Healer Tips/Strategies

[FuzzyDuck81]

I have:
a capped halfling cleric15/monk3/pally2
a capped WF pure FvS
a WF cleric18/fighter2 i'm levelling (currently cleric8/fighter1)
a 2nd WF pure FvS i'm levelling (currently level 11)
a half elf cleric17/monk2/fighter1 i've just started working on

I can honestly say i've never played a healer. OK, a lot of my characters CAN (and will) heal, but its only 1 aspect of their capabilities.

OP, regarding your tips, they're mostly pretty good & a +1 to you for covering a lot of the basics & being willing to help out your fellow players - though a few of them have aspects that are very dependent on the person playing them, gear available etc.

4 - Being in combat isnt a bad thing, as even without particularly high DPS you can still use status-effect weapons like paralysers, stat-damagers etc. Being in over your head is where it can get messy. With radiant servant (and soon Angel of Vengeance for FvS) being in the middle of the fight & healing from there is both easier (just self-target mass heals, use bursts & aura) and beneficial to the party (the new FvS PrE will be a debuff on enemies nearby). When you get level 8 spells, i'd also very much advise taking the Holy Aura spell & keeping it perma-prepped then jumping into the thickest part of the fight to use it - AoE blindness on anything evil that doesnt make their SR check? 50% miss chance means 50% less damage being taken, and less healing thats needed!

5 - depends a lot on the specific guard... damage guards can indeed draw unwanted aggro especially at lower levels when the less healing you have to do for self & others the better, but once you get higher up and have access to crimson chain (haste guard), gorgon docent/armour or the Stalwart trinket (stoneskin guard) they can be very useful for personal survivability - and at high levels, dragontouched or greensteel with earthgrab, freezing ice, enervation, air or radiance guards can all be very good to have.

7 - at low levels, Divine Healing can be very handy.. it doesnt get reduced for warforged which can make keeping them alive a bit easier (and cheaper), also it can work through walls & other barriers (so long as within range) - though best to use your judgement.. if someone stupidly zerged ahead & got themselves shut off, its their own problem to deal with.

8 - use your judgement with combat raises - especially when you have only the basic Raise Dead, which will leave them with only a small number of HP as they could end up dying again pretty quickly & it might be easier to keep the rest of a decent group alive to finish or thin out the fight then raise afterwards (higher levels, clerics can & often will just BB them to death then raise at leisure). Also be aware of the death penalty which gives an effective 2 negative levels once theyre raised... in a fight or area with enemies that are using spells etc, the newly-raised person will be more vulnerable to them. Death penalties also STACK on multiple deaths in a short period which can be very nasty. The only ways to get rid of death penalties are a) shrining, b) waiting for them to disappear (1min per instance of penalty gained), or c) Unyielding Sovreignity (usable once per 10mins).

9 - honestly, although i always make sure to carry wands, i rarely ever use them, or scrolls for that matter - especially with radiant servant, a quick "hug for heals" & burst healing, or regenning in the aura is usually sufficient. However, i'm not a primary caster cleric, i tend to be more melee with spells situationally so it'll vary for different people. To make your healing go further, find a Superior Ardor clicky (or buy pots, but they can be expensive for the higher level ones) and use that before firing off your heals.. it'll also boost your aura & bursts, and can save SP by using a lower tier of cure spell (maybe even making a lower level spell that IS within the scope of your ardor efect actually more powerful than a higher level spell).

11 -multiclassing is a divisive one... for clerics, the main benefit of being pure is the capstone, which will make sure a tank in a raid wont die on reaching -10HP... however, if you're going to be doing other stuff in addition to healing then a 2 or maybe 3 level splash (typically monk or fighter, maybe barbarian) can bring some nice benefits to the table. Though the most important advice when multiclassing is ALWAYS plan it out ahead of time & make sure you're fully aware of both the benefits & drawbacks involved (including later spell access etc). Favoured souls gain a lot more for being pure (especially if more healing focussed, the unlimited CLW capstone which in a good group can often be sufficient for most of the time).

edit: spent so long typing this cardtrick already made most of the points i did.. hehe

[tekkentroop]

I tried bard as my newest char and I really love it... such versatility!

[Malison]

Some very good advice in the OP, especially for its target audience of new players. I'd reiterate a couple of key points from other posts:

Radiant Servant burst and aura are your best friend as a healer. In normal quests you can usually do most of your healing using just those two, with spot heals for emergencies. Once you have radiant servant you shouldn't need wands ever again. You will need scrolls for raid healing.

Along with the importance of buffs is the importance of debuffs. Command and sound burst on heavy-hitters like ogres can save a lot of sp.

