ESO Healing. Part 1: basic role duties.

Welcome to our little healer guide! So you chose to become a healer in ESO and you want to learn how to start or maybe how to improve? We will try our best to help you with that.

Healing in ESO is not just about keeping your group members alive. It’s also about buffing them, debuffing enemies, sustaining the whole group, communicating, and so on – all in all its about supporting your group which is the reason why healers (and tanks) are referred to “Supports” in ESO. Lets take a closer look to all the duties you will have to face.

Keeping the group alive

There’s more to it than just spamming your most potent healing ability.

To feel comfortable outhealing incoming damage, we have to understand how it is structured in the game generally:

• Healing over time abilities (HoTs) usually do not cost much magicka but don’t provide too much healing either (around 3k-7k per tick if the ability crits). Use them to mitigate sustained damage
• Single target burst healing abilities give you a very potent heal, but target only one person and cost a lot of resources, so you won’t have either time or magicka to spam it, so use in emergency situations (say, to save a tank) or during heal-check mechanics (healing tombs on Lokkestiiz in Sunspire)
• AoE burst healing provides a lot of healing (8-30k per hit), but costs as much as single target bursts. Use in emergency situations to mitigate positioning mistakes or in group heal-check scenarios.

Now try looking at the skills that your character has and identify which of your skills belongs to which category and what is the intended use scenario for it?

There’s not a single “ideal” skill bar that will help you dealing with all the situations universally, ideally you want to have some basic combination of healing skills that you adjust depending on the specifics of a fight.

The better you know each specific encounter, the less healing it usually requires, because if your dds are properly positioned and play mechanics to perfection, you will know the exact moments when there’s a chance for them to get extra damage. Outside of those moments, you can focus on another important aspect of your role.

Buffing the group, debuffing the enemies

Buffs are the second most important thing that you have to offer. Buffs increase your groups damage, decrease their damage taken and even help your group sustaining. The more buffs you have to offer the better your group will perform. Debuffing the enemies will make it do less damage to your group and receive more damage from your group which helps a lot both you and your DDs – less time in a fight means less damage that you have to outheal.

Note that two buffs with the same name won't stack together, but the newer one will often override the previous one (so you can't infinitely increase damage or spell resistance by spamming one skill or having several people using the same spell), so it makes sense to think about your support partners and which buffs they will provide to maximise their amount.

There are a lot of comprehensive buff/debuff lists, like this one, but the most important ones that you may want to focus on would be:

Offensive Buffs (increase group’s damage done or resources)

Minor Berserk – increases all damage done by 5%. Available to all classes through Combat Prayer

Major Courage – increases weapon and spell damage by 430 (close to 10% avg). Available to all classes through Spell Power Cure (for dynamic fights) or (perfected) Olorime (for static fights).

Major Force – increases critical damage done by 20%. Available to all classes via (perfected) Saxhleel set, or skills like Aggressive Horn (on top of that increases pools of all 3 primary resources for 30 seconds) or less used Light’s Champion

Major Slayer – increases damage done to Dungeon and Trial monsters by 10%. Can be provided with sets like Master Architect, or (perfected) Roaring Opportunist

Defensive Buffs (decrease damage taken, increase sustain)

Minor Endurance/Intellect – increases stamina/magicka recovery by 15%. One of good perks of having a warden healer in your group using Enchanted Growth

Major Evasion – reduces damage from area of effect attacks by 20%. Available to all classes via Gossamer set and can be absolutely life-saving.

Minor and Major Resolve – two different buffs, increasing physical and spell resistance by 2974 and 5948 accordingly. Usually your dds will have around 10k to 14k resistances, so having sources of both will almost double the resistances. Minor Resolve can be provided on all classes by the Blessing of protection skill and its morphs (Combat Prayer / Blessing of Restoration) or the Magma Incarnate set. Major Resolve can be provided by all classes with Mend Spirit ability or by wardens and their Ice Fortress or other morphs

Toughness will increase maximum health of your group by 10% if you’re healing them as a warden healer.

Minor and Major Vitality will increase your group’s healing received by 8% and 16% simultaneously and can be provided by using a certain weapon (Blackrose Prison restoration staff) or the Mystic Guard skill for single-target protection.

Offensive debuffs (increase target’s damage taken, decrease resistances)

Note that we’re listing buffs for PvE healing here, for PvP healing, check out another article!

Minor/Major Breach – one of the most important debuffs, decreases target’s physical and spell resistances by 2974 and 5948. Available to all classes through Weakness to Elements and its morphs, Razor Caltrops and class abilities for each class.

Minor/Major Brittle – increases target’s critical damage taken by 10% or 20%. Minor brittle can be provided by the chilled status effect from frost staves. Major Brittle can be provided by Nunatak monster set

Minor/Major Vulnerability also increases target’s damage taken by 5% and 10% respectively. Minor can be provided by the concussed status effect (from shock damage), or by class-specific skills (Fetcher infection for wardens, Agony totem for necromancers, Teleport strike and its morphs (rarely used in PvE) for nightblades). Major vulnerability sources are necromancer’s ultimate, Frozen Colossus and its morphs) or the Turning Tide from Shipwright’s Regret dungeon.

Defensive debuffs (decrease target’s damage done)

Minor Lifesteal sources restore 600 health per second when attacking the enemy and the most commonly used source of it is the Blood Altar skill and the morphs.

Minor/Major Maim recude target’s damage dealt by 5% and 10% respectively. You can get this debuff from the templar ultimate skill Nova or several armor sets like Bani, Lady Thorn (those are usually worn by tanks).

As you can see, there are too many buffs, and even in well-coordinated groups it's pretty impossible to get them all, so there's no specific meta-approach that would guarantee you the best results in all scenarios. It's up to you, your raid lead and your group to figure out, which buffs need to be prioritised and what skills/sets to use.

Communication

Communication is key in ESO. It covers a big pool of things that you have to maintain so we will go with the 3 basics:

Supports

To provide a balanced group – may it be dungeons (for a group of 4) or trials (12 members) – you need to talk to your other supports. So don’t be shy and talk to your tanks, other healers and DDs what sets they are wearing and what skills they use so that you can adjust to the group’s needs. You won’t need two healers running the same sets or a skill that provides a buff/debuff that a tank already is applying.

Mechanics

Ask your group if they know the mechanic of the fight and explain them if you can so you won’t have to wipe several times until everyone figured themselves or you killed the boss by accident. Read through guides beforehand – it will not only help you staying alive and focusing on supporting your group it can also help your groups performance if you tell them what to do. (In trials you will most likely have a raid lead that will explain mechanics but knowing them beforehand won’t hurt you)

Callouts

Being a healer means you have a good overview of what is happening in the fight since you’re the furthest behind and your whole group should be in your sight. This makes you the perfect person to do callouts. Don’t hesitate to tell your DDs to form a better stack, get to their spots and not run around like headless chicken. Some content even requires you to do callouts (Cloudrest when you send down the spears or in Maw of Lorkaj where you have to call out when you swap sides).

So having a microphone will help a lot but isn’t necessary at all. You can also just type it in the chat if you find time for it.

But remember: Don’t talk over the raid lead and call out mechanics if you agreed that you would do it before the raid.

In Part 2 we will talk a bit more about how to set up your build.