What am I doing wrong?

[Lord_kNiels]

90% of the time it's not the clerics fault

Few melee would agree with that due to pure ignorance.

[ilovetheusers]

Much has already been said. My experience is that enemy casters do the most damage to a party. So in order to minimize damage taken in the party dont forget to remind people to take out those casters first. This may not sound like much but it will do the difference in many situations.

I hear ya. I have trying to avoid being in a decent guild as it'd wind up being something that lead me into scheduled gaming, more team time, etc.

See, I have a wife that's 100% jealous of DDO, CoH, WoW, Fallout, L4D2, etc.... I'm a gamer and she never will get it. She seems to know exactily when I'm doing something uber important in game to start talking to me about something important IRL or she gets depressed easy and if you have even been depressed, you know how irrational the feeling is and sometimes she just needs me to bail and hang with her.

So, if I'm on a PUG, I can take the headphones off and talk to her, etc and it makes her happy that I'm paying attention to her or if I have to, I can bail and go be with her. Know what I mean? If not, consider yourself lucky I suppose.

I guess I'll make my next characters fighters and such.

[Drekisen]

Few melee would agree with that due to pure ignorance.

When it comes to this I also live by another mantra......I could care less

[Lord_kNiels]

when It Comes To This I Also Live By Another Mantra......i Could Care Less :d

[ilovetheusers]

Don't play a heabot.......worst occupation in the game.

Uncheck the end reward based on class setting in options under gameplay.

Ironically you'll end up with more mnemonics with it on random than u will with it on based by class even when your a caster...which makes absolutely no sense to me.

Wavecrasher Manifest collectibles......drop quite often in the lower level quests...hand them in for partially charged cure mod wands.

Are they cure serious...no...but they are free...and if your party is taking that much damage it's not your healing ability that's lacking....it's their mental capability.

Try to always remember this as well......90% of the time it's not the clerics fault.....make that your mantra.

I hear ya, Been playing support of one kind or another for a while now in different games. Healbot = bad play, inefficient, etc.

I had no idea there was a checkbox for rewards at all, I'll give that a whirl. I often wind up with junk meant for Wizards and Sorcs and I've been wondering *** the game was thinking. TYVM for that!!!! I know exactily what you mean, I keep getting quarterstaffs, scepters, and light/med armor. Rarely a decent weapon, never anything cool, just junk IMO. I'll give that a shot and see what happens. :-)

[zorander6]

Blade Barrier, use it, abuse it, it's your friend. Best mass damage spell in the game. If your wizard casts a firewall and is running stuff through it, stand in the middle of the firewall and cast Blade Barrier. Two or three passes through the BB will kill most trash. One cast, and you've killed most mobs other than casters. Greater command to make trash fall down (note that BB only damages when a monster crosses the barrier or when you first cast.)

The only stuff that avoids BB is stuff with high evasion (like the panthers in the new quests from update 7.)

If your wizard runs up and casts a firewall on a door, cast a BB as well. Will damage monsters on the other side of the door before it even opens.

Cometfall is great as well.

Don't use wands you don't get from collectibles. Don't buy wands, don't buy anything and spend it unless you are in a good group that had some bad luck. If someone wants you to top them off, get a wand from them.

Radiant servant is another one you want, the radiant burst can do a decent amount of healing to those near you. Or once you hit 12 you can get the radiant regen one and just keep it running. People near you will get extra HP while fighting.

With my little guild of three and BB I normally top the kill count (which ****es the wife off.)

[FuzzyDuck81]

The main thing you're doing "wrong" is playing a healer - play a cleric instead! your most effective "healing" spells are the ones like cometfall & greater command, which put enemies down so your party doesnt lose HP in the first place.

Personally, if someone runs off ahead/round corners out of range of my spells i assume they can take care of themselves & wont chase after them - they can get their healing when they're nearby, or alternatively I'll raise them in my own time once me & the rest of the party have killed the enemies.

For warforged, your best bet is to use the Heal spell on them - at lower levels especially, WF wont have very high healing amp so the 50% healing penalty will hit them hard, unless they're a TR with some decent equipment, or a monk - any monk that doesnt take at least one tier of the healing amp enhancements (and likewise any WF that doesnt take at least tier 1 of healers friend....even most WF arcanes who can self-heal will usually take 1st tier) is.. well, lets be nice and call them "unaware".

