Thread: Transition from WS solo (1-74) to main healer (75) pointers

Like many others before, I'm grinding my way to 75 more-or-less 100% solo, i.e. war-speech, DPS spec'd. DPS is obviously not our role come group content at level 75 so I was looking for some basic healing rules of thumb while filling the main healer role. I've read the awesome Visual Guide To Minstrels in Rise of Isengard thread but am now looking for pointers more so around specific healing and buff skill use/rotations.

Thanks in advance!

It's hard to give pointers on what to use and (almost) impossible to suggest rotations since healing is very situational. Experiment with your healing skills, see which one fits best for the situation at hand (like bolster courage for a good-sized, power-effecient but slow to cast single target heal, inspire fellows for a power-hungry group heal, chord of salvation for a quick single target heal with added group HoT and so on) and use whatever seems appropriate.

Traits (and to a certain extend buffing, since the available buffs heavily depend on the traits) are a matter of personal play style. I prefer to trait 4 yellow (plus anthem duration legacy) for 30s duration/5s cooldown anthems, giving me the freedom of keeping up 4 anthems easily even in hard content and having whatever anthem-on-coda-effect I need available to me regularly. Using coda with anthem of the third age (melody), for example, opens an instant-cast bolster courage that I make use of fairly often.

If you trait 4 blue, your anthems will be up to (at least) a 10s cooldown, reducing the amount of anthems you can comfortably keep up and the coda effects available on short notice, but increasing the size of your heals. There are a lot of minstrels out there more comfortable healing this way, and it is as much a valid build for any kind of content as the 4 yellow is.

Healing in harmony with four yellow traits is the closest I'm coming to some kind of healing rotation, usually by spamming minor-perfect-minor-anthem-coda and cycling to my four group anthems continuously. I get a good amount of group healing (1-3k per fellowship member in coda range every 6-7 seconds) this way, keep the four group anthems on the whole fellowship (except myself of course) continuously, and get some AoE damage on top of it. I like to use this for group content that does not have crowd control situations (the harmony coda does AoE damage, thus breaking control) or huge single-target spike damage (I prefer my melody coda plus anthem of the third age -> instant bolster courage for that).

Anyone can play a minstrel, but IMO it takes a mindset to be a good healer. Your #1 job is to make sure people dont die. To do this you need the highest output of heals, most efficent power use, and super quick reaction time. Knowing who to heal when comes with time, but as a start Tank, you, group is the priority.

To put out the maximum amount of heals, you can follow the gear guides to max out will, and healing output on legendaries, but also ranking 3x major ballad and having Ao3a up full time helps.

Power efficency is as easy as using the most efficent heal that is needed. If a hunter is only down 1k health, a quick heal may not be the best idea as they are the most power hungry. Using inspire fellows to heal 2 people can be a good use of time, but it can eat a ton of power. Boulster spam is going to be the most efficent, and only using inspire when 3+ members of the group will use the full heal. If you have time 3x major balad + anthem of compassion + coda = free power pot, but this takes time to do then rank back up to Ao3a healing.

Reaction time... this one I have an odd way of healing that is a carryover from EQ/wow and after 13 years or so it is natural for me. I have heals as ASDFG on my keybard, and HJKL: as target group members. When in a raid I can mouse click the target and click a heal much faster than a straight clicker, when grouping the time it takes for me to hit "jf" is as close to instant as you can get when reacting to incoming damage. I use the "home row" because in other games healing marathons could last for as long as 6 hours, and hunching my arm over the F keys for long periods of time is not awesome. On the other hand I solo with fingers on tab 123, but move those icons in and out for major balad, Ao3a, Compassion, and AoW.

There is no real healing rotation, its rank up, get Ao3a up and react to what damage is incoming. I reserve quick heal and SoS for myself and can quickly hit F1, a, g, and move onto whoever else I need to heal.

Another thing I'll say is that you also have to be aware of the field itself. I've had times where I was standing in the middle of a fire puddle and didn't notice until I was on the verge of death because I was so focused on everyone else's little green bar, so try to stay cognizant of what's going on around you.

Also, I'm sure it goes without saying, but you really want a 75 2nd age weapon and songbook dedicated to healing. Sometimes, I peek at other Minis to see how they equipped/traited out (never hurts, might see something that didn't occur to me or something you want and you can ask 'Where'd you get that?'), see a legacy like Perfect Ballad Damage on their healweapon, and ask myself "What were they thinking?" There are other threads here on the subject of legacies, so I won't go into that.

