Vanguard Saga of Heroes
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Vanguard Saga of Heroes

Author: Anaku

Overview[]

Disciples are one of the four primary healer archetypes.

Disciples are oriented around generating a nearly non stop stream of healing from melee combat range and rely less on their energy pool than any other healer class using instead melee attacks and combos plus a third pool called "jin" that is regenerated through combat. They excel at group healing and boosting the functionality of other healing classes (they are like the bard of healing). They also have some moderate combat buffing abilities, a decent debuff and a touch of CC. What disciples do not have compared to other healers are any kind of invulnrability/shield/rescue. They do have some instant abilities but they will typically not save someone if you try to use them after things have turned sour. Disciples must always plan out their attack and heal patterns before they need them or they will constantly find themselves and their group dead. Disciples who aspire to master the discipline of planning out their attack patterns ahead and change them on the fly to adapt to the situation while laying the hurt down become more than just a disciple...they become Elite Medical Ninjas (EMN). An EMN does not train in handling emergencies, they train to keep the emergency from occurring.

Stats[]

There are in general 3 ways to build a disciple.

Max healing[]

Vit/Wis/Dex (max healing with a large energy pool and low damage low aggro attacks with a little extra crit chance and defense)

Max damage[]

Str/Dex/Con (max damage and extra crit chance plus defense as well as more hps for survival to counterbalance your weaker healing)

Balanced approach[]

Vit/Str/(the rest balanced into whatever makes you happy, for raiding i recommend a mix of con/wis depending on your gear and race)

I strongly recommend starting for a balanced approach and leaning out different ways from there depending on your playstyle and experience.

Going specifically over the different stats you have: Strength: Your bread and butter for damage along with +damage gear. You may think its nifty that you have 400%weapon damage finishers but as a disc your base damage is on a different table and lower than the melee dps archetype classes. If you skimp out on strength you'll hit like your hands are wrapped in fluffy pillows. Max your strength and get a lot of + damage gear and you will deal significant punishment. The downside is this also means your attacks will generate MUCH more aggro than a disc that avoids strength. For raiding if you are going for a dps build try to target a strength value of about 700 when raid buffed. A bard in your group will put it over or near the cap of 900. This means that as your str gets close to 700 it will be more important to find gear with +damage on it instead of +str.

Dexterity: Great for ranged attacks...of which you have two. Adds an OK amount of melee % chance. But gear with +crit on it, 1h weapons innate crit bonus, and your tiger stance are much better ways to go about increasing your crit rating. Dex also helps boost your defense and evasion stats somewhat, but a good martial sword/windblade plus your dragon stance is a far better solution that can be used on demand. All in all dex is OK but not a make or break stat.

Constitution: Hps...plain and simple. If you don't need more hps, then you don't need con. If you are too fragile and dying get gear with more +hps directly on it first. If you simply can't do that and you still need more hps then your only choice is to dump some points into con or die regularly whenever you get hit. When raiding you should try to get your hps above 7500 raid buffed. This will make it very likely that you can survive most AOE attacks and stray hits. Your natural spell mit bonus of 15% is key here. An EMN will combine this with some general +mit or +spell mit gear. This will allow you to survive most AOE attacks (which are nearly always spell based) much better than most non tank classes. And this allows you to safely fight in melee range despite getting hit with AOE damage such as bane barrier or General Vicus's AOE dot.

Fully raid buffed my spell mit is regularly 60-70% if I feel I need it I can rachet it an extra 5+% with my sword on the fly. Realistically you should shoot for about 50% or better (easier to hit than it seems as a disc). Any situation that forces you to back out of melee range DRAMATICALLY reduces your potential, try to keep yourself durable enough that this becomes a very very rare exception.

Vitality: Your bread and butter for healing along with +Healing Focus gear. Capped out vitality can give you a 60% bonus to healing, capped HF gives another 20%. The higher your vit is the faster you regen energy as well, both of these aspects combined help you become a stronger and more efficient healer. The more powerful your heals are the more breathing room you have to do other things...like lay waste to your enemies and maintain many combat buffs. Fully raid buffed you want your vit to be about 700ish. In a group with a competent bard they can boost you more or less to the cap of 900. More than 700 and you'll go past cap with a bard in group when raid buffed thus wasting the extra vit.

Wisdom: Energy...plain and simple. If you don't need more energy then you don't need more wisdom. That said wisdom gives you far more energy than con gives hps. So if you want more of both, get +hps directly from gear when and where possible and put points into wisdom, you'll get much more bang for your efforts vs. getting gear with +energy on it and trying to get your hps from constitutuion.

Intelligence: Utterly completely worthless. Treat int like poison and keep away from it.

Gear[]

As a disc your weapon choices are restricted to "martial" weapons like monks. Worded differently you have a very limited weapon selection compared to most classes. Still there are great things to be had within this limitation.

=1h weapons[]

Claw/ulak, handwraps, knuckles All of these function precisely the same giving a 5% crit bonus on your main hand and a 2.5%crit bonus to your offhand, they are typically fast with claws almost always being the fastest, knuckles usually the slowest and handwraps somewhere in between. Because you have a very powerful self buff that procs off of every hit you will typically want to stick with 1h weapons. Claws can be crafted by weapons smiths but are typically very weak. Handwraps can be crafted by leatherworkers and made to use striking or devastation resonating crystals and pain focusing crystals. Flawless Jagged striking handwraps are among the better weapons you can possibly get for laying down the hurt. The RI arazemus and allul claws are also simply excellent. When raiding legions choking grasp and the senator enforcer are the only dropped weapons in the game that are better. Assuming you are lucky enough to get a dragon eye and the guild has the mats the top 1h weapon is the atonement of vol anari made by a crafter with raid harvested materials and uncursed by a dragon eye from kotasoth. On the extremely unlikely chance that ancient resonating crystals of devastation drop a crafted handwrap can be made with very strong base damage and a simply ridiculous amount of +melee damage on it. This is arguably the best off hand 1h weapon in the game as it boosts not only its own damage but your main hand's damage significantly.

Just remember, more damage = more aggro. Sometimes in hard fights is good to be disciplined and use a sword or a healing focus to lower your damage or equip weak but very fast hitting 1h weapons and reorient yourself away from high damage thus boosting your flexibility.

2h damage weapons[]

Martial staff, bladed staff[]

On average pretty close to on par with 1h damage when leveling but with the disadvantage that you hit less often. Thus you do not proc as much with your disciple buff Inner Light. That said there are some very powerful 2h weapons such as the greystone staff of purification that you can get well before some of the more powerful 1h weapons and will serve you very nicely in the mean time.

2h sword[]

Martial sword, windblade

Never be without a level appropriate sword. You can change weapons mid-fight so if things are going badly you can equip your sword and watch your parry% and thus survival sky rocket. In general keeping the level high is more important than the actual quality of the blade itself. Also it should be noted that in terms of defense the best martial swords are crafted by weapon smiths. At level 48 a flawless martial sword created with a frost resonating crystal and protection focusing crystal will not only have an excellent parry bonus and decent dps for a defensive weapon, it will also grant over 5% spell and melee mitigation and proc a debuff that slows your opponents melee attacks and casting. Thus you can on the fly during combat massively boost your defense when needed which boosts your flexibility in adapting to situations. This crafted sword is the ultimate defense a disciple can own.

