Player with Solo-itis Trying to Heal People...Amusing

eviltwintwo · July 2017

I've made a lot of characters to solo the hardest possible content. (Note: NOT to solo cosmics or anything, I'm crazy not stupid.)

Lately, however, I've become a little more interested in playing a character with support ability, mainly heals. And I'm doing it wrong!

The character I'm speaking of in this particular instance is level 21, has medical nanites, empathic healing, and iniquity with justice. The first flaw is, I don't have a 100' heal; someone went down right in front of me because his/her char was out of 50' range. The second, I use empathic healing as a "crutch" heal to keep myself up, which doesn't work if I'm targeting another player; I seem to need a dedicated self-heal (BCR, maybe?). Third, I got iniquity with the advantage for an area heal, but it seems a bit dangerous for my character to use at 50'; it seems to help the bad guys kill me off. (Last one may be my bad playing more than anything else.)

So, any suggestions for a rework of this would be appreciated, even if your advice is essentially "stick with it, it's better at higher levels".

kallethen · July 2017

Iniquity is probably better off without the advantage mainly because it's normal range is 100'. You already have AoE covered with Empathic Healing. Having a dedicated self-heal isn't a bad idea. Conviction would be my first choice, followed by BCR.

chaosdrgnz43 · July 2017

You could try using Bionic Shielding since it can heal those teammates being hit constantly. Although only 5 times.

spinnytop · July 2017

Presence primary with Selfless Ally can mitigate that "kill yourself" aspect of Iniquity - and yeah I would never take the adv on it, I'd rather take another heal for aoe healing.
Vala's Light is a really good aoe heal that I personally like a lot - big area of effect, big heals.
Bionic Shielding is a great 100' heal for hectic situations.
BCR is a fantastic sustained self heal for healers,
Conviction on healers is basically a "fill me up!" button.
Bubbles like Mindful Reinforcement are actually quite useful - pop it on someone at the start of combat and you won't have to worry about them right away.
Medical Nanites is okay, but consider Aura of Radiant Protection - the less damage your teammates take, the less you need to heal them, and the less emergency situations you'll run into.

eviltwintwo · July 2017

kallethen said:
Iniquity is probably better off without the advantage mainly because it's normal range is 100'. You already have AoE covered with Empathic Healing. Having a dedicated self-heal isn't a bad idea. Conviction would be my first choice, followed by BCR.

Thanks for the advice. One thing, though: Empathic Healing is actually single target. I wish it was AoE. Maybe I'll trade it for Arcane Vitality, though I wouldn't be able to move while healing myself as I can with EH. It's a trade-off, and a little out-of-theme since this is a "tech" hero; still wonder why Gadgeteering doesn't have a healing ray.

eviltwintwo · July 2017

chaosdrgnz43 said:
You could try using Bionic Shielding since it can heal those teammates being hit constantly. Although only 5 times.

I do use Bionic Shielding on some of my other characters. Unfortunately, it would be relatively expensive on this char because I'm not using INT as a Super Stat. If one target (me or other), I'm sure I could use it some of the time, but attempting to put it on 2 or 3 targets would be a little hard. (I'm running into another problem I've mentioned before--gear has not been falling for me very much, which is a little strange; the Stats I'm using seemed fairly common. I'm not even getting a lot of secondary gear with recovery on it, which is really unusual.)

If I do decide to go with Bionic Shielding, I may have to restart this char again, which won't be anything unusual for me. And thanks, BTW, I've been so focused on building this char a certain way I forgot about Bionic Shielding--which makes no sense considering how often I've used it on other builds.

eviltwintwo · July 2017

spinnytop said:
Presence primary with Selfless Ally can mitigate that "kill yourself" aspect of Iniquity - and yeah I would never take the adv on it, I'd rather take another heal for aoe healing.
Vala's Light is a really good aoe heal that I personally like a lot - big area of effect, big heals.
Bionic Shielding is a great 100' heal for hectic situations.
BCR is a fantastic sustained self heal for healers,
Conviction on healers is basically a "fill me up!" button.
Bubbles like Mindful Reinforcement are actually quite useful - pop it on someone at the start of combat and you won't have to worry about them right away.
Medical Nanites is okay, but consider Aura of Radiant Protection - the less damage your teammates take, the less you need to heal them, and the less emergency situations you'll run into.

Ah, a list. Let me see....

I actually went with Pre as a secondary on this one...which I know might be a flaw. I'm admittedly inexperienced with team healing, though I have done it from time to time, and with this char, too. Not putting Pre as primary was a...calculated risk which may not pay off in the end.

