Chloromancer is the mage calling’s original healing soul. It’s unusual in that you heal primarily by doing damage. A chloromancer excels at both raid and tank healing, but cannot buffer hits to reduce incoming damage. That means that if a frostkeeper or purifier are also healing, they’re a potent combination, but the chloro’s numbers will look smaller than compared to being partnered with a warden or sentinel.
The Build
My preferred chloro healing spec is a 61-point build that includes both Frostkeeper and Harb as off souls. If you don’t have those, then anything that increases your spellpower, Intelligence stat, or spell crit, in that order, will work. That means that Stormcaller (Storm Energy and Cyclogenesis) and Elementalist (Biting Cold) are prime candidates, enough that I might swap things around some to see how it plays out. I don’t know why the preset, Sage, calls for necro as the first benefit is in the second level of branches and getting there provides no useful abilities.
If you don’t need the extra speed to keep up with people or to avoid mechanics, you can also move two points from Harbinger’s Natural Swiftness to Keeper’s Overwatch.
The masteries I selected are largely optional. This is especially true with the level 63 masteries. Again, I prefer mobility and for me the change to Natural Splendor provided by Eldritch Swiftness is very useful; if you’re in an encounter that requires a lot of cleansing or are burning through more mana than you can recover with Essence Conversion, then Mental Cynosure is your friend. Coalesced Resolve reduces the effect of CC on you, and provides a useful buff to your brez (battle resurrection).
The legendary abilities I selected are Living Aegis, Healing Torrent, Radiant Spores, Earthen Renewal, and Storm Slash. If I could have, I would have used Legendary Rime rather than Legendary Storm Slash, simply because it still requires melee.
Buffs
Your Lifegiving Veil and Lifebound Veil both counts as buffs. Always have one or the other up. Using Synthesis on a target will switch you to your Lifebound Veil. Careful, though, since all three share the same 5-second CD.
Aside from your Veils, your most important buff is Living Aegis, Chloro’s one and only Mage Armor. It provides large boosts to your max HP, your Life damage, and your healing, and also heals you when you’re attacked. Its biggest benefit, though, is to trigger instant procs for Vile Spores and Natural Healing.
You have a choice between using Lighting Blade and Lightning Charge. For all intents and purposes, they have the same effect with this build, so it doesn’t actually matter which you use. I prefer Lightning Charge, but that’s because I don’t particularly like the model for the sword.
Living Energy is a toggle that reduces energy costs by 10% for members of your party or raid.
Entropic Veil is a charge-consuming toggle ability that blocks charge gain. It increases your damage and healing by a moderate amount.
You can use Frost Barrier either on yourself or on another target, but it places a buff on its target that absorbs 85% of incoming damage up to an amount based on your spellpower. It’s usually best placed on the tank, and its effects stack with Synthesis.
The Abilities
Chloro’s primary healing abilities are its veils, earned at levels 8 and 11 respectively. Level 8 provides your raid healing ability, Lifegiving Veil. The veil at level 11, Lifebound Veil, is used most effectively with an ability in the branches, Synthesis. That means that until you spend the point to get Synthesis, you will not be able to effectively tank heal. Healing from the same sort of veil does not overlap, and a target may only have one Synthesis on them at a time. This does not mean that if the mage swaps veils, their Synthesis falls off. It doesn’t, and veil swapping is a valid technique to change between raid and tank healing.
Thanks to the Veils, each of your damaging abilities heal a certain amount. Life abilities heal more, abilities with cast times heal more, and abilities that are both heal even more. In addition, certain chloro abilities- Ruin, Void Life, and Corrosive Spores, for example- still proc higher heals on a Synthesis target.
Chloro only has a total of seven direct healing abilities. Without investing points in the tree, five have cast times- Bloom and Flourish can be bought down to instant casts with the same perk, Healing Slipstream. In fact, only Flourish (20 points) and Natural Healing (36 points) are in the roots.
Chloro's native single target abilities are Bloom, Natural Healing, Essence Surge, Healing Torrent, and Resurgence. Bloom and Natural Healing provide moderate single target heals. As previously mentioned, Bloom can be used as an instant cast and has a 10-second CD. Its Legendary also turns it into an AoE with a DOT. Resurgence is a small single-target heal over time (HOT) with another 10-second CD. Healing Torrent provides a heal up front along with a HOT effect. Essence Surge is your emergency ability, healing the target for whatever your max HP is at the cost of a one minute cooldown.
This build provides two more, Rime and Earthen Renewal. In this build, Rime is analogous to Natural Healing. Legendary Earthen Renewal, however, is a major heal that is instant cast every six seconds and in a healing build very, very worth it.
You have two direct group or raid heals, Flourish and Wild Growth. Flourish provides one heal to up to 10 party or raid members with at 20 second CD. Wild Growth is a 12-second charge consumer that provides a HOT effect and a snare to enemies.
Radiant Spores and Withering Vine both provide indirect heals. Radiant Spores is an area of effect (AoE) debuff that has the chance to heal people who attack targets affected by it. Its Legendary ability increases threat, but also adds a DOT and reduces incoming damage. Withering Vine is a damage over time (DOT) effect that heals your nearby allies.
Chloro now has two cleanses, Nature’s Cleansing for single-target and Cleansing Rush for AoE. Unless I need to cleanse everyone, I tend to use the cleansing macro in this guide.
Symbiosis massively increases the incoming healing done by your Veil to that target. If they’re your Synthesis target or you are using Lifegiving Veil, it increases healing done by 50%. If they aren’t your Synthesis target, then it increases healing to match the Synthesis target. It lasts 10 seconds and has a 45 second CD.