Unarmed[]

no weapon, healing focus in off hand Like monks your unarmed attacks deal significantly more damage than other classes. Not more than a good weapon but still decent. While most disciples ignor this important information an EMN knows that when using a healing focus on their off hand they will still deal their unarmed damage. That said every disc should always carry a decent healing focus with them to boost their healing on the fly if needed. This means you can free up your armor and jewlry for more stats and hps/mit/+damage/etc. and equip a healing focus in your offhand to cap out your healing focus when you really need to go all out healing. Which boosts your flexibility in adapting to situations.

Armor[]

You wear medium and light armor. In practice this means you wear medium armor. Most medium armor will be str/dex oriented or wis/vit oriented including crafted. Thus it is very very hard to get gear with vit on it that doesn't include a ton of wis which you often do not need. Likewise it is equally difficult to find pieces with str on it that do not have a ton of dex which you also typically do not need. Crafting can help somewhat in the sense that crafted jewlry has single stats and can give you strait vitality and hps to help balance armor that has a mix of str and wis/vit. Finding the "right" balance is a matter of opinion and playstyle. There are disciples that go for a soloing oriented completely evasive combat style focusing on high str/dex and dodge and using their counterattacks heavily. The downside is that this build is very fragile against crits and the evasion bonus does not do much good if you're not getting hit. In groups and raid, you don't want to get hit. So I suggest carrying a good martial sword and using your dragon stance to rebalance defensively when you need to. Try to keep your jewlry and gear focused towards the core of your playstyle. While leveling up that means str/vit hps, the wis that you will unavoidably get when getting gear with vit on it will likely be plenty. If not just get more of it. If you find you have no trouble healing feel free to balance your gear more towards str/dex/hps. If you find that you are having a hard time healing balance more towards vit/wis/hf. Crafted armor and jewlry can leave you with a setup that is very well balanced and survivable. Avoid the itch swamp armor set, or at least do not use all of it. It puts far far too much into healing focus and will leave you too fragile for raiding. Using some of it in combination with crafted Vit/hp jewlrey and a few combat oriented pieces (dropped or crafted) makes for a very nice mix however.

General goals with armor to shoot for is to have just barely enough HF on your armor and jewlry that a healing focus equipped in your offhand can cap it (cap for HF is 10xyour level). Always go for +hps instead of +energy whenever possible. It is very easy to get energy from wis. It is very costly to get hps from con. As you approach level 40 try to plan out two gear sets, a set oriented around getting the most vit possible and a set oriented around hurting things. Just remember that you need to stay survivable too. Its hard to heal or dps when you're dead, always balance your approach accordingly. Quested and Crafted jewlrey are complete reversed in terms of healing focus. Its very easy to get quested jewlry with a lot of HF on it, but impossible to find jewlry with decent vit and hps. Crafted jewlry can have PURELY vit/hps on it if you desire but HF will always be split with SPF. Thus if you choose to use flawless crafted jewlry take advantage of getting VIT/HP jewlry and balance it out with a little extra HF from armor which is VERY easy to get crafted OR quested.

Stances[]

A disciple has three stances. Your balanced stance grants nothing. Your Tiger stance grants +20%damage +10%crit chance and boosts the power of your Inner Light selfbuff but adds a 50% cost increase to your energy based casted heals. Your Dragon stance grants +15%melee evasion +20%hate reduction and adds an instant heal onto your Blessed Wind (BW) melee attack and Kiss of Heaven (KoH) heal over time. Both stances are very powerful. The damage increase from tiger stance is very noticeable and the boost to inner light is pretty decent as well. The problem is that in practice you earn far far too much aggro in this stance unless you are very careful. As an EMN the boost to your Inner Light (IL) combined with careful planning of attacks and use of jin can allow you to dish out very sizable damage and healing and rarely resort to needing energy heals which are of course outrageously expensive in this stance, but still have full power and casting speed and thus can still be used sparingly to good effect. That said the boost to healing from the direct heals added to BW and KoH when in dragon stance is superior to the boost in healing that tiger stance grants IL in practice, and the defensive bonus to evasion is very noticeable for both defensive purposes and that it opens up your counterattacks regularly when getting hit. Lastly the 20% aggro reduction from dragon stance is simply invaluable at the start of fights.

Unless soloing or tanking an EMN should ALWAYS start a fight in dragon stance and only shift to tiger later in the fight after the tank has solid aggro, the nature of the fight is established, and your fight pattern is reliable. After that feel free to switch to tiger and tear into your enemies while further boosting group member's endurance/health/energy regen and damage with IL procs and lay out patterns to focus on healing without your energy casted heals but don't be afraid to use them if needed.

Heals[]

Energy direct casted heals[]

As a disciple you get the basic energy casted heals that all primary healers get, a fast(1.5) sec inefficient heal Breath of Renewal (BoR), a slower (3sec) more efficient heal Astral Wind(AW), and a very slow casting (4.5sec) group heal Celestial Breeze (CB). These heals are strong and useful. You can in fact build a disciple designed to heal primarily through these direct casted heals and do a great job of it. You also would arguably be completely wasting your potential.

Jin direct casted heals[]

LaoJin Flare (LJF) is a weak instant heal that cost 2 jin is on a 15sec cooldown and does not cause global cooldown. It's incredibly flexible in practice and is best used macroed with other heals to boost them. Kiss of Heaven (KoH) is a powerful heal over time made moreso in dragon stance. At level 50 with good healing gear the instant heal portion lands for about 2k and the hot portion ticks at about 700 for 30seconds, an expensive ability for 4 jin but well worth it.

Combat heals/endurance based[]

Blessed Wind (BW) is a combat attack that cost a fair amount of endurance and is on a 6sec cooldown, hits for mediocre damage and adds a small hot that ticks each second over 8 seconds for about 240ish a second and can crit for 360ish a second. In dragon stance this becomes a relatively powerful ability adding an instant heal that lands for about 1600. The heal lands and crits independently of the attack making this a very reliable combat heal in dragon stance. Blooming Ridge Hand (BRH) is a weak attack that puts a debuff on your enemy that heals anyone attacking it for a small amount on every hit ~90ish. Our other combat heal is a combo called Endowment of Life (EoL). To trigger it requires a disciple to hit BW ---> Cyclone Kick (CK) ---> Void Hand (VH). The steps count regardless of the attacks landing and here is a grace period of about 8 seconds between steps that will still count the moves as chained together. The heal hits the moment VH is pressed once again independent of VH actually hitting the attacker and puts a 1500hpbuff on your defensive target followed by a heal for about 1600. In dragon stance with purity/FP/WLS (heal boosters) going on your defensive target you can heal for about 5k every 6seconds with this combo without critting BW. The 1500 hp buff can only be on one target at a time and lasts 2minutes. Inner Light is an expensive (5jin) self buff that lasts 5 minutes and causes all your attacks to (at level 50) regenerate a small amount of health, energy, endurance and add a small melee dps boost to all party members in 10m. Concordant Hand(CH)/Concordant Palm(CP) is our two step 10m group healing finisher series, they open up like any other combat finisher and are on a 1minute cooldown. CH heals almost exactly as much as CB does (about 3k) but can crit and land independently of the attack. If CH hits it opens up CP which lands a powerful group HoT for 15seconds which can also crit and lands independently of the attack. When they hit these moves deal decent damage as well, the combination of dealing solid damage and triggering major group heals at melee range earns simply massive amounts of aggro and should not be used casually because of it.

