With the release of Necrom, the new Arcanist class will be added to the game. The Arcanist Class will come with three skill lines, each of them focused on one of the three roles - DPS, Tank and Healer.
Today we'll be taking a closer look at the Curative Runeforms skill line, which is the healing skill line.
What does the Arcanist Bring to the Table for Healers?
The Arcanist has several interesting skills which have the potential to change the healing meta in ESO. Here we will take a look at the most notable things that the Arcanist is bringing to the table for healers, based on what we know so far.
Please keep in mind that this information is based on a Necrom preview build that we saw, so some of the skills and passives of the Arcanist class may have been changed by the time the PTS and full release come around.
Vitalising Glyphic Ultimate
The most major of these is the ultimate ability from the Curative Runeforms skill line, called Vitalising Glyphic. This skill will summon a glyph that can be healed by yourself and other allies. It spawns at X% of its max health, and will regularly emit pulses that heal and buff your allies by increasing your spell damage. The valies of the healing and damage buffs are dependant on how much the glyphic has been healed, and will be at their max potential if you managed to heal the glyphic to 100% health.
This skill has the potential to considerably shake up the meta for healing in organised ESO groups. In PvE, it's very common for healers to use the Aggressive Horn skill to grant the team Major Force, a role that is also taken on by tanks. Depending on how strong the scaling off the Vitalising Glyphic damage buffs are (and their duration) it is possible that this skill will be favoured over Aggressive Horn.
Another possibility is that Aggressive Horn will still be used, but having one Arcanist healer in the group to cast this ultimate (and other class skills) will be desirable.
And of course it's also possible that the scaling of this ultimate will be weak, in which case it's not likely to get much use.
Arcanist's Domain Skill
Arcanist's Domain is a new ground AOE skill that the Arcanist will have, also from the Curative Runeforms skill line.
The morph of this skill line known as Reconstructive Domain is probably the one healers will use, as this morph also heals you. However if the healing tooltip is very low then people might instead opt for Zena's Empowering Disc, the other morph which comes with increased duration but no healing.
This skill is probably going to shake up the PvE support meta in general for tanks as much as healers. Up until now, it's been pretty much expected for tanks to be able to provide the Minor Courage buff to their group, using the 5-piece Claw of Yolnahkriin set for 12-man raid groups, or the Magma Incarnate monster set for 4-man dungeon or arena groups.
However, Reconstructive Domain is poised to put an end to this state of affairs, as it gives Minor Courage to allies who stand within the AOE. This means that in most situations, a skilled Arcanist healer will be able to give this important damage buff to the group, freeing up a set slot for their tank to add a different buff or debuff to their group's arsenal.
Passage Between Worlds Skill
While this isn't technically a healing skill, I thought it worth mentioning here as it does fall under the Curative Runeforms skill line and it definitely has some potential applications for support characters in groups who are really trying to push the limits of the game.
Passage Between Worlds is a morph of the Apocryphal Gate skill line. All morphs of this skill summon a gate at the target location and a gate next to the caster, allowing the caster to quickly teleport between the locations at will.
However the Passage Between Worlds morph also adds a synergy that an ally can activate while standing near the gate, allowing them to use it too. So it may be possible for a healer to help other players in the group get mechanics done more quickly by putting down one of these gates. This role doesn't necessarily need to be done by the healer, but it is definitely a potential option.
How well this will work in practise depends on intricacies of the skill, such as whether the synergy has a limited number of uses, how expensive the skill is and how long the range is. But it's definitely something to think about while we wait for more details.
Healing Tides Passive
The last thing worth mentioning on this topic is the Healing Tides passive. This is something fairly minor but still quite helpful for Arcanist healers who master the Arcanist's unique Crux mechanic. Healing Tides offers you an additional X% Healing Done for each active Crux you currently have.
Arcanists can hold up to three Crux at once, allowing you to increase this bonus further. So the Arcanist Healer who is mindful of the features of their class and keeping on top of managing their Crux points could utilize this passive to increase their healing output during tricky situations where the group is taking heavy damage, for example during execute phases on trial bosses, or during heavy group vs group fighting in PvP.
If you want to keep an eye out for Arcanist Healer Builds in the run up to the release of the class, please check out our Arcanist Builds Page.
