Thread: Warleader Vs Defiler

What is the difference in play style with the two? Always wanted a healer and thinking about leveling one.
I know about their skills and attacks but what it like playing them in different situations, say after rank 5 or 6 with maybe one to two tp bought skills. Please no negative responses like "don't make one their horrible", I am already aware that they are weak at low levels and take some dedication.

I like Defilers personally cause you can throw HoTs in motion, toss de-buffs on people, and our AoE HoT stacks. I can run a fellowship of people around whole map if they are Badasaurus Rexes.

DPS is not the best but am not banking on a Defiler Warspeech anytime soon. ;D

Infamy gain can be slow if your not duoing with a high DPS monstard.

I'd advise you to also read the monster manual for further information

WL's - they're moderate DPS (compared to defilers), preventative on the damage aspect (bubble on a 2 minute cooldown), and has an AOE rez. They have higher hitpoints and armor. Their AOE healing capability with long cooldown skills is superior to defilers, but if looking at a regular rotation, inferior. Single target healing defilers have a huge advantage compared to WL's. WL's also have no CC whatsoever

Defilers - low/near non-existant DPS. Less burst AoE healing than WL's but superior over time and a long battle in both AoE and at all times single target. Has some critical skills widely useful - AoE fear, traited flies (need to buy from Turbine store, and we're all waiting on this to be nerfed to heck), and traited blight (also need to buy from Turbine store.. likely also to be nerfed to heck). Has a preventative skill that transfers damage to the defiler, not as useful as a bubble but good in emergency situations. Single target out of combat rez on a 30 second cooldown.

So if you're going to group 100% of the time, i'd go defiler. Else you get a bit more flexibility as a WL and less head bashing into the desk. If you intend on 1v1'ing freeps, realize that any freep can run away from a WL at any time, and defilers basically win by healing themselves so long that the freep runs out of power... so they're likely to run away too (the defiler has a... 15% slow I think... it's not much)

Other playstyle difference, when in raid combat, I tend to charge with my WL given how much health/armor it has (that said.... any bit of focus from freeps will down your health in seconds or fractions thereof). WL inductions will pretty much cripple your healing if you have any NPC or freep on you until you run brawler stance and get power of fear traited. On my defiler I tend to work a bit more on the periphery so I can drop out of combat to rez a critical member.

Thanks for the replies very helpful. The defiler sounds like the funner of the two for me, which is what I thought after researching, but wanted to get some more input. The one thing that is a major draback for the defiler though are the skins, ugh!

one you place dots run in circles spamming hots and rotating fear every 45sec, the other yell and shout standing around periodically to do a heal, WL can take hits better then defilers in essence you could say the squishiness of the defilers vs the tankiness of the WL contrast very well with the way they heal, which is one can move around a heal since mits are lower while the other can stand and heal since the mits are higher.

In short as a defiler you'll have to move around a lot more in a fight vs a warleader.

WL dps has been absolutely crippled by audacity, as if it was not weak enough already.
As regards heals, defiler is an outright superior healer. It also has better self-healing capabilities.

The WL is a superior tank though, and it can take more raw damage unaided than a defiler can. Defilers are actually superb in 1v1 though, thanks to their huge power pools and self heals.