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Herald - Quickness Support Healer

This is a rough draft. Once adequately written, it will progress to the testing stage, where it can be rated by the community. You can help by proposing changes with a comment.

Focused on: Healing and Support

Designed for: Raids and Fractals

Expansions required: Heart of Thorns builds

Difficulty:
TBD
This build was last updated on July 28, 2023.

Overview

A heal Herald build that provides permanent Quickness Quickness, Fury Fury, Swiftness Swiftness, Regeneration Regeneration, Protection Protection, and 25 Might 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 Stability or damage reduction.


Template Code

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Skill Bar

Mace/Shield
Staff
Utility
Utility
  • Your choice of mainhand weapon is somewhat irrelevant. Mace is chosen to allow for faster Might 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
Mace
Harrier
Shield
Harrier
Sigil
Sigil
Staff
Harrier
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
x6
Infusion
x18
  • 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 Harrier stats and the chest piece to Minstrel stats 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
Mace
Harrier
Shield
Harrier
Sigil
Sigil
Staff
Harrier
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
x6
Infusion
x18


Consumables

Food

  • or ascended healing food


Utility


Usage

Quickness

You apply Quickness Quickness through the trait Elevated Compassion. This pulses healing and Quickness 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 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 Vigor, Resistance Resistance and Stability 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 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 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 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, 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.
  • Energy Expulsion (Ventari) - A big, but expensive heal that also cleanses conditions and does CC. When empowered it provides lots of Stability Stability to allies. Its multi-functional nature means you're unlikely to use it for healing, but it's a nice bonus.


Rotation

As with most healers, there is no need for an exact rotation, however the following guidelines may be useful:

  • You will need to start in Legendary Centaur Stance and swap to Legendary Dragon Stance to trigger Invoking Harmony and start providing boons.
  • Ideally you would also start on Mace to blast some initial Might Might.
  • Each facet should be activated and consumed once before swapping.
    • It is recommended to maintain Facet of Strength until your group hits 25 Might Might
  • 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.
  • If on Mace/Shield, combo Searing Fissure Echoing Eruption to blast some extra might.


Video example


Ratings

This build has a rating of 5 stars based on 3 votes.
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5 stars
Nuo gave this build 5 stars • June 2024
This build has slowly been buffed over the years and now with the introduction of Scepter it has become one of the top healers in PvE. It can take a little bit of time to learn, and has somewhat limited condition cleanse, but it's benefits are numerous: --Easily outputs lots of boons, including quickness, in a large area; --Tons of passive healing, a good amount burst healing, and some barrier output; --Access to Aegis and Stability, and can bring more Stability at the cost of some healing; --Plenty of CC. Overall, a great choice for a quickness-providing healer in all PvE content at the moment.
5 stars
Mathiasxii gave this build 5 stars • September 2022
I played this kind of build for a while (years, including post patch) and I often find people underestimating the healing potential of a Herald. It takes some practice (expecially with the tablet's placement), but when you can pull it off, people rarely die under your watch. Dragon stance is great for a very mobile group (like in fractals) with perma boons such as fury and regen. Regen is also powerful enough to keep a PUG team alive in 75% of cases, and costs very little energy to keep up. What is also worth mentioning is that it also has A LOT of flexibility in spec traits!!! You can put focus on boon uptime, healing, reducing damage or your own survivability to heal/revive others in tight spots. The major downside I could give to the healing Herald is that it is a true "Healer" role in the sense that you can either focus your energy on attacking or healing, but trying to do both will end up not being to do either since you'll drain your energy bar in barely a second. Your attacks will be more in the occasional side while being CC and healing focused. You might be rejected from groups who wants max DPS/clear speed, but certainly be welcome by those who do chill runs!
5 stars
Polar gave this build 5 stars • August 2022
Solid fb alternative. No aegis, but lots of healing, stab and cc to compensate.

Comments

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