In one of my play groups there is a player who positively LOVES playing healer/support roles. Unfortunately for the rest of us, she doesn't seem to really know what she is doing.
Though that's pretty much a lost cause, it inspired me to start a thread in which people discuss great ways to play an effective in-combat healer would be useful for anyone that wishes to play better healer roles. :)
For starters, I think one thing a lot of new players of healer characters seem to forget is that you don't need to wait for a PC to drop before running over to help them. Resource management regarding your spell slots is one thing, but it can be easy to forget that hit points and actions are a resource too!
I'd argue that it is FAR better to keep everyone's hit points "topped off" well BEFORE they fall down. This keeps everyone in the fight and obviates the need to spend actions standing up, retrieving dropped weapons, and the like. Having passive healing options set up in advance (such as vital beacon, which lets the patient spend actions to heal, rather than the caster) can free up the healer to continue contributing to combat for the small stuff or allow them to get more mileage out of lower level healing (such as with healer's blessing, Healing Hands, or life link), only stepping in with the high level heal spells when someone is down to half life or less.
What are some of your own thoughts/advice on effective in-combat healing strategies?
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Favor 1-action healing such as Battle Medic, 1-action Heal, Healer's gloves, Lay on hands.
Indeed weigh the chances : if one of the party is in likely danger of going down before your next turn, heal them now.
That said, no need to keep everyone at top : that is what out of combat healing is for.
Anyyone who is at risk of going down should be within range of the healer. This is something both healer and party members should remember.
Remember that, if the healer goes down, the whole party is in very dire straits. So, be sure to have secondary healers near them if it happens so that they can revive the primary healer quickly.
Reach spell for the primary healer can be a good investment. As can high speed. And Invisibility.
Note that, in the case you mention above, having several secondary healers should really help the whole party survive.
Also sometimes healing a downed ally is not the best action to take. It is really something to consider before healing them.
Also everyone should be fully aware of how heroic recovery work. Do not waste your precious hero point just to be critted to death a few attacks later.
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Medic archetype and doctor's visitation help a lot to make a non-spell slot focused healer viable. The bonus mobility from DV and the bonus healing from the archetype really help to keep up with healing and contribute in other ways, while preserving spell slots. The 1/day treat someone who is already immune to Battle Medicine helps to overcome the 'but I need to save it for when it matters' for a lot of players.
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Potions are very important in my experience, expecially whithout a healer cleric or similar characters in the party. Medic archetype (expecially with free archetype) is pure cash to have on a healer in the party thanks to doctor's visitation, winning the action economy is important. You should have a single action activity to use in case you do a two actions heal like a martial strike or spells like magic missle(which is why i believe that warpriests are better healers than cloistered clerics).
Also i would agree that keeping people up is better than getting them up.
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I'd argue that it is FAR better to keep everyone's hit points "topped off" well BEFORE they fall down.
I'd argue that it's the most common mistake I see among healer: Casting Heal on characters who are too far away from death. At the end of the fight, there's no difference between 1hp and 100hp, you can all heal with Medicine. But casting Heal to top allies means that you are not contributing meaningfully to the fight. As such, fights drag endlessly and you end up sinking 3 or 4 Heals in a fight that was not asking for a single of them, so a lot of resources for nothing.
The only exception are characters that can heal while doing there thing. Like the Witch that can cast its Focus Spell and still throw an offensive spell.The best type of healing is emergency healing. Not healing once the ally is down, but healing when an ally is at risk of going down.
In one of my play groups there is a player who positively LOVES playing healer/support roles. Unfortunately for the rest of us, she doesn't seem to really know what she is doing.
This seems more like a player who is tactically ineffective in a group that cares about tactics.
Its probably more of a group mismatch than anything else. There are no easy answers that people are going to like.
If the players are of tolerant personality types and are having fun, its not really a problem, perhaps the GM can tone down the encounters a fraction. Hopefully over time the player's tactics will improve. Most people don't have that level of patience though.
Make a point of the dying player calling for healing.
