Dream Star

Dream Star is a super sturdy healer that is meant to support any team, even under leveled and fragile toons.
My Philosophy in what a support toon is best displayed in this video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLN3dPMyXeg
Like in that clip, if your whole team has that much defense, they’ll dish out as much damage as they, without any worries. With that background, here’s a breakdown of the build;

• 1. Eldritch Bolts
• 1. Sigils of Ebon Weakness. Rank 3First step into helping your team (and help you worry less on who to heal), is to slow down your enemies. If your enemies are moving at a snail’s pace, hitting you like a little sissy, you’ll help your team be that much tougher already.
• 5. Aura of Radiant Protection. Rank 3. The second layer of defense for your team is to provide them with some more Protection. Ebon Sigils paired with AoRP’s ~60% resistance to team will provide tank level defenses.
• 8. Iniquity. Rank 3 or 2 w/ adv. A support toon wouldn’t be complete without a heal to team. Even though your team will most likely be hard to gun down, like Superman, you’ll come across plenty of times when you need to heal them. Iniquity is by far has the highest HPS. Sure it takes from your HP, but it’s easily negated by other powers in this build…
• 11. Conviction. Rank 3. Self heal that keeps you up from using Iniquity and serves to proc Molecular Self Assembly.
• 14. Molecular Self Assembly. Energy unlock. Many of your powers will trigger it, making it ideal as an energy unlock.
• 17. Bountiful Chi Resurgence. Rank 3. Paired with conviction and Sentinel Aura, if you choose it, you’ll have some strong self-healing, thus hardly ever dying.
• 20. Ebon Void. Voracious Darkness adv. Your shield of choice, stacks resistance, to top that which you already have. Small self heal. With your defenses already sky high, using this shield and stacking Voracious Darkness makes for a pseudo active defense.
• 23. Protection Field. To add even more protection to your team. Could replace it with Mindful Reinforcement, but I much rather have Protection Field because it lasts longer, relieving you of some micromanagement. Protection Field at rank 3 could be near 3k, which quite nice.
• 26. Skarn’s Bane. Rank 3The only direct damage power on the build. This could be replaced by any other power of choice for direct damage. Dream Star has it due to her being a Magician girl. Skarn’s Bane is still quite nice though for removing energy forms off of enemies. In Therakiel’s Temple for instance, it takes the Nephilim’s energy form to degrade their damage, further helping out your team.
• 29. Pyromancer’s Blades. Rank 2 (optional rank 3). Pyromancer’s Blades alongside Summon Shadows help you deal damage and allow you to focus your attention in other matters, such as healing your team, while they fight for you. Pyromancer’s Blades hits in an AoE, and is thematic for magic/mystic toons.
• 32. Summon Shadows. Rank 2 w/ adv or Rank 3. Taken for the same reasons as Pyromancer’s Blades. Summon Shadows is also an AoE, and are 3 entities, which makes enemies try harder to target you as well.
• 35. Inertial Dampening Field. So with all the above defenses and heals, your team should be pretty sturdy. But flat damage resistance could really help buff your team to bounce off those bullets. Most henchmen hit like such a weak punk (even like little unicorn sissy when their damage is debuffed by ebon sigils), so with this on, it’ll almost seem like they are not hitting you at all.
• 38. Masterful Dodge, for when you really need to. Usually, and currently, you’ll probably never, ever have to use this, due to your high defenses and high healing rates. The only time you’ll probably use this is when you’re really got something hard hitting you.

Stats

Primary Constitution- Constitution provides a big health pool for Iniquity, lets your better absorb attacks, and support your team with a bit more ease via giving you more time to help others.
Presence Secondary- Presence is great a secondary now, because taking it as a primary would hit you hard with Diminishing Returns on your heals. Secondary Presence still pushes good HPS anyway.
Intelligence Secondary- Intelligence lowers your cost and cooldowns, which are plenty in this build. With many cooldowns, it’ll fuel Molecular Self Assembly quite often, so Intelligence is a viable choice.

Specializations

Constitution

• Fuel My Fire (3)
  You’ll be taking damage obviously, so why not fuel your energy?
• Tough (3)
  A nice specialization, which fits well with your theme, being one tough cookie to break. Increase your hit points.
• Armored (2)
  More Defense to stack for yourself.
• Unyielding (2)
  Part of being Tough is being hard to pin down. Stack up your toughness.

Sentinel

• Sentinel Aura (3)
  You’re stacking a lot of defenses on your team, and even though Sentinel Aura will be toned down pretty soon (see PTS), it is still viable to with your staking heals on self and for the team. With this, your team has pretty much a mini Invulnerability + mini Regen.
• Caregiver (3)
  Makes your shields and heals much more potent.
• Genesis (2)
  You’ll be using heals & shields, so lower their cost.
• Rejuvenated (2)
  Haven’t noticed if this triggers off of Bountiful Chi Resurgence, but if it does, definitely better than the other choice. The other choices are crit based, which this toon doesn’t really have.

