I'm posting this after reading the posts about EE's in the General Discussions, there seem to be rather more EE's around than I thought. Therefore, since I rerolled to be a good live PVP healer, I'm looking for advice as to what makes a good healer. People are saying that they know how to play their toon to its full effect, what examples are there of this?
I want to be a good, useful productive member of my current clan, and I'm not entirely sure what a good Elven Elder consists of. I'm currently level 31, in Mithril with a SOL and not finding it too hard to find good parties.
Have any EE's got any tips for me?
I'm not looking for people to tell me how crap EE is, its been covered in the aforementioned posts. If I could have no "rerolls to SE" replies either, it would be much appreciated. Thanks :)
Know when to heal.. always watch your parties hp bar. Make sure you're well aware of your mana bar, and insist on resting when you're out or nearly out. When I'm in a group that takes a lot of damage, I'll even call out approximately how many heals I have left in my mana pool. <"Careful.. I've only got 4 heals left">
Know when to crowd control (keeping the mobs off the robe & light armor wearing classes. with some tanks this isn't necessary, since they know precisely when to hate. some tanks aren't that good.)
EE Specific: Know when to party return. This is the best xp rez ever.. since you never lose it to begin with. When the healer(s) are out of mana and someone pulls a huge train.. that sort of thing. There are people that will complain about being removed from the hunting spot with pr.. Don't party the unappreciate anymore.
Know when/what to buff: EEs get some good buffs. Know when and what places require buffs like: Resist Shock. When you get to 62, if you lack an SE or if the SE isn't 62 yet, buff the nukers with Wild Magic. Buff the tank with Advanced Block.. Keep in mind the class of your buffer and if there is a sws/bd in the party and keep your buffs to where they won't overbuff other important buffs.
Best path to a good healer: practice. Everybody loses some party members now and again.. and, pay attention. :)
Or you could avoid nervous movements - standing still means better regeneration than twitching around. Knowing when to sit and get back up is important also.
I believe for an EE as a secondary-almost-everything, communication is also big. Make sure if you're in group with another buffer you know who is doing what - are you taking strain off their mana by buffing basics (shield/might/ww/hw), or are you saving it for recharges? At that, are you recharging them so they can push more buffs and you can split resting time?
I want to be a good, useful productive member of my current clan, and I'm not entirely sure what a good Elven Elder consists of. I'm currently level 31, in Mithril with a SOL and not finding it too hard to find good parties.
I would consider getting a different weapon. Staff of Life does not boost your Heals enough to warrant gimping your Patk. Unless you are fighting Undead constantly (using Disrupt Undead spell) there is no reason for a healer to have a staff. You are better off with dual swords. Not only will you keep your party healed and buffed, you will be a very productive Damage Dealer when you don't have to sit to regen MP.
Once you hit 40, I'd go with Divine Set (+MP) and +4 Spirit*Raid dual swords. If you are in a situation where Mana is a problem, a Crystal Staff with Mana Up is decent enough (and cheap enough) to have as a secondary weapon.
Everyone loves a healer/buffer that contributes to damage dealing.
Claymore has the same atk speed, harder crits, and higher P atk & M atk then 107's. However as a mage accuracy tends to be a problem with duals you hurt less but you have twice the chance to land a half hit.
I found the use of a staff usefull when I had to do crowd control. Especialy in pick up parties you will have the weirdest combinations and people doing things they really really really shouldnt have done (though always good for a laugh). In such cases you want your sleep to land pronto, no questions asked.
The EE buffs are good basic buffs and some are especially good for defensive characters such as the tank.
Another thing a healer can do is to redirect people and alert them for new threats. Often you have a better overal view then some of your party members.
I was under the impression all D grade weapons had the same casting speed, after all their are no SA's.. I may be wrong tho...first for everything i guess.
I was under the impression all D grade weapons had the same casting speed, after all their are no SA's.. I may be wrong tho...first for everything i guess.
You cast faster with spiritshots. And wasting spirtishots on heals is something I find unnecesary under normal circumstances. But when you use a ngrade staff you can cast very fast with 1 cheap ngrade blessed spiritshot with almost the same effect as wasting 3 expensive dbsps.
But when you use a ngrade staff you can cast very fast with 1 cheap ngrade blessed spiritshot with almost the same effect as wasting 3 expensive dbsps.
Good advice. For this reason I never deleted my Apprentice Wand. Always have a handy NG Mage Weapon that uses only 1 BSpS.
The whole "twice the chance" thing is backwards logic. You have twice the chance to crit and hit - but also twice the chance to miss or land a normal hit.
