Current best Am healing builds?

[masterzenith]

What are you current AM healing builds? I'm trying to figure out what the best tactics are, what the best rotations are, gear, etc...

[Detrytus]

Playing healspec most of my in game time.
Im using Sacrifivial Renewal, Empowered Lores and Wild Healing. All 3 tacticts are for me obligatory. 4th slot is a choice between Discipline/Master of Tranquility/Desperation/ Run Between Worlds. Not tested Isha Encouragement since patch even it was my favourite before.
I spec my renown into survival, so got full futile strikes IV, some wounds, deft defender III, quick escape. Using 5% crit heal and 60 wounds pie. My gear is full sov (all armor talis) with 8th piece bonus Absolute Preservation ability. This is for oh my situation, great lifesaver.
Imo AM is a lot better since patch. Great heal output, good surviveability, a lot of utility with undefendable 5 sec silence with 5/5 tranquility mechanic, ofc snare puddle and toughness debuff, party offensive stat buff and ap buff.
Heals are impressive with ticks from Funnel Essence for over 2k, aoe Group heal over 4k in some situations and Lambent Aura ticks boosted by mechanic 1,5 k tick. New aoe hot is worth using and has his place in healing rotation building mechanic. Im also a big fun of aoe hot proc on Blessing of Isha with 5 tranquility.
For me best patch heal spec AM ever had.

[vitaka]

I run the following:

https://builder.returnofreckoning.com/c ... 9293,32079

I don't use Discipline, but instead swapped out my Armour talis for Willpower ones, as RvR is mostly around positioning anyways. For cities or pre-made scenarios, I'd advocate armour talis as you're likely to get more focussed. Gear is full Sovereign and Fortress Staff, with 2x Annulus rings. RR in crit chance, 2x futile strikes, rest in Willpower. This gives me 212 Healing Power and 42% crit chance, with liniments.

Basic rotation for RvR is: (pre)HoT 5x with Lambent Aura > boosted Blessing of Isha (with group HoT due to 5x Tranq) > Phoenix's Rejuvenation > Energy of Vaul (if Whispering Wind is up, keep spamming it). You'll basically have 3x HoTs on people, plus group and out-of-group healing, creating major healing throughput to mitigate damage crunches.

Of course, there's more to it. You want to use Magical Infusion on key targets or those that are under pressure, especially as it's "off GCD" since last patch. Magical Infusion + Funnel Essence is also a great "oh ****!" combo. You want to ST heal, cleanse, use your puddle, etc, etc.

I've also tried Sacrificial Renewal since, like Wild Healing, it benefits from a high crit % but as it only procs of Direct Heals, I've not found it to be as useful. I also toyed with Desperation, but find it often doesn't trigger due to lag, and if there's cross-healing from other parties, it may keep your target above 30% - I'd rather invest in tactics that keep people "topped up".

All in all, Isha AM is in a really good spot where you get rewarded for using the mechanic, resulting in a more versatile game play than before.

[Toggle]

Kind of want to see this get more traction for the purely selfish reason that I’m sitting on 11k crests and have been waiting for healer changes to shake out to decide what direction to go with my heal set for AM. Was trying to decide between full sov vs. sov/triump mix for the heal proc. Would love to see more input/discussion from other AMs on the topic.

[PROsiak]

Unfortunately i cannot give you specific insight as i gave up healing spec after the patch. However since there has been some activity in the thread i have some questions that if answered might guide you into right direction.

When it comes to choosing gear most common options are as u said full sov or 6p triumph mix. Sov gear is picked mainly for 2 reasons - 8p set bonus for anti crit and +2 points in the tree. Since 8p bonus was not changed, it is just as valid, however +2 points might not be so desirable right now.

My first question would be how valid is EoV in pure healing spec? I see people mention still using it. To me it seems that the nerf to cast time, heal value and removal of heal crit from the skill also meaning no morale pump on it cements it as a dead skill for healing spec. So if that is true (correct me if i'm wrong) it means going for triump gear might be better choice. You would end up with something like 13/0/9 build, where you pick up silence as a great utility. You are probably going to use BoI or BoH quite often and that cast time from triumph might come in handy.