Sentry

• Fortified Gear (3)
  Yup, stack up your defenses, there’s no such thing as too much defense.
• Sentry Aura (3)
  Even more team defense stacking. Not overkill.
• Precise (3)
  Makes your heals and shields even more potent on team members.
• Persevere (1)
  I guess the left over can be stuck on this. Small chance to give a small heal to team if you’re struck by Single Target attacks, which is bound to happen.

Mastery- Constitution Mastery allows for more defense stacking, and greater health pool via the +Con. Aside from that, it also allows you to focus more in gearing as well. The other masteries aren’t worth it imo, as you’re not mezz’n in this build (Sentinel Mastery) and hardly anyone is going to bring you down your health below 50% (Sentry Mastery)

Gearing

On Dream Star, to achieve high HPS and survivability, I used the Sentinel Brooch mods to buff your heals (in your offensive slots) and got the highest +defense to stack even more defense (defensive slots). Went all out Con, Pre, Int with no other stats, since Con +Pre provide survivability, and Int + MSA provide the energy.

Final Words.

Have you noticed how many times I mention “stack defenses”? Quite a few times. Again, my philosophy in what a support toon should be is making your team be like Superman, not flinching when a bullet is shot at the eye. Everything ricochets on a truly invulnerable team. Everything in this build stacks well with each other.
I will say that since this toon is based on Zatanna, many other power choices are “magic” themed. If your toon’s theme is different, don’t fright! You can swamp Skarn’s Bane for any other direct damage power of your choice. The two pets, Summon Shadows and Pyromancer’s Blades can also be replace by any other pets of your choice. If you’re not into pets, you can grab DoT’s or other powers of your choice, but I highly suggest you use pets to kind of keep your enemies busy with them. Please enjoy the videos below!

Videos

Dream Star Vs Xenomorph Drone
Interesting duel, I wanted to push this build to the limits, and dueling Xeno, a great PvP'r, is a great way to push it!

Standing up to Teleiosaurus
Another video to test the limits. Teleiosaurus, AoE is pretty nasty if you've ever went up against her.

Dream Star in Therakiel's Temple
yet another build toughness demo.

Elite Therakiel Boss fight, with @Falchoin
A pre-On Alert video, but still demos the toughness you can come to expect out of Dream Star. Kali (@Falchoin) and I had similar builds at that time, both which have been replaced by much more potent builds now. If those builds were potent then, imagine now with specialization & mods!

Dream Star & Team facing off Elite mobs in Aftershock E1
A video recording of a a bunch of squishies and low level toons facing off elite mobs at higher levels.

Amazing build, so surprised at how well it holds up against stuff in the videos. The only questions I have though, is regarding advantage points. You didn't mention it at all in your builds, and the only one I can safely place a bet on is the Summon Shadows advantage. How's my guessing?

Geez. That's some crazy heals going on. I might have to try this if/when I get the motivation to make another character.

Hey there,

this is a decent healing build, though I feel you could make it better with a few small changes.

I'd strongly suggest dropping the two short summons (blades and shadows) and picking up;

Palliate (with the aggro drop advantage, just don't use it on the main tank) as this lets you instantly lose aggro on yourself, or anyone else. This is a 100% chance for aggro drop. If you die as the main healer, your team dies and we all know healing can pull alot of aggro so this is essential.

You have no self rez or ally rez. You can't really call yourself a proper team support/healer without these as even with the best build in the world, you and allies will die occasionally. Not being able to quickly fix that is a bit of a no no.

Aside from that, the build is solid, though I'd also strongly suggest you take Pre as your superstat, with Int and Rec as secondaries. As a pure healer you should not be getting hit so much you need lots of con, and with conviction and Chi constantly spamming, combined with two shields you will always have lots of health.

I saw this build and decided to try it out in alerts. Had a char at 37 I havent been using and retconned. I did replace scarns bane with force wave mainly for a cooler animation. (just a nice maintained range aoe).

I can say it is a really easy build to get the hang of. I did several alerts and didnt have anybody close to dieing. One failed timed alert, lowbie dps. But nobody dropped below 90% health.

Great build; it has inspired me to smoosh it together with a Cleave-based build that I saw on Kenpo's site to make a super-Cleave combat healer guy (or gal).

Unfortunately, I've been working on the name and costume all morning, and gotten nowhere. Curse you, brain! Where are all your clever ideas now?

Edit: Forgot to say -- thanks for posting a great build. That is actually what I came here to say.