will they need healers in reaper?

[Tlorrd]

I played an absolutely zero damage build, full time healer in lamannia's previous build. While the majority of that time was spent playing in a bugged self-healing version where you could self-heal, I was careful to play as if I didn't have that luxury and took note of the times I thought I would have died if the healing debuff was active. As others have stated in this topic, you really must position yourself correctly for each encounter and you rely mostly on quest knowledge to avoid incoming damage. In a lot of cases you can't take a hit anyway, so the fact you can't heal yourself as the healer is diminished somewhat. This was even on a CON based, 3 pally splash cleric.

A couple of ways to help get you out of a messy situation are to be ready to activate Undying Vanguard at the first sign of trouble. This gives you 10,000 temporary HP. Another way is to proc your triple positive legendary greensteel, either by something fancy like the wizard active pastlife, or simple, like light spells.

While I can see the strategy of trading your own self-heals to others in your party as a DPS role may get you through some lower content. I'm fairly confident that my own experiences have shown me the full time healer role should make a comeback in a big way. For a lot of the red named and purple named fights, there's simply too much incoming damage too frequently for anybody without a large catalogue of healing spells to mitigate. And a lot of these fights demand that you be right at the edge of human reaction time.

Personally I'm looking forward to the potential return of the healer role. I had a lot of fun and satisfaction from healing reaper. And look forward to the new skill set it will require us to learn. Or at least, adapt an old one we've forgotten.

Very nice summary ... Initially I was (and most likely still will) go pure cleric ... but then I learned that True Sight gives mobs blindness immunity and there are a lot of scenarios where champions will have true sight, thus I am considering 17/3 split with either paladin or fighter . Outside of the obvious bonus hp and con, Paladin AP go to positive spell power while fighter AP go to hp ... the self gaining hp maybe necessary. Also while I usually went Scion of Plan of Fire for increased crit chance across the board and PRR/MRR ... maybe Scion of Celestia is better not only for the slight increased crit damage compared to scion of fire, but the bonus hp's again.

Most likely I'll make a pure build and LR or feat swap it a couple times to see which is most fuitful and survivable. I do like playing the healing build that requires on the edge skills.

[imTonE]

Nice.

Would you recommend going pure or some class split in the case of FvS?

That's a tough one, especially when the FvS revamp (or whatever they decide to call it) is next up on the list. Currently, it's one of those things, isn't it - what do you want to do with the build? If it's a 100% heal bot, going pure really doesn't add much. However, the splashes are really only there for the HP and defences. I think you can get away with fewer HP when raid healing reaper as opposed to general reaper questing. Raids tend to be in more open spaces with fewer encounters and the additional players leaves you more places to feel "safe". Therefore, I feel that pure bards, clerics and fvs that have spec'd for DCs or even damage will fair better on average in raids than in quests.

That said, unfortunately in its current state, fvs offers much less for the "healbot" build than cleric. So If you're set on making a full time healbot healer, I can only really recommend a TR. I have no playtime with Healing Word (fvs capstone), while being able to metamagic it for free does look juicy, the limitation is its max caster level. Unfortunately favoured souls get no way to increase positive spell caster levels.

If you have to stick with FvS, and wish to be a healbot, my recommendation would be to take the 3 tank splash for release and use the extra HP and defences to help you gain experience with healing in reaper. Then look to lose the 3 levels and go pure once you feel more comfortable. This is basically my plan, but I'm doing it on cleric.

[SirValentine]

That's a tough one, especially when the FvS revamp (or whatever they decide to call it) is next up on the list
...
That said, unfortunately in its current state, fvs offers much less for the "healbot" build than cleric.

Right. It'll depend a lot on what the 3rd FvS tree is, if/when it comes out. I know at one time in DDO history, "Beacon of Hope", a healing-focused PrE, was planned for FvS, back when we had PrEs instead of trees.

[Rys]

That's a tough one, especially when the FvS revamp (or whatever they decide to call it) is next up on the list. Currently, it's one of those things, isn't it - what do you want to do with the build? If it's a 100% heal bot, going pure really doesn't add much. However, the splashes are really only there for the HP and defences. I think you can get away with fewer HP when raid healing reaper as opposed to general reaper questing. Raids tend to be in more open spaces with fewer encounters and the additional players leaves you more places to feel "safe". Therefore, I feel that pure bards, clerics and fvs that have spec'd for DCs or even damage will fair better on average in raids than in quests.

That said, unfortunately in its current state, fvs offers much less for the "healbot" build than cleric. So If you're set on making a full time healbot healer, I can only really recommend a TR. I have no playtime with Healing Word (fvs capstone), while being able to metamagic it for free does look juicy, the limitation is its max caster level. Unfortunately favoured souls get no way to increase positive spell caster levels.

If you have to stick with FvS, and wish to be a healbot, my recommendation would be to take the 3 tank splash for release and use the extra HP and defences to help you gain experience with healing in reaper. Then look to lose the 3 levels and go pure once you feel more comfortable. This is basically my plan, but I'm doing it on cleric.

Thanks for the insight, appreciate it.

Right. It'll depend a lot on what the 3rd FvS tree is, if/when it comes out. I know at one time in DDO history, "Beacon of Hope", a healing-focused PrE, was planned for FvS, back when we had PrEs instead of trees.

I might hold on it until the pass. I am not sure yet.

[Zachski]

It's kinda interesting how, even to this day, there are people that want to play dedicated healers.

You can't even just blame the "MMO Trinity" for it either because some of it is wanting to emulate a D&D character who may have been the team's healer, or they like the concept of playing someone who fights wounds instead of monsters (that's me), or they want to roleplay a personal character of theirs (also me).

