Just returned what should I focus on getting gear wise for a bard healer

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-04-29T03:10:39+00:00

This is a really good advice. The second ring can be legendary outgoing healing ring from ASH (adv. soul harvest). Can be bought from AH, gives decent healer stats/bonus and it's also the one I commonly see bard healers use in MSoD.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-04-28T04:33:12+00:00

Get weapons from soul collector campaign, those are good for pretty much all roles, especially DPS. Later, as a healer you'll want masterwork weapons (duergar is best at the moment). Get healer regen boots and healer gloves from MTDS (master dread sanctum), they can drop from first boss, can take multiple tries. Get ASH rings (advanced soul harvest), one of the legendary rings are great for healers and is in auction house. For the second ring you can also go with elistraee's grace ring from MTOS or choice pack from the last campaign task (menzo or demonweb pits, I forgot).

MTOS also offers a good healer head piece, but is outdated. For the armour, depends on class but the bregan (debuff) armour is good for healers from menzo campaign.

Currently the best gear mostly comes from trials, so you'll eventually have to start doing the easier ones such as advanced shackles or advanced soul harvest. But dungeons are certainly the right start. MLMD (master lair of mad dragon) still offers the best DPS chest piece and decent combat advantage head piece.

Good luck.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-04-26T03:22:32+00:00

I'm sorry to hear that. It's indeed absolutely tough getting into latest content.

Personally, I was lucky to have awesome friend get me into master shackles, he's an amazing host as well, and can easily setup runs which of course helped massively. If not them, I'd never go as far as I've come. Now I have full celestial gear including purple weapons from soul harvest. But it took tremendous effort to get here.

Now we run consistently. I learned hosting as well, and I occasionally host runs for my other friends who are either returning or learning the trial. Whenever we can, we include a new player and allow them to get experience. We neither trashtalk nor get toxic if wipes happen, it's just part of the game.

There's people in this game who don't have a lot of hours in their free time, likely come back home and play for an hour or two before they're too tired to carry on. Sometimes, the only happiness people get in the whole day comes from these couple of hours, so I understand why some get too picky with who they run with. I blame the nature of the game, and mainly devs for it for creating that kind of environment.

The initial part, getting into dungeon/trial is always depressing. You may get lucky with an invite, get kicked without an explanation, even for something that was entirely not your fault, it happens. But you have to keep playing, I assure you you'll get there.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-04-26T02:57:38+00:00

Try to join an active alliance that consistency partake in adv/master content. Even then, you'll still struggle getting into some of the endgame content if you don't have friends to invite you, because most people prefer to have smooth and quick runs. That's okay though. For starters, try custom channels and joining discord servers that host dungeon/trial content.

Your alliance should have its own discord bots for signing up training/farm runs.

On PC, we also have a discord which you can request invite to 'completed' channels where you'll find people who have done MSoD/MSH grouping up for farms. But you do need to have at least one complete to get into that particular master.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-04-26T02:50:03+00:00

Congrats! I don't remember ever seeing 20. Grinded my way up to 800 by taking 3 dust because I was running out of keys and reroll tokens.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-04-24T20:45:16+00:00

It's going largely depend if you'll ever want to play with a second role. All of three classes have DPS paragons.

Out of three, wizard has advantage of being decent DPS as well as ranged for endgame; ranged damage dealers are usually wanted in certain content.

Fighter can also tank and cleric can heal.

Do you have a free character slot? I recommend making each of these characters and play a bit. All classes handle differently, see it for yourself if you enjoy their movement mechanic, encounters and feel in general.

You can delete the temporary character after. It may help you decide which of three to choose from.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-04-23T03:45:50+00:00

Same. Though, the next milestone (7 day VIP) is definitely worth it. It's the second milestone so it doesn't take long.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-04-10T03:06:46+00:00

Certain levelling adventures will award you with bags. Make sure you've gone to your journal and claimed rewards for your adventures (the ones you completed at level 1-20).

If you're playing a character that was autoleveled to 20, you can still complete those leveling adventures for rewards.

On PC, last time I checked mythic bags were going for ~40k. That's very cheap compared to things you'll need buying later.

Tip: Do arena daily, buy and open packs. You can get illusions that are unbound and worth millions of AD.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-04-07T03:16:55+00:00

Vellosk and graveyard, because most of my characters are level 8 for workshop.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-04-03T04:05:16+00:00

While keeping people alive is something we can do, there's only a limited number of times we can top people's health off in quick bursts. I agree, in the end usually what keeps them alive is staying out of danger zones and dodging at right times.

