DC Universe Online Healing Guide

DC Universe Online Healing Guide by Eruca

Basic Mechanics of Healing
Whowa?
Some importiant tips are as followed (let us pray two of the three are bugs)
1. If a player is rolling to dodge while you throw a heal it will not hit. Hopefully… fixed!
2. If the player is too far away from you the heal will not hit.
3. If there are objects between you and the player this includes enemies the heal will not hit.
4. Lunge attacks will block a heal from hitting. (May be fixed with the rolling issue.)
5. Certian weapons (or their combos) will prevent a heal from landing.

Lesson 1:  Stats and You

Health  –  Health indicates how much damage you can take before you are knocked out.  Fairly strait forward.  This will regenerate fairly quickly OUT of combat, but requires an ability that heals HP to replenish IN combat.

Power  –  Power controls how often you can use your abilities (powers in the load-out tray).  This regenerates very slowly in combat, kicking up when you use your weapon to attack the npc or pc.  This increased power regen lasts for five seconds AFTER you stop attacking.  (It is not dependant on the hit counter.)

Defense  –  Defense is used to reduce the damage dealt by NON players.  The ration is 1% reduction = 71 def at level 30.

Might  –  Might effects the damage potential of any given ability.  At level 30 you gain .35% damage per point.

Restoration  –  Restoration effects the base potential of health healing properties on abilities.  For every 4 points of restoration you gain a 1% increase.

Vitalization  –  Vitalization effects the base potential of power healing properties on abilities.  For every 10 points of vitalization you gain a 1% increase.

Precision  –  This is your base weapon damage, which in turn increases your combo damage.  For every 10 points you gain 1 damage.

Toughness  –  Toughness reduces the damage you take from players.  For every 71 points you reduce the damage by 1.

Dominance  –  This allows a target to sustain more damage before a controlled effect is removed.  (Snares, polymorphs, stuns, etc).  This ratio is 2 points = 1 damage.

For ‘healers’ the most important stat is restoration.  Your purpose on a team or raid is to keep people alive and this is done most effectively by being able to heal more efficiently for the power spent.  Power comes second, or third depending on your personal tastes.    Health and defense play a higher role of importance to healers who choose to use melee weapons than those who use ranged.  Due to being ‘in the thick’ of fighting and more likely to catch a power attack or area affected attack.

Vitalization is 100% completely worthless for ‘healers’ and a waste of time.   Passive power regeneration is only (at this time) affected by your hit counter which is located at the lower right of your screen when you begin to attack.  Vitalization does not increase the amount of power you get on weapon hits, nor combos.  Vitalization only effects the power replenishing properties of certain controller skills.  In other words, Restoration is to Healers as Vitalization is to Controllers.

Dominance would be last on the list of stats to pick up.  We have very few abilities which have an effect, such as stun, that we use for anything other than it’s healing effect very often.  (But it is fun watch them walk around as a puppy…)

In addition to the visible stats, we have two more to worry about that are not recorded visibly anywhere in-game.  “Critical healing Magnitude.”  “Critical healing chance.”  We can argue all day without getting very far on the topic of which is better to have.  Let us assume our heals are, on average, around 500 points.  If we focus on healing chance, we may heal 1 out of 5 times at 750 points.  If we were to focus on healing Magnitude we may heal 1 out of 10 times at 950.  In this department, it is very preferential with how you stack your bonuses.

Lesson 2:  Power Regeneration

We have four ways to regain power:
a) Building up the hit counter between heals
b) Teaming/Raiding with a battery.. Er Controller
c) Getting knocked out
d) Stock up on Sodas and drink one any time it is off cool down

The surest way to replenish your power is by throwing a weapon hit on an npc to trigger the boosted regeneration.  Each time the hit counter changes colour, the power regeneration amount increases.  The base ‘weapon triggered’ regeneration is 10 power per second.  The major downside to this regeneration method is that during fights with a large amount of crowd control effects it seems a fruitless endeavourer to keep/regain power.  (Breaking out of these effects uses a nice portion of our power, snarf.)  However it is not on a timer of any sorts, nor in someone else’s hands all together.  You can control when this form of regeneration is in effect.

Now, while being in the hands of a third party, the abilities Controllers possess to replenish the power bar is the second surest way to regenerate your power.  Each tree has several abilities which give power back to team/raid members, and a good Controller uses these abilities for as long as their own power holds out.  But even with the help of a Controller we will find our selves in dry spells during dire situations.

Getting knocked out is not an ideal form of power regeneration, but you do come back with full power.  So it is a notable, just not ideal, form of power regen.