Have a secondary character pick up Battle Medicine as a not so subtle hint. At least you can cover the critical cases.
Talking about it may help, but many people aren't capable of admitting their mistakes and curl up defensively like this player. But still they may change anyway after you point it out.
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I think there's a sweet spot between on the one hand healing too early, and too late.
The downsides of healing too early are mostly:
- Using resources that didn't need using. If it's unlikely this character would go down, that's a spell or Battle Medicine opportunity used when Treat Wounds or Lay on Hands could have done it for free.
- Not "aggressively reducing damage": dead enemies don't deal damage. If you could use an attack spell to speed up the removal of an enemy, that can be better than healing damage while leaving the enemy around to deal more damage.
Downsides of healing too late are also bad;
- If someone goes down to Dying, they also go Prone and drop stuff, and if you heal them up, they have to recover all that which costs actions and can provoke more attacks. And they'll be more vulnerable because of Wounded. If you'd healed them early enough that they didn't drop, you would have saved the party a lot of actions.
- If someone is close to being dropped they may be forced to retreat, leaving the enemy to take control of a tactically important spot, and not attacking the enemy. If your ally had more HP they'd be more comfortable staying in the front line doing damage.
So what does a good healer need?
- Healing in large spikes. Topping people off with level 1 heals at a time isn't efficient at level 10. If someone needs healing, they need the big stuff to switch them from "I have to pull back" to "I can stay".
- Ranged attacks of some kind. You don't want to put the healer on the front line, and you want them able to take out enemies especially low-HP enemies that might otherwise get enough turn and deal more damage. Magic Missile (Nethys) or electric arc (adopted cantrip) are excellent. Reach Chill Touch will do if your deity doesn't cooperate. Spellhearts with Scatter Scree can also work.
- Player practice: learn to estimate when healing goes from luxury to necessity. Know when your party is stomping enemies easily and when it's dicey.
- Teamwork. Teach the other characters not to run outside of your service range. On the other hand, make sure you stay close enough that you can intervene if something goes wrong next turn. You don't want to be a stubborn anchor either. (This fits in a general teamwork topic of don't run away from the champion etc.)
I'd argue that it is FAR better to keep everyone's hit points "topped off" well BEFORE they fall down.I'd argue that it's the most common mistake I see among healer: Casting Heal on characters who are too far away from death. At the end of the fight, there's no difference between 1hp and 100hp, you can all heal with Medicine. But casting Heal to top allies means that you are not contributing meaningfully to the fight. As such, fights drag endlessly and you end up sinking 3 or 4 Heals in a fight that was not asking for a single of them, so a lot of resources for nothing.
The only exception are characters that can heal while doing there thing. Like the Witch that can cast its Focus Spell and still throw an offensive spell.The best type of healing is emergency healing. Not healing once the ally is down, but healing when an ally is at risk of going down.
Indeed, when I said topping off, I meant going from half hit points to full hit points with a max level heal. We're quite fortunate that healing is so effective in this edition! :) I wouldn't waste the actions, much less a spell slot, on someone who was only something like 10 hp from max (unless they had 20 or less hp to begin with).
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Now that I've gotten a bit more experience with my (Lv 3) Life Oracle, I've found that the server tends to have fights that are either fairly trivial or get very desperate due to lots of crits. (Nothing specific to that server; the GMs I've had for that character just express weird all-or-nothing luck.) As silly as it may be, when the dice are hot you can't always be too conservative with estimates, and if you're the primary healer you also have to recognize how stretched your actions are, and in my case (having Wellspring Mage as well), how stretched my spell slots are too.
So, weirdly, my most common use for Heal has been the three-action AoE version. In three fights now, I've pulled it out as a d12 thanks to my curse (usually rerolling it with the Mask of Mercy as well), even if some enemies are in the way, just because if people are taking so much damage it usually means multiple people are in danger of going down and we need to focus our offense on one anyway. In three fights, that's worked out. One or two turns later, maybe an ally has had their buffer cut through and dropped, but then an enemy goes down too and the fight become a fair bit easier.