Thats the best kind of logic, and yes the claymore is superior. But if there was an equal set of duals then they might be worth a look, however there arnt sadly.
Well, congrats, not many have what it takes to level an EE, I wish you keep it up to the very end (78 saint XD ).
Now, as far as equipment is concerned, since you mentioned "pvp", I'll say "accumen". Use the robe set that offers the highest cast rate bonus (karmian-bw-dc) you can get, plus a 1 handed accumen weapon (homoniculus-valhalla-som) and a shield. If you can afford it, you may also want to carry duals, to assist the group (especially in small groups).
As far as gameplay is concerned:
Know your strengths. You can heal faster than any other. You have some powerful defensive buffs. You can PR and return2. You can exp rez. You have wind shackle and sleep.
Know your weaknesses. You have insufficient offensive buffs. You have low hp and def., and no purify.
While exping, your primary job is mp management. You must do whatever you can to save mp - the more you have, the safer the group is. Tricks to this end: avoid healing your members to full hp, allow some for regeneration/vr. Never use buffs that have no effect, and dont cast the low effectiveness buffs when you cant afford it (that's right, they dont need WW to exp). /Sit whenever that does not endanger you and/or your party. Use sleep only when its more efficient than healing the member the mob is attacking. It's you that must stop the party for a rest, and sometimes you may need to insist on it, remember that.
There are a lot of similar little tricks that seperate a good healer from the rest, most of which you will learn with experience, so long as you keep striving for perfection.
Well, congrats, not many have what it takes to level an EE, I wish you keep it up to the very end (78 saint XD ).
Now, as far as equipment is concerned, since you mentioned "pvp", I'll say "accumen". Use the robe set that offers the highest cast rate bonus (karmian-bw-dc) you can get, plus a 1 handed accumen weapon (homoniculus-valhalla-som) and a shield. If you can afford it, you may also want to carry duals, to assist the group (especially in small groups).
As far as gameplay is concerned:
Know your strengths. You can heal faster than any other. You have some powerful defensive buffs. You can PR and return2. You can exp rez. You have wind shackle and sleep.
Know your weaknesses. You have insufficient offensive buffs. You have low hp and def., and no purify.
While exping, your primary job is mp management. You must do whatever you can to save mp - the more you have, the safer the group is. Tricks to this end: avoid healing your members to full hp, allow some for regeneration/vr. Never use buffs that have no effect, and dont cast the low effectiveness buffs when you cant afford it (that's right, they dont need WW to exp). /Sit whenever that does not endanger you and/or your party. Use sleep only when its more efficient than healing the member the mob is attacking. It's you that must stop the party for a rest, and sometimes you may need to insist on it, remember that.
There are a lot of similar little tricks that seperate a good healer from the rest, most of which you will learn with experience, so long as you keep striving for perfection.
Good luck~
and as an EE, i wish to offer more than a thousand thank-you's for a well written, encouraging, and informative post.
(p.s. how can i mark this with more stars?)
As Dervon said, mp management is the most important thing an EE has to do. Everything else stems from that. (That doesn't mean you horde all your mp, just in case, letting your mages/archers get so low on mp that the group has to take a break.)
You should never have full mp. Start recharging as early as possible. It's a lot easier to manage party member's mp over time than it is to let them all get down to 1/6 mp and then try to recharge them all up to full. Give a little bit here and there. (This is my biggest pet peeve in the game - rechargers that don't do anything, so much that you have to beg/bug/scream to get a recharge from them. And ironically, I find that it's the SEs that are the worst about this, the EEs usually seem to be on the ball. SEs are just lazy, IMO. :p)
As an EE, you're responsible for monitoring the entire party's mp, not just your own. You need to know which members need/use a lot of mp. Some melee (especially daggers and glads) can burn through mp very quickly, but that doesn't mean they need it. If you have a SpS in your group, they are going to need the most mp. Of secondary importance are the other nukers, SH and Sorcs. Yell at them if they're not using btm. :p After the nukers come the archers. I don't really give the tank a rating, because he's super important, and yet, he doesn't go through mp fast so it's not a difficult task to keep his mp up.
You also need to know when not to recharge. When there were two healers in my group, I would usually take on the role of recharger and let the other healer be the main healer. (In large part, because many of the SEs were lazy, as I said, and if you didn't make them heal, you'd wind up doing everything. No offense to the good SEs out there, just the ones I usually party with suck, LOL.) When you are the only healer though, you have to prioritize. Keeping everyone alive is of primary importance. But hopefully you're not spamming heals or anything, so you can do some recharging in between heals.
