Sorc Healer Returns (With Subclassing!) - Zauberer Baue PvP - ESO

PLEASE READ THIS GUIDE FOR A FULL UNDERSTANDING OF THESE BUILDS!

You think Sorc heal was done? Think again! While running a pure Sorcerer healer is no longer advised, subclassing adds a myriad of possibilities to our healing options. I have made but a few examples of how you can play in the current environment. The purpose of this ‘build’ (or set of builds rather) is to retain the unique identity of Sorc healing we have had up to this point, while also benefiting from the extra healing power offered to us by other class skill lines. The bread and butter for this patch is formed by the Storm Calling (Sorc) and Siphoning (NB) skill lines.

If you look near the top of the page, under ‘SETUPS’, you can see several build variants:

• All-Round: This is your standard build, fit for any environment, be it Cyrodiil, Battlegrounds, smallscale or largescale. It's tanky and offers plenty of healing power. It uses the Arcanist's Soldier of Apocrypha skill line for buffed defense/sustain.
• Max Heal: This variant uses the Dragonknight's Earthen Heart skill line to give our team Minor/Major Brutality and ourselves Major Mending. This will result in much stronger heals.
• Max Health: This build incorporates Green Balance from the Warden skill tree to give ourselves and our team Minor Toughness. This is a great buff to have in Battlegrounds especially.
• Group: The group build is intended for (semi-)organized group play, ideally groups of 6-12. It sacrifices individual tankiness and sustain to deliver insane heals to bigger groups of allies. Essentially a ball group build, but it can also be used in other largescale environments.
• Classic: This build is the closest to what Sorc heal used to be, as it is centered around providing synergies and Negates in addition to offering strong healing. The only Sorc skill line we're dropping here is Daedric Summoning, which has become rather useless to us anyway since it was changed significantly in U46 to be centered more about pets. We use Siphoning instead and also keep our old buddy Dark Magic.

There are many more variables to consider than I can include in any of these builds. I will go over them in detail in this guide, but consider the following principles:

• Mundus: I use Ritual in (semi-)organized Cyrodiil groups and Atronach in unorganized settings and Battlegrounds.
• Weapons: For my frontbar, I use Dual Wield for max healing in (semi-)organized groups and Sword and Shield in unorganized settings, smallscales and Battlegrounds. Backbar is always Resto.
• Sets: There are many options for our buff set. Spell Power Cure/Olorime to give more damage/healing to your group; Rallying Cry as a bread and butter defensive set; Curse-Eater or Stendarr's Blessing for Battlegrounds exclusively (YOU WILL BLOW UP YOUR TEAM WITH THESE SETS IN CYRODIIL, which, while funny, is not effective). You can fit any other buff set in here provided it is viable to be 1-barred (so Gossamer and Transmutation, while valuable, do not fit this exact constellation). Drop the monster set or mythic if you want to use a set that has to be 2-barred. On the Healer's Haven discord you can find a complete spreadsheet with all the different build options.
• Skill lines: With subclassing, you can pick and choose any skill class lines that may fit your particular situation. For this playstyle, I would always choose a basis of Storm Calling and Siphoning, and then pick a third skill line depending on your needs.

That all being said, let's get into the details.

Why Sorcerer healer?

Before subclassing, Sorcerer was, in many situations, the best healing class. Power Surge gave a ton of passive healing on top of the usual HoTs, and Streak was the number 1 mobility tool in the game. In organized groups Lightning Flood, was one of the core damage synergies you could provide to your damage dealers.

All of the above is still true for Update 46, but other things have changed. For starters, Daedric Summoning no longer gives the insane amounts of sustain it did before, and has since been turned into a more pet-oriented skill line that will not really be of use to PVP healers. As such, I have dropped this skill line entirely for all my Sorcerer-based builds.

In addition, I have also dropped the Dark Magic skill line for all but 1 build variant (Classic). It's not that the skill line got worse per se, but there are just better options now in a lot of situations. Dropping this skill line does have the major consequence of playing without a core skill of Sorcerer healers: the Negate ultimate. Instead, we are going for more heal and defense-oriented ultimates this patch.

Attentive readers will have notice that the core Sorcerer healer skills in the first paragraph all fall under the Storm Calling skill line. As such, this will be the base skill line of all our healing set-ups.

Do I HAVE to be a Sorcerer to use these builds?

No. Unless you are running the Classic build variant, which uses 2 Sorcerer skill lines, you can run these builds on any class ‘involved’ in the skill tree set-up. We are not using class scripts or class-restricted sets. However, I decided to call it Sorc healer still because the gameplay experience is still closest to the original Sorc healer from previous patches.