An EMN in dragon stance with purity/FP/WLS on a target can use hit KoH macroed with LJF followed by their EoL combo and literally heal a target for well over 10k in 8 seconds without having touched their energy pool, but involved diggined deeply into your jin (7 total). Thus it has to be balanced out with other things to be sustainable.

Attacks[]

Ranged[]

You have a whopping 2 ranged attacks, RaJinFlare (RJF) which is a special throwing weapon attack dealing 300% weapon damage + ~235 and can be used from point blank range. It costs 3 jin which is a poor trade off especially since no ranged attacks generate jin. But it can be nice to pick off a fleeing opponent that's nearly dead. Our other ranged attack is Enfebling Shuriken (ES) which causes a light (1k base) Dot + a 60% snare for 8 seconds. It is unfortunately however on a 12second cooldown meaning you can not keep something snared. Still in conjunction with RJF these give you some light tools to negotiate with runners. And combined with Fleeting Feet technically make it possible for a disciple to kite snarable mobs though this really isn't recommended unless you are playing a Vit/dex/wis build and have crafted or wardship quested shuriken at your disposal.

ES also makes split pulling VERY VERY easy against snarable mobs. Pull a bunch of mobs from max range. Give yourself some room to fall back a bit. Use ES as they start to get close and immediately FD afterwards. If FD succeeds the mobs will all run away but the snared one will straggle too far behind the others making it a breeze to get back up and use a normal ranged attack to pull that straggler by itself. If FD fails at least you did everything with a little distance allowed to you so that you can still run away and try again when FD is back up.

Counter attacks[]

Come in three flavors. Sun Fist (SF), Kiss of the Slug (KoS), and Kiss of Torment (KoT). KoS is the first one you will get, it deals no damage, restores no jin, but causes a significant reduction in damage and str of the mob for its next 3 attacks. In practice a soloing evasive build in dragon stance can fairly easily permanently maintain KoS on an opponent making dangerous fights much more manageable. I find it more practical to outheal since we have heals that deal damage simultaneously and healing is useful in groups. By comparison, high evasion is only useful solo and KoS deals no damage. Thus using heals to boost survival instead of evasion tends to make you a more well rounded disciple and more useful in groups. SF is a 200% weap damage + X type ability, but it also restores THREE jin, it is easily the fastest way to build up jin in a solo fight and the only combat move that gives more than one jin back. It deals pretty decent damage to boot. In practice I feel using SF plus LJF & KoH is a much more effective approach than using KoS when soloing. When grouping/raiding, on the rare occasion that a mob has AOE melee attacks and lights up your counterattacks, sometimes KoS is useful as it does stack with other debuffs and can help soften a mobs blows on the tank. It really depends on how much you need the jin at that point. As an EMN you should always have a comfortable choice between the two. KoT is our odd duck. It deals less damage than SF does, restores no jin, but has a range of 25. This actually makes it quite handy when taking bow or thrown weapon damage or when a mob has lit up your counters and suddenly decides to run out of melee range. On the whole you will rarely use it, but it does have a niche purpose.

A fun and handy trick to do when "cold starting"(zero jin) on an easy mob and you don't feel like meditating is to lead off with a shuriken and hit Dodge before the mob gets to you. Its first hit will open up your counter and you can immediately hit SF and use the 3 jin to use Leache's Grasp and give yourself a major endurance boost allowing you to load on melee damage and get your jin up manually while using melee heals and combos.

Melee Attacks[]

By the time you hit 50 you will have a wide array of melee attacks and 4 different special combos (endowments) you can pull off with them in addition to practical combos that, while they trigger no special effects, make excellent use of the abilities themselves. I'll go over them in the order they are received and essentially lay out the growing progression.

Our most basic is Void Hand (VH), it is fairly weak damage but is also fairly inexpensive and like almost all disciple melee attacks and finishers generates 1 jin. If you are low on endurance and need the jin, this is a very good way to convert end --> jin on the cheap rivaled only by finishers and SF counter. As your Leech's Grasp ability gets stronger you will likely find yourself naturally using VH less and less as time and jin steadily become more limiting factors than endurance.

Blessed Wind (BW) is the second melee attack you will receive and is on a 6sec cooldown. By itself it is a weak attack costing 30endurance, generating 1 jin, and casting a light 8second HoT on your TD that will land and crit independent of the attack. Coupled with dragon stance it also lands a modest instant heal which makes it your bread and butter endurance based direct heal, its 30end cost at lower levels is a stiff price and will make it too expensive to spam recklessly. As you acquire higher levels of leech's grasp to fuel your endurance this ability practically becomes free other than causing global cooldown and is limited only by your vit/hf and its own 6 second cooldwon.

Cyclone Kick(CK) is a high damage high crit chance ability that uses no endurance but burns up 2 jin. Until you get the disciple ability clairity this is your primary way to open up finishers. As a 300% weapdam move for 2jin and a high crit chance this move is a significant part of your DPS. At higher levels with some decent +crit gear its chance to generate crits becomes extremely reliable making it a very powerful tool and allowing you to reserve clarity for when you really need it. CK also opens up your first endowment "of life" giving you a third non energy based heal to compliment LJF and BW. Yes at the tender level of 4 you can already be rocking and rolling and get practiced at balacing out your 3 pools of jin/end/energy.

Falling Petal (FP) is your first finisher, in terms of damage for a finisher its pretty weak but stronger than VH and generates 1 jin for only 10end. It also lands a groupwide buff (10m) that increases healing effectiveness for 5min.

Soul Cutter (SC) expensive for 27end but OK damage 125%weap + x type ability and removes a very large chunk of hate from you while giving 1 jin. This move becomes ridiculously important later on. When you first get it its usually not worth the cost. Later on when endurance flows freely it will be your default jin generating attack in groups helping keep you from peeling aggro while ramping up jin and dealing damage.

Touch of Discord (ToD) ahaaa!! The first step of your damage finisher chain. For a low low 10end deals 400%weap + X damage and generates 1 jin. Now you can actually start hurting things, loading down a mix of CK and ToD from the crits while layering in BW and VH to heal and keep your Jin Balance positive.

Concordant Hand (CH) first step of your heal finishers deals almost as much damage as ToD for 10 endurance, generates 1 jin and generates a solid group heal (10m) that lands and crits independent of the attack. Usually resulting in your peeling aggro and dying when FD fails (which you also get at this level, thank jin). A powerful and dangerous tool that you hopefully learn to respect and stop dying from eventually.

