Priest healing tactics
As a priest, you are the lifeblood of your group (in other words, you take responsibility for helping your group survive as much as you can with your healing). But be warned, part of their strategy is that you have to do what it takes to be both efficient and useful at the same time. This tutorial will help you get used to the daily routine of a healer, as well as the role you play in PvP.
For starters, think of a scale with two sides on it. One is your efficiency; this indicates how well you save your mana during battle. The other side of this scale is reliability; how often do you use your healing skills to help your group members survive. Now why are these two things so important to keep in mind? Well, for instance, if you're a healer and you hardly use your healing skills, it's great that you're not wasting all of your mana at once, but your group will have a tough time trying to survive in the dungeon. On the other hand, most beginner healers think that you should keep on spamming those healing skills. You may be helping your group survive by doing that for a while, but it's a big no no, because if you are standing there with 0 mana, you're just a sitting duck that is letting all of your group members get wiped out.
But first, here's one major point that you should consider. In most RPG games, you would think that there is no cooldown for potions. Well guess what? This game has a 2 minute cooldown when you use a single potion, so it's not going to help you at all unless you really need it; hence why every group requires at least one healer in it.
Now, to answer the bigger question here. The solution is that you want to be in the middle of this scale; you want to be efficient but also reliable enough to the rest of your allies.
Alright, now enough theory, let's move onto the popular priest skills. The summary of below is this:
Contents
Healing Priorities
Below lists some of the healing priorities for a priest. Each ally that you're healing has a different level of importance (i.e. a tank will need more healing because they take more damage and have more health, versus a damage dealer that may take less damage and can easily be patched up by common healing spells). By matching these priorities against each other, you can see what kind of spells are needed.
Note that there are two important facts to consider. Just because the spells that fall closer to the right are less likely used does not mean that they should never be used. It is perfectly okay to use them, as long as you don't waste the spell (using a strong heal on an ally that took little to no damage). The same can be said for the left side as well. A tank should never only receive stronger healing spells (ex. spamming only Heal on Tanks). Using weaker healing spells like Revitalize along with stronger spells is key to keeping a tank alive.
Priority of Healing to Allies (from weaker spells to stronger spells)
Damage Dealers < Healers < Tanks
Spells for all priests (from commonly used to uncommonly used/emergencies):
- Healing Winds (Lv. 37 and above) > Revitalise > Heal > Healing Springs > Surge of Light/Emerald Shield > Greater Heal > Song of Harmony
Healing Techniques
- Revitalise is your best friend. It may seem weak at lower levels, but give it some time and you have a cheap, reliable, instant cast spell that does the work for you on one ally. But remember that it heals health slowly over 12 seconds, meaning that you should only cast it once every 10 seconds or so on that ally that took some damage. Healers should use it on players that have taken damage, typically when their health is about 50-80% or lower. You should choose to use Revitalise on your ally if they fall below 50% of their health while healing them (especially if they're the one that is taking constant damage, as it may save them from being knocked out).
- Revitalise is often used in place of Cure Poison to soak up the damage taken from enemy damage over time spells. However if the enemy uses poison that has a very long duration and inflicts heavy damage over time, you should just use Cure Poison instead.
- In diverse groups of tanks, damage dealers and healers, your damage dealers should really only receive Revitalise from you at most while Tanks should receive both Revitalise and Heal. This is because damage dealers have less health than a tank; rarely you should feel the need to use Heal on a damage dealer unless they have low health (about 10 to 30%).
- Heal is a powerful healing spell that restores a large amount of health in one use to a friendly target. You should avoid using it a lot and instead use Revitalise on your teammates. In times of emergency when one of your damage dealers is not expected to survive with a Revitalise that you placed on them, that is when you should use Heal on them. But for most cases, use it on a tank when they are at about 50% of their health or lower (if your Revitalise cannot heal them enough).
- As mentioned above, only when a damage dealer is down to less than 30% of their health or so, then you should use a heal on them.
- This spell in particular allows you to instant cast a spell that would otherwise take too long to cast. This should be best saved for a Revive to instantly revive one of your fallen allies. If one of your heals will not make it, then you may choose to use this skill to immediately heal them once and immediately go ahead to cast for a second heal. Remember that it should be used sparingly, as this spell has a cooldown to it.
