Mechanist - Alacrity Support Healer

The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Healing and Support

Designed for: Raids and Fractals

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on July 27, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

Mechanist is a versatile and potent healer, capable of providing permanent Alacrity, Fury and 25 Might in addition to a variety of defensive boons and barrier.

The mech itself provides the majority of offensive boons, which leaves the mechanist able to handle ranged mechanics and makes it very reliable provided the mech's position is controlled. Unlike the DPS alacrity builds, it also does not require Crisis Zone to maintain Alacrity, leaving it free to be used to counter mechanics with Aegis and/or Stability.

The greatest weakness of heal mechanist is that its self-healing is even lower than usual for a heal build, which means that it is more difficult than the common alternatives if used as a tank.

Skill Bar

Short Bow

Utility

Weapon Variants

• Mace/Shield is the best option for players that don't own Secrets of the Obscure, and it is worth having on the second weapon set as it has a few benefits despite the lower healing:
  • Skills 3-5 provide more CC than Short Bow can offer, as well as having a knockback.
  • Magnetic Shield (engineer) is a projectile reflect.
  • Static Shield is very useful if tanking, or filling specific roles such as Hand Kiting at Deimos.

Skill Variants

Any of the utility skills could be swapped out if needed, just be aware of what you're sacrificing in each case:

• Elixir Gun offers consistent condi cleanse and healing over time. This should be your lowest priority for swapping out.
• Barrier Signet is an extra source of barrier, and can cover any gaps in Alacrity or provide projectile defence. You can also benefit from the passive damage reduction if you're tanking.
• Shift Signet gives you a stun-break and allows you to precisely position the mech if needed. More importantly however, it guarantees that your mech will have Alacrity, which is what affects the cooldown of your command skills.

Some ideas for extra utilities:

• Personal Battering Ram for reliable CC.
• Throw Mine can be used for even more CC if Personal Battering Ram isn't enough, or for the boon rip.

Thanks to the recommended relic, Relic of Karakosa, any blast finisher can be used as an additional heal, notably:

• Throw Mine becomes a great all-round skill, offering CC, boon rip and healing.
• Flamethrower gives you access to Flame Blast, which has a very low cooldown.

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Specializations

Trait Variants

• Over Shield if using Shield.
• Experimental Turrets gives you access to additional boons if you bring the relevant turret.
• Comeback Cure might be useful on some encounters. Typically you shouldn't struggle for Regeneration uptime, but on encounters where boons might get stripped/missed and there are frequent condis to cleanse, it can be potent.
• Purity of Purpose can be very nice on encounters with lots of condis, particularly if those condis convert to boons you otherwise have limited generation of.
• Iron Blooded can be very useful if you're struggling with tanking.

Equipment

Head
Harrier

Shoulders
Harrier

Chest
Harrier

Hands
Harrier

Legs
Harrier

Feet
Harrier

Backpiece
Harrier

Accessory
Magi

Accessory
Magi

Amulet
Harrier

Ring
Harrier

Ring
Harrier

Short Bow
Harrier

Sigil

Sigil

Mace
Harrier

Shield
Harrier

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Relics

For players that don't own Secrets of the Obscure, Relic of the Monk is the best option.

Consumables

Food

• or alternatives
  • as a cheap option - it would be optimal to swap one accessory to Harrier stats to make up for the lost concentration.

Utility

Usage

Activate Barrier Burst off cooldown. Due to the cooldown penalty from Mechanical Genius, try not to be too far from your mech when activating Barrier Burst. Though with boon duration as high as this build has, it's not essential.

This should keep your group healthy for the most part but for optimal play you want to make use of the following:

Mace

Energizing Slam provides barrier, Regeneration and Vigor on a low cooldown. You want to use it off cooldown to maintain your group, and use your kits to provide extra boons and healing.

Short bow

Across the four skills, Short bow offers barrier, healing, CC, Might, Protection, and some Aegis. This means you can be pretty effective by just using skills 2-4 off cooldown. Essence of Borrowed Time can be held on to for CC or Superspeed.

Much like with shield, you want to balance the need to maintain Protection with holding Essence of Liquid Wrath for Aegis (much like Crisis Zone).

A very useful aspect of Short bow is that its skills have the same cooldowns as key skills within your kits, so by using these skills together, you can ensure you're using them off cooldown:

• Essence of Animated Sand and Bandage Blast (Med kit)
• Essence of Living Shadows and Super Elixir (Elixir gun)
• Essence of Liquid Wrath and Infusion Bomb (Med kit)
• Essence of Borrowed Time and Elixir Shell (Elite mortar kit) - you can hold on to these skills rather than use them in your rotation, as on-demand CC and a water field.

As Short bow has a fire field and two blast finishers, it can be used to quickly stack up Might with an optimised opener, such as:

1. Essence of Liquid Wrath - fire field
2. Med Kit ⇒ Infusion Bomb ⇒ Bandage Blast ⇒ Weapon Swap
3. Essence of Animated Sand
4. Essence of Borrowed Time

Combined with Barrier Burst, this should be sufficient to reach 25 Might in a matter of seconds even if no-one else is contributing.

