Welcome to the Wand / Longbow PvE build guide! When compared to other healer builds such as Wand / Staff or Wand / Dagger, Wand / Longbow is not the greatest when it comes to DPS or overall build flexibility. In PvE, this weapon combination is more known for the utility they bring to a party in the form of party-wide Cooldown Reduction, Mana Regeneration, and Critical Hit, as well as Accuracy buffs.
By taking advantage of unique longbow skills such as Nature's Blessing you ensure your party has proper Mana sustain throughout a boss fight. Longbow also has the only CC cleanse ability called Purifying Touch. With this ability, you are able to uniquely help your party get past certain Co-Op Dungeon mechanics that would be more challenging for parties without a Longbow.
Wand / Longbow Mother Transcendental PvE Build
With Rune Synergies and Resonance
- CC Cleanse
- Party Hit Chance Buff
- Ability Cooldown Reset
- Party Critical Chance Buff
- Party Mana Regeneration
- Party Cooldown Reduction
- Low DPS
- Low Mobility
Skill Builds
In Throne and Liberty, healing is your main role, but part of playing a healer to the fullest potential is contributing damage when there isn't much to heal. Doing so inside Co-Op Dungeons helps reduce your clear time. If your party requires additional damage mitigation or healing replace some DPS abilities in this skill build. This especially helps if your party is new to the game and as more challenging Co-Op Dungeons are introduced. Use this skill build for Co-Op Dungeons and when you're required to heal for Field and Guild Bosses.
Active Skills
Damage Skills
- Always start the fight with Touch of Despair. Your goal is to stack the Curse from this ability to 3 on a boss before detonating your Curse Explosion.
- Cast Decaying Touch before you cast your third Touch of Despair. This helps you to min/max your Curse Explosion damage.
- Use Decisive Sniping before your Strafing into Zephyr's Nock combo for the 300 Critical Hit buff.
- Curse Explosion with Dark Explosion leaves your Curses on the boss. This reduces the cooldown of Curse Explosion so you can use the skill more frequently.
Utility Skills
- Coordinate with your party to time Deadly Marker around Critical Hit buffs in their burst rotation. This ensures they get the most out of the Cooldown Reduction aspect of the skill.
- Use Time for Punishment and Nature's Blessing before Deadly Marker to ensure the full duration of the Cooldown Reduction is applied to all three skills.
Passive Skills
- One of your best passives to increase your healing output and reduce the Cooldown of healing abilities is Devotion and Emptiness. Remember that during the night you lose the healing bonuses and gain increased damage and Cooldown Reduction on your Curse abilities instead.
- You can easily keep Selfless Soul at 5 stacks with Fountain of Life, or with Clay's Salvation and Nature's Blessing.
- Your remaining four passive skills focus on slotting options that increase your damage output against bosses. These include Wraith's Beckon, Roxie's Arrowhead, Sniper's Sense, and Rapidfire Stance.
- Vampiric Contract provides a small amount of healing to whomever you are targeting. This is great for damage sustain against DoTs in PvE or slowly keeping party member's Health bars topped off without wasting healing abilities.
Alternatives
- If your party requires more support abilities or help tanking a strong boss mechanic, replace Decisive Sniping with Invincible Wall. Remove Mana Recovery from Fountain of Life to get Expand Targets.
Use this Wand / Longbow PVE skill build while solo farming Resistance Contracts and Open World Dungeons.
Active Skills
Damage Skills
- After grouping mobs, always start with Touch of Despair. With Curse, you always have one mob who has two stacks of Touch of Despair. Swap targets to that mob to continue your Curse Explosion combo.
- Cast Decaying Touch before you cast your third Touch of Despair.
- Use Arrow Vortex into Brutal Arrow into Ray of Disaster.
Utility Skills
- Always use Time for Punishment into Karmic Haze to spread the Skill Damage Reduction debuff within a large AoE.
Passive Skills
- One of your best passives to increase your healing output and reduce the Cooldown of healing abilities is Devotion and Emptiness. Remember that during the night you lose the healing bonuses and gain increased damage and Cooldown Reduction on your Curse abilities instead.
- Your remaining four passive skills focus on slotting options that increase your damage output against bosses. These include Wraith's Beckon, Roxie's Arrowhead, Sniper's Sense, and Rapidfire Stance.
- When you have no one targeted, Vampiric Contract instead heals yourself providing great damage sustain in PvE.
