Hello everyone, I recently picked up PvP again trying to reach Rank 7/8 so I can get some upgrades to my Tier 3 raid armor. I have being playing with some healing builds which I find are very effective in PvP and I will share some of here.

The goal for me in PvP is not topping the heal parses. Rather, I try to keep my self alive first and foremost and then my teammates. Managing mana and able to do some damage/Crowd-Control (CC) on the side are also good traits to have.

I only cover the pure healing builds here. There are a lot of other builds that utilize DoL/justicar in combination with other DPS souls. These builds may excel at high PvP ranks but for they never had the survival/burst healing I needed.

The Templar

Templar is a soul you can purchase from the favor merchant in Sanctum/Meridian for 2500 favor. It is a PvP soul and advancing in that soul requires you to have certain PvP ranks. Each vertical advancement in that tree requires you to have the corresponding rank (i.e. 2nd branch of the tree requires you to have rank 2 to be able to put points into it).

0 Point Templar will grant you Break Free, an ability with 2 minutes cooldown which will remove all the CC/snare (run speed impairment) effects from you. This ability is also nice for PvE on raids/dungeons when you get CC'ed.

5 points in Templar will grant you Detaunt, another useful ability with a 1 minute cooldown that will reduce damage against you by an enemy player by 50% for 15 seconds. This is super useful in 1vs1 or 1vs2 situations you may encounter as you can pop detaunt on an enemy player and run back to the rest of your teammates.

10 points into Templar will grant you Nysyr's Brand, an useful ability against rogues and allow you to spend points in Reinforce, which will grant your and your ally 6% damage reduction for 10 seconds. The beauty of Reinforce is that when combined with Protect the Flock from Sentinel, you are looking at 11% damage reduction for you and your teammates when you spam AoE heals.

In terms of points allocation, for the first 5 points you definitely want to invest 5/5 in Resilient as it is a flat 15% chance to reduce crits from enemy players (i.e. if enemy player have <15 crit chance, they will never able to crit you). See this thread for more discussion.

Once you are at least rank 3 and don't have much of a survival issue, then going the other path and getting 2/2 reinforce is definitely recommended to help your teammates out.

PvP Healing Builds

Build 1: 31 Sentinel/30 Warden/5 Templar

Build: 31 sentinel/30 warden/5 templar

You could switch it around and remove the point from Healer's Haste and put it into Healing Showers in Warden if you wish and make it 30 sentinel/31 warden/5 Templar. You can also move other points around (i.e. moving points away from Light Efficiency into Enraptured Breath) but you definitely want 28 in Sentinel for 3/3 Serendipity and invest 2/2 in Protect the Flock.

This build is probably the most mana friendly of all the builds listed here. As in majority of the warfronts you will be doing lots of AoE healing combined with occasional bursts of single target healing, you will run out of mana quickly and become useless. Having 5/5 in Light Concentration and Cascade from Warden will help a lot. If you need additional mana, you can switch from 5/5 in Destructive Tide to 5/5 in Aquatic Affinity in the Warden tree. Also, pack lots of mana pots (Ember Isle daily quests give out a lot of these as rewards) and lots of drinks (I pack 80-100 drinks/pots on average and consume on average 5-10 drinks per warfront).

Macro

PvP is not really macro friendly so I try to minimize my macro usage. The one macro I do have is Tidal Surge + Orbs of the Stream to make my my orbs much more effective. I cast the orbs on myself whenever I get a chance and on teammates whenever I can spare it.

#show Orbs of the Stream
suppressmacrofailures
cast Tidal Surge
cast Orbs of the Stream

The other macro I have is to promote other team members to assistant when I have the leader. This way, no one bugs me to mark people or pass lead! The macro is a simple one liner - promote.

The third macro I have is instant Healing Invocation.

#show Touch the Light
suppressmacrofailures
cast Touch the Light
cast Tidal Surge
cast Healing Invocation

Single Target Healing

For most of the single target healing, I use Healing Breath whenever I can. If the damage is too severe to be recuperated with Healing Breath, then Healing Invocation with Serendipity proc is the way to go. I spam Healing Flood as much as I can to proc Serendipity + keep up Protect the Flock. If you need to move and Healing Breath isn't up, stacks of Soothing Stream and Healing Spray can be good to use as well. If you or a teammate is getting focus fired, then using the instant HI macro mentioned above and then pop Healer's Covenant after if it is up. I never cared much for Deluge but if you have HoTs already running on someone and don't have the 1.5 second to cast Healing Invocation (after Serendipity proc), then it can be useful as it becomes 0.5 seconds with Serendipity.

AoE Healing

When your team is taking multiple angles of fire (i.e. the Bridge in Port Scion or Codex in Codex), then AoE heals it is the way to go. Keep spamming Healing Flood as often as you need. Healing Communion will be the way to go for most cases but if the damage is minor, Ripple + HoTs will do the job as well. I try to avoid using Healing Communion as much as possible as it is mana intensive and will drain your mana quick. If things goes awry, then Divine Call may or may not save the day.