Grasp of Discord (GoD) second step to our pure damage finisher chain, another 400%weapon +x for 10endurance and adds + 1jin. This makes hitting your damage chain ideal for boosting jin efficiently and has the side bonus of laying down trauma to your opponents.

Knife Hand (KH) is a melee dot that you incidentally get the same time as clarity (your 5sec force crit ability 30sec cooldwn). You will get well versed at using clairity to force crit your KH, BW and wrap it up with ToD/GoD to generate some serious healing and damage efficiently while gaining jin. KH by itself does decent damage for a 18end ability, but force critting it makes it a very strong tool to stream out damage, especially when you are too busy healing to use your damage finisher chain. For 18end this is our cheapest non finisher move that generates 1 jin.

White Lotus Strike (WLS) is our second step to our incoming heal buff finisher chain. Like FP it doesn't do very much damage for a finisher and generates 1 jin, it also stacks another buff on your group members within 10m that boosts incoming heals. This second step makes IL a very very powerful group healing tool.

Blooming Ridge Hand (BRH) is a high endurance cost weak attack that plants a 30sec healing shield on the enemy, every hit that lands heals any attacker for a very small amount of hps. Still it adds up. Having IL + BRH running is a pretty nice combo that will have most meleers in 10m of you keeping self healed most of the time without any direct intervention. Generates 1 jin.

Palm of Discord (PoD) a third 400%weap damage + x step to your pure damage finisher chain that generates 1 jin. At this point, if you have some +crit gear, using 1h weapons, and are in tiger stace, the chance of CK critting is high enough that for the 2jin CK costs you, the 3 you get back from opening up your 3 step damage finisher will typically balance itself out mixed with clarity + KH when its available. These combos combined will essentially allow you to deal endless damage balancing out your endurance and jin pools nicely. You'll never get the huge numbers that "true" melee DPS classes get but you'll also be far more relentless and be able to deal a constant stream of damage without pause.

Essence Thief (ET) this is our learned ability line, first available at 34. It deals a moderate amount of damage, steals energy from the mob and gives it to you on a 1min cooldown. The energy gained is NOT independent of the attack, if you miss you do not gain the energy. This can be force critted with clarity to gain a very large chunk of energy. Combined with S&M discapline you can recover very large chunks of energy in a very short timespan.

Concordant Palm (CP) our second step to our healing finisher, lands and crits independently of the attack. Like CH this is a pretty high damage finisher, close to our discord finisher chain. Instead of a 1shot 10m group heal though, CP grants a group 10m HoT that is very strong. Like CH this move can generate silly amounts of aggro and should be planned out accordingly. Generates 1 jin.

Fist of Discord (FoD) our fourth and final step to our pure damage finisher chain. Like all the others it is 400% + x. This means you can now stream out 4 fairly hard hits off of any crit. Each one generates 1 jin as well making it a very nice way to keep your jin pool high for minimal endurance spent.

Utility, etc.[]

These abilities while not damaging attacks or powerful heals often have their place and use regardless.

Dissonant Bonds Touch of Woe (ToW) your first dissonant bond. Costs 3 jin and lasts for 2 minutes, like all bonds you can only have it active on one target at a time. ToW causes your offensive target to take damage each time they attack. It does a reasonable amount to normal mobs but is particularly nasty on the fast hitters such as mosquitos etc.

Leech's Grasp (LG) a dissonant bond that lasts 2minutes and cost 3 jin. This ability "leech's" endurance from a mob and gives it to you. Even at low levels this is a strong ability. At its highest level later in the game you should essentially never run out of endurance unless you are spamming your highest cost abilities. Once you get this ability you will lead off most fights with it to fuel your combat.

Touch of the Ox (OX) This is our one and only debuff oriented dissonant bond for 3 jin that lasts 2 minutes and can only be on one target at a time. It removes a large chunk of str/dex/con from the target. This ability combined with KoS makes most mobs hit for SIGNIFICANTLY less. Even raid mobs seem to be notably effected. Like LG, you will regularly lead off fights with OX most of the time, especially on any target that hits remotely hard.

Mindless Clutch (MC) is another dissonant bond that like all the others cost 3jin and lasts 2minutes. At its highest level it leech's 54energy/4 seconds and gives it to you. For fights where you must hang back and focus primarily on energy heals this is a must.

Feint Mechanism Feint is almost like having a second dodge ability, it can only be used if a mob is actively attacking you and interrupts its attacks for 3 seconds at its highest version. This ability cost 20end and has a 20sec cooldown, if it is successful it opens up two other abilities.

Astral Gale (AG) is your most worthless ability. When polled not one disciple considered the ability useful and we all agreed we'd never miss it. It is quite likely you will never use it your entire career as a disc. Usable only after a successful feint it takes 100end and divides it among the party members. Since it cost 20 end to use feint and 4 seconds of global cooldown you just spent a good chunk of time in a full group to give less than 20 endurance to everyone. You have better things to do with your time than give people trivial amounts of endurance. Things like endowments, damage, and healing.

Paralyzing Touch (PT) is usable only after a successful feint. This is your bit of CC. Your highest version stuns a mob for 40 seconds. The advantage being that any damage dealt stays dealt, they do not recover it like they would from a mez. The disadvantage is that the mob has to be actively attacking you in order to use feint and feint can miss and so can PT and it will be 20sec before you can try again. This creates a catch22 scenario. Its easy to use PT safely against easy mobs that don't hit hard...but you don't really need to bother in those cases. In the cases where you really need it because the mobs hit like a grand piano from a 2nd story window its not safe to use because you have to deal with them attacking you first and if it fails you're stuck taking those hits for at least another 20seconds.

There are some things you can do to make it safer. If the mobs are snarable you can use your enfeebling shuriken so that one gets to you far far ahead of the other. Use ES in conjunction with OX and ToW on the one you will eventually be fighting, on the other one that will get to you first use LG and dodge in advance. Immediately use KoS and feint when the mob gets to you, if PT fails follow it up with KoH on yourself plus clairity on BW --> CK --> VH --> CH --> CP. You are now in a situation with two mobs hitting you hard but at least not for full damage and you having extended your hps with a huge amount of regen ticking away on you for the next 15seconds giving you time to try to feint and use PT to stun the mob you are still facing off against for the second time. If it fails again evaluate your situation and decide if you're going to cross your fingers and FD or try to stick it out for a third attempt.

The most useful situation that you should use Feint --> PT is when you have intentionally pulled aggro on an add that was on the tank after using CH/CP, this is an ideal situatino to get them off your case by using PT to stun them. Bear in mind this all assumes that the mobs are not immune to stun.

Casted Buffs[]

Wisdom/Sagicity of the Grasshopper 1hr casted buff that raises group members str by a decent amount and dex by an OKish amount.

Favor/Grace of the Crow 1hr casted buff that raises AC a small amount and physical resistance (poison/disease) significantly.

Impenetrable/Stoical Mind 1hr casted buff that raises mental resistance significantly.