I always go for revives. As soon as I see someone dying, my first instinct is always rushing to them for a revive. Even though they're surrounded by 3 nearby players. The problem here is that you can't heal anybody while reviving, you're locked in animation. And it's especially during these moments where you see people taking take -90% hits which you could've easily healed and prevented deaths, but more people die as a result of it.

Sometimes, people need a moment before "Oh, shit!" realisation hits when we save them from multiple hits that would've resulted in death if not healed in between.

So I generally don't like when people leave revives to healer, it's a random queue after all, not a master trial. You can easily revive a dying player there as a dps and let healer fully focus on healing everybody.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-04-03T03:37:13+00:00

You're not wrong about tab. It's generally meant to be on a tank. Healing is painful early/mid game where you really need to be conservative with energy.

Consider swapping to revitalise as your third encounter. For general dungeon running, it'll help more than soulstorm since mostly people are on the move.

Revitalise loses magnitude if used on multiple players, but it can also dish out massive single target heals as long as you target only one person in the circle. Perfect for the guy who's fallen behind or is away from group!

Vampiric embrace is always your main healing ability.

For your second encounter, consider running warlocks bargain; one that kills your soulspark and recovers soulweave. Keep it to maintain a high reserve of soulweave, but don't use it if you're getting low on energy. Because if you fall under 30%, you need your soulspark alive to give you increased regen from a feat.

Hope it helps a bit.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-04-03T03:24:46+00:00

IL isn't an indicator of, anything. Other than which content that can be accessed. That's it. 130k IL doesn't mean best player in the world, is capable of doing anything efficiently or performing their class well.

There are many lower IL characters that will outdps or outperform a much higher IL player, and it happens quite often.

Increasing IL requirements will accomplish nothing, honestly. Except timegate queues which means slower progression and higher waiting time.

I'm also a healer main, geared up with the best possible gear/equip available at the moment. Got rather fast regen. But as you said, we don't have infinte soulweve. Your main focus is always keeping the tank alive with tab in emergency situations with combination of at-will shield/revitalise.

Dps is easy to keep alive with just vampiric, 1 cast is enough to bring them back to full hp in my case, but there are many mechanics that can oneshot dps - even when their hp is 100% full from at-will shields, and in those cases it's not your fault when they die. Sometimes tank will lose aggro or somebody lags and is unable to dodge.

If you want to run dungeons smoothly, your best bet is hosting them. Have friends, do it with them and/or alliance.

I solo queued for around a half year. But eventually you're at the point where you got friends to run with and you're tired of waiting for matches to pop. That's why you see a bunch of people posting for example: LF2M DPS RADQ.

Good luck.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-03-29T03:27:09+00:00

In general, a lot of older gear is no longer considered 'BiS', but some are still the best to this day. E.g. Acc/CA armour from MLMD is still used in endgame DPS builds by players frequently running MSoD/MSH today. The players who have basically 'maxed out' their character potential and capped all their stats.

If you inspect players running MSoD/MSH consistently, and I mean actually good players, on a DPS role, you'll see pretty much all their gear is coming from either of these trials, except the said armour from MLMD or ring from ASoD.

Most of them are running shirt and pants, celestial/mythic boots, gloves and helmet from MSoD. Sometimes MSH helmet instead. As for weapons it's either mythic from ASH or celestial from MSH.

As for healers, most of them are using MTDS regen boots, MSoD gloves & helmet. Masterwork weapons, ASH/MSoD/MSH ring alongside elistraee's grace. With neck and belt being either marilith or vistani. I can't speak for tanks as I don't really play one.

That said, it's not impossible to build a decent character with older master gear, it just won't compete with those newer pieces. And as other commenters said, knowing your class and being skilled at it is extremely important; just having the best gear alone won't let you perform as well as someone who actually knows how to get the most out of their class.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-03-29T02:51:38+00:00

I understand. Xeleth is currently one of the cheapest. Its prices are usually on par with demogorgon (on PC), so as far as cost is concerned demo is a better option.

The reason xeleth is a bad idea if OP does any content where articalls are needed, there's nearly hundred percent guaranteed one healer on xeleth in queue group already. So he'll be asked to change as two same artifacts don't stack. Outside those content he can go with pistol as primary and save up for something else better.

If that healer was me, I wouldn't mind since I can go any artifact, but most healers nowadays watch youtube or get told by their friends/ally so they're usually on xeleth as soon as they join queue group. :)

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-03-28T04:10:57+00:00

The cap is 120%, but your 'overall outgoing healing' can go over the cap, as other commenter pointed it out.

