Build:Herald - Quickness Support Healer

The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good

Focused on: Healing and Support

Designed for: Raids and Fractals

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on July 25, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A heal Herald build that provides permanent Quickness, Fury, Swiftness, Regeneration, Protection, and 25 Might to its subgroup. It also provides Facet of Nature to your group, increasing boon duration while channelling Glint.

It can also provide other utilities depending on the second Legend chosen, such as Stability or damage reduction.

Template Code

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Skill Bar

Scepter/Shield

Staff

Utility

Utility

• If you don't own Secrets of the Obscure, your choice of mainhand weapon is somewhat irrelevant. Mace allows faster Might generation, but Sword could work as well.
• Your second Legend defaults to Legendary Centaur Stance. Read the Legends section below to see other alternatives.

Specializations

• The first trait in Invocation and second trait in Salvation are up to personal preference and can be adapted to what you're most likely to need in a given encounter.

Equipment

Head
Minstrel

Shoulders
Harrier

Chest
Harrier

Hands
Harrier

Legs
Minstrel

Feet
Harrier

Backpiece
Cleric

Accessory
Minstrel

Accessory
Cleric

Amulet
Minstrel

Ring
Cleric

Ring
Minstrel

Scepter
Harrier

Shield
Harrier

Sigil

Sigil

Staff
Harrier

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

• Relic of the Flock is a very strong option, and will be better if you end up swapping out Legendary Centaur Stance.
• If you're using Mace instead of Sceptre, Relic of Karakosa becomes a reliable source of healing on your second set.
• This setup is intended to cap boon duration with +70 concentration food. If you are using +100 concentration food, swap the head piece to Harrier stats and the chest piece to Minstrel stats.
• Sigil of Superior Sigil of Water and Sigil of Superior Sigil of Renewal are very similar amounts of healing. Sigil of Superior Sigil of Water was chosen as they are significantly cheaper and the more frequent healing is likely to be more effective.
  • If you find yourself camping one weapon set, then you could put Sigil of Superior Sigil of Renewal on the other to benefit from the burst healing should you need to swap.

No-toughness variant

The recommended setup has 1665 toughness. Herald is an excellent choice to tank on many encounters due to the self-sustain and large range of its boons, but if you don't wish to tank, the setup below has no toughness.

Head
Harrier

Shoulders
Harrier

Chest
Harrier

Hands
Harrier

Legs
Magi

Feet
Harrier

Backpiece
Magi

Accessory
Harrier

Accessory
Magi

Amulet
Harrier

Ring
Magi

Ring
Magi

Scepter
Harrier

Shield
Harrier

Sigil

Sigil

Staff
Harrier

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Consumables

Food

• • for a cheaper alternative

Utility

Usage

Quickness

You apply Quickness through the trait Elevated Compassion. This pulses healing and Quickness whenever you are using upkeep energy of six or above. Fortunately, all of your non-Legendary Dragon Stance legends have a skill that uses exactly six. Thus while in these legends you want to maintain the skill in question for almost the entire time. Glint is a little trickier as all the skills use upkeep, but Facet of Chaos and Facet of Nature combined are six energy, so these two are maintained together.

Legends

• Legendary Dragon Stance - absolutely key to the build, this is your source of almost all your non- Quickness boons. It also increases the duration of boons your subgroup provides by 20%. Note this effect does not actually increase Concentration, it increases Boon Duration (and is not shown in the Hero Panel), so a build with this effect and 100% Boon Duration would provide boons lasting 120% longer.

• Legendary Centaur Stance is your primary heal source and also offers some Vigor, Resistance and Stability if desired. It provides projectile block through Protective Solace, condition cleanse through Purifying Essence, CC through Energy Expulsion, and a very weak heal through Facet of Nature—Centaur. Can be swapped out if necessary for one of the options below.

• Legendary Dwarf Stance provides your squad with Facet of Nature—Dwarf which reduces damage taken by 10%. You can provide Stability through Inspiring Reinforcement, CC through Forced Engagement, and reduce personal incoming strike and condition damage by 20% with Vengeful Hammers. If needed, it can also reduce incoming strike damage to your subgroup by 50% with Rite of the Great Dwarf.

• Legendary Demon Stance should (almost) never be played in bosses, but it offers a pull with Call to Anguish which may be useful when fighting trash mobs if your group does not have pulls.
  • It can also be used in fractals to remove the boons from No Pain, No Gain if no-one else is able to.

Healing

A lot of your healing is essentially passive - you have no trouble maintaining Regeneration (boosted by Elder's Respite) and Elevated Compassion grants additional healing every second.

One downside of this is that no healing will overflow into the second subgroup of a squad (as it is applied via boons, which will always prioritise your own subgroup). The easiest method to apply extra healing is to autoattack on staff: The final attack of the auto chain applies healing in an area, and Mender's Rebuke is one of your most energy-efficient healing skills.

Other sources of passive healing:

• If you maintain Facet of Nature in Legendary Centaur Stance then it will pulse healing every three seconds.
• Generous Abundance makes your legend skill activations heal. This is most relevant in Legendary Dragon Stance as there is otherwise no inherent healing on these skills. Be aware that the heal only applies when you consume a facet, rather than activating it.