Inner Focus 5minute casted buff (ally only) that's highest version regenerates 1jin / 6seconds. Monks want you to maintain this on them constantly, however its difficult to keep track of in hard fights and requires you to constantly retarget the monks and then switch back to the tank you're healing. In short its a big PITA. But sometimes its worth the efforts of bringing them extreme joy. Also useful to cast on other disciples ESPECIALLY on ranged fights.

Purity 2minute jin based casted buff that boosts inc heals by 300 hp. Cost 5 jin.

Combat Triggered Buffs Falling Petal finisher, small +inc heals to group for 5min.

White Lotus Strike finisher, small +inc heals to group for 5min.

Endowments[]

Endowments are melee combos that trigger various buffs. To make a combo the moves must be pressed within 8 seconds of each other. It does not matter if the move lands a hit or not.

Endowment of Life (EoL) BW --> CK --> VH, upon hitting VH your defensive target is given a 1500 hp buff (at level 50) for 2minutes. This buff can only be maintained on one target at a time. After giving the hp buff the defensive target is also healed over 1500hps. An incredibly strong buff and worth maintaining on your tank. Available at level 4.

Precept of Mastery (Mastery) SC --> VH --> KH, upon hitting KH group members within 10m are given a 10minute buff that reduces ALL ability costs (energy AND endurance) by 10%. Particularly nice for other healers. Available at level 18.

Endowment of Balance (EoB) BRH --> KH --> CK, upon hitting CK you gain a 10minute buff that regenerates 1jin /8seconds. Once you get this endowment you will pretty much want to maintain it 24/7. Available at level 26.

Endowment of Enmity (EoE) CK --> RJF, upon hitting RJF you gain a 10minute buff that grants +10% damage. Only two moves but costing a total of 5 jin makes this an expensive buff. Still its usually not too terribly hard to maintain with a little planning. This buff is for the most part the only real reason you will use RJF. Available at level 34.

Because of the 8second grace period between moves in a chain you can weave different endowments together into a single long chain that doubles up on some of the moves and saves time.

SC-->VH-->BRH-->KH-->CK-->RJF Allows you to trigger all 3 of the 10min durration endowments in 6 seconds. Making it pretty easy to squeeze them together and much easier for keeping track and managing. Firing off KoH and if necessary CH/CP gives plenty of breathing room to get this off while major regen heals are ticking away on the tank. The EoL 2min endowment can not be perfectly sandwiched in with the others because CK and VH are in the wrong order.

That said, SC-->VH-->BRH-->KH-->BW-->CK-->VH-->RJF is the most efficient way to fire off all 4 endowments in minimal time.

Misc. Stuff[]

Dodge has three particularly good uses. One is using it to buy you a precious extra few seconds when a particularly nasty mob turns on your and FD either fails or is on cooldown. It gives your tank more time to respond and rescue you. The other good use is pre-emptively using dodge as a mob is incoming so that its first hit misses and you can immediately counterattack with SF for decent damage and +3jin or with KoS to greatly nerf the next three hits and extend your breathing room. Which one is the best choice is largely dependant on how hard the mob is going to hit, if he has friends, and how much jin you had going into the fight. Thirdly Dodge --> SF is literally the fastest way to get 3 jin if you are under attack.

Astral Walk is our summon that all healers get.

Symbol of Unity is our "rez candy" clicky that we can give to others to bring us back to life if we die that all healers get.

Reincarnate is our basic out of combat res that all healers get.

Purify is an ability that removes both poison and disease simultaneously. Quite handy since it is VERY strong and usually only requires one cast. There are some mobs that will use both, in these cases purify is a wonderful tool to have.

Sun and Moon Discapline (S&M) exchanges 6 jin for a large chunk of energy and causes global cooldown. 6 jin is ~gol-durned~ expensive mind you, but sometimes in hard situations you need to use your energy a fair amount, if things get too far out of balance and you've got the jin to spare this becomes a very handy ability to have around.

Feign Death (FD) unlike monks and necros only has a 90% chance of working against even level mobs. It is on a full 1 minute cooldown, so when using it always have a plan B ready because you won't get a second chance to FD for a loooong time. The most reliable use of FD is to pre-emptively use it as an aggro wipe before the mobs turn their attention to you. The more mobs actively aggroed on you the lower the chance of success.

Clairity, forces all abilities that can to crit for 5 seconds. On a 30sec cooldown. Cost 1 jin. Does not cause global cooldown. Making good use of clarity like LJF is the hallmark of a good disciple. If you macro it so that you loose no time you can make 3 abilities crit for you with this skill instead of 2. In a heavy situation you can crit BW --> KH --> ET to land a good heal and OKish HOT followed by a strong melee dot followed by an very large boost to your energy pool while having your finisher chains opened up to you. Clairity macroed to KH can allow you to force crit two steps of your damage chain, Clarity macroed to BW can allow you to force crit BOTH steps of your healing finisher chain. With a little planning and some dexterity it is a very very powerful tool to a disc.

Awakening our in combat resurrection spell on a 10min cooldown. It is very fast casting for a res spell at 3seconds cast time. Use it wisely because its unlikely you'll get to use it again inside the same battle with its long cooldown.

Stance Wheel Our extremely expensive stance removal tool cost 40 endurance and does nothing else. This is both good and bad. Compared to a ranger who's move "Cripple" is a stance push + damage + debuff for cheap Stance Wheel seems like a rip off. The upside is that since it does not actually do damage it also does not count as an attack. Thus a stance that causes attackers to take 4k damage does not hurt you as you use this ability to remove it. And if any class has the endurance to fuel this ability it is the disciple at the later levels of the game with your very very strong LG dissonant bond.

Baiting Strike (BS) boosts the hate of your offensive target with your defensive target. Its a nice aggro plant that is done from melee range for 15endurance. With a 30sec cooldown. Definitely a handy ability to use when FD fails and to help a tank with aggro in general. Also can be entertaining on a raid to coordinate this ability with other classes that have aggro plants to cause a raid mob to suddenly turn on someone and two shot them out of the blue.

Fleeting Feet (FF) is a 50% runspeed boost for 20sec on a 45sec cooldown. It is extremely handy for split pulling, running for your life, and getting somewhere fast in general. It stacks completely with everything including bard run speed. I have hit speeds in excess of 600% with this. At that velocity you can sometimes run past a mob so fast it doesn't necessarily register you in time to get a hit off. You can run past a caster so fast that by the time it finishes casting its spell you're already out of range. Nice for making insane dashes into a dangerous place and hoping FD works to try to summon in your group quickly and easily. Another fun trick is that although FF can only be used on the ground you can land a flying mount, hit FF and take off into the air with the momentum to get a 50% flying speed boost. Once the effect wears off you can land your mount and repeat it when FF refreshes.

Paralyzing Sweep (PS) is essentially like a rescue stunning all enemies attacking your defensive target for 10 seconds or until attacked. Assuming enemies can actually be stunned this move can really pull someone's bacon out of the fire.