As others have mentioned, Radiant Servant PrE line (the 1st tier is an AoE burst, that heals & restores negative levels, much cheaper to gather a party & fire that off than cast lots of single Restoration spells) & wavecrasher manifest collectables are your friend - a few free CMW wands can make a lot of difference in your cashflow. You can also take a couple of tiers of wand & scroll usage enhancements and you'll get a nice boost to them too.

[Winter_storm]

Warforged can be repaired by wizards (sorcerers if the spell is slotted). So if you have Wizards in the group ask to slot the repair spell to help.

Also Clear a way to the shrines first and use them when you close to being down and let the group know if your sp and shrines are out the group is on their own (I know they don't always listen).

On the DDO Daily website there is some good stuff called Awsomesauce Divinity:

http://ddo-daily.com/category/ddodai...sauce-divinity

Hopes this helps.

[Bwahahaha]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is finding a Bard to buy your scrolls and wands for you.

[AtomicMew]

As others have said, do NOT be a "healer." Be a cleric. For most people, this means choosing either melee (battle cleric) or offensive casting (OCC) in ADDITION to healing duty. On my completely untwinked 28-pt noob gear BC, I can consistently keep up 1/3 to 1/2 of the highest kill count. BCs are easy to build and are more efficient while OCCs are probably safer and more powerful, but take a bit more gear and grinding to truly make effective. Both are far superior to the pure healer in 99% of the game. It's only really in 12 man raids where you should focus purely on healing, because your other abilities contribute a much smaller percentage than they would in 6 mans. (And even then, not always true).

People who play "pure healers" tend to be a certain... type (let's just leave it at that). I'm sure there are good pure healers out there, but honestly, I have yet to see a pure healer that could outheal my BC, simply because the pure healers I've played with don't understand how to conserve SP.

As far as how to be more effective, try to make good use of your area heals. If you can hit two people that need heals with an area heal, that's more efficient than healing them individually. Don't waste SP at the end of fight, when you could just heal up with aura afterwards. You don't need to keep everyone completely topped off (and in fact shouldn't). On tough missions, you don't even need to keep everyone alive. It's often more efficient to let someone die and battle-rez them, especially people with low HP (rather than having to spam heals on them every time they get a paper cut).

Playing more efficiently >>>>>>> buying more wands and scrolls. You should only need to use items if your playing elite or if your under-leveled or if your on a tough raid. If you consistently run out of mana for normal play, that's a clue that you should re-evaluate your play style.

[Helsdot]

I think all I have to say has been said here, but I'd like to bump the things I agree with. :^)

I like Clerics. I'm somewhat new to the game, but currently I have 3 different Cleric builds I'm playing up at once. So, while I may not have lots of uber raid experience, I haven't had a non-Cleric character yet.

1. Be firm.
It's okay to be the 'bad guy'. Don't take this to extremes and be a massive jerk, but, honestly, if the group needs a healer, then they likely need you more than you need them. DPS are a dime a dozen, a competent healer is rare. You have some latitude to lay some ground rules. I keep a few sentences in my character description that I copy/paste over into party chat when I get into a group. They usually go something like; "Hi, I'm a Cleric, not a healbot. I will swing my weapon, cast offensive spells and CC. I start dropping heals when you get to 60%, at best. If you want more HP, feel free to supply it yourself. I'll only drop one heal on a Warforged if their health gets critical, otherwise, good luck fellas. Stay near me to stay alive." Specify right up front the conditions you feel comfortable with and stick to them. The worst case is not that you get booted from a group you don't fit with - the worst case is if you get dragged along with a terrible group that you don't fit with who keeping wiping over and over racking up repair bills, aggravation, and wasted time for you. Not every group is a group you should run with. Feel free to be a little choosy.


2. Keep them alive.
You didn't sign on to keep everyone at 100%. Even hirelings don't heal to 100%. Just keep people alive. Above half health should be more than enough to absorb a crit and keep up with normal incoming damage. If the Wizard runs in front of everyone and throws down some firewall action, he's going to get dead, and there's very little you can do about that. Be a little stingy with your heals.


3. Reward the careful.
As it sounds. Let the less cautious ride a little lower. It's a little dangerous, but if the Rogue is always super-leet-assassin-lolzers-mode opening up on mobs, let them get down to maybe 30% before you pop a heal. Once players get to less than about 50% health, they start to get worried. If they complain, tell them to be more careful and to only attack mobs after the tank/platey has opened up on them.


