I am looking at building a healing shaman and I'm trying to decide if witch doctor is a good choice. The extra channel pool is 3 levels behind, leaving me wondering if it would ever be enough healing to bother using it in combat. Counter Curse and Counter Hex are decent hex-equivalent abilities, but they are very situational. But my real concern is that the witch doctor takes so very many of your hexes. I suppose this can be remedied with extra hex feats, but channeling builds are pretty feat heavy themselves, and I'm just not sure if the witch doctor is worth the investment.
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I can give you some fairly good advice on the Witch Doctor archetype, mostly because I am playing one in the Strange Aeons adventure right now. You do have to work around the lower pool, but there are things you can do to make up for it. These things also help any channeler as well.
1st: Get (and use) the spell "Healing Token". This lets you use your channel energy as an immediate action and effects anyone within 30ft of the one who triggers the spell, and holds a token. This helps render 'quick channeling' as something you really don't need.
2) Get a phylactery of positive healing to make up the difference.
3) Don't be afraid to channel the life spirit as your wandering spirit.
4) Don't focus purely on your channeling abilities.
5) Use "Imbue with Spell Ability" to grant your party the shield other spell (and other 1st level boons) and share the HP damage across the board. It makes your channeling more effective because instead of only minor healing to the person that really needs it, you heal everyone the minor damage they all took for each other (not doubling the benefit, but close)
6) And probably more situational, consider using your witch doctor channeling as variant channeling, and Life spirit channeling as your main channeling.
My character is a Half-elf Shaman: Nature (Main) and Waves (Wandering), or was until I picked up Spirit talker and was able to snag Crashing Waves without having to actually channel the spirit. Now, I use Life as my wandering spirit and have a protector familiar that has fast healing. I focus on Protective Luck, Chant, and the Scar hex (so I can use any of my hexes on my party members up to one mile away, at any time) and throwing around "Benthic" metamagic elemental spells to force knockdowns and deal bludgeoning damage to those that resist elemental damage. I am also one half of the party face (Diplomacy).
We've just reached level 8 as of two sessions ago and the Counter Curse has already proven useful, as has granting my party spells (at the cost of my 4th level spell slots). The Investigator is quite scary being able to target touch ac with my Benthic Flameblade spell. Benthic Lightning Lash is also becoming my favorite combat spell.
well, if you grab the life spirit then witch doctor ends up giving you an independent channel ability that you could use to fuel abilities like channeled revival and turn undead which aren't dependent on how many dice said channel has. Alternatively, you could always use the weaker channels via quick channel.