The Expedition Medic
First published in Season 5. | Return to the Build Hub.
Meddikk’s Elite Expedition Battle Medic
The only M3 Gold healer setup that provides results. This build uses the Life Staff as a secondary weapon and Void Gauntlet as the primary. The goal here is to do damage whilst providing passive healing. The more damage your team does, the less healing you need to do (the quicker the mobs die, the less healing required).
Build Summary
Weapons:
- Void Gauntlet
- Life staff
Best for:
- PVE
- M3 Expeditions
Main Attributes:
- Intelligence
- Focus
This includes things that prevent damage such as blocks, stuns, roots, staggers.
This includes things that strengthen the team and mitigate damage, such as healing, buffing and debuffing.
This is pretty self-explanatory and covers raw damage output, including damage over time.
Difficulty:  Intermediate Hard
Weapon Ability Trees
Life Staff
By far your most important ability! This has the highest healing effect in the game along with mana and stamina regeneration and increased healing effects for your teammates and MUST be active most of the time! Use the Refreshing Move perk on your life staff by light attacking to keep this ability up consistently. The weapon/armor perk FORTIFYING SACRED GROUND will also apply extra FORTIFY to anyone within the radius!
Will make tanks love you and cuddle you to sleep. The FORTIFY from this ability will help keep your teammates from being one shot and the length of time it is applied is increased from GLOWING FOCUS by 20%. Mix this with the MENDING ORB weapon/armor perk will increase its healing effectiveness by 40%+ if the player is below 50% health. This can also act as your single target healing ability if need be.
An awesomely massive AOE heal that also increases your team’s haste, this ability mixes perfectly with the weapon/armor perk KEEN BEACON which increases anyone in the Beacon radius’s CRIT CHANCE while it is active.
- Reason for NOT using Intensify: You simply do not have enough time to stack up 3 x heavy attacks. For the time you have spent casting a heavy attack, you could have used 2 x light attacks which reduces your cooldowns. Reducing cooldowns is way more important. If your team is loosing health too fast, it is not your fault, either their resistances are not right or they are taking too many hits! This perk is not a requirement! Get your cooldowns reset, light attack like mad!
- Reason for NOT using Divine Blessing: Your team should be self-sufficient enough with potions to stop the need for this perk. If your team member goes below 50% health, they should be using a potion straight away. You need to distribute your perk points into more important areas that will work ALL OF THE TIME whereas this perk only works when someone is below 50% health. It is not required at such a high skill level
Void Gauntlet
Void Blade
Is the main damage dealer and you will use this at least 80% of your time, with Refreshing Move on your VG you will have unlimited uptime on Oblivion and Scream/Essence Rupture along with providing much needed damage to kill mobs faster. The only time you should not have your blade out and attacking is when the life staff abilities are ready to be cast again or in dire situations.
You want to try and hit with your blade at least six times, our goal is to use the void blade to inflict Disintegrate (since we don’t have the Orb of Decay to do that anymore) and to pop the Voidcaller ultimate for the extra heals and will damage enemies whilst it is active, that means we can go back to our life staff to do our cooldown resets but the aura will still damage enemies and heal people/us
Oblivion
This is a non-negotiable choice, buffs your teams damage and inflicts weaken on enemies which lowers their damage on players. Every time you hit an NPC with your void blade whilst inside oblivion adds a stack of weaken and can stack up too 3 times, this is much faster/efficient than using the Orb of Decay (Only applies 1 stack and has a cooldown). The refreshing move on your VG and the attacks from the void blade will keep Oblivion up 100% of the time.
Petrifying Scream
This is a self-buff to increase our survivability and also to provide a de-heal on nature mutations with compost. THIS IS A MUST ON NATURE MUTATIONS! Gives you 30% Fortify if you hit 3 mobs, which is just amazing.
Essence Rupture
The reason we are also specced into Essence Rupture is for boss fights. Swap your ability on your skill bar from Scream to Essence Rupture before you engage in the boss fights. This will heal all team members whenever they do damage to the boss/target and will be much more useful than Scream when fighting bosses. It is a way for yourself (since you are doing damage with your Void Blade) & your team to self sustain along with all of your other heals on the ground. If you or your team is doing enough damage, you can potentially heal yourself instantly with all of the other AOE heals everywhere.
This skill is way more useful compared to Scream on boss fights as you can usually see the boss mecahnics and avoid them. Whereas when fighting a pack of mobs it can be hard to monitor all the incoming attacks and the Screams fortify will help with your own sustainability.
