Ruby Grid 3: Cleansing Flame
This is mainly the Healer tree, but there are a few important rubies not to be missed here too.
Blaze of Faith
Each tick of Cleansing Flame has a 40% chance to apply 3 buffs on the target that increase the damage of a Holy attack by 15%. Almost all of your damage is Holy, so this is a big boost to your DPS. These buffs will keep stacking up and provide an almost constant 15% boost to your DPS.
Illuminated Mind
Increases your Vigor by 9%. An important stat ruby for all builds.
Valiant Guardian
Increases your Willpower by 8 and at rank 2 it will cause Holy Blast/Celestial Judgement to apply a mark on the target that will allow you to use Sacred Word and Exorcism on them. If you want Exorcism to work on players you must take both of these.
Divine Foresight
A nice backup heal for only 1 ruby. It can save your life from being 1 shot. If you have enough rubies, take it.
Eternal Fire
Each tick of Cleansing Flame has a 30% chance to apply Eternal Fire which renews the effect and increases its damage by 10%, stackable up to 5 times. It also increase the duration of Perpetual Healing (your main heal in Caster build) by 30%. This ruby will save you a lot of mana by not having to cast Cleansing Flame as often, as well as increasing the damage of the DoT that should be on your opponents for the entirety of combat by up to 50%. These are good rubies to take.
Enlightenment
Increases your Determination by 3/6/9. I have taken it only rank 1 to reach Divine Infusion. For PvE you will not need Determination as you should be far from mobs and receive little damage normally. For PvP Determination is much more important and you should take all 3 of these rubies. I will go into more detail about the stats later on in the guide.
Divine Infusion
Increases the critical strike chance of Cleansing Flame and Perpetual healing by 10/20/30%. If I had one more ruby I would take this to Rank 3. Increased chance to crit makes a huge difference with the new stat system.
Other notes:
I have skipped Entreaty as you shouldn't need so much healing in PvE. In PvP it is a good, cheap and decent heal with instant cast and a short cooldown. You can reach it through the Determination rubies. I skipped the mana rubies for the same reasons as stated for Angelic Grace. The other rubies are all related to healing and we can ignore them
Part 3: What About Stats?
The new stats may seem quite confusing at first, but they're not so difficult to understand!
The most important stat is Vigor. This will be your base damage. The only way you can change this stat is through getting better gear, and rubies.
Out of the stats you can change, Proficiency and Brutality will be the most important. Proficiency just increases your damage, Brutality increases it the lower your target's health is.
Mathematically the optimum stat distribution for maximum DPS is half in Proficiency and half in Brutality. Though in raids, if you are against bosses that Enrage at the end of the fight, you may want to increase Brutality slightly to finish them off faster when things are most difficult.
But what about Determination? Well, this is an interesting stat that is not so easy to calculate. Determination increases your damage when you are being attacked. Well, as a Caster Healer of course you should be stood far away from enemies and not be receiving damage. In this case, Determination is useless. However, it's not always so simple. In raids there may often be a lot of AoE, in astral there can be AoE, fire on the ground, poison clouds etc etc. So what do we do then? To calculate the ideal stat distribution, first you need to know your average amount of Determination for the whole fight. You can use the wonderful addon AoUMeter for this. Next do a couple of fights and check your average Determination level. If it is above 30-40 then great! put some stats into Determination. If not, then you can skip this stat entirely for PvE. The higher your average Determination, the more stats you should put in it.
And for defensive stats? Well, personally I quite like Bloodlust. As I deal a lot of damage, Bloodlust provides a continuous stream of small heals to help me survive if I take damage. The addon AoUMeter will show you the healing done through Bloodlust if you have the latest version, and the heals are not bad
You may also be curious about PvP stats. Now, these are entirely dependent on the type of PvP. For large scale PvP such as Arena, the Caster Healer should hide at the back in the hopes of receiving less damage. Here I would stack as much Proficiency as possible to burst down my enemies very fast. (Think of Mages one-shotting people with their Icy Comets, we will do the same with our Heavenly Smite
) We want to hit as much damage as possible on the first hit, so Proficiency will help us the most here.
For Dominion, it is much smaller PvP and you will probably take a lot of damage, thus raising your Determination levels to 100 a lot of the time. Here you should put as much points as possible into Determination. For defensive stats I would suggest a lot of Willpower, around 15+ Tenacity to help protect you from Wound Complexity, and Vitality so that you are a bit more tanky.
Part 4: The Rotation
Well, now you have a build, and some stats, so how do you actually go about playing as a Caster Healer? The rotation is pretty simple
Be prepared to hammer certain hotkeys, as Caster Healer is all about spamming Celestial Judgement. My rotation is as follows:
First make sure you have Aspect of Light active.
- Start the fight with Cleansing Flame. This will begin to build Blaze of Faith stacks that will boost your Holy Damage.
- Use Heavenly Smite.
- Activate Frenzy.
- Spam Celestial Judgement. This will give you Fanaticisms and reduce the cooldown of Heavenly Smite.
- When you receive a stack of Fanaticism, use Particle of Light if single target, or Chain of Light if multiple targets.
- Heavenly Smite should be ready to cast again after Frenzy.
- Repeat Step 4, casting Frenzy and Smite as soon as they are ready. Don't forget to refresh your Cleansing Flame.
When fighting a large monster, or a boss you can also use
Providence for a nice burst.
Part 5: Random Useful Stuff that Doesn't Fit Anywhere Else
Weapons
For weapons in PvE you can use any 2 handed. You are only using it for stats and mana, and you won't be hitting things with it, so you can use a Staff, 2h Spear or 2h Mace. For PvP you can use a 1h Weapon (either 1h Mace or 1h Spear) and a Shield for more defence. It won't affect your damage in any way, unlike Melee Healers, however you will have less mana. Here Mana potions, Restoration potions and Warden's Balm will be your best friend
.
Recommended Reincarnation Skills
Adrenaline Rush - Warrior
Restores mana 3 times faster for 10 seconds. We use a lot of mana so this can be useful when your potions and Martyr skill is on cooldown. Particularly good for long boss fights and in raids.
Flash - Mage
Allows you to instantly teleport 25 meters forward. Good for kiting in PvP.
Part 6: To Conclude
Caster Healer is a lot of fun, and easy to learn. Thanks to the changes in update 5.0 it is now viable as a DPS spec, and it has given Caster Healer a whole new lease of life. I enjoy Caster Healer as I can deal a lot of DPS without having to charge in like a brute with a huge hammer :3 In PvP I can kite out of people's range while still inflicting damage, and by using Frenzy I can be fully mobile while continuing to deal damage. In Dominion I can be wicked with control effects, throwing Knockdowns, Blinds, Silences, and Fears every which way. Now my class is very fun to play, and I finally enjoy playing as DPS!
Thankyou for reading this far!
I hope this guide helps people to understand the new Caster Healer. If anyone wants any advice or tips on Caster or Healers in general (but not really Melee Healer), feel free to message me in game
P.S. If you're still not convinced, here's a final DPS shot from a routine guild run through Tep's
Taken from the fight with Sihal. The new Caster is OP!