Naturally, luck in both directions impacts that experience, and it probably wouldn't be as necessary if players were better about focusing on one enemy. My general conclusion there is not to worry so much about including enemies in your healing if it means giving the party time to pull something off.
On a different note, as a Life Oracle with limited slots limited further by the encouragement of Wellspring to prebuff and stuff, I have Spirit Link despite its overlap with Life Link as a way to use a slot early and still contribute to defense with it; but at these low levels where Life Link is way down on its weird exponential scaling, I'm honestly considering picking up Shield Other to do the same with, over Comprehend Language or Augury. The distance limitation is annoying, but since I don't have Reach Spell I want to remain in close proximity to allies anyway, and half damage from all effects is a lot more powerful of a passive defense than Life Link's current 3 damage reduction per round or Spirit Link's 2 healing per round. Wellspring's design has proven kind of frustrating, but Life Oracle in general is still an interesting playstyle, being an HP "tank" with bad AC who stays in the backline and peppers people with Spout from a spellheart when not keeping myself or others up. And as time goes on and I get more and better spells, I expect to get even busier while not having to work as hard to get the passive reduction going. :>
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Indeed, when I said topping off, I meant going from half hit points to full hit points with a max level heal. We're quite fortunate that healing is so effective in this edition! :) I wouldn't waste the actions, much less a spell slot, on someone who was only something like 10 hp from max (unless they had 20 or less hp to begin with).
So we agree :)
As a side note, I think the whole concept of "primary healer" is a bad one in PF2. I far prefer to have multiple healers in the party, of course all secondary healers. First, they contribute meaninfully to the fight when not healing, when primary healers tend to have lower offensive potential, increasing combats' length. Second, 2 (or more) secondary healers easily outheal a primary healer. And because emergency healing is important in PF2, it's better to have massive healing output when necessary. Third, if a healer goes down, another one can heal them. And of course it gives way more flexibility to have the choice between multiple healers.
Healing is very strong in PF2, but in my opinion it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's important to know that in a 4-PC party, if you have one character that doesn't meaningfully contribute to the fight, the fight's difficulty goes up one level (Moderate to Severe and Severe to Extreme). So by bringing a primary healer with low offensive efficiency you push combats to higher difficulties, increasing the need for emergency healing and as such increasing the feeling that you absolutely need a very focused and maximized healer. I've seen this prophecy in one of my campaign (Abomination Vaults) where I have flexible party compositions. When the party has a specialized healer, fights always look more dangerous and the healer always seem to save the day. And when there are no such healer, fights are easier...
That's why I don't rate the Cleric class very high. After the very first levels (where combat is very quick and dicey) I find Clerics to be more of a liability than a strength.
1) The healer that is still on his feet at the end of the battle is the best healer, so in case you are a dedicated main healer don't neclect your defenses. And though it is much more difficult to ramp up defenses in PF2, it is not impossible. Get AC, get a shield, get Canny Acumen for your weak Save, have a healthy Con score and/or get Toughness in order to not end up a damsel in distress every single time a remotely dangerous enemy manages to bypass your front lines. Most of the time this will give the enemy some though choices. Do I go for the Barbarian clobbering me (but who can probably easily be fixed by a potent heal spell) or do I go for the backline, where the target is comparably tough, has an easier time healing himself, getting myself isolated and flanked in the process and I even lose actions for movement?
By the way range & good ranged attack options is another form of defense if you do not want to go down the road of the tanky healer.
2) Do not neglect your offenses either, do not wait for heals to happen and only heal if there is a high chance of one of your teammates going down in between your turns (might require some experience to figure out and even then surprises like critically failed saves and or enemy crits can ruin your planning). If you win initiative often and by all means open with the most potent offensive action possible.
3) Remember that in-between-combats healing often is made trivial by the Medicine skill, which may very easily influcence your feat and spell selection (including focus spells). This means that feats and spells that can be used in combat are often worth more than feats and spells that probably yield a better output out of combat.
