charges much better if you know exactly which abilities the boss is throwing out and precisely when they'll land.

AuraMastery Codes:

If you want to use AuraMastery you can check out the auras I use with these import codes. The LAS trigger for AuraMastery is currently broken, so you'll have to use the "Enable Aura" checkbox to toggle them on/off depending upon your LAS. Don't forget to hit the "Save Aura" button before switching to another one or closing the window altogether.

Sustain:
A simple tracker set to show the icon with a flashing border when Sustain is available and to display its CD if not.
Vitality Burst:
A very simple CD tracker that activates if VB goes on CD.
Voidspring:
When Voidspring is off of CD the icon will shine with a border. When cast the icon will disappear then re-appear when VS is within 3 seconds of becoming available.
Void Pact:
This aura will alert you to when the VP buff is not present on you (and therefore likely the group/raid) and yours is available to cast. Great for raids when you're rotating your Void Pacts with other spellslingers.
Gather Focus:
This aura will alert you if you have less than or equal to 80% focus and GF is off CD. If you use base GF/FS shortly after the icon becomes visible it will take your focus back up to the 95-100% range.

Healing Salve:
This aura will track if you have the HS buff on you and for how much longer. In the last two seconds of the buff's duration the icon will begin to flash with a border indicating that you should prepare to cast it again shortly.