Alternatives
- If you need extra healing, swap Arrow Vortex for Fountain of Life.
This skill build is only to be used when your party requires minimal to no healing during Field and Guild Boss fights and your only goal is to work together to deal as much damage as possible for a higher chance of receiving boss drops.
Active Skills
Damage Skills
- Always start the fight with Touch of Despair. Your goal is to stack the Curse from this ability to 3 on a boss before detonating your Curse Explosion.
- Cast Decaying Touch before you cast your third Touch of Despair. This helps you to min/max your Curse Explosion damage.
- Curse Explosion with Dark Explosion leaves your Curses on the boss. This reduces the cooldown of Curse Explosion so you can use the skill more frequently.
- Weave in Decisive Sniping for the Critical Hit buff.
- In between Touch of Despair cooldowns, use Ray of Disaster, followed by Strafing into Zephyr's Nock.
Utility Skills
- At the start of a fight after your first cast of Touch of Despair, always follow-up with Deadly Marker, followed by Enchanting Time to obtain the Skill Damage Boost, Critical Hit, and Cooldown Reduction buffs.
- Fighting Spirit Barrier is used right after you cast Decaying Touch to enhance Curse Explosion's damage.
- Don't forget to use Nature's Blessing off cooldown to restore Mana.
Passive Skills
- One of your best passives to increase your healing output and reduce the Cooldown of healing abilities is Devotion and Emptiness. Remember that during the night you lose the healing bonuses and gain increased damage and Cooldown Reduction on your Curse abilities instead.
- Your remaining four passive skills focus on slotting options that increase your damage output against bosses. These include Wraith's Beckon, Roxie's Arrowhead, Sniper's Sense, and Rapidfire Stance.
- Vampiric Contract provides a small amount of healing to whomever you are targeting. This is great for damage sustain against DoTs in PvE or slowly keeping party member's Health bars topped off without wasting healing abilities.
Skill Prioritization
- Use Quality Marind Ore to craft Quality Passive Skill Growth Book and Quality Active Skill Growth Book
- Use Rare Marind Ore to craft Rare Passive Skill Growth Book and Rare Active Skill Growth Book.
- Prioritize getting all these skills to blue first before getting them to purple. These are universal skills you always use.
- Upgrade the rest of your skills as you play the game.
PvE Gameplay and Skill Rotation
The healing abilities listed below are to be used as you need in any content that requires you to heal allies or yourself.
AoE Heals
- Clay's Salvation
- Fountain of Life
- Nature's Blessing
- These are your AoE healing abilities commonly used in PvE. Use your AoE heals after multiple party members receive damage that require your support.
- Swift Healing is used as your main heal until this happens.
Single-Target Heals
- Swift Healing
- This is your main heal that has a low cooldown and can be casted up to three times with Consecutive Use.
Damage Mitigation
- Blessed Barrier
- Invincible Wall
- These skills help your party tank strong hitting mechanics.
- Blessed Barrier and Invincible Wall can be changed into AoE abilities with Expand Targets and Expand Targets.
The following rotations should be used while completing your Resistance Contracts and solo farming mobs in Open World Dungeons.
Long AoE Rotation
- Group mobs
- Ray of Disaster
- Touch of Despair
- Time for Punishment
- Decaying Touch (make sure there are three stacks of ToD)
- Touch of Despair
- Karmic Haze
- Curse Explosion
- Arrow Vortex
- Brutal Arrow
- Decisive Bombardment
This is the long combo. Weave in DPS skills as you wait for your Karmic Haze cooldown.
Short AoE Rotation
- Touch of Despair
- Time for Punishment
- Decaying Touch (make sure there are three stacks of ToD)
- Touch of Despair
- Karmic Haze
- Curse Explosion
This combo is used to quickly kill normal mobs that are a lot squishier. You frequently use this rotation while completing your resistance contracts.
Tips
- Always group mobs and use Chaotic Shield to block Fury attacks and easily spread Touch of Despair. If done correctly, you can skip building 3 stacks of ToD and go right into the final part of the Curse Explosion combo.
- Always spread Time for Punishment with Karmic Haze before exploding.
The rotations listed below should be used on Field and Guild Bosses, as well as bosses inside Co-Op Dungeons.