If I were going to use Vala's Light, I would probably want Seraphim instead of Medical Nanites, for the increase in healing power. I already use Seraphim on other characters (FF and AT) and was trying to avoid repeating myself. Seraphim does have a 3-sec heal, though it's not as strong as MN's. Also, I was under the impression that Vala's Light was a bit weak (esp. w/o Seraphim), but you seem to have a different view; I've heard a few other players say something similar so maybe I'm just dead wrong.

As I told chaosdrgnz43, Bionic Shielding isn't ideal (unfortunately) for this build at this point...if I get some better gear the energy cost would be less of a concern, I expect. Or I could always restart and go Int-Pre-Xxx or Pre-Int-Xxx for super stats.

I actually have another character that has both BCR and Conviction on it--not only for the healing but for Molecular Self-Assembly. It seems to be working okay. (Int is primary on that one.)

Mindful Reinforcement has the same problem as Bionic Shielding--the cost. I have both on another character (Int primary) and think it's awesome to combo the two--MR absorbs damage while the healshield restores health. Another argument for restarting, which I've done at least twice with this character. I really wanted to use the Nanites for the tech theme and so it would be different from my other builds.

Aura of Radiant Protection...I have soloed Teleios Tower with that as my armor (with IDF for good measure, in Hybrid role). I also have another character with that as the passive. Love it. [Note to readers: Teleios Tower, not Teleios Ascendant. The latter isn't soloable, as I understand it.]

Thanks for the advice, esp. about Vala's Light. I'll definitely consider it.

eviltwintwo · July 2017

More information (and possibly more flaws) about the build:

Passive healing from: Medical Nanites and Sentinel Aura.
Toggle is Inertial Dampening Field. (Because healing is not a substitute for resistance...and resistance is not a substitute for healing. Unfortunately, IDF is currently still Rank 1; I got it at lvl 20.)

Though I have teamed, I've also attempted to support non-teammates in an open mission. Medical Nanites doesn't help with that since the Onslaught nerf.

decorumfriends · July 2017

I haven't seen it mentioned (EDIT: Except in the post before me that I'm apparently blind and missed

), but taking the Sentinel Aura from the Sentinel specialization is always a must on my healers.

deadman20 · July 2017

eviltwintwo wrote: »

More information (and possibly more flaws) about the build:

Passive healing from: Medical Nanites and Sentinel Aura.
Toggle is Inertial Dampening Field. (Because healing is not a substitute for resistance...and resistance is not a substitute for healing. Unfortunately, IDF is currently still Rank 1; I got it at lvl 20.)

Though I have teamed, I've also attempted to support non-teammates in an open mission. Medical Nanites doesn't help with that since the Onslaught nerf.

Perhaps try swapping the purpose of your form and passive. Take Aura of Radiant Protection to be your primary source of Resistance boosting for your team and use the Compassion form to boost your overall healing/shielding strength. It'll be a much more comfortable setup to get you started with the role of healer. Arcane Vitality is also a great heal to get started with. It's still 50 foot, but it's a Cone AoE maintain. You can use Iniquity as your Single Target and 100 foot heal, just don't give it the advantage.

Medical Nanites and Inertial Dampening Field isn't a bad setup at all, but it's a setup that requires you to be more predictive with your healing. The two shields Mindful Reinforcement and Protection Field are great assets here as well as Bionic Shielding since they can be used as preemptive measures to incoming damage, or as a small patch to help let your passive healing maintain the patient.

jonsills · July 2017

Tech hero? Have you considered Support Drones (one of my favorites)? The only problem I've had with them is they'll abandon the guy with his intestines hanging out if they detect that you've received a slight scratch, but other than that Patchwork swears by them.

spinnytop · July 2017

If you're having energy issues as a healer then my guess is that one of the following is true:

- You don't have Compassion
- You're not in Support role
- You're not stacking Presence or Recovery ( suggest pre for obvious reasons )

In this game healers are basically set up so that they never have energy issues and can spam all those expensive heal powers with wild abandon so long as there's somebody taking damage to receive heals. If you're not healing enough to have infinite energy then your teammates aren't really in any danger and you can relax and just look for emergency moments.

Also Seraphim is... well it's not really that great for healers to be honest. The extra heal power doesn't mean much when you consider the sheer healing power that a healer in support role with Compassion already wields. Seraphim is more of a hybrid passive.

IDF is similarly...underwhelming. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone, ever, much less a healer. Taking IDF actually works against you as a healer.