Finally....mistakes will happen, misclicks will happen, people will go down. Accept it as a fact of life and move on. Don't hold yourself to the standard of perfection, or you can expect to be very disappointed. Find some skirmish raids to practice on, they're usually saner.

best way is to get experiance, group group group!!! tell the group that you have not grouped much so they understand and you wont get ignored for future groups

Most of mine are for raiding, it's pretty easy to heal 6 man most stuff and you might as well half-dps in 3 man stuff.


Don't forget or underestimate Song of Aid and Call to greatness. You never use em soloing, but they can make a difference in a group/raid.

Know when to use fellowships heart and triumphant spirit. Sometimes the fights are easy in the beginning and hard at the end (lightning wing), sometimes they are easy at the end and hard in the beginning (saruman phase 5), sometimes they are hard in the middle when a bunch of adds pop in or something (acid wing). Don't try to save em through a tough stretch.

Don't hurry to use your in combat rez if there is a captain in the group/raid. They will probably be rezzing, so save yours for if they die or run out of rezzes. Will just waste it otherwise more often then not.

Virtues are for mitigation and morale, not boosting will or fate.

Might want to use cry of chorus when pulling trash to ballad-up.

All that I can think of atm.

Simple, stop.

Make an alt, a Minstrel, level it to 20.

Now run GB Maze non-stop, until you understand your healing skills, can heal with those without running out of power, even with bad pulls/longer than necessary fights.

Once you get totally confident with that, run GB Thadurs non-stop. Be able to heal even after you've had your power totally blasted away to 0.

Learn how to heal with the simplest instance mechanics presented there (move out of the puddles).

Now you've gained some levels, and some new skills, see how they incorporate into your healing rotation, learn them intimately, so you don't even have to think to wield them.

When the GA and Fornost instances unlock, run them with groups like crazy, involving all those new skills you've gotten over the past ten levels. Learn how to deal with being silenced, with more AoE attacks on your groups, with adds spawning based on different conditions than you've had before.

In your 40s, it's a whole new ballgame, group in Annuminas instances, working out new instance mechanics as well as legendary items. Learn how to maximize your healing with your legendaries/build.

In your 50s, run Forgotten Treasury, learn how to heal a tank and off tank that are out of line of sight of each other. Grand Stairs, learn how to pot while healing and keep yourself up, learn how to heal bad players who pull threat (or just let them drop and rez them later).

Start doing raids, Helegrod and Vile Maw is great learning ground for working with another minstrel, coordinating heals, orchestrating how to keep a dozen or 24 people healthy.

In your high 60s, do the Absence instances, particularly Lost Temple, where the mechanics will teach you most what you need to know for Orthanc later (and combine everything you learned in GB, GS and FT).

Once you've gotten that down, feel free to delete that alt and return to your main (although your alt will have a far better build). Foundry is GB, Fornost, Halls of Crafting instances all rolled into one. Orthanc has an amalgam of all the above rolled into one.

I'm sorry, but there obviously is no way a forum post can give you a fraction of the knowledge gained by grouping in your twenties, or integrating higher level healing skills and their dynamics into your play experience.



"Sometimes survival comes down to not being hit. Actually, most times." -the chicken skill, Bob and Weave

In an ideal setting RJFerret is correct , unfortunately with the maturity of the game it is not possible to always group up at lower levels.

Read the forums here , there is alot of useful information about gearing up ,Traits , virtues , LI's etc.

Since your join date is back in 2007 I assume you are in a Kin and well versed with Lotro and understand a Minstrels place in a Fellowship / Raid.

Your kin will have some experienced active members who should be more than happy to help you practise , by running 3 / 6 mans / SkirmRaids to get you comfortable with healing before plunging into the Raids. If you are not in a Kin join one , Good Healers are always in short supply, and learning your trade ,healing, in PuG's could be a thankless task and probably not enjoyable.

For me its Kin payback time for the hours I have spent on my Warden running them through LLG and the Isen 3/6mans , I am looking forward to healing again after a 8 month healing break


Stratospaly made the most important comment - Anyone can play a minstrel, but IMO it takes a mindset to be a good healer. . Healer cannot be your 3rd or 4th alt that you use once a month and expect to be great in a T2 Raid setting.

My advice would be to heal some lower level instances for practice. There's almost always a group running some Moria instance or another. This will give you a feel for how things work, in a much more forgiving environment.

If you're in a helpful kinship, ask them to do some of these practice runs with you. Work your way up through more challenging content until you're comfortable healing level 75 instances and raids.