View my full gearset on Google Docs
Attribute distribution
EXTREME Difficulty:
- Intelligence: 250
- Focus: 315 (With Blackened Larva Barb with Corn Succotash – 48 Focus)
- Constitution: 50
This is for people who are EXTREMELY versed in running M3s and is highly recommend using this with set teams only or with people of a similar skill level. The likelihood of being one-shot is extremely high, monitor your environment!
Safer Option:
- Intelligence: 200
- Focus: 315 (With Blackened Larva Barb with Corn Succotash – 48 Focus)
- Constitution: 100
This will make you less squishy if you are prone to being hit a bit more.
Reasoning:
The idea of this whole build is you are playing with elite M3 runners. Your obligation is only to provide the 3 life staff cooldowns and that is it. If your teammates get hit, it is up to them to either avoid the damage or use potions, it is not the healer’s fault if they die due to not dodging, utilising their potions or removing themself from a dangerous situation.
The goal is to pop all of the heals on the ground and GO CRAZY with your void gauntlet, that it why the Intelligence is so high… GET THE DAMAGE CRACNKING!… The debuffs from your void blade and oblivion are priceless in fighting mobs/bosses and your primary objective is to keep the buffs/debuffs from your VG up at all times if possible!
In terms of food, this is entirely dependent on your gear (Magnify and so on), just pick whichever foods gets you closer to this goal.
Important perks
Weapons
Life Staff:
- Gem: Diamond – 15% Outgoing Healing + Damage when at full health.
- Perk 1: Fortifying Sacred Ground
- Perk 2: Refreshing Move
- Perk 3: Blessed
Explanation:
Fortifying Sacred Ground is the best weapon perk for a life staff. The fortify is priceless as players will be in the Sacred Ground 100% of the time and are always healed by it, so you are providing 17% Fortify by doing…nothing 🙂
Refreshing Move: THIS IS MANDATORY! This is what resets your cooldowns on your Life Staff every time you hit a mob. For obvious reasons, this is most important perk on this tree for high level mutations. If you find yourself needing more heals, this perk will be a god send.
Blessed: +12% Outgoing Healing… Need I say more 😛
Void Gauntlet
- Gem: Diamond – 15% Outgoing Healing + Damage when at full health OR Gem that does more damage to the certain mob types (Fire Gem, Lightning Gem and so on).
- Perk 1: Refreshing Move
- Perk 2: Enchanted
- Perk 3: Keen
Explanation:
Refreshing Move: THIS IS MANDATORY! This is what resets your cooldowns on your Void Gauntlet every time you hit a mob. For obvious reasons, this is most important perk on this tree for high level mutations. Use this to spam oblivion, scream and rupture!
Enchanted: Light & Heavy attacks deal +5% more damage. NEVER USE HEAVY ATTACKS, ONLY LIGHT! Heavy attacks are a waste of precious time and every second counts!
Keen: +7% critical strike chance means you’re doing more damage and crits reset your cooldown faster 🙂
Armor
Jewelry
- Elemental Protection (Frozen, Flame, Nature, Void – Have one piece of jewellery for each mutation)
- Refreshing
- Health
- Healing Breeze
- Hearty
- Sacred
- Refreshing Toast
- Healthy Toast
My advice
At its core, you are a DPS. The Life Staff is only there to sustain your team whilst you are doing damage. Your sole job is to put your heals on the tank and go crazy with your void gauntlet.
Open with a dodge to increase healing output and use your Life Staff/Sacred Ground and quickly apply Orb of Protection and Beacon. Swap immediately to your void gauntlet and apply oblivion, scream/essence rupture and go bananas with your void blade.
Swap back to your life staff when your cooldowns are close to resetting, the idea is to tune yourself to judge when your sacred ground is about to expire and act accordingly in order to keep it up 100% of the time. I recommend dodging before swapping to your life staff to increase healing.
YOUR JOB IS NOT TO HEAL THE TEAM, BUT TO PROVIDE AN AREA OF HEALS THEY CAN STAND IN TO SUSTAIN THEM!
If your teammate’s health keeps going down constantly THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT, they are doing something wrong. Also, if your team is not in sacred ground, that is on them! This build requires highly skilled players who know exactly what they are doing. They have potions they can use to heal themselves don’t forget!
Always remember, the more damage you do = the less time the mobs are alive for and therefore the less damage they do 🙂
Here is a link to my spreadsheet explaining in MASSSSSIVE detail bout healing M3s (could be outdated by now but a huge repository of information)
Submit Your Build
If you would like to submit a build, please fill in the New World Utopian Organ Build application form to the best of your ability.