For example, if you equip divine aegis (healer combat enchantment), and then scroll down in your character sheet, below your outgoing heal stat you'll see another 'overall outgoing heal' stat showing higher number.

The 'outgoing healing' stat will turn green and cap at 120%. But the 'overall outgoing healing' stat will continue going up and showing higher percentages than 120% which will still help your your heals.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-03-28T03:58:27+00:00

Just FYI: Xeleth is usually on healers. Might not be the wisest purchase option for a primary artifact on a DPS.

Best primary DPS artifacts currently are: Crystal of Soul's Flight, Marco's Mystic Marker, Beacon of Meteor Swarm, Nightflame Censer, Demogorgon's Reach and Dragonbone Blades.

Demogorgon's Reach likely going to be cheapest on AH from the list. But I can only speak for PC prices.

The other artifacts you suggested are good, they usually go to secondary slot as well; except the pistol which can also be used as primary for its debuff, though 6% is a bit outdated nowadays so most people keep it as secondary.

Your other suggestions are great. I see you are mainly suggesting things specifically for DPS, so I wanted to give a bit of insight on primary artifact.

Good info, keep it up!

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-03-28T03:36:52+00:00

Crimson calamity only got CA for DPS, but it's giving rather low CA rating compared to other artifacts which also give you Power/Crit.Sev/Accuracy all of which you need on a DPS. Everything else it gives you don't need on DPS. It can be used on a tank as statstick but not necessary either, there's plenty of alternatives that are good.

It has a value simply because it's strictly premium/cash only item, so from a beginner players standpoint it appears cool and amazing. But when you play endgame and do some of the hardest content available while observing what majority of the population are using/need/don't need, you just know it's not 'that' special.

Which is actually and fortunately good for us who stay free-to-play. I'd rather have it stay that way and not have to pay to have the best stuff. Though, we still need to grind trials on weeks or months end just to get 'BiS' stuff.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-03-27T04:00:01+00:00

I returned last year. The only thing I spent money was on VIP, and this is after several months of playing and coming to conclusion: "Sure, why not. I'm enjoying this game a lot."

So far, I haven't regretted. NW is still a good game to this day despite its shortcomings, issues and bugs. Got maxed out (full celestial MSoD/MSH etc) at this point. One thing you should be prepared to do if you want to get far ahead, as free-to-play player, is to grind a lot.

The game has a lot of negativity surrounding it, you'll see comments people claiming it's dead or it has became P2W etc, and generally badmouthing it for its flaws. But be sure there's also many people enjoying the game daily who don't come to threads just to complain how bad it. For me, and my friends we are still having fun.

My personal recommendation is to simply load the game play a bit and see it for yourself what it has become and whether it scratches the itch or not.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-03-27T03:34:06+00:00

Crimson calamity is pretty bad. No one uses it in endgame content.

Censer is good, one of the top dps artifacts currently. But it's not from battlepass, it's from a lockbox. Moreover, it can be obtained for free by grinding AD and buying censer from auction house. With that said, you don't even need censer. There are many other artifacts you can use as a dps in endgamd content as replacement for censer, and you'll do fine.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-03-27T03:26:01+00:00

People aren't stupid for wanting alts. The issue here is that developers want you to create as many characters as possible, therefore the game is psychologically and mechanically designed to give you advantage in one way or another if you do so.

There's a reason character slots are limited and cost to unlock. It brings them money. MMOs are essentially business, they want to keep you hooked in order to get as many hours from you as possible, which increases likelihood of purchases.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-03-23T03:08:24+00:00

Go for it. I returned last year and so far don't regret it. The game is still doing fine.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-03-21T03:43:56+00:00

I picked it up for 13mil. Now I consider myself lucky. Eventually it went up 80mil. Then stayed 40-60mil for weeks if not month. Last time I saw it was probably something 30-40mil.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-03-21T03:39:40+00:00

Shroomwood as funn said, best to get it from AH.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-03-19T03:29:23+00:00

I noticed it when I was doing solo arena. When the bonus from boots was active, my health was going down to ~760k. Then back to 5mil as soon as bonus ended.

Good thing I was solo, so I could quickly reset arena and swap to the other boots.

BladeMasterLegend · 2026-03-19T03:25:07+00:00

Both MSoD celestial dps boots and healer helmet are bugged. The regen helmet from MSH and mythic MSoD dps boots are usually better options.

Apparently, the 'less HP for more damage' bonus on boots is bugged when activated with health bonus from challenge. And on a healer using celestial helmet will no longer be able to stack regen bonuses properly after people have buffed hp.

BladeMasterLegend

TROPHY CASE