- Healing Springs is a spell that heals all of your damaged allies multiple times that are standing in this spring, but the drawback is that you have to stay in one spot and channel it. In order for this spell to be effective, you want all of your allies to be standing on it at once. In cases where you are stacking (as many allies including yourself standing in the same spot), this spell can work wonders. Springs should be used when multiple allies are at 50-70% of their health, however you should refrain from using it if your group likes to split up a lot.
- Using Healing Springs should not interfere you from carrying out your regular revitalise pattern unless you believe that one healing spring can consume less mana than multiple uses of revitalise and heal just as efficient.
- Surge of Light is your alternative healing spell to Heal. But remember that Surge of Light's healing is based on the current skill level of your Heal. This spell should be only used in critical situations when an ally has only 10% to 20% of their health left, and they won't be able to survive another attack within the time it usually takes for you to Heal them. Unlike Heal, Surge of Light serves as a panic button, and should not be used more often than Heal because of it's expensive mana cost.
- Emerald Shield is an emergency spell that when used on one of your allies, it absorbs a limited amount of damage, ultimately buying you time to recover their health with a Heal. As outlined in the skill's description, it should be used when your ally that you're healing only has 10%-20% of their health left and won't be able to survive another attack. Because of this, the skill should never be used consecutively.
- The spell can be cast on yourself to buy yourself some time and prevent your revive from being interrupted while Divine Clarity is on cooldown. Other applications can include extending a target's health to prepare against a high damage attack.
- Song of Harmony is a last ditch effort spell that recovers health to all of your allies within a large radius, with a weighty cooldown of 7 minutes. You should never ever use this spell early, as later on in the battle you may need to rely on it as a life-saver. Ever considered a time where multiple allies are at around 10 to 30% of their health, one or more of them are likely not able to survive the next attack and all of them need to be healed at once? This spell should really only be used at that point of time in battle.
- There are exceptions to Song of Harmony's use. You may have to use it early or mid-battle because a boss's signature one-time attack hits your group, or even pounding through your tank (even after he or she used Burning Determination to reduce the damage).
- At level 37, you acquire this underappreciated spell with a master level of 1 with a cooldown of 15 seconds. Healing Winds to Revitalise is like butter to bread, because of it's ability to slowly heal multiple allies over 15 seconds. Consuming one revitalise's worth of mana and slightly weaker than Revitalise itself, it is commonly used to heal off minor amounts of damage across each of your allies. Healers should use this spell as their main priority over Revitalise when multiple allies (particularly damage dealers) fall to 60% to 90% of their health and continue to use Revitalise on the tank of the group if he or she is not affected by Healing Winds.
- If the group is under constant pressure from damage, more than what Healing Winds can heal over, you should consider to combine both Healing Wind and Revitalise effects on your allies. Also, in order to boost the overall healing power for Healing Springs, you can use Healing Winds on them beforehand.
- Late at level 42, you obtain another healing spell, which is a stronger version of Heal, but with a master level of 1. It consumes less mana than a Surge of Light and more than a Heal. It is also not dependent (Greater Heal has it's own healing value) on the skill level of Heal unlike how Surge of Light is. However, the biggest drawback of this spell is how long it takes to cast. If you have an ally such as a tank whose health is low (about 10 to 30% health), but isn't in immediate danger, then this spell is suited towards that situation. That ideal situation might not always occur.
- Due to it's long casting time, this spell is completely up to you whether or not you want to learn it.
Healing Routine
After reading the descriptions of each spell above, you probably now have a sense of when to use those spells, but you still don't know the healing routine works. Try to relax, as healing isn't that stressful unless you make it stressful on yourself. Here are some key tips that you should follow (or just incorporate into the way you heal).
1. Briefly look at the list of health bars for your group from time to time. When someone's health bar goes down, that's when you know that you should respond with a revitalise. You shouldn't try to be clicking on the player that took some damage, but on their health bar. It will automatically highlight that player you clicked via their health bar so you can respond to them with a healing spell.