PS - I know the feeling of "I already use this on a toon, I don't wanna reuse it" since that's basically how I approach my characters. It helps to make compromises on that though for a few things.

eviltwintwo · July 2017

Thank you all for your input, I appreciate it...may be going for Aura of Protection/Compassion (clone dat AT!!!). FYI--I am using support role; that by itself doesn't seem to keep me in energy. Also, I have to say that it would be really nice if Compassion actually affected Medical Nanites...I found out, much to my dismay, that it doesn't.

And yes, I was trying my best to stack Presence, but the gearfall on this character has been atrocious, it's something I've complained about on other threads. I really wish they'd convert all the green & blue gear to be like the later stuff that has one stat on it with a slot for you to add another, that seems to work a little better, don't know why they have to be so random with ordinary gear. Of course, I could also try to cure my solo-itis and run some queue missions....

I'll probably (stubbornly) try this build a while longer, at least to 25, but I'm probably looking at another redo. Well, part of the fun is trying different things and seeing what works for your playstyle.

Have fun, all.

sterga · July 2017

I've been using Life Essence as both a self heal and AoE. It doesn't heal others as much if the target isn't poisoned, but it's still super easy to just run next to someone and heal both of you. You could get something like Will'O'Wisp for the poison, illuminate, clinging flames, and fear. You can also pick up Absorb Heat for more AoE healing even though it's basically a melee range heal. Can be nice to pop next to a big boss for all the melee. I would suggest Ascension with Judgement for Will'O'Wisp's illuminate, but that's probably too out of theme for a tech toon.

I like Pre PSS. Repurpose is surprisingly decent considering is scales with offense from gear. My toon only uses Heroics and basic purple secondaries with no extra offense. (I went crit.) It's not a huge increase, but still noticeable.

People run out of range for 100ft healing. Not much you can do about people who refuse to at least block when they start getting low or try to kite around like mad instead of holding still for some healing.

kallethen · July 2017

eviltwintwo wrote: »

Thanks for the advice. One thing, though: Empathic Healing is actually single target.

You are correct. I was probably thinking about something else and apologize for it.

spinnytop wrote: »

Also Seraphim is... well it's not really that great for healers to be honest. The extra heal power doesn't mean much when you consider the sheer healing power that a healer in support role with Compassion already wields. Seraphim is more of a hybrid passive.

IDF is similarly...underwhelming. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone, ever, much less a healer. Taking IDF actually works against you as a healer.

I don't find Seraphim to be too bad. I will agree that AoRP is probably better for a more pure Support Healer (Damage mitigation > Healing), while Seraphim is Support/Damage.

I definitely agree that Compassion is better than IDF. I find that IDF doesn't provide enough damage mitigation to be worth the energy loss.

deadman20 · July 2017

eviltwintwo wrote: »

Thank you all for your input, I appreciate it...may be going for Aura of Protection/Compassion (clone dat AT!!!). FYI--I am using support role; that by itself doesn't seem to keep me in energy. Also, I have to say that it would be really nice if Compassion actually affected Medical Nanites...I found out, much to my dismay, that it doesn't.

And yes, I was trying my best to stack Presence, but the gearfall on this character has been atrocious, it's something I've complained about on other threads. I really wish they'd convert all the green & blue gear to be like the later stuff that has one stat on it with a slot for you to add another, that seems to work a little better, don't know why they have to be so random with ordinary gear. Of course, I could also try to cure my solo-itis and run some queue missions....

I'll probably (stubbornly) try this build a while longer, at least to 25, but I'm probably looking at another redo. Well, part of the fun is trying different things and seeing what works for your playstyle.

Have fun, all.

If you have a nemesis already on another character, it might be prudent to grind out the nemesis tokens for leveling gear from the vendor to transfer to the one you're leveling. It would take 200 tokens for each of the primaries, but you get 3% bonus XP per piece as well as the gear scaling to your character's level. Would save you the trouble of keeping yourself geared as you level. Otherwise, you'll probably have to check the AH and hope for the best there to keep yourself up to date as you go.

If you plan on sticking with the character's role of healer all the way to 40, I could go ahead and prepare some equipment for you for when you cap. This is free of charge, of course.

If you have access to the PTS, I'd definitely recommend heading there as your playground for testing builds. If not, head to the Battlestation in the powerhouse and give your powers a try to see if you find them comfortable before heading out with them. Getting a build just right does involve a lot of trial and error, so it's good you're rebuilding every so often. Kinda wish we had a dummy to practice healing on in the powerhouse.

Player with Solo-itis Trying to Heal People...Amusing

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