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[img]http://i.imgur.com/TDbDotq.jpg[/img]

.:Changelog:.

[spoiler]

18-12-2015: Guide added
31-03-2016: TG update
- Gear updated
- CP updated
- Trials skills added
26-07-2016: DB update (little late)
- Introduction updated (read it!)
- Document style updated
- Gear updated
- Skills updated
- Replaced DPS screenshots with a section where I can post some video’s from my POV if people are interested.

[/spoiler]

.:Introduction:.

Let me start off by thanking the people I have run many dungeons with or had fruitful discussions with, without whom this build would not have come to fruition: Yolo, Korino, Upu and many more as I tend to run with many people :).

What/Whom this build is for

This is a build for templars who want to run PvE 4man content taking on the primary healer role.
It assumes the group contains 2 (or 3) dedicated DD’s that will require help with resource management, but does not differentiate between Stamina or Magicka DD’s.
The build is made as flexible as possible to minimize the amount of skill swaps during runs.
Because I’m a cheapskate, I will focus on a setup that only uses cheap pots that drop from NPC’s, [Essence of Magicka], but for completeness feel obligated to discuss the most optimal build including [Essence of Spell Power] pots as well.

Main philosophy

To clear any content as fast and smooth as possible the single most important goal of this build (and of any build should be actually) is to maximize group DPS.
This is achieved (in order of importance) by;

Trying to keep everyone alive.
Applying buffs/debuffs to increase damage output and help groupmembers with resource management
Do as much DPS as possible

Important (DB update): With the ever increasing DPS in this game, providing (as healer) becomes more and more important compared to doing DPS yourself.

.:Stats:.

I myself have not yet reached my optimal build but here you can see my current with stats only including food buff (Destro Staff left, Resto Staff right).

[img]http://i.imgur.com/ygIyBNp.png[/img]

Race

Optimal race is either High Elf or Breton. Given the low Magicka recovery on this build and only mosly magic damage abilities, I think Breton is the winner as of this moment.

Food Buff

Obviously V15 Max Health/Max Magicka food.

Attributes

64 Magicka
0 Health
0 Stamina

Note that I am currently putting some points in Health! I try to have around 17k Health to prevent getting one-shotted. If for some reason you cannot make it to 17k Health and you keep dying because of it, I would suggest using attribute points to increase Health a bit until it reaches levels you are comfortable playing with. Optimally all points go to Magicka. With my current gear setup I just don’t dare to :p.

Mundus Stone

To maximize DMG/healing output we go on the offensive with the Thief. For both bars this mundus stone wins in the straight DPS department from other stones given the gear/CP setup in this build. Calculations based on spreadsheet whose creator I think is Asayre.

Note for TRIALS: I swap to the Atronach mundus when healing trials. The ability to consistently heal is way more important than your damage output (as your contribution should be only a few percent compared to total group DPS.

Champion Points

The Thief

Since our Magicka recovery is low anyways, we go ful on reduction with the Magician and put the rest in the Arcanist.

Magician: 100 points
Arcanist: 67 points

Note for GATHERERS: If you like to pick up the occasional plant (like I do), you want 75 points in The Lover for the Master Gatherer passive (reducing gathering times by 50%). In that case 75 points go into Arcanist and 92 into Magician.

The Warrior

At high CP the percentage damage reduction from The Lady (Hardy, Elemental Defender, and Thick Skinned) are definitely the most useful, so all 167 points are spent there. Spreading points evenly between Hardy and Elemental Defender makes sense if you are not preparing for specific content.

Thick Skinned: 45 points
Hardy: 61 points
Elemental Defender: 61 points

Note for TRIALS: For vSO you just HAVE to put 100 points in Hardy. All bosses in trials have very polarized damage sources, so either all Magicka-related or Stamina-related. Depending on the trial you go 100 points in Elemental Defender or Hardy respectively. Sidenote; I don’t bother resetting to the points above for random dungeons :P.

The Mage

Point distribution is pretty straightforward. All our sources of damage are Magicka-related so 100 points go into Elemental Expert. Elfborn gets 56 points (as it is rounded to 17% increased damage and healing on spell criticals), while the remaining 11 points go to Blessed. You could go one jumping point higher in Elfborn for a flat 1%-point increase for the crits, but I’d increase all healing by 2%-point.