Keeping the living alive is more important than raising the dead in almost all situations. Use the highest-level raise spell you have access to so they don't die immediately on taking the rez.

Bards can be excellent healers. Most are not.

[Aashrym]

For bard healers I recommend spellsingers for the SP bonuses, SP cost discount, and SP regen abilities that come down the road.

The SP regen song still doesn't work on warforged, so that's forewarning.

CC caster style or melee works, but spellsingers are taking the following nerfs in U9: extend no longer applies to CC spells, hypnotism changed to 6 seconds with a kicker ability, hold monster no longer autocrits/autohits, spell resistance now applies to the mass suggestion spell and the duration was reduced.

Some spells were buffed up: crushing despair has a nice additional ability with a -5 to target will saves on top of the regular ability for 15 seconds, HD caps were removed from several spells, healing and direct damage spells are cheaper, and other spells have some additional penalties added on.

The end result was a nerf to bard spell CC'ing in general. It can still be done and song CC'ing will still work well so melee with otto's IR and fascinate (or virt songs) might be a better option for a lot of players. CC casting still works too but not as well as it did before, and relying on hold monster for hit and damage has gone by the wayside.

I'm about to LR on Lamma again to test the bard versions of the changes to cause fear, scare, and fear. It's rare to see a bard using necro spells and without the higher level necro bard spells added to DDO there isn't much incentive to focus there. I might have more info on upcoming changes as they currently look.

[t0r012]

I'd like to add what I feel is a very important point that a lot of new clerics/FvS don't get.

Do not top people off. if you aren't in a fight , let others take care of their own healing. Think of your job as combat medic, you bandage them up mid fight.

After the fight is over it is not your job to top people off. That is their own responsibility.
This is very important at lower levels when you don't have a lot of SP to throw around.

Sure throw up and aura or a burst if an RS , but keep it limited to that. Anyone that doesn't care enough about their toon to bring/use pots between fights doesn't deserve your healing.

[African-Grey]

Offensive casting works, but it uses sp. Really depends on the quest and difficulty.

Even at low levels, casting non-heals can save you more spell points than you would have spent healing. Casting Sound Burst on that enemy caster (and possibly his neighbors) means your group isn't getting lightning bolted, cursed, or getting some other form of mystical badness thrown at them. At-level ogres? I defy you to heal the damage prevented by Command in 10 spell points or less. And, of course, a dead enemy creates zero damage that needs to be healed, so if you're in a position to finish something off quickly with a Searing Light, why would you stand around waiting to use a heal instead?

There are more examples, of course, but the point is that an ounce of prevention can indeed be worth a pound of cure.

[Raoull]

Recent things I picked up, some from much better clerics than I....

Raiding notes:
-During the cooldown of Mass Heal (quickened of course) you have enough time to read a Heal scroll without slowing down the MHs. This works great for those squishier toons, or arcanes that aren't in the melee. (And carrying around multiple stacks of heal scrolls is even more important... don't leave home without them.) This probably works with Res scrolls as well, but I haven't explicitly timed those.

- If there are multiple clerics, stand near each other, and watch each others hands. I find when I'm not doing this there are way too many Mass Heals at nearly the same time (after all, you're both watching the fight and deciding to MH or not). If you are also watching them, you can quickly make the decision not to MH if you notice they've already started the animation. The near simultaneous ones will still happen, but if you can reduce 50% of the wasted MH's, that's a bunch of mana saved.

-in part 5 of shroud, stand next to one of the pools on either side of the altar while healing. Bouncing in the water while on cooldown (or even do that slow move while casting) is easily worth a pot or two. (Be careful with the multitasking.... gaining less mana is better than screwing up the healing.)


Comments/Questions on other things from this thread.....

I think a cleric built for it can definitely mix it up in melee and heal too. Recently did Sins with a party (much harder than solo...) and was wielding 2 vorpal kamas in the thick of it (note... I don't pretend my DPS can compare to a true DPS toon, but vorpal works great). That allowed me to use only Mass Heal to preserve SPs, and Holy Aura when it got really thick (awesome damage mitigation spell). Not that I was leading the kill count or anything, but it gave me something useful to do when not casting. For pure clerics, you can use a paralyzing mace and the like.

Do clerics use wands after heal scroll are available? I just use heal scrolls (in large quantity on occasion) and didn't think wands would be worth it. It seems others work the way I do, but I was wonder if there are any capped clerics in the pro-wand camp. (I do carry some emergency buff & remove curse wands...) Reading this thread and thinking about it... I do think that on the rare occasion when my blue bar actually goes empty and I'm just working off scrolls, that 50 or so HP healed by a wand during scroll cooldown sounds useful. I'll probably pick one up, just in case....