thehealersguide-blog

[thehealersguide-blog]

Healer’s Guide to Borderlands 2

For the longest time I didn’t bother with healing in Borderlands 2 because on paper it sounded like an afterthought, and early on it really is weak.

However, I have to take that back. Support in Borderlands 2 gets ridiculous if you put the time into it and know what to do.

Siren is the only viable option for a pure support build, so I won’t bother with anything else. Please, please take Siren.

Skills: HARMONY

Harmony is focused on healing, so unless you want to start healing at level 25, we should start there.

Tier 1

Mind’s Eye: +25% critical hit damage, +30% melee damage

Sweet Release: Killing a phaselocked enemy releases healing orbs

Sweet Release isn’t that great. It’s unreliable and a bit weak. If you’re eager to start healing, take it, but you have better options right around the corner. Mind’s Eye doesn’t help your friends, but it’s a nice thing to have.

Tier 2

Restoration: Shooting an ally heals them for 30% of attack damage. +15% HP

Wreck: Phaselocking an enemy increases fire rate by +50% and gun damage by +30%

Restoration is where the fun begins. At level 15/20 the best guns for healing are a decent Jakobs Shotgun or an Infinity if you don’t mind farming Doc Mercy. Don’t try to heal when your friends are running around, you’re better off running to them when they take cover or training them to come to you for healing.

Wreck goes well with Restoration. A decent Vladolf or Hyperion machine pistol and you’ve got really fast, potent healing whenever you phaselock.

Tier 3

Elated: Phaselocking heals all teammates 5% HP per second

Res: Instantly revive by Phaselocking an ally

Recompense: Taking damage has a 50% chance to deal equal damage to your attacker.

Do I even have say this? Get Elated and Res. Elated heals everyone regardless of location or line of sight, two shortcomings that Sweet Release and Restoration suffer from. Elated also benefits from Action Skill duration modifiers like the Suspension skill and action skill cooldown modifiers like Quicken.

Res is broken in the best possible way. Your Phaselock cooldown is 13 seconds without any modifiers and Fight For Your Life is 12 seconds. With Quicken and a decent Cooldown relic, you can get Phaselock down to 10 seconds and res people quicker than they can die. Get it. 

Recompense is bad. Enemies have very high health and you won’t notice it really.

Tier 4, 5 and 6

Sustenance: Regenerate +2% of missing health per second

Life Tap: Killing an enemy gives +6% Life Steal for a short time

Scorn: Melee now fires a ball of slag (18 second cooldown)

Scorn is really good, it slags anything it passes by before exploding once it reaches it hits a surface like a wall. Life Tap has its moments and synchronizes well with a lot of the skills you’ll have by now.

Sustenance isn’t that great. You won’t really notice it and the healing you’ll have by now will make it barely noticeable.

Honestly, how you get to Scorn is up to you, if you even do. You can take Life tap and Sustenance, or you can get Wreck and Sweet Release.

Skills: MOTION

So we’ve gotten what we want from Harmony, and our friends/minions couldn’t die if they tried. If you want to be a pure healing build, Motion is the way to go now.

Tier 1

Ward: +25% Shield and 40% Shield Recharge Delay

Accelerate: +15% Gun Damage and +20% Bullet Speed

Ward doesn’t compliment what we’re doing. Accelerate, besides just being a good skill, compliments Restoration by increasing your gun damage.

Tier 2

Suspension: Increases Phaselock duration by 2.5 seconds

Kinetic Reflection: Killing an enemy causes you to deflect bullets.

Elated and Suspension work *really* well together. 2 extra seconds of Phaselock is +10% more healing as well as more time to activate Sweet Release.

Kinetic Reflection is okay, it really shines if you get a Class Mod that amplifies it, but not there’s no healing-focused class mod that does.

Tier 3

Fleet: 50% Movement Speed while your shield is broken

Converge: Phaselocking pulls nearby enemies towards the target

Inertia: Killing an enemy regenerates your shield for a short time

Fleet can be useful, and since you’re less disposable than your friends, being able to run away from danger is invaluable.  Converge is great if you took Scorn and it makes your team’s job a lot easier. Intertia isn’t anything to get excited about unless you have a very specific need for it.

Tier 4, 5 and 6

Quicken: -30% Cooldown rate

Sub-Sequence: Killing a phaselocked enemy causes another to be phaselocked

Thoughtlock: Phaselocking an enemy causes it to switch alliegence

Quite a mixed bag here. Quicken works great with Res and Elated, so I recommend picking it up. Sub-Sequence is lacklustre, since the cooldown doesnt reset when you phaselock another enemy.

One bonus with Sub-Sequence is that even if you kill something, Phaselock will be active for the full duration, meaning you get the full bonus of Elated no matter what.

Thoughtlock is interesting, though. If you’re not sniping, it might be worth getting as it increases Phaselock duration by 4 seconds and takes attenton away from you. It does, however, increase cooldown by 3 seconds. it’s up to preference, but most people don’t like it.

GUNS

For Restoration, you should look for either a Jakobs Shotgun for its raw damage or a high fire-rate pistol like the Synergy or Anarchist. For Sniper Rifles I recommend Dahl, since headshots arent important when healing teammates. Rocket Launchers heal basically anyone completely, but doing that regularly will eat away at your money very quickly.

I also recommend the Infinity, since it has a decent fire-rate and never reloads.

Later on, you can also help your friends by slagging bosses and crowds for them. Scorn should cover this pretty well, but between cooldowns consider the Slagga. Its high-fire rate, magazine size, damage and projectile count also make it a fantastic healing weapon.

GRENADES

For grenades, anything works but Transfusion grenades are yet another source of healing, and a decent one at that.

SHIELD

There’s nothing really support-based, Booster shields fit the bill but they’re quite terrible. I recommend the Sham or an Adaptive shield for survivability. Note that Amp shields don’t boost healing!

CLASS MOD

No question. Nurse, then Legendary Nurse. The latter even boosts Suspension!

RELIC

Get one that reduces Cooldown so you can revive people quicker. Nothing else really helps us.

Thanks for reading. I don’t expect this blog to really take off but for a lot of games you don’t see many guides specifically for healing, so It’d be nice to have something to point to.

Also note that this guide isn’t heavily researched, these are my own findings and i’ve probably missed something, I’m happy to make ammendments if that’s the case.