Blessed: 11 points
Elfborn: 56 points
Elemental Expert: 100 points

Gear

[img]http://i.imgur.com/VXWY7mn.jpg[/img]

Gear Piece Explanation

We want to increase our group DPS as much as we can. We do this by buffing our teammates, and debuffing our enemies as much as we can. The Spell Power Cure (SPC) set is great! A normal CP160 legendary piece gives 129 Spell Damage or Weapon Power, but our 5th piece bonus gives twice that much to ALL party members. So with 100% uptime (which you should nearly get) that is the equivalent of 8 normal set piece bonuses.

Note for TRIALS: SPC can only proc on 6 people, and so it is advised that there are always 2 people proccing this set on the whole group.

Infallble Aether (IA) has an insane 5th piece bonus as well that afflicts enemies so that they take 8% more damage. Individually it gives the same damage increase as Combat Prayer, and since we are inclined to use that, we should definitely use IA as well. Only on big dudes though, since you shouldn’t try and proc it on trash mobs that die within 8 seconds anyways.

Note for IA: IA’s 3rd piece bonus, increasing damage you do to boss monsters by 5% will apply to all NPC’s in dungeons and trials with the next update, making it a lot less useless!

Note for IA: The 5th piece bonus does not actually need a fully charged heavy attack. It procs of off the first tick of a resto (or lightning) staff.

Molag Kena (MK) and Maelstrom Destro staff are only there for their raw spell damage bonus.

All armor should be divines, all weapons precise, and all jewellery arcane. As for enchants, all armor should give Max Magicka, the restoration staff should have an Absorb Magicka enchant, and jewelry should give Max Spell Damage.

Optimal Gear Setup

Remember that with single weapons (i.e. staves) you have 11 pieces. SPC requires 5 armor slots, MK requires either a shoulder or head slot, vMA staff a weapon slot, and IA drops in any of the pieces. This means that we MUST go 3 jewellery IA pieces, together with an armor slot and the restoration staff slot. This means the IA 5th piece bonus can only be procced of off the resto staff, which is not an issue considering the IA note mentioned above. Dropping the IA 5th piece bonus on destro staff means we get MK 1st piece bonus for free! For extra survivability I’d suggest getting a heavy piece MK.

My Current Gear Setup

Sadly, I do not yet have a Precise IA Restoration Staff (only defending), but I feel like the MK bonus is not worth it if your IA staff comes in a shitty trait. In this case you can drop MK for an IA gear piece, and equip a random restoration staff instead. I’m personally going for vMA Resto Staff, as I sometimes use Mutagen, but you could also go for a vDSA Master Resto Staff or any random CP160 golden Resto Staff (the differences are not that big). Issue here is, that you are forced to go 7 Light armor, and so health is a bit of an issue, which is why I put points in Health as pointed out in the Attributes section.

Alternative Setups

If you have at least 5 different SPC pieces I’d use them, even if they are not Divines or are in the shoulder/head slot. The bonus is just too great. It’s worth farming it IMO. In case you do not yet have 5 pieces, or if you are not yet CP160 and are pretty much forced to go full crafted gear, I could recommend getting Julianos (also lets you easily switch to full damage). If you lack IA (another farm set) a good alternative is 3 Willpower jewellery and two Torug’s Pact pieces. This can also be combined with a MK piece if you have acces to it. Note that the Willpower and vMA set bonuses are ~50% larger than usual ones, and so are much better than equivalent plain Increase bonuses on other set pieces.

Note for TRIALS: With two healers both wearing SPC, it makes sense that only one uses IA. Alternative sets that are also very good are the Worm set, or Twilight Remedy (with the stamina dominated meta and their constant use of Traps, this makes the 5th piece bonus also less outstanding). Both sets have jewellery and both sets I would NOT recommend in 4man dungeon setups as the bonuses are weak for only 4 people.

.:Skills:.

Remember the goal is to provide some healing, buffs/debuffs for group, supply resources, and do as much damage as possible.

All-round Setup

This is my standard setup. I chuck cheap [Essence of Magicka] pots that drop from NPC’s, and I can cater to Magicka and/or Stamina DD’s. With the DB update, stamina DPS took the lead by a longshot, and your own damage contribution is probably a lot lower compared to pre-TG. This means (de)buffing is becoming increasingly more important, even in 4man content. Because of that, I decided to drop Entropy from my skill bar. The 20% increase in Spell Damage was super nice, but I find that healing a GOOD DPS group increases DPS more than if I neglect them and try to DPS myself.