Long Single-Target Rotation
- Ray of Disaster
- Touch of Despair
- Enchanting Time
- Deadly Marker
- Decaying Touch (make sure to have three stacks of ToD)
- Touch of Despair
- Fighting Spirit Barrier
- Curse Explosion
- Decisive Sniping
- Strafing
- Zephyr's Nock
- This combo delivers your highest DPS output.
- Some practice is required to get the timing right.
- The DoT stacks remain if using Curse Explosion so make sure you practice balancing your skill use effectively.
Short Single-Target Rotation
- Ray of Disaster
- Touch of Despair
- Deadly Marker
- Enchanting Time
- Strafing
- Zephyr's Nock
- Touch of Despair
- Decaying Touch (make sure to have three stacks of ToD)
- Curse Explosion
- This combo is a shortened version of the long single-target rotation for when you need to get a quick burst of damage off on a target.
Stat Priorities
Use the following stat priorities when playing a Wand / Longbow build in PVE:
- Primary Stat
- Dexterity and Wisdom
- Secondary Stat
- Strength and Perception
You have 49 Stat Points you can freely allocate to any of the 4 primary Stats. Once you put 20 points into an individual Stat, it takes 2 points to increase the Stat by 1. Do not put more than 20 points into a Stat unless you are trying to reach a certain breakpoint.
You get bonuses for every 10 Stat Points you invest from 30 to 60. Invest your points based on acquiring these bonuses.
Dexterity not only adds maximum Weapon Damage but also increases your Crit Chance, Evasion, and Attack Speed. Increasing Dexterity is your best method of increasing your damage output. Wisdom is the next best stat for improving your Weapon Damage. Each added point into Wisdom also provides extra Cooldown Speed and Mana Regen.
Mid Game
For PvE, you care mainly about maximum damage output so put points into Dexterity and Wisdom. Reaching 30 Strength is worthwhile if you think you need the extra Health to survive. You can have two Presets for max Dexterity and Wisdom or 30 Strength.
End Game
With enough Purple Gear, you can optimally hit certain stat breakpoints. 50 Wisdom gives you extra Cooldown Speed which is great to get your healing and support abilities back quickly.
Gear Progression
If you're interested in PvP Gear Progression, check out our Wand / Longbow PvP Build Guide here!
Mother Transcendental
Story Gear for Wand / Longbow PvE Build
If you've been following our Leveling Guide for Wand / Longbow, the advice in the Leveling Guide was not to transfer over your Green Gear into Blues just yet. Thus you should have ended up with mostly Green Gear. If you are using Special Resistance Hawk Armor leave it at 0.
If you didn't read the Leveling Guide, that's fine, your Story Gear doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things.
- Your two biggest upgrades once reaching Level 50 becomes Elite Resistance Longbow and Lethal Fortune Ring.
- These are obtained by completing Lithograph Book entries:
- Marksman's Arsenal
- Rustic Mother Nature Rings.
Mid Game Wand / Longbow PvE Build
- The Insightful Ring of Dimension recipe.
- Karnix's Hell Bow (Death's Abyss) and Lequirus's Thorny Edge (Cave of Destruction) are crafted through the Dimensional Essence: Salvation pity system or obtained from their respective Co-Op Dungeons.
- Bloody Fog Leather Pants come from Open World Dungeons.
- Lethal Fortune Ring, Prophet's Bracelet, Scales of Time Necklace, Frost Barrier Magic Shoes, Dark Destruction Iron Gloves, Deadly Fighter's Plate Armor, Furious Sniper's Longbow come from Co-Op Dungeons.
- Elite Retainer's Belt, Great Spirit's Grace Visor, and Elite Sharpshooter's Cloak come from both Open World Dungeons and Co-Op Dungeons.
- There are alternative gear options such as the Mysterious Sage Set that are boss drops you can use. However, they are harder to trait and take longer to obtain so instead, stick with more easily farmable blue pieces.
As you progress further into the game, you gather more blue gear with flat Stat buffs such as Dexterity and Wisdom to boost your raw damage. It's also more costly to trait due to the low supply in the early game. It's okie to still use green accessories. Slowly transition to Blue Gear as you play the game and acquire the pieces you need.
The goal for your Mid Game build is to reach over 45% Critical Hit for your heals and damage. With this build, you also have high Cooldown Speed. You don't require much Hit to land your abilities on mobs and bosses.
Where possible, Melee and Ranged Evasion are prioritized on your gear because most mobs use these attack types. These defenses help you survive in dungeons and during PvE Events.