4) The most effective combat healing strategy is not to rely on effective combat healing and as such the complete team needs to play as such. The best combat healer in the world will not be able to keep up with the HP bleed of your Giant Instinct Barbarian deciding to slug it out with the BBEG, just because of the "but I have a healer" mindset.
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As a side note, I think the whole concept of "primary healer" is a bad one in PF2. I far prefer to have multiple healers in the party, of course all secondary healers. First, they contribute meaninfully to the fight when not healing, when primary healers tend to have lower offensive potential, increasing combats' length. Second, 2 (or more) secondary healers easily outheal a primary healer. And because emergency healing is important in PF2, it's better to have massive healing output when necessary. Third, if a healer goes down, another one can heal them. And of course it gives way more flexibility to have the choice between multiple healers.Healing is very strong in PF2, but in my opinion it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's important to know that in a 4-PC party, if you have one character that doesn't meaningfully contribute to the fight, the fight's difficulty goes up one level (Moderate to Severe and Severe to Extreme). So by bringing a primary healer with low offensive efficiency you push combats to higher difficulties, increasing the need for emergency healing and as such increasing the feeling that you absolutely need a very focused and maximized healer. I've seen this prophecy in one of my campaign (Abomination Vaults) where I have flexible party compositions. When the party has a specialized healer, fights always look more dangerous and the healer always seem to save the day. And when there are no such healer, fights are easier...
That's why I don't rate the Cleric class very high. After the very first levels (where combat is very quick and dicey) I find Clerics to be more of a liability than a strength.
I prefer the option of having multiple sources of healing, and one decent size healing spell. Because there are situations where it is needed. For example where the party is fireballed in the opening stages of an encounter. But I've also had a game where the party was continually fireballed, and the cleric just kept churnng out top levels 3 action heals to negate it. It worked wonderfully - but I found it too gamey a tactic. The party had other options which they did not take, they just brute forceed the encounter. To me it was more about how Heal is so very strong in this game.
I agree that one player in a party of 4 that spends their time buffing and healing but not otherwise helping, is a marginal option. When you think about it, if you are improving the effectiveness of 3 other PC by 25% but have removed 1 PC from being otherwise effective to do it, then the party is behind 4 normally effective PCs.
When you are rating the Cleric class or indeed playing the Cleric class, please do not always insist on being a pacifist. That is just one way of many. You do have moderate damage and offensive options. You just have to select them. Think about a ranged weapon option, pick up a direct damage cantrip - together these give you a base level of damage output which while its on the low side, its not that bad, and often its the right tactic. Also take a focus spell that helps offensively, branch out into non cleric feats. Doubling down and becoming a super healing specialist is normally a waste because your healing is so effective as it is. Note that I'm not saying that the non damage options are bad or and not offensive - take them too - just have a damage option.
When you are rating the Cleric class or indeed playing the Cleric class, please do not always insist on being a pacifist.
I don't. I have an Angelic Sorcerer of Sarenrae, so I have quite a good grasp on the Divine spell list. Still, being a prepared caster with 3 slots, a spell list that is not the best one and full of specialized spells (so not ideal for a prepared caster unless you have strong information about what type of creatures you'll face), average focus spells and a lot of feats increasing healing for few offensive feats, the Cleric is not a really strong class outside healing.
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When you are rating the Cleric class or indeed playing the Cleric class, please do not always insist on being a pacifist.
Sorry that was a non deterministic generic "you" directed at the ether ... not at you. You clearly already know these points. I am agreeing with you and adding more to your comments.
Indeed, when I said topping off, I meant going from half hit points to full hit points with a max level heal. We're quite fortunate that healing is so effective in this edition! :) I wouldn't waste the actions, much less a spell slot, on someone who was only something like 10 hp from max (unless they had 20 or less hp to begin with).So we agree :)
As a side note, I think the whole concept of "primary healer" is a bad one in PF2. I far prefer to have multiple healers in the party, of course all secondary healers. First, they contribute meaninfully to the fight when not healing, when primary healers tend to have lower offensive potential, increasing combats' length. Second, 2 (or more) secondary healers easily outheal a primary healer. And because emergency healing is important in PF2, it's better to have massive healing output when necessary. Third, if a healer goes down, another one can heal them. And of course it gives way more flexibility to have the choice between multiple healers.