What skills should I run now?

Just to get it out of the way, these are our core non-class skills: Blessing of Restoration (spammable burst heal), Echoing Vigor & Radiating Regeneration (Heals-Over-Time), Illustrious Healing/Healing Springs (ground heal; flex spot). If you are running Dual Wield, you can also slot Quick Cloak for Major Evasion. A scribing skill you can use is Healing Soul. Scripts are of your choosing, but I went with Healing, Gladiator's Tenacity and Major Prophecy/Savagery.

The class skills and skill trees you run depend on the situation. I've included multiple build variants to give you plenty of options. The basis of all builds consists of Storm Calling (Sorc) and Siphoning (NB), so I'll go over these first.

CORE SKILL LINES

• Storm Calling (Sorcerer) - Core skills here are Power Surge and Streak. Power Surge offers great passive healing and gives us the Major Sorcery/Brutality buff. Streak offers great mobility. Streak is more useful in open world PVP than it is in Battlegrounds, but it has its place in both. Streak also has a stun so this allows you to stun groups of enemies both defensively and offensively. A good Sorc healer can be vital in fights against organized guilds. Streaking an enemy group's backline can neutralize their entire support cluster during a damage push, rendering the enemy DDs sitting ducks. Alternatively, Streak can just be used to put distance between you and the enemy. Other potentially useful skills here include Hurricane to give you the important Major Resolve buff, as well as Lightning Flood to provide a damage synergy. Only use the latter when you play with a more organized group; only a well-timed damage synergy that is actually pressed will be useful. Casual players often do not activate synergies at all. Finally, the passives of this skill line are a bit more useful in U46: we now get extra sustain and extra weapon/spell damage. As of Update 46, Storm Calling is the best Sorcerer skill tree for healers by some distance, and one of the best skill trees for PVP healers in general.
• Siphoning (Nightblade) - I would probably consider Siphoning the #1 skill line for any PVP healing build. First of all, we gain access to the best healing ultimate in the game: Soul Siphon. It burst heals everyone in a 28-meter radius, gives them Major Vitality (increasing their healing received and damage shield strength), and continues to heal them over time for another 4 seconds. It can be as, if not more effective than a Barrier in preventing a group wipe. At around 150 ultimate cost, it is also relatively cheap. The only real downside is that it is channeled and can be cancelled by a stun, or just not go off at all in lag. It also will not work inside a Negate. Other than that, it is an absolute carry skill. Maybe not as good as Practiced Incantation to farm healing numbers in Battlegrounds but 100% a better skill in its actual effectiveness. What else does Siphoning have to offer? It has multiple sources of ultimate generation, the most important being the 30 ultimate you get for potion consumption. It also offers you extra healing for any Siphoning ability slotted on that bar. The only regular skill I'd slot, though, is Siphoning Attacks for extra sustain. Healthy Offering is not bad, but a scribing ability will probably give you more bang for your buck.

ADDITIONAL SKILL LINES

You can pick any of the following skill lines to complement your gameplay. I'll try to go over them briefly. (Spoiler: I failed to keep it brief.)