2. Many bosses later in the game have all sorts of gimmicks that it makes an idle player (someone who likes to stand in the same spot all the time) more vulnerable to attacks than a player that knows when to move. So don't get caught up in looking at the group's health bars all the time, because if you're not aware of your surroundings, a boss could instantly take you out in one fell swoop with an AoE (e.g. poison patch).
- The same thing applies to a teammate, particularly a damage dealer. If they're constantly taking damage on purpose from an AoE, not trying to move away to avoid it, and you're in a position where you have to keep throwing Heals at them, don't heal them (they're only going to drain your mana before the fight ends).
3. You should mind to look at your mana once in a while during a fight. You never want to let your mana drain a lot early on, and only when later in the fight. For instance, if you're down to about 20-30 percent of your mana (with potions and SoH on cooldown) with all of your allies hovering at about half their health, you have to be wise with how you spend your mana. In this case, you might want to focus on adding a revitalise (and healing winds) on each of your group members, and wait. By that time, if your healing spells healed your damage dealers to about 80% to full, don't use your revitalise on them again, and focus on keeping your healing spells alive on the tank. Only decide to use revitalise on the damage dealers of your group once they start taking a lot of damage.
4. In many boss fights, as opposed to clearing a group of monsters, your attentiveness changes with the situation. The priest has to respond naturally with Nightfall when approaching a group of monsters, oftentimes on the enemy healer of the group. In a boss fight, you can be asked to use Nightfall one or more times at a certain point of the battle. If an enemy uses Grievous Slash (an ability that deals lots of damage over time and only ends when the player affected has 90% or higher health; will keep damaging the player if they are not healed to full), you need to quickly heal that player that received the debuff to full health. If an enemy uses a strong poison (usually indicated by a red debuff icon with a green outline), you need to use Cure Poison to counter it. A lot of this is done in addition to just healing your group, but you shouldn't worry too much about how often these cases can happen. These will only occur periodically, but you still have to be at least ready for it.
As the role of a Damage Priest
Alternatively, a healer may choose to become a damage priest instead, allowing for hybrid healing and offensive tactics. A damage priest can choose to become either a poison priest (with Petal Rain inflicting wind damage), a light priest, or a dark priest. Each of these three builds specialize in their own strengths, however dark priests are more suited to certain PvP game modes (e.g. Cheese Hunt) and/or namely PvE.
Revitalize is likely to be your only healing skill, due to limitations on the number of skill points. A good build will incorporate a max level Revitalize and at least one point in Revive, and focus on a specific element (such as poison, light, etc). The reason for this purely comes out of survivability; allowing for solo play, easing the healer's job and in emergency situations where the healer is down (having a damage priest removes the need for Potions of Life). Without it, you become just another Mage within a group.
A couple of reminders that you should follow:
- Like a Mage, a damage priest should not divide up their skills into several elements (e.g. mixing dark and wind/poison skills).
- If possible, a damage priest should not leave some of their damaging spells at an unmaxed level.
- A damage priest cannot replace actual dedicated healers within a group.
- Whatever decision you make is up to you in the end for what skills you see fit for your chosen element.
Dark Healing
A variation of the traditional healing build, priests may choose this route instead, though having it's own flaws to deal with. The core of this build involves sacrificing Heal and Divine Clarity in order to obtain Life Tap (it's only possible to obtain up to skill level 2 of the skill on limited skill points). Life Tap provides constant mana regeneration, at the expense of health, which can easily be recovered back by using other healing skills, such as Revitalise and Healing Winds.
The main issue with healing is that it is not sustainable without mana regeneration and healing efficiency (how well healers can heal while using up less mana as possible). The longer a fight drags on, the more vulnerable that your group is to being knocked out, and healers end up using more mana than they should for emergency situations. While you may acquire more intellect in equips later on, you'll find that mana regeneration is growing more and more scarce (larger mana reserves, but slower mana regeneration).
Charms such as the Charm of Rejuvenation (Revitalise also heals for 50% of one periodic heal's worth immediately to the target; one periodic heal = healing done in 3 seconds) and Charm of Ancient Protection (Emerald Shield heals the target for 75% of it's absorb effect) actually become viable options under this build.