In many encounters, your passive healing will be insufficient, so you should always be ready to spend energy on burst healing if required. Your burst heals, in order of energy efficiency, are:

• Envoy of Exuberance (Shield) - a strong, cheap heal that also applies Protection. The only downside is being locked out of Staff for 10 seconds, so your average healing will drop.
• Mender's Rebuke (Staff) - this is cheap and has a low cooldown so you can use it any time your team's health dips.
• Natural Harmony (Ventari) - an enourmous, but relatively costly heal. If empowered (see below), it heals even more and regenerates endurance to affected allies.
• Renewing Wave (Staff) - heals about the same amount as Envoy of Exuberance but costs twice as much. This is most valuable as a condi cleanse.
• Blossoming Aura (Sceptre) - provides a small amount of AoE barrier (allow to channel fully)
• Energy Expulsion (Ventari) - a big, but expensive heal that also cleanses conditions and does CC. When empowered it provides lots of Stability to allies. Its multi-functional nature means you're unlikely to use it for healing, but it's a nice bonus.

Legendary Centaur Stance

Legendary Centaur Stance has a fairly unique mechanic attached to it. When swapping to this legend, you will gain a buff called Tranquil. This buff causes the next Legend skill you use to become "empowered", providing an enhanced effect and consuming the Tranquil buff.

This means you want to pay attention to the first skill you use in this stance:

• Natural Harmony - Increases healing by 25% and regenerates Endurance.
• Protective Solace - Provides AoE Protection.
• Purifying Essence - Removes an extra condition.
• Energy Expulsion - Provides AoE Stability.

During your regular rotation, you most likely just want to activate Protective Solace to maintain Quickness and treat the extra Protection as a nice bonus.

If you need to access the empowered effects later in the rotation, you have two options:

• Consuming Facet of Nature while in Legendary Centaur Stance will re-apply Tranquil (as well as cleansing conditions).
• Using Energy Expulsion will destroy the tablet, and allow you to resummon it with Project Tranquility, which in turn provides the Tranquil buff.

Rotation Fundamentals

As with most healers, there is no need for an exact rotation, however there are some helpful guidelines to consider.

Protection and Regeneration
As with any healer, you want to prevent the need for healing in the first place. This means maintaining Regeneration and Protection to reduce incoming damage and automatically heal up a small amount (such as from a boss with a ticking aura).

Thanks to Spirit Boon, you apply 10 seconds of Regeneration whenever you swap to Legendary Centaur Stance, and ideally you are doing this approximately every 20 seconds. The only other source of Regeneration you have is Facet of Light. This applies eight seconds of Regeneration every three seconds, so only two pulses are needed to make it permanent. However, as the skill is so cheap to maintain (and the active has a long cooldown), you can typically just activate this and leave it running. This is also helpful if you're running a Legend other than Legendary Centaur Stance.

Similarly you apply six seconds of Protection whenever you swap to Legendary Dragon Stance. Facet of Chaos provides another six seconds every three seconds, to relying on just these two skills, you would need three pulses of Facet of Chaos to make it permanent. Both Envoy of Exuberance or an empowered Protective Solace would allow this to be reduced to just two pulses, and it is highly likely that your Protective Solace will be empowered as part of your Quickness rotation. As Facet of Chaos is quite expensive to maintain, it is therefore efficient to consume it after you have enough Protection so you can benefit from other Facets.

Quickness
As mentioned above, in general you want to maintain upkeep skills worth six energy in order to pulse Quickness. As a healer, you have an abundance of boon duration, which means you pulse 2.5s of Quickness second. Technically this means that you only need to be maintaining Elevated Compassion half of the time. In practise, there's little reason not to maintain it (as thanks to Shared Empowerment it is also providing Might), but you have a lot of freedom to use your energy for other skills if required.

Other Boons
In your secondary legend, you mostly want to maintain 6 upkeep and use skills reactively. Legendary Dragon Stance however, can pulse additional boons depending on your preference.

As discussed above, you likely want to maintain Facet of Light the entire time you're in this legend (unless you need to use Infuse Light). You also want to maintain Facet of Chaos for 3-6 seconds, along with one extra facet in order to keep Elevated Compassion going. After this, you can consume it and replace it with two other facets of your choice (so you will have four Facets active). You can probably skip Facet of Strength if Might is already at 25 stacks, or better yet, immediately consume it for a damage increase.

Legend Swapping
In general, you want to legend swap off cooldown to maintain Invoking Harmony and reset your energy. As this build runs Invocation, this also provides an extra boon via Spirit Boon and ideally you want to swap below 10 energy to gain the bonus from Charged Mists.

It is quite easy to use up excess energy on most legends, but less so on Legendary Dragon Stance, as none of the consume skills have an energy cost. Even if using Mender's Rebuke and Renewing Wave off cooldown, you may struggle to use all your energy within 10 seconds. This means it may be worth maintaining Facet of Chaos even if the Protection is wasted.

Alternatively, you could swap to Scepter/Shield in order to burn off any excess energy.