• Soldier of Apocrypha (Arcanist) - The safe, defensive option. In terms of defense, it offers you the lot. Cruxweaver Armor is a good alternative for Hurricane as it gives you Major Resolve while giving you crux and debuffing the enemy. Runeguard gives you several defensive buffs while also acting as a sort of anti-one shot skill that immobilizes enemies. Gibbering Shelter is a decent alternative ultimate to Barrier, especially in smaller groups or if you are trying to survive solo. This skill line also has nice passives, such as granting the rare Minor Evasion buff, as well as giving you extra sustain for slotting abilities from this skill tree.
• Earthen Heart (Dragonknight) - This is a personal favorite of mine. It's a much more offensive option in that it buffs both your healing and the group's damage. You can use Igneous Weapons to grant your entire group Major Brutality, and a passive makes sure you also grant the much rarer Minor Brutality buff for 20 seconds every time you use a skill from this tree. I also like to use Fragmented Shield - the skill by itself is kind of useless, but it is the most reliable and longest-lasting (8 seconds) source of Major Mending in the game, which means a whopping 16% buff to your healing done. I've managed to get uptimes of around 70% over a 2-hour run in a group, which is not something I could achieve with other sources of this buff. The buff pairs well with the Soul Siphon ultimate (see: Siphoning), which gives Major Vitality, so in case of emergency you can give absolutely cracked heals. I initially thought a lot of this extra power would go into overhealing, but I have actually noticed its use in action, where I pulled through my group in situations that seemed like they'd be a certain wipe. If you want to be really annoying, you can use the Magma Shell ultimate as a temporary immortality button, but given the cost of this ultimate and the fact that you cannot generate ultimate while it's active, I do not think it's nearly as good as other options.
• Green Balance (Warden) - The classic healing skill tree from Wardens gives us Minor Toughness, which increases our health by 10% and is one of the most convenient buffs to have. Skills you could consider here are Living Vines, Budding Seeds (strong healing synergy) or Lotus Flower (for Major Prophecy). Even Enchanted Growth is not a bad option for a healing spammable, though not necessarily better than Blessing of Restoration. You can even use the other morph (Soothing Spores) to have a stamina burst heal in case you are Negated, but in my view that is too context-sensitive to be worth slotting. It's an all-round good skill tree, but my issue with it is that I find the Minor Toughness buff to be more valuable than any of the skills in it, so I would personally slot it only to be able to grant that buff. But since most of the passives only proc off of Green Balance abilities, we can't simply slot this skill line and continue to use other skills.
• Restoring Light (Templar) - Another classic healing skill line and a great alternative for Earthen Heart in terms of providing a more pure heal-oriented toolkit. In big, open world fights, Ritual of Rebirth is the #1 healing spammable in the game by a distance. Do not use it in GvGs though or other fights where keeping your distance is important, as the range is much shorter than Blessing of Restoration or other spammables. Radiant Aura can grant minor recoveries to the entire group. Channeled Focus gives you both Major Resolve and sustain. It also boosts your healing done by a ridiculous amount, but the circle is too small to benefit from this consistently in a mobile fight. The skill tree also has some good, heal-boosting passives, and also a nice passive that auto-blocks while channeling an ability, allowing you to cast your Soul Siphon in peace. All in all, a great skill tree to have for any healer.
• Living Death (Necromancer) - The Necromancer's healing tree has some decent passives, but to me does not pack the same punch as some of the alternatives. For starters, unless you are a Necromancer and are using the class script, it is difficult to benefit from the ultimate-generating passive as you cannot regularly create corpses. The Spirit Mender provides decent healing and the resurrection ultimate Renewing Animation is a must in every group, but purely from a healer point of view, I think there are better options.
• Dark Magic (Sorcerer) - Last but not least, we have our old friend Dark Magic. The passives here are pretty solid, with some extra sustain and the ability to grant the rare Minor Prophecy buff. The issue is that the regular skills on this tree, in my view, are not worth it. The only potentially good ones are Vibrant Shroud, which in my view underperforms compared to other spammables due to its narrow, limited range, and either morph of Dark Exchange, which we shouldn't really need if we build sustain in other ways. As such, the main reason to run this skill line is the Negate ultimate (either morph is fine). If used correctly, it is potentially the most vital ultimate to have in the game, but in less organized settings, the effectiveness of Negate is more restricted. As I currently see it, Dark Magic is still a great option to play in organized groups, but from a pure healing point of view, the skill tree falls short of many of the aforementioned alternatives. Remember that your character needs to be a Sorcerer in order to run this in combination with Storm Calling.

Basically, picking any of these to complement our basis of Storm Calling and Siphoning will give you a good healing/support toolkit to work with.

Which sets should I wear?

Our sets are still similar to previous builds. Check those build pages if you want more detailed information, but I'll give the basics here:

• Ozezan's Inferno - Unique armor buff, best monster set for healers. Alternatively, you can run Symphony of Blades.
• Wretched Vitality - The best and most versatile sustain set. Having a lot of sustain is better than just having tankiness. You can craft this set in any weight, so adjust according to your liking. It can be procced on 1 bar so you don't need to have it active on 2 bars. Make sure you can proc both a Major and a Minor (de)buff on that bar in order to be able to benefit fully from Wretched Vitality.
• Death Dealer's Fete OR Snow Treaders - DDF is great for solo/unorganized play as it boosts our max health and resources. Snow Treaders are OP in (semi-)organized group settings because they let you completely ignore snares, allowing you to cast your skills with much fewer interruptions. You may want to consider a snare removal (Race Against Time; Shuffle) while wearing DDF, or a source of Major Expedition while wearing Snow Treaders. Remember to not use the Refreshing Stride CP slottable in combination with Snow Treaders!
• Buff Set (flex spot - you decide) - This set can be any set procced on one bar. Olorime and Spell Power Cure can grant Major Courage, to boost spell/weap damage of you and your group. Rallying Cry gives strong critical resistance. Curse-Eater and Stendarr's Blessing allow you to remove negative effects from you and your group, but use these latter two sets only in Battlegrounds, as in Cyrodiil it can blow people up because of Plaguebreak. If you remove the monster set, you can also slot a 2-bar set, such as Gossamer (Major Evasion source) or Robes of Transmutation (crit resist).