Overflow is a nice passive to have in PvP and will make up a significant chuck of your heal parse as well (~10%).

Crowd Control/Survival

One ability I absolutely love to use is Crushing Wave from the Warden soul. It has a fairly short cooldown (15 seconds) as well. I use this knockback ability for three purposes.

1. When I see a warrior/rogue running towards me, Crushing Wave will push them back so my teammates can pick them off and it allow me to prepare myself mentally for the incoming fight.

2. Removing key enemy players from the fight. This is especially useful in the ridges near Codex as I can punt enemy players off the cliff and force them to run back. Other locations come to mind are the staircases in Library and the bridge in Port Scion. This works really well against enemy healers but also in general any enemy player will work. If they are removed from the fight for even a few seconds, they cannot assist their team and there is a bigger chance your team will decimate the remaining enemy players.

3. Interrupt people picking up relics/flags/capturing points. This can be fairly annoying to your opponents as not only they are interrupted, but they are also punted a distance away and have to run back.

Another ability I love to use on enemy mages/cleric is the silence ability. You have two at your disposal. Quietus from Sentinel and Drown from Warden. Both don't last long and are very situational but if you are faced with mage/cleric and need to get away, they will do the job.

Dissolution from Warden will remove any movement impairments you have and make you immune to them for a short duration. Break Free is there if you need to get out of a silence or fear but it has a 2 minutes cooldown so use it sparingly.

Detaunt and Healer's Covenant are indispensible for survival. Healer's Covenant work best when you are getting focus fired while Detaunt works best when you are against a single enemy player or small groups. The key to use Detaunt is to quickly target whoever is chasing you and then hit it and heal yourself up quickly afterwards. Detaunt/Healer's Covenant + Touch the Light macro for instant HI is my get out of the jail free card for most occasions.

Restorative Tide from Warden is nice to have in PvP. It is not a big heal but it procs constantly with all the damage (crits) you take from other players and it serve as a passive heal that will top you off. It accounts for around 10% of my heal parse on some fights (varies depends on how much you get focus fired).

The main thing about survival in PvP is LoS (Line of Sight), use pillars, stones, rocks, whatever to your advantage and hide behind them when you are getting focus fired. If they don't get line of sight to you, they can't kill you.

Cleanse is another big thing in PvP and you will devout a significant amount of time to it and soon learn all the icons you need to cleanse off right away. The reason you need to cleanse a lot is the healing debuffs from warriors, rogues and mages. These healing debuffs will reduce your healing by as much as 50% if not cleansed. Also, since mages are FOTM (Flavor of the Month) with 1.6, there are a lot of out there running with the stormcaller build and they have a nasty Storm Shackle that will damage you if you move without cleansing it. Remember you have 3 cleanses - AoE, cleanse over time and single target cleanse.

Lastly, if you want to do some damage, Waterjet is the way to go. Its handy to finish enemy player off or kill some lowly ranked players.

Build 2: 28 Sentinel/26 Warden/12 Templar

Build: 28 sentinel/26 warden/12 templar

Keep in mind you need to have rank 3 in PvP before you can use build.

If you are not getting focus fired a lot in PvP, this build might be the way to go for the 11% damage reduction (5% from Protect the Flock and 6% from Reinforce) for your and your teammates. Play style is largely similar to the first build.

Build 3: 28 Sentinel/17 Warden/21 Templar

Build: 28 sentinel/17 warden/21 templar

This is a heavy Templar build that can be used only by those with Pvp Rank 6 or above. The main reason to go into 21 templar is for Overload, which is really nice when you are getting focus fired, and Greater Empowerment (think of it as Touch the Light + Tidal Surge combined). Beware that all these abilities have a 2 minutes cooldown timer.

You are also getting some nice utility for your teammates along the way, such as 6% damage reduction from Reinforce and 10% damage increase on teammates under 50% health from Rolling with the Punches. Mark of Purification is also nice to have to ease your cleansing job.

Gear and Stuff

Ever since they equalized the valor on all PvP gear, there is very little reason to not get it. Get as much valor as you can, even if the PVP gear has worse stats. You can get + 50 valor rune for chest (Blazing Valorous Rune) and a sigil with +50 valor if you do your PvP dailies. The PvP trinket with permanent stats is nice to have for PvE as well if you don't have a nice trinket already.

Use Burning Powerstones (+200 sp) if you can afford it. Get Thick Armor Plating or the cheaper version Heavy Armor Plating for damage mitigation against warriors/rogues. Cushioned Insoles or Performance Insoles are also nice for 4-5 % boost to unmounted runspeed, allowing to get out of sticky situations faster.