Wand / Longbow Mother Transcendental PvE Build
No Rune Synergies and Resonance
Wand / Longbow Mother Transcendental PvE Build
With Rune Synergies and Resonance
This version of the gear build is semi-self found, meaning some of the pieces are acquired only through the Auction House, Substance Transformation, or Field and Archbosses where you must rely on your guild for loot. These gear pieces are:
- Destroyer's Choker (obtained from Field and Guild Boss Nirma).
- Tycan's Bloodlust Belt (obtained from Field and Guild Boss Aridus)
- Transcendent Magic Ring (obtained from Archboss Bellandir)
- All of these accessories are obtainable through the Substance Transformation system.
Alternative
Wand / Longbow PvE Build
No Rune Synergies and Resonance
This version of the gear build is fully self-found, meaning all the pieces are acquired yourself through grinding. You do not need to use the Auction House, Substance Transformation, or rely on your guild.
The goal for your End Game build is to reach over 45% Critical Hit. With this build, you also have high Cooldown Speed which is important to spam DPS abilities as quickly as possible, including Deadly Marker and Time for Punishment for your party.
- Obtain Slaughterer's Collar from the Lithograph: Marienne's Recommended Necklace Collection.
- Transcendental Mystery Gloves comes from the Shadowed Crypt Open World Dungeon.
- Ghost Wolf Alter Ego Mask, Archpriest's Devotion, Miracle of Mother Nature Clothing, Transcendental Salvation Pants, Specter's Frost Bracers, Lethal Frost Ring, and Butcher's Belt come from Co-Op Dungeons.
- Resonance of Mother Nature Boots comes from both Open World Dungeons and Co-Op Dungeons.
Wand / Longbow Reaper's PvE Build
No Rune Synergies or Resonance
Wand / Longbow Reaper's PvE Build
With Rune Synergies and Resonance
The goal for your End Game build is to reach over 45% Critical Hit. With this build, you also have high Cooldown Speed which is important to spam DPS abilities as quickly as possible, including Deadly Marker and Time for Punishment for your party.
This build works towards obtaining the 2-piece Death Set to increase your overall damage output. Although Critical Hit does not increase the damage of your Curses, they can still "Crit" and only the Critical Damage Bonus applies (this is an unintended occurrence in game). Reaper's Black Mask is usually prioritized for DPS players, so you may find it difficult to get your hands on one from your guild since you're a healer.
- Some pieces here can't be farmed in the open world or dungeons. Namely, the Reaper's Black Mask, Destroyer's Choker, and Tycan's Bloodlust Belt which all come from Field Bosses and Guild Bosses.
- Transcendent Magic Ring is only obtainable from the Archboss Bellandir or Substance Transformation.
- For all pieces that drop from Field and Guild bosses, you can also acquire them through Substance Transformation. This works best for accessories and Field Boss gear like the Reaper's Black Mask. Since the pool for accessory rolls is smaller, you want to roll on these first until you get what you need.
- Reaper's Footsteps comes from Sanctum of Desire Open World Dungeon.
- This set takes some time to complete, so take it slow! It's not a race! With full Rune Synergies, you hit 30 Strength, 60 Dexterity, 53 Wisdom, and 42 Perception.
Alternatives
Wand / Longbow Reaper's PvE Build
- Replace Transcendental Salvation Pants with Mysteries of Mother Nature Pants for increased Curse damage.
Guardians
Guardians are special transformations that add offensive or defensive buffs or attacks to your character for 30 seconds. These are the recommended Guardians for this class.
- Shade Revenant Stheno is the one and most viable DPS Guardian in PvE because it deals the most damage.
- Lady Knight Kamarshea is a useful Guardian while you learn new dungeons. It helps in situations as an emergency button to survive mechanics that deal a significant amount of damage. Not many other situations arise where this is necessary.
Summary
- Wand / Longbow healer is a great choice for dungeons with boss mechanics that can be countered with Purifying Touch, while also providing your party Cooldown Reduction, Hit and Critical Hit chance with Deadly Marker, as well as great Mana sustain with Nature's Blessing.
- Although not normally required, you have the option of resetting heals using Blitz to allow for additional healing if needed.
- Play a Wand / Longbow healer build in PvE if you enjoy using a longbow and want to be a reliable support for your friends and allies in Co-Op Dungeons and open world PvE content.
Credits
Written by EliEli
Reviewed by Yaen and Tenkiei