The Healer's Haven discord has a great sheet for building a PVP healer created by Fuketsu and TingleTony, so I recommend going there if you really want to explore all the options.

What consumables should I use?

For buff food, use either Orzorga's Red Frothgar (if you don't need extra stam sustain) or Orzorga's Smoked Bear Haunch (if you do need extra stam sustain). Usually I pick Red Frothgar when I play Snow Treaders, and Bear Haunch when I play DDF. Snow Treaders alleviates a lot of pressure on the stamina pool, so you need a lot less of it.

Potions are either Tri-Stat for Battlegrounds/unorganized or Immovability + Stam for organized groups/pushes.

Mundus

Either Ritual (healing done) or Atronach (magicka recovery) depending on your needs. I find Atronach really comfy in Battlegrounds especially, while Ritual is more for optimized group settings.

Race

Bretons are still the best option for PVP healing due to their strong sustain. Argonians, High Elves, Imperials and Dark Elves also work. In fact, you can make any race work; just adjust your attributes and sustain accordingly.

Curse

We remain mortal.

Attributes

Previously I went up to 35k health with only buff food on and put the rest into magicka, but since damage bursts are higher in Update 46, I now put all 64 points into health. This still depends on your race and the circumstances, though.

Enchantments

Most of the enchantments speak for themselves, but I should add that for Battlegrounds, instead of going for Atronach Mundus + weapon damage glyphs, you can also go for Ritual + cost reduction glyphs.

Champion Points

You can view these in the Champion section, but I just wanted to clarify that I only use Refreshing Stride when I am not wearing Snow Treaders, since it is absolutely useless if you cannot sprint. You can slot whatever defense or sustain-related CP here instead if you are wearing Snow Treaders.

Armor Weight

Armor weight is entirely up to personal preference. Personally, my sweet spot is 3H/3M/1L for Battlegrounds, smallscale and unorganized runs, and 1H/5M/1L for organized largescale (i.e. ballgroups). But if you want to run 5H, that is perfectly possible.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How do I play this build?

You play it like my previous Sorcerer healer builds. Watch the healing videos on my YouTube channel to learn more. I might make a separate video to accompany this guide in the future.

Will Oakensoul/1-bar work with this build?

No.

Can I play this build without Storm Calling?

Yes, effectively you can just use this guide as a template to build your own healer that doesn't incorporate any Sorc skills. A common combination I've seen is Siphoning, Green Balance and Restoring Light. The reason I built this guide around Storm Calling is that Sorc healing has been my thing for years, and I also think that Storm Calling/a Sorc-based approach offers unique, effective healing gameplay that is still underappreciated by the community at large.

Why do you not use a tank set like Pariah or Trial By Fire?

If you want to run a selfish set, Wretched Vitality is generally the best option. I've found that, when healers die, they often run out of magicka/stamina before they run out of health. So the longer you can delay depleting your resources, the longer you can delay death. Wretched Vitality is the best sustain set available, and with it being craftable, you can still slot 5 Heavy Armor pieces if you so wish. With subclassing, the incoming damage has gone up, but likewise our ability to incorporate extra defensive power into our build is also greater than ever: as explained above, Soldier of Apocrypha is a great skill tree to achieve this with. So simply put, there are more effective ways than just tank sets to increase our odds of survival. They may still be useful in some niche builds, though. Another reason I am skeptical about tank sets is that playing with a lot of in-built, ‘free’ tankiness can easily become a crutch, making it difficult to play without such a set-up. My personal experience is that players more easily adapt to lower sustain than they do to lower health/resistances.

Is this build better than an ultimate generation build?

Generally speaking, yes. Ultimate generation can be effective to farm medal scores in Battlegrounds or even HPS in zergs. However, these builds tend to come with a few downsides. With everything in such a build being geared towards ultimate generation, it goes at the cost of other functionality, such as the power of your regular heals, your survivability, your mobility and your overall use in buffing the group through a variety of skills/sets. If you still want to go for an ultimate-oriented build, then feel free to, but they aren't the end-all of healing in this game and will be close to useless in some situations.

Where can I contact you for questions about this build?

My name is the same here as on discord. Send me a direct message since I do not accept friend requests from people I do not know (they're always bots). You can also go to the Healer's Haven discord to find a community of healers who can help you.

Where do you play?

PC/EU Gray Host (Aldmeri Dominion). And occasionally on PC/NA.

Thanks to Fuketsu for helping me put this guide together and checking for any mistakes.