==Supporting other healers==. A disciple can constantly stream heals to a group making a bloodmage's ability to use pact much more safely manageable. They make all heals more (particularly shaman's reactive heals) powerful by boosting incoming heals to everyone in their group and especially so on a single target. They help keep bmg and shaman life topped off making their cannibalize abilities more functional (their abilities to sacrifice their own health for energy). And at level 50 they also generate energy for their group members on every hit on top of reducing the casting cost of everything by 10%. They make a cleric's already strong heals even moreso allowing them in many cases to safely use lower level (lower cost) heals and help regen their energy. In a nutshell a disciple who is good about keeping up their endowments, their +inc heal buffs, and IL is another healer's wet dream. The disc makes all their heals notably more powerful and more effcient while topping off their life and boosting their energy regen.

The heal boosting occurs in two ways. A finisher chain of "falling petals" (FP)+ "White lotus strike" (WLS) that gives 5minute buffs to all group members and boosts each heal that lands on any of them by 87 hp & 81 hp. So every heal cast on a party member lands for an additional 168hps.

And an ability that disciples get at 46 called purity. This ability is expensive (5jin) only lasts 2minutes and has a 1.5min cooldown so you can only effectively keep it on one person at a time. It stacks with FP&WLS and generates an additional 300 hp on incoming heals. So a disciple who is on the ball can keep all heals boosted by an additional 468hps on an individual. This does not effect HOT ticks but it DOES effect reactive heals and procs.

This makes paladin healing shield, paladin healing judgement, warrior grim determination, shaman reactive heals, bard song heal component, and other procing heal abilities extremely powerful. It also makes heals that are relatively "weak" compared to the long casting direct heals of primary healers much more functional. This all stacks with gear that boosts inc heals so a tank with the palpenipe gloves from APW has heals boosted by 568hps. At this point even ranger heals become useful.

"Inner Light" (IL) and "Blooming Ridge Hand" (BRH) allow a constant stream of small heals to land on people. BRH is used on an opponent and causes every attack that lands to heal the attacker for a very small amount (90ishhp), this does not stack with heal boosting effects. IL is a buff the disciple uses on themselves, it is expensive (5jin) and lasts 5minutes. This buff is a proc that works on every hit. At lower levels is heals every group member in 10m for a small amount that stacks with heal boosting effects such as FP,WLS,Purity. It also boosts melee damage for group members by a small amount for 8 seconds. At mid levels it restores some edurance to all group members in 10m. And at level 50 it restores around 40energy in addition to endurance, heals and melee damage boost to all group members in 10m.

If a disciple uses their tiger stance the effects of IL become stronger.

As a healing tool combined with FP/WLS and purity. IL is a very powerful group healing mechanism healing your whole group for well over 200hps on every attack you land. Stacking purity + the palp tank gloves can heal an MT for over 600hps on every hit you land. BRH means the tank is also healing themselves another 90ish hp on every hit they land.

A smart disc keeps purity and FP/WLS strike up at all times the moment they get these abilities. Smart group members stay within 10m of the disc at all times to benefit from them. A note: 10m is "loose" in terms of vanguard. Sometimes you can be at the limits of 10m and be too far away. To be safe try to keep at 9m, then you are garunteed to not be out of range.

Perceived "Emergency" Abilities A disciple essentially has 3 "oh crap!" abilities, a very powerful group healing finisher chain, a small instant heal on a small cooldown, and FD. Your finisher chain and FD are powerful and unreliable. Your instant heal is weak and completely reliable. To be effective you should always use FD and your finisher chain BEFORE you need them.

FD currently has a 90% chance of working against even level opponents, however the more targets that aggro on you the less chance it has of working. It lasts for up to 5minutes and has a 1minute cooldown. Many people when playing a disciple use it as an emergency tool after they already have aggro and are getting beat on. At best it saves you and hopefully doesn't make the mobs ping pong driving your tank insane. At worst it fails and the group systematically wipes. A smart disciple uses this ability regularly as an aggro wipe so that they never win aggro to begin with and the emergency situation never occurs. If you wait until multiple mobs are focused on you your chances of FD succeeding go down dramatically. If you use it in advance and it fails you have time to use your other aggro manipulation tools Soul Cutter and Baiting strike.

Concordant Hand (CH) + Concordant Palm (CP) This is our wonderful group heal finisher chain on a 1min timer. Used right it is a very very powerful tool. Used wrong it usually gets you killed. CH is the first step of our heal finisher you get at level 14. It does a sizable chunk of damage and a large group heal (base ~1900 hp) on par with the long casting group heal. Unlike your 4.5sec casted group heal it can also crit (and be force critted by abilities, clarity, imperil, hamstring etc.) for a simply massive group heal. However, if you have remotely high aggro and you use this ability you WILL pull aggro from the tank. If you have moderate aggro and you crit with this you will probably pull aggro from the tank. At level 38 you get the second step of the chain CP, assuming CH didn't miss. It also does a decent chunk of damage and heals for a base of ~2500 hp to your group over 15seconds. In practice with good healing gear this means everyone in your group is healing for around 1k a tick. If it crits, and it can, your group will be healing for around 1600 hp a tick. Combined with IL and FP/WLS/Purity you can easily create your own worst aggro nightmare that no tank will be able to save you from forcing you to use FD the wrong way and pray it doesn't fail. There are two ideal uses for CH/CP: as a tool to give you breathing room to get off your endowments (combos that grant buffs etc.) and energy regen abilities or just cut loose and deal damage. Or as a tool to deal with your group getting hit with heavy AOE damage. If you are simply pouring on as much healing as possible to a single target this is "usually" not the best way to do it. It earns huge aggro and if you miss with CH you just wasted 4 seconds to heal your MT for ~3k (~4.5kcrit) instead of just casting your Atral Wind for over 5k healing in under 3 seconds. Worse if you earn aggro from CH landing you'll have to hope FD works, if it does you spent 6seconds to heal the MT for 3k. If it doesn't you're quite possibly dead. That said if you're deep into a fight and aggro isn't an issue (because you've been playing like an EMN and using FD correctly) intentionally hitting CH/CP during an imperil or other force crit becomes ridiculously powerful healing your MT for 4500ish up front and another 6kish over 15seconds. In conjunction with some of your other abilities the MT will be healed for a combined total of roughly 1600(CP)+700(KoH)+1350(IL)+270(BRH)+680(BW) = 4600 hp a tick or more for the next 15 seconds assuming you use simply use melee attacks. Using your other abilities and direct heals on top of all this essentially allows you to heal an utterly ridiculous amount for those 15second covering for another healer to take alternate action or allow you to try to keep two tanks up simultaneously or heal other raid members etc. On the flip side if you aggro is at all questionable pulling a stunt like that will once again force you to pray FD works.