Advantages
Life Tap can solve mana problems by constantly regaining mana from health. Life Tap at skill level 2 takes 20% of your base health, and turns 75% of that 20% base health into mana (e.g. if you had 2000 base health, you'd lose 400 health and restore 300 mana each time you use Life Tap). The spell only has a one second cooldown, allowing it to be used repeatedly. Make sure you don't reduce too much of your health at once, and use healing spells such as Revitalize to regain the health that was immediately lost.
Ability to use spells with high mana cost repeatedly without much penalty. Two important healing spells is Emerald Shield and Healing Springs. Both consume a lot of mana to use, making it ideal only for emergency situations, or when the group is stacking among other players for a boss fight. Being able to spam Healing Springs and Emerald Shield during fights, and restore lost mana back with Life Tap may lead to bad practices, but can also open the door for certain boss fights.
Priests can use DPS equipment instead of healing-based equipment. The more magic you have, the stronger your heals get, but the shorter you can keep your healing up because you have less int to give mana. Life Tap can solve mana problems, allowing for damage-oriented equipment to be used in place of healing equipment (you are not limited to using int-focused equipment all the time with Dark Healing). This can make slow regeneration spells such as Revitalise heal much stronger every three seconds.
Being able to use certain skills from the Dark skill tree, though weaker. Depending on how you divide your points up to acquire Life Tap, you can also pick up certain skills that may be useful, such as Terrify (skill level 2) or Possess (skill level 1, able to possess Brutes). Having these skills on the backburner may seem gimmicky, but can be useful in pinch situations, where the group lacks an additional Mage or Priest to use Flash Freeze/Nightfall. Dark Pact (at skill level 5) also offers a +25% bonus to your armor, giving you a bit more defense to endure attacks, as well as cutting down the casting time lost from damage by up to 40% (not offered with a traditional healing build).
Disadvantages
The power of this build varies depending on the level of the dungeons. If you're using this build during a dungeon run that scales you down to a low level, you may lose certain skills that are key to this build, such as Life Tap, or Healing Springs. Greater Heal, the only healing spell (with Light attributes) that isn't currently affected by Dark Pact's restrictions can only be learned at level 42.
Slow healing and revival may not be acceptable for certain battle situations. If you need a fast spell that can heal an ally who is at low health to full immediately, Dark Healing can fail to live up to it's task, as it relies on strong slow healing spells (even if you use Emerald Shield and Healing Springs). Additionally, since Dark Healing gets rid of Divine Clarity, Priests cannot combo the skill with Revive for an instant revive (unless you were to take off Dark Pact mid-battle, quickly use Divine Clarity, use Revive, then put Dark Pact back on again).
Mana regeneration from Life Tap can sometimes be slow, even if it's fast. Spending too much mana at the wrong time, and/or taking too much damage at the wrong time can still overwhelm the healer. If the healer keeps getting hit, they won't be able to take full advantage of Life Tap to restore their mana back, as they are spending more time and effort to survive. In addition, the healer has to constantly have high health to begin with (having low health all the time defeats the purpose of using Life Tap).
PvP Combat
In PvP combat, Priests are the main target out of any good player group. They're the one that gets picked on more than any other class because they are what keeps the enemy team alive. As a priest, you should stay behind your teammates and try to use Nightfall whenever you can to prevent one of the players from targeting you with a deadly spell. As a healer yourself, you should aim to use Revitalise as much as possible on your allies to outlast the opponent, but be sure to keep your own health in check as well.
- When facing Mages:
- Mages are more likely the members out of the enemy team to target you specifically. If one of them has Flash Freeze, they can take you out of commission with it to limit your healing while focusing on the heavy-hitter members of your group. Other strategies include bombarding you with an AoE such as Ice Spikes, Blizzard or Fire Wall to take you out immediately, or having Mages cause a back to back disrupt on you.
- Focus on the mage that is trying to take you out and quickly use Nightfall to stop their assault in it's tracks. Then you can let the damage dealers on the team take care of the other team's priest. If the priest is already down before you used nightfall on that mage, the player that is still sleeping cannot attack you, so let your team deal with the rest of the attackers. In addition, you should try and bait mages to use their expensive spells on you to waste their mana.
