Shaman healer?

[ekibus]

Hey all looking at maybe making a Shaman Witch doctor, but I'm noticing I really wont be good at healing until level 4 any suggestions? (Thought about starting with healing spirit but was told that was a poor idea) By level 3 I plan to take extra hex and have slumber and healing ready to go

[David knott 242]

If you want to channel for healing, why not skip the Witch Doctor archetype and take the Life mystery so that you can channel from level 1 at your full shaman level? Most of the Life mystery hexes are not particularly good, but there are several generic hexes that are just fine.

I cannot figure out what you mean by "healing spirit". If it is the Life mystery, then you should ignore what you were told -- if you want to play a Shaman who focuses on healing, that is the way to do it. Just be sure to find something that your character can do besides heal, since healing doesn't work until somebody has been hurt.

[ekibus]

Biggest problem is I plan to rely on the hexes, just will take a few levels to get them going. Slumber hex at 2 Healing hex as a feat at 3, Evil eye at 4 and chant at 5 then wandering hex heals at 6. I plan to keep him in the back casting spells. If I go human I'll probably pick up extra channel and selective channel at level 1. Not sure how I'm gonna do the stats yet...

[Captain Zoom]

ekibus wrote:

Hey all looking at maybe making a Shaman Witch doctor, but I'm noticing I really wont be good at healing until level 4 any suggestions? (Thought about starting with healing spirit but was told that was a poor idea) By level 3 I plan to take extra hex and have slumber and healing ready to go

Not sure why the Healing Spirit as your primary spirit is a bad idea, unless you want specific hexes and features from another spirit? If you want to be uber-healer, that would give you TWO pools of Channeling. You'd have so many channels from Life Spirit + Witchdoctor that you could consider a channeling-for-damage type build.

In any case, if you don't go Life Spirit as your primary, then you'll just have to load up on cure spells until you can channel at 4th level. Even then, your Witchdoctor channeling is Level-3, so it won't be so great. You could take Life Spirit as your wandering spirit to get the two pools of channeling, though.

As for the healing hex, if you're going to be able to channel, you probably don't need the hex. If you double up Life Spirit and Witchdoctor you definitely don't need the Healing Hex. I'd personally get a different more useful hex. Remember, Healing Hex only does 1d8+L or 2d8+L (5th Level and Up) ONCE per 24 hours per PC. In a weird situation where you need to heal 100 people, it's great, but in a typical party, you're mostly healing the 1-2 front-liners (and 1d8+L once per day isn't going to cut it) and if everyone is hurt, channeling is much, much better.

[Onyxlion]

If you want to be broken at healing take the healing hex and the hex vulnerability spell, it will let you spam the healing hex for 1+1/round per level.

You'll rock more than any wand spam for zero cost.

[Markov Spiked Chain]

I started this build (life shaman witch doctor) and regretted life spirit when I hit 4. Unfortunately, there's not much good for life other than channel. I wish that I had picked heavens as my base spirit, picking up full channels at 4th, and spirit talker at 7th for the extra lore spells. Heavens hexes and greater spirit magic are a lot better than lifes. The only upside is that the spirit animal fast healing has some potential.

You do have weak healing until 4th, though. But if you can scrape up a CLW wand, it should get you through until the full double channels come online.

I'm picking up Fateful Channel (Pharasma) at 5th to get double rolls for everyone while healing.

[ekibus]

Wow @Onyxlion, didn't even realize that could be used like that. Was gonna skip the healing hex but now it might be back on the table.

@Markov: Fateful Channel is pretty awesome. I'll have to look into heaven some more. I asked the GM last night if he would allow me to retrain my main spirit at level 4. So I would do life until level 4 and then switch life to wandering and then heaven as my main.

[Markov Spiked Chain]

If your GM is flexible, ask them if they'll let you use life link like the oracle version. It's not clear if they meant to completely nerf it, but it's the only life hex that has much potential.

Void adaptation was the big draw of heavens for me, but heavens leap has a lot of potential as we'll.

[Dokomo]

The key is to combo life spirit and witch doctor. Witch doctor makes you give up primary spirit hexes, but you weren't going to use them with life spirit anyways since they suck. Then, find the items that increase channel healing, take selective channeling, and you're golden.

[Bckstabber]

Don't know if this matters to the original poster (this thread being almost 3 years old now) but for the people reading this FROM THE FUTURE the above mentioned Hex Vulnerability spell would not work with a beneficial Hex, like Healing.

"The targeted creature becomes susceptible to a repeat use of your harmful hexes..."

I do not have a better solution, as I too am looking to improve my Shaman healer.

[Conjoy]

The good thing about a Shaman as a Healer is that you can spend fairly minimal resources on it and have a ready made alternative action for early in most encounters with the Evil Eye and/or Misfortune Hexes.
You get Channeling innately with the Life Spirit and then you can fill up your spell slots with Remove spells because your spell list is terrible. The down-side is that spamming evil Eye or Misfortune every encounter can get old.
Also worth noting from the earlier post in this thread that the Shaman Life Link has been faqed to work the same as the Orcale version.

[ekibus]

Yup, sadly 3 years ago was a different time. Honestly since the nerf I stopped playing him and honestly in 3 years the shaman hasn't gotten much love. Spirit guide oracle is almost better than the shaman :/

[Louise Bishop]

ekibus wrote:

Yup, sadly 3 years ago was a different time. Honestly since the nerf I stopped playing him and honestly in 3 years the shaman hasn't gotten much love. Spirit guide oracle is almost better than the shaman :/

For reactive healing builds yes. But for a more proactive supporting then I prefer shaman. Hexes are amazing for preventing damage with the right ones. They also provide some utility. I also like prepared casters for Status removal so I do not waste my spells known on remove X.

[Melkiador]

Spirit Guide is pretty awesome, but it is still somewhat constrained when being the healer. You spend so many of your known spells getting the needed condition removal that you barely have any for anything else. The wandering spirit helps with this, but then you have to sacrifice your double channels.

The Shaman is awesome because it can have whatever spell it wants during a day by just leaving some slots open and taking 15 minutes to prep a new one.