LaoJin Flare (LJF) Our little wonder. For the low low price of 2 jin at level 50 heals for about 1200 hp instant on a 15sec cooldown. Discs who do not aspire to become EMN shirk this ability and rarely use it and look with envy at the cleric's huge heals on short timers or the other healer's instant invulns etc. The big trick with this ability is that it does not effect global cool down. Using this correctly DRAMATICALLY expands your flexibility healing and makes you less tempted to do silly things that earn you aggro and/or get people killed. "But ron? What about the talk of using CH/CP to give you 15s of healing glory and all that jazz?" Good question future EMN. The prolem with CH/CP is that CH can miss, in fact the hit before getting CH can miss thus never opening the finisher chain to begin with. If you miss CP never happens, thus you NEVER want to work yourself into such a bad situation that you NEED CP to go off or you NEED FD to work. Because when you NEED them is when they will fail. Gambling your group/raid's success on these abilities is a very very bad idea. Any melee attack has a minimum 5% chance to miss. FD against a level 53 mob has supposedly a 25% chance to fail (in practice it seems closer to 20%). By comparison, ALL your other healing abilities have a 100% chance to work (assuming you are not stunned,silenced,mezzed, have energy/endurance/jin etc.). The single best uses of LJF is macroed with other abilities to give them serious healing kick. Example LJF macroed with our fast casting heal Breath of Renewal (1780 hp base 1.5s) means you just turned your quick heal from a 2800 hp heal into a 4700 hp heal. Better still, you're an EMN which means that you had purity+FP/WLS up on your MT, since it got applied to both LJF AND BW adding a slick 468 hp to BOTH. Now...for the extra 2 jin, you just turned a 1.5sec 3280 hp heal into a 1.5sec 5680 hp heal. That's some major spot healing power that you can reliably pull off every 15seconds. Or macroed with BW in dragon stance you can literally instantly heal someone for ~4.5k plus a tiny hot for about 1.5k more over 8 seconds.

As an EMN you will take advantage of ability haste from bards or psis plus items like the shoulder guards of the dedicated to make your cooldown abilities available more often (45ish sec on CH/CP, FD and 11s on LJF) and tighten up your timing to capitolize on it. Using your "emergency" abilities as preventative tools rather than as a desperate bid in response to a bad situation. General Strats Max Damage If you have a remotely decent crit rating the most damage you can possibly do is to lead off with your dissonant bonds, LG, ToW, OX and immediately lead off with CK --> RJF followed by clairity macroed in with KH. Allowing you to crit your first two steps of your discord damage chain while your KH is ticking away for high damage. After finishing your discord chain immediately spam CK until you crit with it and hit your discord sequence again, if you have the RI meleedps helm immediately use it to refresh your KH as its about to end and keep hitting your discord chain using CK to keep it rolling and use your clarity + KH macro the second time KH needs to be refreshed. In cases when you absolutely MUST back off from a fight give a mob something to remember you by and refresh your KH just as you back off. When you get back in range again lead off with your clairity + KH and continue the onslaught.

On the very few fights that I have actually been allowed to purely focus on damage and nothing else and had the right buffs with a bard and the lag hasn't been bad and I've bothered parsing in APW I have hit 1300 to around 1400ish+ dps. This is from dps gear carefully gathered completely outside of APW (except for the siliasauras dps arms and legions choking grasp). It also doesn't take into account the damage from ToW which would typically add about ~150 to 200dps+. Ideally I believe its possible for a disc who focused on APW dps gear in the right group to achieve 1500-1600dps on a good day. This is still well below an equivalently geared "true" dps class but quite significant regardless.

That said in by far the vast majority of fights focusing on pure dps isn't remotely practical as you serve the raid FAR better keeping the EoL endowment on the tank plus purity and FP/WLS among other things.

Still if I'm only doing passive healing and wearing my dps set it is not unusual to parse over 1000dps. Actively main healing in my healing gear I'm happy to break 700. Still not terrible.

Healing From a Distance[]

When you are forced to heal from a distance it is crucial that you start a fight with full jin. Make sure the puller gives you a 25second notice, use IL on yourself and purity on the MT and immediately meditate back tof ull jin. And hopefully as an EMN you have your EoB up so that you regenerate jin through the fight and Mastery so your astral wind is 10% cheaper to cast.

Ignor your instinct to use LG, obviously endurance regen does you precious little good at range. Instead use MC, OX is also still important and if you can afford it ToW will help end the fight faster. Refrain from using LJF or your fast casting BoR. Use keep purity up and use your lower level 40 Astral wind V instead of your level 48 version if you have enough vit/hf to support it. Or flip back and forth between the two. Use ranged attacks (not RJF though) whenever there is time to help support the fight and also proc IL to regen energy from it (IL procs off ALL attacks, ranged or melee). If another disc is present you can hit each other with inner focus. This will give you enough jin to not only maintain MC and OX and purity, but also allow you to use KoH periodically making your task much much easier.

Following that setup you can very effectively heal a single target at range. Its not as good as your melee healing setup by a long shot...but its definitely functional and still capitolizes on some of your own abilities to increase efficiency.

Efficiency/Balance/General Tips[]

Making the most of a disciple is a matter of balacning your endurance, energy, jin, aggro and time. In the beginning your greatest bottleneck is endurance, which in turn limits your jin production. This goes away as leech's grasp gains power and soon your major bottleneck becomes time and aggro. You have enough endurance and if you're careful enough jin and energy, but you can only do so much so fast.

At the earliest levels being a good disc is about patience in your approach to fights. If you spam any given ability you will tap out of that resource thus limiting your options. Get used to the idea of always waiting just 1 extra second between melee attacks. This allows your natural endurance regen to kick in. Throwing a BoR or AW between attacks serves the same purpose. This should allow you to steadily maintain a set pace of attacks and healing no matter how long the fight goes. Save your LJF to use macroed with BW or BoR for unexpectedly hard hits or use it between healing attacks to even the flow depending on what you are facing.

At the mid low levels as you have leeche's grasp and CH, and reasonable damage finishers combined with Inner Light. Thus aggro management becomes a major problem. Few tanks have the tools to deal with the nervous breakdown you can cause with aggro nightmares if more than one mob is present. You have to temper the joys of CH with making sure it doesn't tick off your tank and get you killed simultaneously. In most cases you should be able to get by fine with KoH plus combat heals. You should lead off in dragon stance unlees you are very confident tiger won't be a problem. Get used to using FD near the start of a hard fight and then again as it become available. This helps the tank stay consistently ahead of your. Using SC periodically should garuntee your relative safety. If you plan on being a combat disciple you should start getting away from using energy heals at this point. Get used to maintaining KoH and feeling out the limitations of BW and EoL both in timing and strength. Also getting a feel for when you need to be in dragon stance for the instant heal bonuses to BW and KoH. And if you have a lot of jin while in dragon stance get used to the idea of using KoH as an instant heal almost much as it is a HOT. It has no cooldown which means it is always available as an option if you keep your jin high. Start practicing blending your mastery and EoL combos together and keep their buffs up constantly to always give you an extra mesure of safety and efficiency.