4. Use your full toolkit.
I find the expression 'battle cleric' somewhat amusing. By slightly adjusting starting stat priorities and splashing maybe two levels of a different class Clerics can deal respectable melee damage. Clerics have heavy armor, shields and weapon proficiencies for a reason. I'm not saying try to be on the front line all the time, but Clerics can effectively play the middle distance between caster and melee. Have a missile weapon ready (returning thrown items are great) as well as some offensive spells and CC. At early levels Soundburst is beastly. You can also effectively 'off tank' in a lot of situations. Is a mob running at a caster? Toss a Command at it, get in its face and start swinging. Throw Obscuring Mist at groups of ranged mobs and casters backing up melee mobs. Be careful not to burn through your mana, but spells that do area damage and have a secondary effect can be very helpful when the part is ambushed or overrun. One way to keep someone alive is to prevent them from taking damage. Not every button is 'heal'. :^)

[Meowin]

Quite some things have already been mentioned, but one thing has to be stressed more: radiant servant PrE.

I picked this one up on my cleric as soon as I could and now, being lvl15 I have had a few times when I considered selling all those healing wands in my inventory because they only clutter it and I hardly use them at all. Sure some wizards complain because I seldomly have turn undead attempts left for DV, but hey, I can keep the party at full health with almost only using positive energy burst healing (and aura of course at lvl 12+) and use my SP for fun stuff like blade barriers, soundburst, the lvl 4 aligment spells and such.

Make use of the variety of spells the divine magic users are offered. Sound burst will stay your "cc enemy caster spell" for a long time (it´s a fort save). Use slay living/destruction after you put the enemy melees on their backs using greater command to quickly take out the caster. Use the alignment based lvl 4 spells for a bit of AoE damage which comes along with short-time cc - often it´s enough for the melees to take care of everyone. Use empower healing and the enhancement line for it. Without any enhancements it´s a great feat once you get lvl 3 spells. With enhancements and Radiant servant II you can get a load more healing for your SP. Get Superior Ardor clickies! They grant, opposed to what their descriptions says, 75% healing amp for the duration.

Meowin

[PNellesen]

Taking on the role of Healing a party is both a heavy responsibility as well as a Thankless job

A couple rules to help with SP management.

1. Use the Spells during combat only
2. Use the wands for out of combat healing / In combat healing only when SP is low / or in combat healing when incoming dmg is so rare you could almost fall asleep waiting for it.
3. Never chase anyone to heal them - If they run off its now their responsibility (both cure and heal can't help stupid)
4. Never Top people off - if they feel that 10 - 20 hp needs to be cured they can handle that themselves

These are all excellent pointers that I tend to use myself. #3 was the hardest for me learn, but I finally started adhering to it religiously, and it has helped a lot in SP management. I used to give players that did it 1 free raise, but I've stopped doing that as well - too many times these players would take off immediately afterwards and get killed 30 seconds later to make it worth the SP.

One other thing that has probably been brought up already - once you hit level 12, take the RSII PrE, then pop your aura right before a fight and simply stand near the melees while they're fighting (or while you're fighting too.) Many times you can heal them for more damage than they're taking and not use a single spell point to do it. Obviously this isn't a strategy to use for every fight, but if you're on a really long quest with only one shrine, every spell point counts.

[FuzzyDuck81]

One other thing that has probably been brought up already - once you hit level 12, take the RSII PrE, then pop your aura right before a fight and simply stand near the melees while they're fighting (or while you're fighting too.) Many times you can heal them for more damage than they're taking and not use a single spell point to do it. Obviously this isn't a strategy to use for every fight, but if you're on a really long quest with only one shrine, every spell point counts.

Radiant servant is 100% awesome to have, and if you have it active while standing alongside the melees & fighting, life can be much easier.. people always forget that you dont need to be doing huge damage to contribute in a fight if you find yourself a nice paralyser, vorpal, etc. as every weapon swinging with those effects is an extra chance of it proccing to take an enemy out of the action in a hurry.. and if you DO need to crack out an actual healing spell, you can just use an AoE without having the hassle of manually targeting.

[sweez]

Advice: stop running with people who think Shield of Faith is a good idea once in double-digit levels. Anyone who cares about AC in the slightest will have a deflection item by then.