Stocking upon Sodas is an ineffective, expensive, and irresponsible way to manage your power.  Sodas are great to use, especially when you need mana to pull off a heal -now-, but should not be your answer to power regeneration.  Why is this below getting knocked out?  Personal reason, spending 5,400 per alert on top of repairs is worse than just paying a repair bill.
Lesson 3:  Your Guide to Weapons

Someone else has already written a wonderful guide on weapons and stats, check it out here: DC Universe Online Weapon and Role Synergy Guide

Lesson 4: Abilities, The Unabridged Version

Sorcery Auras

Bad Karma (BK)
Effect thrown onto enemies, when using certain skills, that causes the mob to either deal damage to their allies or heal their target with each attack.  Indicated by a circling ribbon on the affected npcs.

Golden Soul Aura (GSA)
Increases the critical heal chance, applied when using *most* heals. Indicated by a golden ring rotating around the caster.

Red Soul Aura  (RSA)
Various effects depending on the spell used.  Applied when an npc dies near a soul well.  Indicated by a red rotating ring around the caster.

Sorcery Abilities
Rejuvenation
250 power
Instantly heals the lowest member of the team or raid in addition to the healer.  Grants Golden Soul Aura.

Invocation of Renewal
335 Power
6 second channel
Heals 7 members of your team or raid (including friendly npcs) in addition to the healer.  Grants Golden Soul Aura

Condemn
235 Power
Stuns the target and inflicts Bad Karma

Shared Fate
220 Power
(Unsure how it works as a healer)  In addition to its healing effects it also spreads Bad Karma among enemies.

Circle of Protection
350 Power
Place a circle upon that ground which heals your allies while standing in it. Enemies effected by Bad Karma will take damage and be slowed while standing in the circle. CoP ‘ticks’ every 0.75 seconds (estimation) for a mediocre duration (estimation needed). The heals are capable of criting.

Transmutation (No longer affects projectiles)
300 Power

Boon of Souls
260 Power

Soul Well
250 Power
Similar to CoP, Soul well acts as a centered heal over time aura. It’s duration is tripple that of CoP, and the healing ticks work a little differently.  (As an example, it ticks every second for 10 points, when an enemy dies nearby it’ll heal everyone for 100 points.)  It’s healing range is around double that of CoP. The Soul Well is capable of providing the healer “Red Soul Aura“.  Keep in mind that Soul Well counts as an object that can be destroyed or block damange/healing LoS.  It follows similar placing rules to CoP.  Instead of landing at the target’s feet it’ll land between you and your target.

Summon: Watcher
335 Power

Nature Abilities

Metabolism
??? Power
Accelerates healing over time for yourself and your allies. This ability will tick five times at a rate of about 0.75 seconds. The pheromone only works in the healer mode. The ticks will be fore small amounts and is affected by your(?) critical rating.

Hive Mind
??? Power
Dramatically increases might, critical strike, and critical heal for yourself and group members. Critical healing bonus is estimated around 300% when applied. Affects all healing by any group member..

Regeneration
50% Supercharge
Regenerates health and power over time for you and your allies. The healing done is estimated to be 300-500 with 772 restoration.

Mini guide to my insight of Sorcery by Levie: ( It was intially gonna be a private message to a ncie guy who PM’d me but it was a lot of info so i thought id send it here too)

Right as i mentioned previously Sorcery is all about Set up and Amplification.

The Amplification comes from Transmutation and the set up comes from your Circle of Protection and Soul Well.

Amplification Mechanic:

The Amplification mechanic uses all physical objects in the enviroment, this also relates to player based powers, such as Psychic Blades, Meteor, Ice Cube and Explosive Bomb.

Transmutation is a power on the Summoning Power Tree, it is affected by damage role and healer role: Meaning it will act different depending on what role your on. It consumes objects around it to amplify its damage/heal So presently for me Healer role it will heal 300-400 HP from one object, so as you can see it will twice this value if there are two objects.

This effect works the same in damage role, it does 100-200 but then again my might is horribly low, like 768 since im a Dedicated healer with 1300 Restoration.
Pro’s – Heals a lot!/ Power usage resonable/ Tactical / Ruins a Gank plan/ Effective in instances

Con’s – Needs Objects/ Distract’s you from healing the team / Not all objects can be used to amplify / Not effective in Open World

Set Up Mechanic:

Circle of Protection again works like Transmutation; in terms of roles but it’s an active Heal over time (HoT). Fortunatly it ticks every 0.75 of a second? [Estimation] for a mediocre duration. When combined with Rejuvination’s 10% chance to crit buff, it the heals can sometimes crit, which is always nice.