On the other side of the fence, there are people who remember the days when other people would shout at them for not healing well when said people would often wander out of eye-contact or rush ahead of the group or something, or would yell at them for casting any spell that wasn't a healing spell, even when said spell benefits the group.

Personally, when I used to think of Cleric, I used to think of a gentle person, full of faith and a desire to do right, who would use a mace and shield in defense of others, and acted to keep the rest of the group's health in tip-top shape. The Team Mom, even when they're male. Sometimes preachy, but with the best intentions.

When I think of Cleric now, though, I just don't know what to think.

[Skycaptain]

I mean, Olladra is good as a contingency full-heal for the tank

Actually, Olladra is completely broken, and has been for some time. You may only heal yourself and grant yourself stat bonuses with the ability.

[Tlorrd]

Healer Evo DC ... the benefit (if you so choose to believe) of cleric over other arcanes is that they don't necessarily need spell pen to CC ...

BoGW, Holy Smite, Order's Wrath all bypass spell pen and are based on Fort, Will, Will saves respectively for CC
Soundburst is fort save as is Implosion but both are subject to spell pen and more situational.

Evo DC
--------
3 past lives
3 heroic feats (evo, greater evo, archmage past life)
1 epic (epic evo)
1/2 enhancement (divine disciple T4/T5 (if you're not taking T5 of radiant servant)
-3/3 sentinel/exalted angel (i put -3 since there is no Wis enhancements in Sentinel and not regarding Ascendance)
3 magister evo
2 draconic evo
7 equipment mantle of earthen legend
3/4 insightful CC or legendary brazenband/legendary slavers staff
2 quality (multiple sources)
2 greater evocation augment
1 profane Thunderforged caster armor
0/2 helm/epic deific diadem
0/4 Scion of Celestia/Scion of Air
0/4 Legendary slaver's set
-----
25/43 Depending on setup and anywhere in between

Assuming a Wis of 90 which is very doable nowadays and should be closer to 100 ...

Maximizing DCs and possibly higher than below if you factor in a Wis > 90 ...

Burst of Glacial Wrath is 20+40(wis)+43 = 103 vs Fort save
Holy Smite/Order's Wrath 19+40(wis)+43 = 102 vs Will save
Implosion/soundburst would be 102 vs Fort save (but subject to spell pen)
Sunburst (although borked right now, but I'm sure will be fixed at some point) would be 102 vs reflex save for blindness.

There are many options for clerics to not only heal, but CC as well.

[KoobTheProud]

It's kinda interesting how, even to this day, there are people that want to play dedicated healers.

You can't even just blame the "MMO Trinity" for it either because some of it is wanting to emulate a D&D character who may have been the team's healer, or they like the concept of playing someone who fights wounds instead of monsters (that's me), or they want to roleplay a personal character of theirs (also me).

On the other side of the fence, there are people who remember the days when other people would shout at them for not healing well when said people would often wander out of eye-contact or rush ahead of the group or something, or would yell at them for casting any spell that wasn't a healing spell, even when said spell benefits the group.

Personally, when I used to think of Cleric, I used to think of a gentle person, full of faith and a desire to do right, who would use a mace and shield in defense of others, and acted to keep the rest of the group's health in tip-top shape. The Team Mom, even when they're male. Sometimes preachy, but with the best intentions.

When I think of Cleric now, though, I just don't know what to think.

Healing is a completely different way to play the game than DPS or tanking. It's more intuitive and it's more about pattern recognition and anticipation and it's more about playing whack-a-mole inside the first three categories.

I won't group in a game that does not have a healer sub-game involved. I'm just not that interested in the simplicity of DPS or the single-mindedness of tanking. I'll tank or DPS as an off-role in a game that honors the trinity but healing is the only part of high-end grouping and raiding that is really fun for me.

[DeltaBravo]

Iam pretty sure a cleric, can contribute alot in reaper quests or any other quest for that mater if you know what you are doing when you play a cleric.

TBH, i know it.

[Ellihor]

There are many options for clerics to not only heal, but CC as well.

Trust me, this won't be very functional. On R6+ you want to have 100% of your attention on other people's bars, and the rest on not getting killed. Having CC or damage abilities will only create trouble to yourself. If a melee stays 5 seconds with his bar at 50% his dead if he stays in melee, or he will run away (what can possibly create even more trouble because if there are multiple people with bars not full you won't be able to mass heal since they will all run away and be split) what means if you are doing things other than heal, including DPS, is negative DPS to the party. You have no time to do other sutff. That's why most healer pugs I've found suck, they want to do things and forget to heal.

[Tlorrd]

Trust me, this won't be very functional. On R6+ you want to have 100% of your attention on other people's bars, and the rest on not getting killed. Having CC or damage abilities will only create trouble to yourself. If a melee stays 5 seconds with his bar at 50% his dead if he stays in melee, or he will run away (what can possibly create even more trouble because if there are multiple people with bars not full you won't be able to mass heal since they will all run away and be split) what means if you are doing things other than heal, including DPS, is negative DPS to the party. You have no time to do other sutff. That's why most healer pugs I've found suck, they want to do things and forget to heal.

totally agree for reaper 5+, especially at level ... thus for me on my dedicated healer ... I have my healing stuff ... and Sunburst because until they fix it, I don't have to invest at all and can at least blind mobs that are not immune. I'll throw an occasional implosion if I know fort saves are low and no spell resistance ... otherwise I heal away. My earlier point only was that there are ways to do it to add something else and not everything else (you can't be a jack of all trades as a healer) ... you can invest in enchantment for greater command or evo ... but yes if you are focused on something other than healing, you'll miss the boat and your true primary purpose in high reaper skulls and not be very good.