I think a major reason for this Barbarian healing discussion is the way healing consumables are implemented in the game. There are couple of ways to get rather good healing effects through consumables.

  • Silver flame potions
    • First you have to grind 400 silver flame favor
    • Then they only stack to 10 and nobody(I hope) knows why
    • Then when used they can cause helplesness if you didn't think/know about using them when creating your character
  • Store potions
    • Break Immersion
    • Break your gaming budget
  • Collectible potions
    • You can only get so many collectibles(atleast most people)
    • Weak cooldown properties


As you can see they all have a feature that makes them not so fun to use. Maybe it would be a good idea to come up with somewhat reliable healing consumables. This would save time from developing and (hopefully)balancing healing abilities that fit the class flavor each time some class falls behind in self sufficiency. There would be baseline self sufficiency level every class or build could reach by simply investing platinum and maybe heal skill. Examples:

  • Bandages
    • Heal over time
    • Healing per tick and duration can increase with heal skill
    • Relatively cheap
    • Usable on others
    • Effect could break on damage making this out of combat style healing
  • Bandages version II
    • Heals right away for amount determined by your heal skill
    • Could have stronger versions with heal skill requirements to use them
    • Can be used on anyone
    • Relatively cheap as they require build investment
  • Potions
    • Versions that scale sufficiently to keep player alive in typical non-raid combat situations with decent plays
    • Price high enough that careless use may result in spending that is more than loot gains from quests
    • This way healers are still desirable as having one can mean considerable plat savings
    • Also someone might still use store potions because they're out of plat
    Cannith Crafting
    • Since you can craft things like arrows and runestones maybe recipes for healing consumables could be added
    • Probably cheaper than bought ones to make them worth the trouble


I used to play the 2002 NWN quite a bit before. There potions of heal fully healed you but on many servers you could go totally broke if your survival strategy was based on heavy potion use. You could live for a quest or two with potions you got and then you either had to team up or go earn some gold from places where you didn't need potions. They also got heal kits that healed amount depending on your heal skill check. Self sufficiency discussion barely existed there and people were very happy to get classes with inherent healing abilities to play with them for some free heals. Balancing the price might be tricky though. Maybe if done about right it could even make more people use store potions as they're more accustomed to relying on consumables instead of other means.

My first character in DDO had Heal skill because I thought it surely could be used to actually heal yourself and your allies. Then I found out that it was a newb trap even more so than today.