When you start getting low on mp, start sitting (if you're not already sitting) and stop recharging. Only stand to heal. Let everyone know you're low on mp and can't recharge any more. If you're good at managing the group's mp, everyone will have slowly and steadily been decreasing in mp at about the same rate, so they'll all be pretty low on mp around this time as well and hopefully won't be so dense that they don't realize that (of course, some are, and will aggro every mob at the second bridge.)
I never let myself get below 305 mp. That's how much mp it costs to cast party recall. I let my party know when I'm getting close and that I refuse to heal them past that point. I'll PR before I heal under that. (Or so I tell them, LOL. Only really had to PR twice due to mobs in all my time playing L2.)
Know when to PR. Keep an eye out on the mobs. The only reason you'd need to PR is if you're really low on mp or multiple players have aggro and you can't keep up with the heals. You're an EE - you heal fast and you are (or should be) good at what you do, so it must really be bad if you can't keep up with the heals, and mp is not a problem. If you absolutely can't keep everyone healed or you are out of mp and you know your party can't kill all the mobs w/o heals, then PR. Don't panic and PR though. You'd be surprised what a good party can pull out of. Like I said, I've only PRed once or twice that I can remember, due to mobs. But I've been in way more dangerous situations than that. There's been several times where I thought we would all die and we managed to survive.
As far as set ups, just do whatever you need to do till you get high enough to start partying. After that, I'd do Divine, BW and either DC or Majestic. DC has faster casting speed, but Majestic has 50% stun resistance. Stun is your worse enemy in pvp. Everyone knows how fast EEs can heal/rez/PR so their number one priority (and usually only hope of killing an EE) is to stun them. For weapons, either go for something with Acumen, like an OE'd homu, or get something with a Health SA. I used my homu for parties and my AOBA for pvp. I think the extra HP helps more than the cast speed, because it doesn't matter how fast you can heal if you can be two-shotted by archers. The extra hp gives you the time to heal yourself. (I also got +4 CON tattoos and +5 WIT.)
Of secondary importance are the other nukers, SH and Sorcs. Yell at them if they're not using btm.
You can't yell at the sorcerors. They only get level 1 b2m, gives 22mp, loses a little over 100 hp. They don't get any hp regen skill (such as vamp claw) after lvl 35, they need a dead mob to fix their own hps.
You can't yell at the sorcerors. They only get level 1 b2m, gives 22mp, loses a little over 100 hp. They don't get any hp regen skill (such as vamp claw) after lvl 35, they need a dead mob to fix their own hps.
So, don't yell at the sorcerors!
Aye but it still costs less mana to heal em (especially with a group heal you are already gonna cast) than it does to recharge em normally.
Of secondary importance are the other nukers, SH and Sorcs. Yell at them if they're not using btm.
You can't yell at the sorcerors. They only get level 1 b2m, gives 22mp, loses a little over 100 hp. They don't get any hp regen skill (such as vamp claw) after lvl 35, they need a dead mob to fix their own hps.
So, don't yell at the sorcerors!
I know they only get btm1 and I debated putting that in there because I knew someone would say something about it, but it was already a long post and that wasn't really that important. So yes, sorcs only get btm1, but most sorcs I know still use it in parties.
for 20-40 i got scallop jamadhrs and sally skin for soloing. i chose the fists because they have good accuracy for our crappy dex, and because dex and str so crappy crits dont matter. (i never used a mage weapon once during 20-40)
40+ i have karmian and homu, if i cant find a group for some odd reason ill grab my SE slave and go might of heaven in dragon valley. (make sure to use regular sps not the blesseds when doing this or else youll go broke VERY fast)
As an EE I would suggest befriending Prophets and Archers. In higher lvls many people prefer SE or Bishops and sometimes are [censored] enough to refuse even an EE when they need a healer. Archer parties or even small parties with a Prophet buffing is excellent. Oddly enough some of the best parties I have been in have been with Elven Elders yet people still seem to prefer Bishops and SE over them simply because of Purify, which I feel is not even that much of a problem when playing with a great group, especially a tank or EE that know when to stun or sleep the mobs that cast Paralyze. Also at higher lvls learn to recognize mob names that cast Paralyze. Most people underrate EE simply because of their lack of Purify (many can argue about GGH but I feel its not needed). If you can learn which mobs cast paralye and remember to sleep them when they cast it, and it usually takes mobs long ot cast para, then it should never be an issue. Also at higher lvls remember that Vitalize almost doubles as a heal, in PvP many EE spam their heal and vitalize back and forth before going to battle heal if needed.