Only current encounters that noticeably benefit from having a healer present are the megaboss ones:
They have damage that doesn’t immediately kill non-tanks
They have many people who do not bring self-heals or bring non % ones (due to how much HP we get from equal footing, non % heals end up fairly weak)
They have many people in melee range of the boss, who can’t really see under their feet and can’t really move away from AoE damage
So, for those encounters I usually run an AR/Blood build, due to Fist having only defensive targeted or group-wide heals. It consists of Unveil Essence (with passive), Essence Grenade (passive + Ground Marker Rounds), Runic Hex, Eldritch Scourge (with passive) and Sanctuary, which I try to keep on myself or people I just cleansed from Last Laugh. Leeching Ray for basic and one passive slot I use for Explosives Expert - just so I’d have a 6 seconds leisure time for grenade launch while using KSR.
Now to my primary question, which of healing signets (we have 3 - Amelioration, Echoes and Empowerment) would be better in this situation? My limited testing seems to indicate that only critting direct heals (big green numbers) can proc them, barriers or leech effects won’t do. Moreover, only those heals that are attributed to me in combat log seem to trigger them, so Unveil Essence is right out. And, only heals that actually restore lost HP seem to be able to proc them.
I currently only have Amelioration (a leftover from my Fist healing days), and it doesn’t seem to proc all that often, its cooldown is also running on me. Do Echoes/Empowerment work differently? Since their effect is applied on the character/s other than mine, do those characters also get a cooldown instead of mine? Can they apply their effects on multiple allies or do they only proc on a singular defensive target? I’d imagine giving a 5.56% damage bonus to most melee characters in the encounter would be nice.
You mean Jack with Megabosses? I mean you really really shouldn’T need a healer with that, just have people not stand in stuff and they are fine. I am mostly in melee range and have no issue dodging everything, even if I get hit my weapon healpassiv eats up the damage. If you really want something to heal your team:
Take a shotgun offhand fill it with reconshells and maybe cleanup and add passivs as you feel and the rest dedicate to dps. The empowerment signet which probably is the best of the three gives 9-10% for 5 seconds on a 15 second cooldown…that means 3ish% over the course of the fight…which is nothing compared to missing out on another person doing dps. Sure you suddendly only work groupwide but you do so to an amount that makes a meaningful diffrence instead of trickle small heals on people that for the most time stay full anyway or get damaged more than you heal.
At least I think that is the endeffect of your build…haven’t put it to the test but I can’t see a space for a healmeta in Jack fights.
Only content I can think of that needs a healer is Shambala were a healer can make a team far beefier.
Should’ve specified that this is all about no team, no dedicated tank scenario. Completely random people, no premade groups, so all group-wide abilities are out, and defensive target specific abilities are out since I would have a very hard time selecting a tank to heal and switching to one who got aggro next.
And yes, by megabosses I mean event bosses mostly: Jack, Hel, Hatekeeper. Making sure that DPS can keep DPSing and not get caught with half HP during big damage part - I feel like it does more to ensure fast and smooth fight than my own non-weapon-specific-signeted damage. If only there was a TAoE cleanse gadget, that’d make such a build almost perfect for what I want it to do.
There’s also Biological Metamorphosis that could help.
I think Amelioration is still the best one for you given your usage, by affecting yourself your efforts in helping everyone is increased.
However, as an Ar/Blood user, you could use empowerment to good effect. Making yourself the defensive target and maintaining a level of corruption with mix of healing and damage to gain the damage bonus on yourself. But this would mean a change in your combat style too.
In terms of keeping people alive during the event bosses, all it needs is one person in the instance to run Unveil Essence. They don’t need any extra heal allocation or any signets, the damage that everyone deals with the equal footing buff is enough to top everyone up (other than blood users, but they get healed when they drop their corruption).
The only tricky thing is having hp bars on so that you can gauge if it’s worth using UE or just keep your normal DPS rotation going.
With the difficulty of targeting non-group members, it’s always going to be hard for dedicated healers to reliably heal people who have taken damage during those fights, and most of the signets only proc from direct heals (as you noted).