Now what worries me with the new AM mostly is tactics setup. I'll share what i've been using previously in my 13/0/13 build and i'll try to compare it to setups suggested now.
So previously i was using 10% heal crit, morale pump, desperation, insta rez. Morale pump/desperation could be swapped for example for AoE cleanse or some other tactic depending on need. As u can see, besides 10% heal crit and desperation rest tactics were for pure utility, u could even be running just 10% heal crit and 3 tactics for utility and u would still have very good healing potential.
Right now i mostly see tactics mandatory for healing numbers. 10% heal crit stays the same in all setups. Desperation, even tho slightly buffed is no longer tied to Magical infusion and is probably much less valuable than discipline, so i would pick discipline on that spot. I guess to get even comparable heal output to what was before, the new 25% more crit healig must be picked up. So we already sitting at 3/4 tactics. Now i'm not so sold on empowered lores. On paper it seems strong, in reality uptime is bad, and to get it running just right when u need it is also another story. So it might be increasing the numbers u see in the scoreboard, but in reality not translate directly to the number of targets saved. Also i dont know how people can be running Sacrifivial Renewal. With no armor whatsoever, more incentive to put willpower on talismans, also more incentive to go for crit IV in renown, so at most futile III, u might just get exploded in 3secs by some random squig switching targets on ya and getting critted by few attacks. So from remaining suggestions Light of Isha is a good choice, to get something u previously had build in.
As u can see all utility is gone, all tactics are pretty much there to boost your healing numbers.
When it comes to the mechanic i don't think it's even that much worth to care about it. You should focus on using the skills fit for the situation, and since reaching 5 force will be almost impossible due to constant prehotting your only spenders will occasionaly be 5 tranquility, which u could use for on the move Funnel Essence or things like better BoI.
If patch drops with some changes to AM i'll be happy to try it out again, but right now i find the new mechanic unfun and honestly i'm not buying the whole "heal AM is much better now" narrative. It lost it out of group healing potential, it's utility and the healing potential is not that impressive either. Sure, there are some situations where u will put much higher numbers than before, like for example on Funnel essence boosted by magical infusion and all the tactics. So in some small scale or scenarios u will do just fine. But that's about it.

[vitaka]

EoV got nerfed various times in a row, but is still valid. Previously it was our go-to heal, now it's just one of various choices that we have. It doesn't mean that it's dead though, although I now typically use only in a few instances:

1) At 5 Tranq and we're kiting, as it's an insta-cast
2) When Whispering Wind is up
3) Occassionally as a filler

Heal numbers for EoV aren't as high as our group heal, but remember that it heals out of group as well, so in WB situations it can still be very powerful as you can heal 24 rather than 6 people.

It's also the reason why I still run full Sov. For heal throughput, I'd prefer a Sov/Tri mix, but I'd lose the full Sov "Absolute Preservation" ability, plus won't be able to get EoV.

[PROsiak]

The question is at which point the opportunity cost of the skill becomes too high to pick it up ? You need +2 sov to be able to build 13/0/13 and u have to pass on some good utility like silence, res debuff and/or tactics. You sacrifice it to get some mediocre skill (~800 heal vs previous 1100-1200 base) that doesn't scale with ur heal crit. The cast time reduction is lower now, so you are even more vulnerable casting it. And since there are more tranquility spenders, even on WW up u might not have that much tranquility to spend to keep casting it "quickly", meaning it's more and more situational.

[vitaka]

The question is at which point the opportunity cost of the skill becomes too high to pick it up ? You need +2 sov to be able to build 13/0/13 and u have to pass on some good utility like silence, res debuff and/or tactics. You sacrifice it to get some mediocre skill (~800 heal vs previous 1100-1200 base) that doesn't scale with ur heal crit. The cast time reduction is lower now, so you are even more vulnerable casting it. And since there are more tranquility spenders, even on WW up u might not have that much tranquility to spend to keep casting it "quickly", meaning it's more and more situational.

It depends on what setting you play in, I'd argue.

6-men roaming? No need for EoV.
PUG WBs? Can be useful, but chances of getting a reliable WW-bot are small.
Guild WBs? Absolutely still useful, the ability to spam EoV across the whole front-line of the WB when WW hits is still powerful.

[Sever1n]

I dont like heal am changes so far. Old am had normal rotation, hots-spend res points on EoV-hots/heals-another ww eov drop. Now eov heal less, cant be casted on move, don't benefit from castime reduction. It was main instrument of heal AM, that could make huge numbers on am, now its nerfed to the ground. Tactics heal crit, crit power, 3hot, and one for fill. Rotation when on impact anticrit-hots to5-aoe heal-aoe hot- mass heals / eov / new hots. Usullay i dont have time to watch and controll those 5 stacks, and sometimes they just go to waste on healing energy. I pref old am, pre rework. Aoe hot dont worth what we lost. For 25% crit heal we paying a lot in other tactics. Would be a lot better if they nerfed 5 point efects but make them dont drop to 0 from cast.

Full sov for wb, anticrit just to good to ignore. Small scale sov tri or sov tri + vale with armortalis. Normal group will be always try to kill you and 10sec panic button wont save from constant st pressure.

[BluIzLucky]

...

Guild WBs? Absolutely still useful, the ability to spam EoV across the whole front-line of the WB when WW hits is still powerful.

But then you'd just go INT healing spec to max out EOV, since you'd have WW and a good group healer to cover your group

I'd back pretty much what PROsiak said, and I'll add that the AP changes (while ago) means that at least one source of AP gain is needed (not from AP/sec).

Which means either The Sight, Resto Burst, 5p Sov / 4p tri or +7p sov, have personally gone with the latter, since I'm not spending 10k on a ring that's slightly better than Sentinel (especially when Victorious Ring is way better alternative).

But if we are just talking wp healing BIS (no cost concerns); 5p sov/ 4p tri has to be it now.

Massive nerf to EoV + having to pick Wild healing, means 6p value is down.
7p bonus is slightly more AP than the 4p Tri, but then other bonus and gear mixing is better.
Initiative changes means you are no longer getting 100% critted when debuffed, so 8p sov value is down (even if it's still good).