- Mages are more likely the members out of the enemy team to target you specifically. If one of them has Flash Freeze, they can take you out of commission with it to limit your healing while focusing on the heavy-hitter members of your group. Other strategies include bombarding you with an AoE such as Ice Spikes, Blizzard or Fire Wall to take you out immediately, or having Mages cause a back to back disrupt on you.
- When facing Warriors:
- If a DPS warrior or Tank sees you casting one of your healing skills (with the exception of Revitalize), they can rush to you and try to neutralize it by smiting or bashing you. They will try a number of approaches similar to a Mage to try and get to you, but they have an easier time because unlike Mages, Priests cannot use Skip to counter a Charge.
- Try to position yourself in a spot that is hard to reach and far away from the Warriors but still capable of you healing your teammates. If a warrior is in pursuit of you and not a mage, you should try to use Nightfall to get away from them as far as possible.
- Against Tanks, they may not pose much of a threat against you unless they are aiming to Smite or Bash you down. Only DPS Warriors will have the choice of trying to land as much melee swings against you to knock you out.
- If a DPS warrior or Tank sees you casting one of your healing skills (with the exception of Revitalize), they can rush to you and try to neutralize it by smiting or bashing you. They will try a number of approaches similar to a Mage to try and get to you, but they have an easier time because unlike Mages, Priests cannot use Skip to counter a Charge.
- When facing another Priest:
- Against enemy healers, they have no choice but to rely on Nightfall to stop you in your tracks, while healing to protect their damage dealers. If you or another member of your team are not quick enough to respond, their healer may quickly get you with Nightfall.
- Be able to recognize the enemy healer first in their team and try to use Nightfall as quickly as possible on them. Otherwise, try to stay out of their casting range so that they don't get a chance to use it on you.
- Against damage priests, not only can they have Nightfall, but their Revitalize gives them a lot more survivability in the battle. Their skills (strong to Neutral) give them a deadly advantage in combat towards players who do not have elemental potions to change their defending element. Beware of these hard-hitting players in an enemy's arsenal, as they can act for part of the role of a healer.
- One advantage is the fact that they cannot disrupt or smite you (even if they invested points into Curse of Silence, it would hinder their DPS). Try to stay back and let your warriors try to dispatch of them quickly. They are a bigger threat than Mages because of their healing capabilities that can soak up damage. By letting your teammates overwhelm them with amounts of damage for more that they can heal, they will be taken out more easily.
- Against enemy healers, they have no choice but to rely on Nightfall to stop you in your tracks, while healing to protect their damage dealers. If you or another member of your team are not quick enough to respond, their healer may quickly get you with Nightfall.
- When facing Hunters:
- Pure Hunters will fight far away from you (likely on another platform), but you have the range to deal damage to them. Their ability to do a large amount of damage to a single target from far away is menacing. However, this can be a problem trying to get close to them, because there is no Skip. They may have superior horizontal range, but that doesn't mean they have great vertical range for their attacks. Try to get outside of their attack range, then rush to them.
- If you are a healer, stay out of their attack range, and instead bait them to come closer so your allies can get the jump on them.
- When facing Pet Hunters, avoid dealing with the pet, as it eats up most of your time. Instead, focus on trying to close the distance towards the Hunter, and use Revitalize to shrug off any damage.
- Hunters are unlikely to use traps in PvP. Although traps can be useful, they only work best when an ally is assisting you, and you know exactly where and how many enemy players will come. Watch out for Root Trap, as you have to deal with getting rid of the roots, taking up some of your time.
- Pure Hunters will fight far away from you (likely on another platform), but you have the range to deal damage to them. Their ability to do a large amount of damage to a single target from far away is menacing. However, this can be a problem trying to get close to them, because there is no Skip. They may have superior horizontal range, but that doesn't mean they have great vertical range for their attacks. Try to get outside of their attack range, then rush to them.
Remember that you are the most valuable player out of your group, as seen by your enemy team and allies. Because that happens to be the case for most PvP fights, make the enemy team think that their main priority is taking you out. Be prepared to expect this when that seems to be their game plan, so that you can have your team counter this by leading them into a trap. Knowing this fact is key unlike Mages where elemental match-ups are more important to them.