Soul Well is also affected by Roles. It is a HoT like the Circle of Protection but, its healing does not share the same frequency as the Circle; and its values are random wthin a range of 20-100. The reason why the Soul Well is good on the set up mechanic is that, it heals you and team mates 200-300 (Depending on Restoration) Hit Points as well as granting the Soul Well Owner a Red Soul Aura.

Note: Red Soul Aura‘s are awarded from dead foes and Golden Soul Aura are earned from casting spells like Rejuvination or Shared Fate ( Which again like roles trades damage for healing )
Red Soul Aura can be consumed by powers in the summoning tree and Golden Soul Aura is same all round by increasing Critical Heal Chance by 10%
Now playing Sorcery is all down to the player knowing when to deploy certain things and drawing aggro away from yourself by being subtle to some extent (When PvPing ofc.)

Opinions:
Now there are somethings in sorcery i love and hate but excuse my negativity to certain powers in the tree that you may have or still enjoy using.

Pets and their “Help”: Maan do I dislike pets now, sadly in this current version of DCUO they do not scale in damage/healing with your character stats and sometimes may get stuck or stop attacking, presently you chance their modes and dismissal by the same button? That’s no help for pet control at ALL!

SuperCharges: Now there are a few in here that I like, and a few i find useless completly. Polymorph being the useless one… it scales with Dominance iirc… and when does Sorcery ever use Dominance? Never! As for Grand Summoning, it’s a “Pretty SuperCharge” I don’t know whether its useful or useless since i’ve only witness the use of it, and never used it for myself. Currently the Supercharges i have is Baleful Transmorgification and Transcendance due to PvP and PvE Reasons. One curses people and dot’s the other gives people full HP and makes them invincible for the duration of the Cast. Now as for Arbiter of Destiny, again i’ve only witness’d it, though i’ve been told by some of the nice people on the forums that it you have infinte power and can only use the destiny moves on your power tray.

Powers: There again as you can see above I’ve mentioned some positiveness for some powers above so they’re all in check, another power I like is Boon of Souls as it can absorb your Red Soul Aura to not only absorb damage for you and your foes but to reflect some of it which i guess scales with your Might. Another useful power is Invocation of Renewal, all though it should never be used in a PvP enviroment, it makes a great asset in raids when your accompanied by other healers.. and its alright in some alerts if not all when used at the right time.
Final Ruin is an awesome power, I spare the details but its a must get if you want to play some offensive, though the power use is pretty chunky… allowing 4-5 casts for all of your power. Karmic Backlash… lets not go there… it’s like Transmutation, it doesn’t absorb objects, its useable in controlled state and i think Knock’s down? or is that just Transmutation… oh yeah and the damage is LOW – no thanks… moving on rapidly!
Weapon of Destiny, last for 5 swings of your melee attack, awesome for Damage Role, pointless for healer role… it heals very little and next to useless. Life Element – now i’ve had a chance to try this and its a pretty alright power, it takes the same power usage as Rejuvination it gives you objects for Transmutation and the funny thing is stand up right when you drop them. They look like the red crystal stands you see in Dr.Fate’s missions. Funny power xD It’s alright but i wouldn’t waste a Power point for it. The only + is that it gives you objects for Transmutation of drool over and it detonates after a duration and heals all members near by. Would be better a lot better if it dotted like barrels – if only!
and finnaly Barrage of Souls? I think last power on the bottom right of Summoning. Undoubtedly Sacrificial Offering is just… useless… I have nothing to say for this power, it should be buried and not spoken of…!

So yeah tats pretty much all I can think of with Sorcery off the top of my head. If you plan on healing id reccomend a ranged weapon but it can cause a lot of aggro in PvP so interchange every now and then. DPS weapons are great Fun!
But it also depends on your preferance… Oh and Skill points! They are VERY important… farm Feats like you farm Influence…
Edit (Thanks to Whoaness):
Iconics: Now im not a fan of Iconic Powers but i am a dear fan of Iconic Inate‘s I’ll list my what i took + my reason
Wisdom of Soloman +100 Power + 25 Vitalization – Now i chose this because 100 power can pretty much cover you an extra heal either Rejuvination or a Transmutation ( Yes i am obsessed! ) so its pretty much gives you an emergency pouch for a dire heal.
Nanoweave Armor +50 defence +100 toughness – Moar defence… yes!
Miracle Worker +10 crit heal bonus – Extra Heals on your critical
Empathetic Healing +3 crit heal chance – Increases your chance to critically heal
[Optional] Powerful Resistance +100 health – If Power isn’t your thing bonus health is always welcome’d