Arena of Kings – Ultimate Elder Class Guide

Definitive Guide to Elder Class

Terms used in the guide

Term – Definition

• AoE – Area of Effect
• CC – Crowd Control
• CD – Cooldown
• DoT – Damage over Time
• HoT – Heal over Time
• DPS – Damage per Second
• GCD – Global Cooldown
• LoS – Line of Sight

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

• One of the best CC spells available to healers: Windstorm.
• Decent self mobility & defensives through shapeshifting.
• Good usage of Bear form HoT’s make you a hard kill target.
• Able to heal while moving/kiting through excellent HoT spells.
• Able to heal through CC if you time & upkeep your HoT’s correctly.
• A lot of instant casts, making Elder hard to interrupt and fairly easy to play.

Weakness

• Gets countered by comps that have access to purge (Buff/HoT removal) spells
• Can go OOM fast if forced to spread heal too much or facing a purge class
• Windstorm can lead to misplays if miscommunicated with your team(or pugs)

(i.e wasted damage or CC on the Windstorm target due to poor timing)

Suggested Build

This is the build that I have been using and having success with.

IMO the best options for the last slot are either Seed of life, Corrosive Asp, Grasping vines, Ritual or Shapeshift: Bear depending on what your playstyle or team composition lacks and whatever kind of teams you’re running into the most.

If you’d like to swap out another spell I would swap out Cleanse or Windstorm since everything else is pretty mandatory IMO.

Gameplay/Tips

• Mending Spirit stacks up to 3 times and lasts for 7 seconds. You can save a lot of mana if you keep refreshing this duration on your enemies main kill / train target at the end of its duration, saving you from reapplying 2 extra charges each time.
• If the situation allows it, don’t feel forced to stack it all the way up to 3 right away every time. You can just naturally stack it by reapplying it before it runs out each time eventually ending up at 3 and reducing the risk of your enemies abusing swaps to drain your Mana faster.
• Remedy removes an Ailment immediately and every 2 seconds after. You can use this Effect to counter incoming CC effects on you by applying it to yourself right before whatever CC hits you. Perfectly timing it accordingly to your opponents cast Timer means you can instantly remove the effect, just beware that casting it early like this potentially leaves you vulnerable to your enemy fake casting and you essentially wasting your cleanse CD.
• Revitalize should not be spammed, it will OOM you way too fast. Instead use it in combination with your other HoT’s to get max value out of it’s ‘Revitalize’ effect and trust your HoT’s to keep up your team.
• Potential Burst damage & “Go” moments your opponents have are the exception to this rule if you’re sure that just the HoT’s won’t be enough, this is something you’ll get the hang of after playing Elder for a while.
• Windstorm is a super strong CC that basically removes your opponent from the game for it’s duration, ignoring and blocking everything that gets targeted at them.
• Try to avoid using this on your team’s main target since it can really ruin momentum and potentially waste important CD’s your allies were casting right before.
• Since windstorm also denies all healing on the target, you can set up the Windstorm on a low HP target, potentially giving your team the time needed to recover an interrupt or whatever to deny the healer as soon as the low HP target gets released, securing the kill.. Just make sure to communicate this with your team to avoid a bad fluke loss 😉
• Symbiosis is a map wide heal that doesn’t require vision on your team. Very useful to cast if you’re in a safe position to top off your team before going for a Meditate.
• Inspiration is also castable on your teammates. I see a lot of new elders accidently using it while having their ally targeted, wasting it on them instead of themselves and end up wondering why it’s not affecting them/working.
• Shapeshift: Wolf is a really good tool to avoid melees and can help you endlessly loop them around pillars. Otherwise useful to get back into the action after a meditate or getting a better position to cast Windstorm / Heal your Ally that’s currently, for better or worse, LoS’ing you.
• Shapeshift: Bear’s Ironhide ability’s effect stays on you even if you leave bear form which can be useful if you’re forced to spread heal while being focused yourself or just generally as a tool if you didn’t have the time to HoT yourself before going into bear form.
• The Charge Spell not only is useful to root your target, but should be considered as an extra tool to avoid those pesky melee classes or get yourself in a better position for your next planned move.
• Soothe should be used as your emergency button as it 1. Has a very long CD and 2. Is an instant cast with no GCD and 3. Has a better effect if used on low HP allies (+ Each buff currently applied to them). Keep calm and don’t waste the Soothe that might save you the game 20 seconds later.