Healing is very strong in PF2, but in my opinion it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's important to know that in a 4-PC party, if you have one character that doesn't meaningfully contribute to the fight, the fight's difficulty goes up one level (Moderate to Severe and Severe to Extreme). So by bringing a primary healer with low offensive efficiency you push combats to higher difficulties, increasing the need for emergency healing and as such increasing the feeling that you absolutely need a very focused and maximized healer. I've seen this prophecy in one of my campaign (Abomination Vaults) where I have flexible party compositions. When the party has a specialized healer, fights always look more dangerous and the healer always seem to save the day. And when there are no such healer, fights are easier...
That's why I don't rate the Cleric class very high. After the very first levels (where combat is very quick and dicey) I find Clerics to be more of a liability than a strength.
I do healing like Superbidi. A secondary healer or two.
The group healer is the one with the Medicine Skill maxed and the necessary feats to do the job using the PF2 healing simulation between fights.
We tend to set up to mitigate the need for intensive healing, though it can't always be avoided. We like to concentrate healing on the martial getting slammed the hardest. We only heal if the enemy proves capable of taking out the person getting hit fast enough to require an immediate heal. Otherwise, we let them fight with lower hit points.
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Note that in many parties I played with (including in PFS), the Medecine user is the Cleric or the Druid because of their maxed WIS.
Which has the disturbing side effect of making the best healing ressources both magical and mundane dependent on a single PC staying conscious.
I have the nagging feeling that parties without a Cleric or a Druid will actually fare better because they will naturally spread the healing duties among several secondary healers whose main schtick helps killing enemies faster.
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Investigator-Medic is a decent healer, the action economy of Doctor's Visitation is brilliant.
TheRavenBlack, I think you have a point about high wisdom caster/medicinistas being a single point of failure. But if they're up they're also the most efficient at it. Maybe a reason to spread the healer's gloves/potion love around the rest of the party a bit so they can revive the healer if needed.
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Nevertheless, there are few things cooler than turning the battle around by bringing someone on the brink of death to full hit points with a 2-action heal and 1-action Battle Medicine.
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Investigator-Medic is a decent healer, the action economy of Doctor's Visitation is brilliant.
TheRavenBlack, I think you have a point about high wisdom caster/medicinistas being a single point of failure. But if they're up they're also the most efficient at it. Maybe a reason to spread the healer's gloves/potion love around the rest of the party a bit so they can revive the healer if needed.
All my PFS PCs wear healer's gloves as soon as they can afford them. With spare gloves in their equipment. Even if they are untrained in Medicine with an abysmal WIS. AFAIK I am not the only one doing this.
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Nevertheless, there are few things cooler than turning the battle around by bringing someone on the brink of death to full hit points with a 2-action heal and 1-action Battle Medicine.I like going through several fights not losing a single HP myself.
LOL. And so it often goes with many of my spellcasting characters
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Note that in many parties I played with (including in PFS), the Medecine user is the Cleric or the Druid because of their maxed WIS.
Which has the disturbing side effect of making the best healing ressources both magical and mundane dependent on a single PC staying conscious.
I have the nagging feeling that parties without a Cleric or a Druid will actually fare better because they will naturally spread the healing duties among several secondary healers whose main schtick helps killing enemies faster.
We had one party where the primal elemental sorcerer had the heal spell and the monk was the medic. In the same party the fighter and rogue both built up medicine as well because my buddy was new to the game and liked being able to heal as a martial without spells.
Medicine is always a useful skill. And it is 2 feats with maybe Battle Medicine to be the group medic.
I love that PF2 made recovery so easy and no more dedicated healer.
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Now that I've gotten a bit more experience with my (Lv 3) Life Oracle, I've found that the server tends to have fights that are either fairly trivial or get very desperate due to lots of crits. (Nothing specific to that server; the GMs I've had for that character just express weird all-or-nothing luck.) As silly as it may be, when the dice are hot you can't always be too conservative with estimates, and if you're the primary healer you also have to recognize how stretched your actions are, and in my case (having Wellspring Mage as well), how stretched my spell slots are too.