[VonBek]

It's a small thing, but a CSW wand can be got from Seld the Gray Sister in House P, by trading her two House Sealed Letters.

[BlackSteel]

hard/elite and a bit more difficult than simply running a quest 1 or 2 levels above your own.

my advice would be to run normal with your group first. If you breeze thru it then run hard or elite. Only run the more difficult settings in a group that you feel can handle it.

if you're joining a pug and someone goes, "Oh! We got a healer, we can run elite now!" Simply tell em you'd like to try normal or hard first. More often than not, the group will oblige the healer.

[dunklezhan]

I may have missed this, but noone has mentioned devotion items - these boost your healing by a certain percentage of certain level and below spells. If you always have the best devotion item for your level, then all your healing will be amped by a good amount.

see here: http://ddowiki.com/page/Devotion

But this will certainly make your SP go further, as you can cast lower level heals without necessarily using metamagics, and still put out decent healing.

[CrimsonEagle]

I may have missed this, but noone has mentioned devotion items - these boost your healing by a certain percentage of certain level and below spells. If you always have the best devotion item for your level, then all your healing will be amped by a good amount.

see here: http://ddowiki.com/page/Devotion

But this will certainly make your SP go further, as you can cast lower level heals without necessarily using metamagics, and still put out decent healing.

Just as an aside, I prefer to have sup potency items so that it will help my offensive spells and it also works on your healing spells.

More bang for your buck you might say

[dunklezhan]

Just as an aside, I prefer to have sup potency items so that it will help my offensive spells and it also works on your healing spells.

More bang for your buck you might say

Yes, this. I do this on my wiz rather than having combustion gear or whatever.

But it does come with a caveat: the best potency gear for your level always excludes the highest level spell for your current spell list e.g. at L5 the best you'll get is a potency item that increases output from your L1 and 2 spells but not your new L3 ones, whereas the best Devotion, Magnetism, Combustion etc gear for your level will always cover your highest level of spells in those specific schools.

So if you do want to be more than a healbot, depending on your other gear and character concept, you may end up dual wielding a Devotion club and [whatever the one for BB Spells is] club to max out the two types of spell you cast you cast most - but then excluding any other spells you might decide to use, or you get a Potency item and increase damage across the board except for your top level spells.

There's also of course clickies that temporarily increase spell output for certain types of magic, and other buffs (make sure you have a light monk and a spellsinger in the party their buffs are for Teh SP Win). Obviously any and all enhancements that reduce metamagic costs too, and the best +Wis gear you can. Anything you can do to make more SP or make them go further.

One gear tip OP is to get a one hander item of wizardry or magi. These increase your maximum spell points, though they do not replace lost ones. You load this up before a rest shrine or before entering an instance. You then blow the extra points on buffs, and swap back to your 'active' gear once all the extra points are gone.


All the other advice in this thread should be heeded too, its all good. Just noticed gear hadn't really been covered and it makes a massive difference.

If you want to be the best healer you can be your objective is to adopt tactics, playstyle or get gear that lets each SP go further.

• Anything that puts out more heal for the SP is going to be worth it, as that's fewer spells you need to put a maximise on.
• Anything that reduces the cost of those metamagics when you do need them (wiz has enhancements for this, not sure about cleric).
• Increasing crit chance is good, but in my opinion as a wiz rather than a cleric, you need to be able to manage without that - crits cannot be guaranteed.
• Radiant Servant is, frankly, a must if you're trying to play a primarily healing cleric (Ok, its not a must but its like an Arcane not loading firewall if they're capable of casting it. People will look at you funny till you've proved you can make it work...).
• Try not to overheal except in an emergency.
• Don't be afraid to let people know what you need from the party too - for example, if you are concentrating on healing the tank in this boss fight so everyone else needs to come to you if they need healing and stand in your RS Aura, and that's all you'll be doing for people other than raises after the fight if you've any SP left!
• I don't think its unreasonable to ask people to give you some plat towards your wand costs - but try not to get upset if no-one does. The people that do give you some cash (yo!) will tend to give you far more than was really necessary if they can afford it anyway
• A bunch of other stuff in this thread which has also been really enlightening for me with my L6 cleric I'm very cautiously levelling to see if I can hack this healing malarky

A caveat on all my advice: it is based on wizarding, which I'm just about starting to get the hang of now. Hope this helps.