Your brez is Soul Tether. Like every other brez in the game, it’s an instant cast that comes with a 5 minute CD.
Your mana regen is Essence Conversion. It burns 5% of your HP to recover 15% of your MP. With veil heals, that’s less of an impact than you might think.
Blight, Natural Conversion, Living Shell, and Hail Blast are all situational abilities. Hail Blast is a non-Life instant cast (it comes from Frostkeeper), meaning that it will trigger very little in the way of a Veil heal. Its primary benefit is that it slows enemies for 6 seconds. Blight removes all heal over time effects and reduces single target healing that the target receives by 15% for 6 seconds. The Legendary version also removes all absorb shields. Though there’s not much use for it in PvE at the moment, there may be some utility in PvE. Natural Conversion is supposed to take the next damaging single-target ability that its target uses, within 30 seconds, and cause it to also heal 200% of the damage done. There were some uses for it in vanilla, especially in the raids Gilded Prophecy against Guurloth and in Greenscale’s Blight against the big bad himself, Greenscale. I don’t know if it currently works, and it has always been finicky. Living Shell briefly provides you a small absorb barrier.
Macros
Cleansing macro, so that you don’t have to go find which person has the debuff. The “cast @groupxx” line continues in sequence up to “cast @group20 Nature’s Cleansing” so that it looks for every person in the raid.
#show Nature's Cleansingsuppressmacrofailurescast @mouseoverui Nature's Cleansingcast @group01 Nature's Cleansingcast @group02 Nature's Cleansingcast @group03 Nature's Cleansingcast @group04 Nature's Cleansingcast @group05 Nature's Cleansing
…
cast @group20 Nature's Cleansingcast Radiant Sporescast Withering Vine
ST bamheal macro. You’ll notice that Earthen Renewal is down at the bottom; that way, if it has six stacks and I’m moving, it’ll still cast, but I’m not sitting there for six seconds if it’s not.
#show Bloomsuppressmacrofailurescast Bloomcast Healing Torrentcast Natural Healing
cast Legendary Earthen Renewal
DPS macro, specifically to condense Ruin and Vile Spores. Void Life is on a separate button for me. Nature’s Touch is at the bottom for the same reason Earthen Renewal is in the previous macro.
#show Ruinsuppressmacrofailurescast Ruincast Vile Spores
cast Nature’s Touch
Sample announcement macro, so that you have the format. I have a few of these- one for synth, one for Wild Growth, and one for my brez. Feel free to change the yell to fit you.
#show Soul Tetheryell Rise, %t!cast Soul Tether
Technique
Being an OK chloro is fairly easy- have your Veil up, sit there, and spam Void Life. Being a good chloro is another thing entirely. Unfortunately, it’s largely about knowing when to and where to use your abilities. That means there’s not a real rotation, as such.
You do need to have at least one Veil up at all times. Which one you use depends on what you’re doing, and if there’s another mage-healer around that has a Veil on. Veil healing from the same Veil does not stack, meaning that chloros do not stack well.
Ideally, you would alternate between using direct heals and damaging abilities. Thanks to the Healing Balance perk in the branches, using direct heals places a stacking buff on you. Per Circle of Life, using damaging abilities increases the crit chance of Bloom, Flourish, or Natural Healing within 15 seconds. Boon of Life can reduce the cast time of Healing Torrent and Nature’s Touch, potentially to instant.
Always have Withering Vine and Radiant Spores up on a target; they provide passive healing that you don’t have to after the initial mana cost.
Ruin and Vile Spores both leave unique DOTs on their targets. These DOTs also appear to trigger Veil heals. Ruin is an instant cast. Vile Spores counts as a Primary Bolt. Use them when you can, especially if you have instant procs.
When you’re shooting into a pack of mobs, Corrosive Spores and Natural Splendor are your go-to abilities. Corrosive Spores is a ticking DOT that does damage to mobs around the target and provides a larger heal to your Synthesis target. Natural Splendor is a channeled, charge-consuming green beam of death that does AoE damage to mobs around the target and heals to your allies. I have never used Nature’s Fury, which I think of as the bouncy green ball, in a serious situation simply because there’s no telling where it’s going to go. It might hit the nearest enemy to the one it just hit, it might bounce ten meters in the other direction. Couple that with the cast time, and I’ve got better things to use. On the other hand, if you want to mess with the tank, fire away! Assuming that he ever reads this, Gunghnir can attest to that.
You have a number of solutions to surging damage waves. The first is to just ignore it, since your Veils heal everybody. The second is to top off heal, using Flourish or Legendary Healing Torrent and then ignore it. For more serious situations, use Wild Growth. Once that’s over, go to a combination of the above, potentially even Veil swapping for a few seconds.
I don’t use Entropic Veil very often. It’s on my bar where I can easily get to it, but I just don’t use it that much. There are healers out there who will scold me for that. I’m sorry?
To burst heal a tank, make sure that they’re your Synthesis target (reminder: a person can only have one Synthesis on them at once) and then hit your Symbiosis. Symbiosis and Essence Surge are two of your major tank-healing CDs. Save them for when your situation requires it. You can also use your direct heals- Bloom and Earthen Renewal are extremely helpful, as is Healing Torrent. If you have the instant cast proc from Explosion of Life, then Natural Healing can also be helpful. Between the Internet and myself, the single biggest target of my bamheal macro is the tank. It's immediately followed by DPS that don't pay attention, but tank first.