I recommend this same strategy for tanks who leveled up solo.

For me it wasn't too hard, as I had practice in some instances (Grand Stair, etc) leading up to 75. But really it's all about knowing what your healing skills do and how much power they consume. Believe it or not, for a lot of fights, i sit there and look pretty until someone takes a hit. it would be a waste of power to keep healing when nobody is really getting hurt.

It's a lot easier than it sounds, but it just takes some practice

Bumping this thread for current and future reference.

Thanks all for the pointers.

Thank you all for the great advice. I've been 75 for a couple weeks now and have been able to heal Foundry, RoF and Draigoch all at T2. I'm not going to lie, the first few times I was sweating bullets. With that being said, if for some reason you get behind on healing your tank due to a big crit or trying to save another fellowship member, what are the ways you try to catch up? I found myself trying to spam Raise the Spirit but that wasn't too effective or at least it left me on the edge of my seat. At that point are you better just blowing Triumphant Spirit?

Thanks again!

You can coda heal on the tank, then assuming you had anthem of the 3rd age up (you should) you also get another free instant-cast bolster. You have cry of chorus to get your ballads back if you don't have the time to do them one at a time.

Also chord of salvation legacy lets you use it pretty often for those instances if needbe, it will use up your power though. Careful of the animation hang-up if you use it for this, or it could be problematic.

TS is always an option. Once you have done whatever instance/raid you are in a few times, you get an idea of when you are gonna want to use TS and FH. Every fight seems to have a specific point where the maximum damage is thrown at you. Except draigoch I guess, but you don't need much healing for that fight at all.

Panic situations like that are what Triumphant Spirit was made for. That's also a good time to detonate your Coda (if you happen to need some more power, it's also a good time to preface it with Anthem of Composure). I find Raise the Spirit spamming problematic just on a cost effectiveness basis - I'll use Raise the Spirit until he's out of that really critical range, hit Chord of Salvation and Soliloquy of Spirit if off cooldown, then go back to Bolster Courage. That's actually also a good reason to use Anthem of the Free Peoples, to buy you a bit of time to focus on your critical needs while everyone else has the ICMR buff. Really, if you need to experiment with something, Draigoch is a good place to do it because there are certainly enough noncombat periods in case things go awry. Skraids are good practice for potentially tenser content...you don't want to be going into the Tower of Orthanc saying "You know, I've never tried this setup before!"

I tend to use Triumphant Spirit to give myself some breathing room when things are really getting hectic on several fellowship members at once. TS (and even Fellowship Heart) are there to use, not to sit idly on my skill bar waiting forever for a moment where I am even more desperately in need of them .

If it is just one person needing quick heals (most often the tank after a big hit) then my melody coda followed by an instant bolster courage (from the anthem of the third age coda effect) usually does the trick. Throwing the Hammerhand bubble on the person also buys me some time, and Soliloquy of Spirit helps to speed up somebodys morale gain while I can concentrate on another task.

Raise the Spirit actually is the healing skill that I almost never use, I prefer to use Chord of Salvation for a quick healing headstart plus HoT on the whole fellowship, then follow up with Bolster Courage (which, as far as I have seen, does roughly the same amount of healing per second as Raise the Spirit due to animations, only in bigger chunks and less expensive).

I have the cooldown reduction legacies for both Triumphant Spirit and Chord of Salvation on my healing LIs and like to use both skills liberally whenever they are off cooldown. Play around with them and you will find that saving them for a better moment is most often not necessary. Use them whenever they look helpful and it's a good bet that they are in fact your most helpful healing skills in that situation.

Thank you all, this has been extremely helpful. Yesterday I managed to heal Orthanc T1 (1-4) and realized quite a few things that I've been neglecting after rereading this. For one, I was not using Ao3A (Anthem of Third Age) at all. Apparently I had it stuck in my head that I should be trying to maximize the group's DPS so I was trying to keep up AoW (Anthem of War) and AoP (Anthem of Prowess) up the whole time while being traited 4B/3Y for maximum healing output. Going forward I think I'm going to switch to 4Y/3B as to be able to keep Ao3A up and be able to stack other anthems. With that being said, which anthems do you typically use and how do you prioritize them?

Thanks again!

Ao3a (keep this up full time!!)
Composure on AoEing bosses
AoW when I have time (swap out for a buff book when casting)

I prefer 4b\3y for the 10% healing. It is not your job to help everyone do more damage, its your job to keep them alive. If you have time, help with the damage using AoW.