Key Skills

Significant healing over time can be added from the following skills:

• Essence of Animated Sand and Essence of Living Shadows (Short Bow) provide barrier and healing respectively.
• Infusion Bomb (Med Kit) - Provides a large amount of Regeneration as well as some other useful boons.
• Super Elixir (Elixir Gun) - Pulses rapid healing over six seconds on a relatively short cooldown.
• Elixir Shell (Mortar Kit) - A water field and more healing over time.

Infusion Bomb and Super Elixir are the most important skills here. Elixir Shell is nice, but it is also a water field so on some encounters it may be worth holding on to for burst healing.

Infusion Bomb has the same cooldown as Barrier Burst, and Super Elixir has about half the cooldown. This means you can use the cooldown of Barrier Burst to track the cooldown of the other skills whilst not in their respective kits - Use both skills whenever you use Barrier Burst, and hop into Elixir Gun an extra time when Barrier Burst is on a ~15s cooldown.

Protection

You can just about maintain permanent protection by using Crisis Zone and either both shield skills or Essence of Liquid Wrath (Short Bow) off cooldown. However these skills also offer significant utility, so feel free to delay them if they will be needed.

Burst Healing

You only really have one burst skill available, the appropriately named Vital Burst, but you can get some more by comboing available blast finishers with the water field from Elixir Shell or Cleansing Field. These are:

• Magnetic Inversion (Shield) - the flip skill of Magnetic Shield (engineer)
• Essence of Animated Sand (Short bow)
• Essence of Borrowed Time (Short bow)
• Infusion Bomb
• Acid Bomb

As you may be using the first four skills in your rotation, Acid Bomb might be the only on-demand blast finisher you have so it can be beneficial to plan accordingly if you know there is some big damage incoming. Be aware that Acid Bomb launches you backwards, which can be very dangerous, but it can be cancelled by weapon swapping as soon as you see yourself move.

If using Relic of Karakosa, all your blast finishers are heals in their own right.

While not a burst heal per-se Barrier Signet can provide a good amount of barrier to protect against and incoming hit. This skill can also be used to fill in any gaps in Alacrity, or to block incoming projectiles for five seconds. Also bear in mind that the passive reduces all incoming damage by 10%, which may be more valuable than the active effect if you're tanking.

Finally, if a large amount of sustained healing is required you can remain in Med Kit and spam Med Blaster and Bandage Blast. Be aware that neither of these skills heal you, and you're no use to your team if you get downed!

Condition Cleanse

Super Elixir already provides some measure of condition cleanse. You also have:

• Essence of Living Shadows (Short Bow)
• Cleansing Field (Med Kit)
• Fumigate (Elixir Gun)

If you need even more, then the light fields from Super Elixir or Flash Shell (Mortar Kit) can be comboed with a blast finisher.

Crowd Control

You don't have a huge amount of CC available, limited to:

• Rocket Fist Prototype (Mace)
• Magnetic Inversion (Shield) - flip skill of Magnetic Shield (engineer)
• Throw Shield (Shield) - flip skill of Static Shield
• Essence of Borrowed Time (Short bow) - an additional daze can be triggered by using a second Short Bow skill (other than the autoattack) within four seconds.
• Given your abundance of boon duration, you can also briefly recall your mech and use Crash Down.

As ideally you want to use shield skills to provide Protection, on encounters that require a lot of CC you may wish to bring a utility skill such as Personal Battering Ram or Thumper Turret instead.

Hand Kiting

Heal Mechanist is very well suited to hand kiting and many options will work, but there are some recommendations.

Skills

Med Kit only has one skill that heals you, and it's not for a huge amount so is strongly recommended it be swapped out

• Rectifier Signet offers consistent healing while passive, and Mechanist's largest heal when activated.
• Elixir H provides a big heal, and also a good amount of protection and regeneration.
• Healing Turret has a very short cooldown and if left active pulses a huge amount of Regeneration.

Elixir Gun is an essential skill due to Super Elixir, but Barrier Signet is optional and Shift Signet should be replaced

• Tool Kit brings a channeled block on Gear Shield.
• Thumper Turret in combination with Experimental Turrets pulses Protection.

It is extremely helpful to have permanent Protection uptime, so Thumper Turret is a good choice - make sure not to drop hands on it so that it stays alive as long as possible. Similarly, Healing Turret makes Regeneration permanent when combined with Energizing Slam. As the initial overcharge also provides Regeneration you are free to immediately pick it up for the cooldown reduction or detonate it for the water field combo.

Traits

The standard traits can be run, but there are options:

• Experimental Turrets should be used if you're taking Thumper Turret, otherwise there's no point in bringing the turret.
• You may find the damage reduction from Iron Blooded more valuable than the duration increase on HGH.
• Alchemy or Inventions can be replaced with Explosives for Blast Shield and Big Boomer. Be aware that Big Boomer will require you to regularly hit enemies with your Elite Mortar Kit to trigger.

Playstyle

For a general explanation of the playstyle and some suggestions for runes and food, see the guide.

The key to this build's value is in keeping the mech on the group to provide boons, so make sure to direct it to the group whenever they are on the platform. You can save Crisis Zone to block Annihilate, but as you are unlikely to be in range of Mechanical Genius you won't have it available for each one.

As you lack blocks, you may not be able to consistently stack five hands together, so keep an eye on your health. Use Static Shield to save yourself from Mind Crush. You won't have time to use this again in between.