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 June 16, 2024 and is up to date for the March 19, 2024 patch.
Contents
- 1 Overview
- 2 Template Code
- 3 Skill Bar
- 4 Specializations
- 5 Equipment
- 5.1 No-toughness variant
- 6 Consumables
- 7 Usage
- 7.1 Quickness
- 7.2 Legends
- 7.3 Healing
- 7.4 Legendary Centaur Stance
- 7.5 Rotation Fundamentals
- 7.6 Rotation
- 7.7 Crowd Control
- 7.8 General Tips
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
[&DQkMFQMlNBXcEdwRBhIGEisSKxLUEdQRyhHKEQEGAQMrEgYS1BErEgYS1BE=]
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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.
- If you find yourself camping one weapon set, then you could put
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.
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.
Otherworldly Bond - targetting an ally
Energy Expulsion &
Blossoming Aura to quickly get below 10 energy
Legendary Dragon Stance - triggers
Invoking Harmony
Facet of Chaos - to immediately reach 6 upkeep and start
Elevated Compassion
Facet of Light - for
Regeneration
Facet of Strength - maintain at least until you reach 25 stacks of
Might
- 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
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.
- In less than 10 seconds - use
- 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
Facet of Chaos
Facet of Light
- 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.
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.