As an example I will give the first boss of vICP. If you decide to burst the boss, many adds will spawn. If you heal minimaly the DPS might be forced to rolldodge etc to stay alive and loose MUCH more DPS than you yourself could ever provide, and so it is better to keep that Healing Springs going (don’t have to 24/7 spam it) then to get that Entropy boost.

Restoration Staff

1 Breath of Life
2 Extended Ritual
3 Combat Prayer
4 Healing Springs
5 Flex Spot
U Agressive Horn

Destruction Staff

1 Repentance
2 Mystic Orbs
3 Blazing Spear
4 Elemental Drain
5 Radiant Oppression
U Solar Prison

R2,R3,R4,RU,D1,D2,D3,D4 are all skills that do damage or heal, but more importantly, give buffs to yourself or group members. The outliers are;

R1, Breath of Life; is too good to pass up on, you sometimes need this ‘o shit’-button.
R5, Radiant Opression; with all buffs applied, all health bars full, and NPC health bar critically low (~25%) start channeling this for some nice DPS.
DU, Solar Prison; another ‘o shit’-button, that also does some nice damage if synergy is used.

The Flex spot can be used for Siphon Spirit for heavy Magicka focussed groups on bosses, Jabs for some nice single target/small AOE DPS, or Entropy if your group is really really bad. Basically, the better your team mates are in terms of damage, the more important it is to keep them alive and to support them. At many times though, after you drop Extended Ritual, CP, or applied Mutagen, you have time to DPS. Shards and Orbs are great AOE DPS, and Jesus Beam and Jabs are nice for single target.

Skill optimalization

Sometimes you know you will run with all Stamina or all Magicka users or your team consists of you and three Nightblades, and you can adjust your skill bar accordingly.

If you only have Stamina users, you can drop D2, and D4 for things like Channeled Focus, Power of the Light, or Mutagen. If your group is running around like crazy, swap out R2 for Mutagen. Nightblades can get their own Minor Berserk (from CP) buff and so even CP can be dropped in that case. Try to keep things like this in mind if you want to optimize your team setup. I’d suggest you only do this if you regularly run with the exact same setup though. In case you want to set worldrecord times, it’s time to use [Essence of Spell Power] on cooldown, and make sure you have specific Skill setups for each of the encounters.

Skill Rotation

With the build itself completely explained, it is time to explain skill rotation. Before a fight starts, SPC should be procced on all group members, just throw down Extended Ritual. Just before everyone runs in, throw one Combat Prayer onto the whole group and the fight can begin. Use WH before big boss fights.

For single target bosses; Make sure IA debuff and CP/SPC buffs have 100% uptime. In case there are Magicka users you also want 100% uptime on Elemental Drain. With Extended Ritual down you shouldn’t have to heal too hard in most scenario’s and you can Jab, Beam, or throw Orbs/Shards to your mates.

For trash mobs; CP buff still go on your teammates. If you think the fight will take less than 8 seconds you do damage instead. If the trash is DPS heavy you make sure you throw a healing springs down before you switch to Destro bar, if the trash is … trash you can skip the Healing Springs and go straight to some DPS with Orbs/Shards.

Healing Trials

I’ve already added some Trial Healing specific tips and tricks in this post, but here the most important points.

Get two group specific sets. One should be SPC as it only procs on 6 people max, and the other can be IA, Worm, Twilight Remedy, or any other utility set that scales really well with a 12man group.
Make sure you use expensive pots for important runs. Don’t cheat your teammates out of a better score by saving on pots. They are dirt cheap compared to the rewards anyways.
Get Atronach mundus for groups you’ve not ran with before. You will probably need to spam BoL at some point.
Group DPS takes priority. Nobody should die, and everyone should be buffed if possible. Your individual damage is negligible compared to group DPS so there is no reason to risk a Jesus Beam if there is a possibility that someone dies.
Using Jesus Beam DOES give Minor Sorcery to the whole group for 20 seconds though, so if there are no templar DPS in the group, you might want to consider ticking this at least once every 20 seconds in a Magicka focused group.

Example Runs

I deleted the DPS parses as the discrepancy between my own damage and that of two good (Stamina) DPSers is so large that it really isn’t worth it anymore pushing out all the damage you can. I could, however, if people want, add some videos of typical runs with people I know to show how stuff goes down from a healers point of view. Let me know if you are interested!