Weapons
Staff offers sustained healing, and so is likely to be the default choice for many people, particularly if they are the only healer in a squad. Remaining in Sceptre/Shield instead is totally viable though, only swapping to Staff for emergency healing. Sceptre allows you to generate more Might from the autoattack and by targeting an ally with Otherworldly Bond. Swapping between the two weapon sets can be helpful while tanking, as each set has a powerful active defence skill.

Tanking
As a healer, you have naturally great sustain, but there are several abilities that are worth highlighting:

• Crystal Hibernation (Shield) - a long duration block that heals you as it channels.
• Warding Rift (Staff) - another channeled block. Not as strong as Crystal Hibernation but has lower cooldown and costs less energy.
• Infuse Light (Ventari) - for three seconds, turns all incoming damage into healing. Even allows you to survive some abilities that go through invulnerability!
• Gaze of Darkness - your only stunbreak. If you think you might need it, maintain Facet of Darkness while in Legendary Dragon Stance.

Rotation

Putting it all together, a rough outline of a rotation could look like this (weapon skills are not included outside of the opener):

Opener
Start on Sceptre/Shield in Legendary Centaur Stance with Facet of Nature active. Position your tablet slightly in front of you.

1. Otherworldly Bond - targetting an ally
2. Energy Expulsion & Blossoming Aura to quickly get below 10 energy
3. Legendary Dragon Stance - triggers Invoking Harmony
4. Facet of Chaos - to immediately reach 6 upkeep and start Elevated Compassion
5. Facet of Light - for Regeneration
6. Facet of Strength - maintain at least until you reach 25 stacks of Might
7. If you don't need Aegis in the next 10 seconds, swap to Staff once Blossoming Aura and Otherworldly Bond expire

• It is likely you will need to provide at least a little Fury with Facet of Darkness, but with four facets running, you won't have be able to activate it. You can consume Burst of Strength once you hit 25 Might and activate Facet of Darkness. If there is no Fury at all, you may have to immediately consume Facet of Nature instead.
• Once below 10 energy, swap to Legendary Centaur Stance

Ventari

1. Protective Solace

• On Ventari you can just maintain the bubble and use skills reactively. When Legendary Dragon Stance is available again, you can just spam random skills to use up any remaining energy.
• If you need Stability:
  • In less than 10 seconds - use Energy Expulsion ⇒ Project Tranquility ⇒ Protective Solace when you enter this Legend.
  • In 10 seconds or more - True Nature (Centaur) before it's needed, then Energy Expulsion ⇒ Project Tranquility ⇒ Protective Solace.
• Once below 10 energy, swap to Legendary Dragon Stance.

Maintaining Facet of Nature and Protective Solace will leave you with 35-45 energy to spend when Legendary Dragon Stance comes off cooldown. If you haven't needed to use any extra healing, you can just use Energy Expulsion and swap. Alternatively, you can use Natural Harmony once or twice.

Glint

1. Facet of Chaos
2. Facet of Light
3. If Facet of Nature is not active, activate at least one of the other facets to reach 6 upkeep.

• If you don't anticipate needing to use any extra energy (e.g. for CC or burst healing), maintain Facet of Chaos.
• If you use Chaotic Release, activate other Facets to keep at least 6 upkeep.
• Use your other Facets as desired.
• Once below 10 energy, swap to Legendary Centaur Stance and return to start of Ventari section.

Maintaining Facet of Nature, Facet of Light and Facet of Chaos leaves 45-55 energy to spend by the time Legendary Centaur Stance comes off cooldown. It is convenient to also maintain Facet of Elements to make Swiftness permanent and also use another 10 energy. You can also maintain Facet of Darkness or Facet of Strength to use up another 20 energy, and this would mean you can use Renewing Wave for the rest. Otherwise, you will need to spam Mender's Rebuke and Renewing Wave as well as probably switching to Sceptre/Shield to use those skills.

Video example

Crowd Control

Staff gives you access to one of the best CC skills in the game, Surge of the Mists. This skill hits up to 8 times, applying 150 Defiance Break per hit, potentially providing up to a massive 1200 Defiance Break total. Surge of the Mists will move you forward naturally, however, so to maximize hits on target that you can pass through, back away from your target slightly before using. Additionally, be careful using this skill near the edge of a cliff as you might end up falling off of it.

Additionally, each legend has one skill that can apply CC/Defiance Break:

• On Legendary Dragon Stance, Chaotic Release provides 232 Defiance Break.
• On Legendary Centaur Stance, Energy Expulsion provides 300 Defiance Break.
• On Legendary Dwarf Stance, Forced Engagement applies both Taunt and Slow for 4 seconds, providing up to 500 Defiance Break over the duration.

General Tips

• Consuming Facet of Nature while in Glint will extend boons in your subgroup, but maintaining it provides +20% boon duration to your subgroup, so both have their merits.
• On Sceptre/Shield, you can rely on autoattacks to maintain Might after your opener. This means you don't have to deal with trying to regularly target an ally.
• If on Mace/Shield, combo Searing Fissure ⇒ Echoing Eruption to blast some extra might.