Overview

Defilers are the heal over time specialists with important CC.  With their HoTs they allow warleaders to concentrate on mitigating burst damage.  Defilers also bring significant skills such as massive debuffs, slows, and an AoE fear to the battle, all of which makes Freeps extremely unhappy.  Which is a good thing.

Skills

* Starting Skills          ** Requires "Advanced Skill: Fungal Spores" trait to be equipped

Traits

Class Traits

Recommended Corruption Traits

[Jex, Elendilmir]

Seeing as I haven't put much thought into my traits I dont have much advice, but the first thing I would say for corruption, would be Health for Damage. You are a Defiler, you are not going to attacking in anyway which requires you to cause damage, you will be healing, keeping yourself and others alive. Having a large amount of Morale will allow you to help keep others alive longer because you yourself will survive longer.

Going along the same train of thought, if you wish, you can also put Power for Damage to give you that small boost .

Health for Damage

Power for Damage

[Nopain, Elendilmir]

Being a healing class, Defilers usually gain a lot of freep attention, and are often one of the first to be targetted. As such, it is important to improve your survivability as much as possible. At lower ranks it is especially important to boost morale, as the more morale you have, the more opportunity your fellow team members have to keep you alive under heavy focus fire. Additionally, you are less likely to be the first one targetted as you won't present as a fast and easy kill.

Unless you are planning on soloing a lot then you have little need for damage (leave that to the DPS classes!), so the first morale boosting corruption traits I would recommend are:

• Health for Damage 1
• Health for Damage 2

To boost your morale further, you can add the following into the mix:

• Health for Power 1
• Health for Power 2

To gain a bit of extra staying power on the battle field, and/or to offset the negatives from the Health for Power corruptions, I would also suggest:

• Power for Damage 2

If you find you run out of power too quickly, you can just avoid the Health for Power corruptions. However I feel that at lower ranks the sacrifice of power is well worth it for the improved morale, as a dead defiler can't heal ;-)

As you rank up you will gain access to resistance and mitigation traits, which can be very beneficial. You will soon find that as a healer you get lots of NPC love! (This will be discussed in more detail in the Tactics section below). As soon as you hit Rank 3, you will gain access to:

• Common Mitigation 2

Slot this! I cannot suggest this strongly enough. You will get NPC aggro, and you will get it a lot. You are not going to have much fun playing when every time your raid flips a freep-occupied hot spot you find yourself eating mud. Or better yet... when creeps who still have your HoT's active run into Elf Camp to annihilate Freeps who think they are safe... guess who gets the aggro ;-) You can try to run the aggro off, generally out of range of all the juicy infamy, or you can slot Common Mitigation to help withstand the onslaught.

You will soon be keenly aware of how many stuns/mezzes/roots land on you every time you set foot on the battle field. Fortunately at Rank 4 you get access to some traits that can help boost your resistance to these:

• Cry Resistance 2
• Tactical Resistance 2
• Physical Resistance 2
• Song Resistance 2

Once these traits are availble, I will drop the Health 1 corruptions and replace them with 2 of the above Resistances. So my Rank 4+ Defilers will be traited something like this:

• Health for Damage 2
• Health for Power 2
• Common Mitigation 2
• <...> Resistance 2
• <...> Resistance 2

Some Defilers prefer to stick with a max health build, and it all really comes down to personal preference and the particular play style of the Freeps on your server. It is always a good idea to mix and match to see what works best for you.

Tactics

[Monstrel, Elendilmir]

Optimized Healing Out of Combat (Rank 5+)

As a primary healer prior to defiling the enemy, the optimum sequence for casting heals on your front line fighter(s) prior to engagement is to maximize the duration of the heals by starting with the induction-based, stationary Fungal Bloom (642/156 every 5s for 30s for 1578) followed by Fungal Spores (273/273 every 5s for 30s for 1911) and lastly Fertile Slime (78/78 every 5s for 60s for 1014).

By ensuring your induction-based heal leads off, you ensure that your HOT's are most effective leading to a cumulative healing of 4503 over the course of 60 seconds. When you lead with your slowest heal, you can get the complete sequence off within the first 8 seconds of the durations giving your target a minimum of 22 seconds of full HOT's.

Optimized Healing In Combat (Rank 5+)

Once combat begins, speed is of the essence for your heals. With that in mind, your primary sequence changes from the three skill cycle to a combat medic throwing Fungal Spores almost exlusively in tandem with Fell Restoration. Because the power cost of each skill is the same, it's a waste of power and time to try using either the anemic Fertile Slime or the easily interrupted Fungal Bloom.

Never underestimate the value of being able to reapply Fungal Spores on the same target while you're moving within the combat zone.

[Nopain, Elendilmir]

Coming Soon ;-)