At mid higher levels your leech's grasp is becoming quite powerful and endurance shouldn't be much of an issue. Additionally you have EoB and OX. This means you have powerful tools at your disposal to keep fights safer and more fuel to your endurance and jin. It also means you have more things to manage and maintain within the same time frame and same global cooldown limitations. It can be a VERY rude awakening if you are soloing or healing against a hard hitting mob and you lost track of OX, and EoL, only to find that suddenly you or the tank are getting absolutely hammered on. This combined with an ill timed crit usually equals some combination of panic and wasted resources followed by death. The only spell heal you should be using at this point is BoR macroed with LJF to control spikes in damage, BW, KoH, CH/CP, EoL, BRH, IL + FP/WLS should be taking care of the standard damage flow so long as you stay on top of things and extend what you've already been doing. You should also either intimately understand the feint/PT mechanism and use it RAPIDLY when an add aggros on you so that you don't pause your healing on the tank too much or ignor it completely and deal with adds by getting adept at loosing aggro with SC and planting it on others with Baiting Strike. Ideally you'll pursue a mixture of the two so that you can function in pretty much any situation without it becoming a crisis. You will also be feeling out the fine lines of maintaining "just enough" healing so you can focus on damage and endowment maintenance etc. and get sensitive to shifts in the battle that cause you to up or downscale your flow of healing while keeping your jin high so that you are never caught in a bad situation and unable to deal without using despret measures. Sometimes its simply a matter of hitting dodge ---> KoS ---> Feint/Baiting Strike ---> SC to help give your tank time to get things under control.

At the highest levels you have practically unlimited endurance and should be a master at keeping your jin high. Time is your enemy, cooldowns and global cooldown will be your true barriers so rotating through attack patterns becomes key to maximizing your potential. You will have developed your own styles and trends as well build preference largely based on play style and/or group makeup at this point. Grouping will be very similar to the mid high levels but with a few extra tricks up your sleeve than before primarily in the forms of purity and a 4 step damage finisher chain helping you very efficiently regenerate jin and paralyzing sweep when mobs are not immune to stun (and they typically are at end game) to save someone's butt.

Raiding is a different ball of wax. Your primary initial focus raiding should be to get your survival up to par. That means 7500+hps raidbuffed, otherwise the psudo random stray hits from the "B" robots in the entrance will likely 1 shot you. You second goal should be to get your raidbuffed vit close to 700 (without bardsong), and cap your HF at 500 when using a Healing Focus in your offhand. Legions choking grasp should be a side goal for you as it has a lot of vit on it and as a perk does a lot of damage.

When on raids you absolutely can not afford to be using your FD after getting aggro as you will often not live long enough to even try to click the hotkey. You simply MUST manage your aggro or die. And you have been given tools to do this so you will rarely have a good excuse for failing. This means you stay in dragon stance unless you are ~gol-durned~ sure the tank has solid aggro. You will use baiting strike early and often not only for your own benefit but for others. You will use FD either immediately before CH/CP or immediately after CH/CP and spam SC like mad if it fails (and it will so expect it). You will get so used to spaming SC and Baiting Strike after a mob flips aggro to someone else that it will be like an automated response and you will save yourself and others doing so.

You can keep a group alive through ridiculous amounts of AOE damage if you watch your aggro and stay on top of your MT healing. Your AOE casted heal takes a LONG time to get off, never use it unless you already have KoH+BW running on your MT or they may be dead before you finish. If some members are getting hit with AOE harder than others use KoH on them to balance out the difference. And possibly BoR. Also most AOE attacks are pretty regular in their patterns so you can anticipate them and use CH/CP appropriately. If you have a druid present on raid your members have berries, if they are getting a little low despite constantly getting heals from IL and CH/CP and BRH among other things remind them of the delicious red orbs they have, its stupid to take attention away from keeping your MT alive if its completely un-necessary.

Try to use openings to maintain your endowments and combat buffs, invulns, CH/CP+KoH, etc. Never just randomly decide you won't heal for the next 6seconds, either cover it or let someone else know so they can cover you.

Also if you are managing your aggro well you can use CH/CP to give the other healers in your raid breathing room, ESPECIALLY if you are split tanking and BOTH tanks are in your group and only 9m or less away (10m just isn't safe enough, sometimes at the edge of 10m your AOE abilities do not land, I have gotten a lot of people killed because the game said 10m and I thought I was close enough). Just because YOU'RE combat res is used up doesn't mean another healer's is. Using KoH plus CP essentially completely covers for another healer for 15seconds (and earns you sick aggro so don't be reckless). Let them know when you've got it running and they should have plenty of time to res someone, fill their hps and use their buffs on them.

DODGE DODGE DODGE...if you get aggro and FD fails, and you are somehow still alive HIT DODGE IMMEDIATELY to give your tank that extra moment to save your sorry butt. Sometimes even if you do everything right and are an EMN, aggro gets glitchy and you somehow win it anyway, dodge is your 1hit invuln and it CAN give the tank the 2-3 extra seconds they need to save you.

Be consistent when possible. If you are too erratic in your healing patterns other healers will never get used to you or be able to figure out if they need to cast a heal or not, if you are consistent they can get a feel for how much they need to contribute of their own healing to balance out yours. If you are going to slack or do something different don't make them guess. It will cause them to simply constantly spam heals as if you weren't there which will increase their aggro needlessly and burn through their resources which partially defeats the point of you being on the raid to begin with.

Lastly on raids...never loose track of your endowments. If EoL falls on your MT they suddenly lost 1500hps, if OX falls they are getting hit harder, if Mastery falls everything suddenly cost 10% more, if EoB falls suddenly you aren't regenerating jin as fast. If purity/FP/WLS falls suddenly heals are landing for a fair chunk less. On their own none of this is good. Combined it can be too much to deal with on the fly because the healers and tanks have gotten used to a certain pace and pattern, they aren't expecting the tank to suddenly loose larger chunks off their healthbar and their heals suddenly landing for less.




Abilities Categorized and Alphebatized[]

Format Key: Ability Name fr/fu (cost) (i or cast time), (refresh time +n), (durration), (p, o, d, g, a), (range) Ability Function

i = instant, c = cast time, r = refresh time, n = no global cooldown, p = selfonly, o = offensivetarget, d = defensivetarget, g = group, a = ally fr/fu = level first received / level of final upgrade all time is given in seconds unless specified all stats are of final upgrade

Aggro manipulation Baiting Strike 30/48 15end i, 0, 0, o&d, 5 Increased TO's hate for TD by 2566

Feign Death 14/14 free i, 60, 5min, p, na 90% chance aggro wipe vs. even level. Note: More mobs paying attention to you lowers the chance of success.

Soul Cutter 8/48 28end i, 0, 0, o, 5 125% +170 damage, removes 4221 hate from you

Buffs Falling Petal

Favor/Grace of the Crow 18/48(dropped50) 161 energy i, 0, 1hr, d, 25 +physresist 196, +AC 504

Impenatrable/Stoical Mind 26/50(dropped50) 142 energy i, 0, 1hr, d, 25 +mentresist 196

Inner Focus

Inner Light 10/50 i, 0, 5min, p, na Self buff that procs off every attack, melee or ranged. Proc effects group members in 10m radius. In dragon stance regens 89 hp, 2end, 28energy. In tiger stance regens 124 hp, 3end, 44energy. It also adds +6% melee damage. It should be noted that healing efficiency has 1/3 effect aka +60% healing only adds 20% to the healing portion of this).

Meditate

Purity

Wisdom/sagicity of the Grasshopper

White Lotus Strike

Counterattacks

Crowd Control

Debuffs

Heals

Melee Attacks

Ranged Attacks

Utility Other

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