Halfling: Dragonmarks or Mental Toughness x2?

[Antheal]

Which would be better for a Healing specialist, taking the 3 Dragonmarks or taking the 2 Mental Toughness feats?

[Arkat]

If soloing a lot, Dragonmarks by far!

If not, the choice isn't so clear-cut but I'd still take the Dragonmarks.

[Daggaz]

Assuming you are talking about a cleric, I would say neither. Dragonmarks especially are wasted feats. You are far better off taking maximize (for cure spells AND bladebarrier) and empower heal (for heal spells), as well as investing fully in cleric life magic enhancements, and wearing the best devotion or preferably potency item you can find. Add in quicken spell for fast paced fights and raids, and you are pretty much set with all the healing potential you will ever need. By any measure, you will get far more bank for your healing buck with those three feats compared to the halfling dragonmarked chain, and those feats synergize with your other spellcasting abilities as well.

By cap, even with "only" a 16 in wisdom and no level up points there, you will have more than enough spell points to do what you need to do, so mental toughness is really not needed. If you are maxing wisdom, its an absolute waste of a feat. Far better would be toughness, even taking it a couple times if you really wanted to. The hps are far more important. As well, you can and should carry a stack of various scrolls around (ress, heal) for both emergencies and for extended fights where you have to conserve more mana than usual. VoD comes to mind.

Ultimately, any cleric can heal and heal really well. "Healbot" builds are kind of a waste of your true power. Check out Sirgog's cleric catalogue 2010 thread, and decide if you want to go melee, or magic. You can always heal.

[hockeyrama]

Assuming you are talking about a cleric, I would say neither. Dragonmarks especially are wasted feats. You are far better off taking maximize (for cure spells AND bladebarrier) and empower heal (for heal spells), as well as investing fully in cleric life magic enhancements, and wearing the best devotion or preferably potency item you can find. Add in quicken spell for fast paced fights and raids, and you are pretty much set with all the healing potential you will ever need. By any measure, you will get far more bank for your healing buck with those three feats compared to the halfling dragonmarked chain, and those feats synergize with your other spellcasting abilities as well.

By cap, even with "only" a 16 in wisdom and no level up points there, you will have more than enough spell points to do what you need to do, so mental toughness is really not needed. If you are maxing wisdom, its an absolute waste of a feat. Far better would be toughness, even taking it a couple times if you really wanted to. The hps are far more important. As well, you can and should carry a stack of various scrolls around (ress, heal) for both emergencies and for extended fights where you have to conserve more mana than usual. VoD comes to mind.

Ultimately, any cleric can heal and heal really well. "Healbot" builds are kind of a waste of your true power. Check out Sirgog's cleric catalogue 2010 thread, and decide if you want to go melee, or magic. You can always heal.

I have looked at alot of the posts about cleric builds and have to disagree a bit here. I agree that you can get alot of healing and that there are many ways to hela without these feats. However, I have tried and found that if setup properly you can use your mass heals and buffs for your sp and then click on empower and maximize and throw out some insane single person dragonmark buffs. They cost no sp and if used correctly can be a huge boon to your healing.

I think the problem is peopls not use the marks properly. They are not affected by sp so turn on your empower heal and other bonuses and throw on your devotion item and then watch how much helaing they can give. Yes, it is for a solo person unlike mass but again that is fine if used right.

Here is how I do it. Use mass aid before fight then during fight if everyone is taking about equal damage use mass heals. If one person is getting creamed (usually there is always one that is way more hurt). I throw the dragonmark on him and when he is equal with the rest I mass heal.

I find this can give you quite alot of extra healing.

There is a post out there (sorry can't find it now) where the guy breaks down and shows how at about levle 12 (agian by my memory) he gets over 1000sp of heals from his dragonmarks.

So again it all about how you use them.

[Visty]

with maximise, empower and empower healing the dragonmarks save about 1205 sp

the two mental toughness feats give a total of like 240 (too lazy to do the real math here)

choose for yourself

[Thrudh]

Which would be better for a Healing specialist, taking the 3 Dragonmarks or taking the 2 Mental Toughness feats?

Dragonmarks, but only if you've got the spare feats after Maximize, Empower Healing, Toughness, and Quicken... (Empower would be nice too).

One nice thing about Dragonmarks... They can't be interrupted in combat, and work even in a Beholder's anti-magic field.

[sirgog]

with maximise, empower and empower healing the dragonmarks save about 1205 sp

the two mental toughness feats give a total of like 240 (too lazy to do the real math here)

choose for yourself

No they don't.

At high level, most healing is done with Mass Heal, Mass Cures and scrolls of Heal. Single-target Heal is used a bit too.

Dragonmarks don't mimic the spells you'd actually spend most of your SP on. The three feats gives you about 10 Heal scrolls per rest (from the smaller dragonmarks), and 3 to 5 Heal spells per rest. That's ~150 SP worth.

Personally, I'm not a fan of either, although the dragonmarks are truly incredible at lower levels (before you have Mass Heal).

[hockeyrama]

I still not understanding how they are not effective.

Yes, the mass heal is great. howver, most runs I have done at any level always have one player getting creamed instead of everyone. So i use the dragonmarks to heal that person. When I get mass heals I would use those for the whole group and still use the dragonmarks for the guy getting creamed. Since usually that is a serious situation ( saves a res spell and buffs instead of letting die) it is important that the dragonmarks cannot be interupted.

So if you use the marks for solo guys and mass for everyone the dragonmarks (3 feats and enhancement) can provide alot of healing and all without touching your SP.

Of course I can only go by what I have seen with my highest character (13th level rogue) and since I have just started vale stuff and that a rogue not a cleric I know I may be standing out on a limb

[FuzzyDuck81]

I'd say the dragonmarks - significant healing power with no SP cost, meaning more SP to spare for BB, greater command, cometfall etc. & it has the bonus of not technically counting as magic, so you can use it in the odd situation where facing beholders

Also means that if you take them as early as possible, you can have Heal at level 9 rather than 11.. a big help

[Visty]

No they don't.

At high level, most healing is done with Mass Heal, Mass Cures and scrolls of Heal. Single-target Heal is used a bit too.

Dragonmarks don't mimic the spells you'd actually spend most of your SP on. The three feats gives you about 10 Heal scrolls per rest (from the smaller dragonmarks), and 3 to 5 Heal spells per rest. That's ~150 SP worth.

Personally, I'm not a fan of either, although the dragonmarks are truly incredible at lower levels (before you have Mass Heal).

have to say: if you are mainly using massheals then youre doing it wrong

in higher levels most fights have 1 meatbag and up to 5 ppl (more in a raid) beating his back
if more then the meatbag gets damaged, something is wrong
and for the random times all get damaged you can still use a mass cure while single healing the tank is for free