I hope you get to 5th level soon. Life Link with two targets will make your life so much easier on blanketing the party. The extra padding it gives grants so much battlefield positioning freedom for its targets, you don’t have to chase down your partymates just to be in support range as much. And if you do need to, everyone gets more time to react to emergency situations.
Being a Wellspring Mage is interesting though. The reduced spell slots really scares me for the Life mystery just because of having no Healing Font and all. How has it treated you so far?
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Now that I've gotten a bit more experience with my (Lv 3) Life Oracle, I've found that the server tends to have fights that are either fairly trivial or get very desperate due to lots of crits. (Nothing specific to that server; the GMs I've had for that character just express weird all-or-nothing luck.) As silly as it may be, when the dice are hot you can't always be too conservative with estimates, and if you're the primary healer you also have to recognize how stretched your actions are, and in my case (having Wellspring Mage as well), how stretched my spell slots are too.I hope you get to 5th level soon. Life Link with two targets will make your life so much easier on blanketing the party. The extra padding it gives grants so much battlefield positioning freedom for its targets, you don’t have to chase down your partymates just to be in support range as much. And if you do need to, everyone gets more time to react to emergency situations.
Being a Wellspring Mage is interesting though. The reduced spell slots really scares me for the Life mystery just because of having no Healing Font and all. How has it treated you so far?
Gotta say...it's a bit rough at low levels! Having few slots and spell levels makes it easier to get back your "investment" through surges, but it also...well, means you have fewer slots at the levels where you already had the least amount of power and resources. The archetype sort of shined in one quest where we ended up having 4 minor fights in a day, since (after a Spirit Link to have the slot free) I was able to get two slots back for upkeep healing and thus save my last real slot for a Command on the big boy at the end, but the end result could've largely been replicated by not having the archetype at all and taking more time to heal between fights. (Though the antimagic zap revealing my character's kitsune form was cute, and my more roguish allies appreciated the concealment from trinket rain. So it was still an overall positive.) In other quests on the (West Marches) server, largely consisting of 1 or 2 fights a day and especially if I can't prebuff or otherwise free the slots (admittedly that's only happened once), it's a detriment that took up my Lv 2 class feat, forcing me to be extra careful and conservative to make up for the lost resources (hence AoE Heals).
Just hit Lv 4, at least! But, Urgent Upwelling can't come quickly enough...like, really, it should've been the Lv 4 feat of the archetype, or either it or Wellspring Control should have had some hand in that Lv 2 feat I was saddled with. As it is, I'm currently picking between what is mostly a lose-less feat I'll want to have if I stick with Wellspring (to pick up another archetype, Folklorist, at Lv 8), or Divine Access for Phantom Pain + Invisibility or Hydraulic Push + early Aqueous Orb as spell options. Wellspring is nice if you have a lot of fights in a day, don't want to stress about using slots as much, or are a Summoner and don't get many slots in the first place, but it definitely feels feat-taxy...and spell-taxy, since the most frustrating part of the archetype so far is needing to have your top three spell levels used so that you don't risk losing a successful surge. Combined with having less slots already, it's a little much, and if I didn't find it as cool and the flavor as fitting as I do, I would be a lot more tempted to retrain out of it.
Still, I'm trucking along for now, and the extra 2nd Lv slot is bound to be very helpful. Shield Other seems a little annoying but quite strong, so I'm going to try it over Spirit Link (a good spell which simply scales kinda slowly/is a little too weak at Lv 4 if I keep it unheightened). The latter will be replaced with either Sanctuary or Phantom Pain depending on which feat I pick. And I'll continue trying to save my focus to use two Life Links in a row when it's most impactful, with Shield Other as a prebuff, hoping to get good surges and otherwise using Heal and Battle Medicine where possible. It'll definitely be a fair bit easier at Lv 5 and 6! ~w~
Well...Life Link and Shield Other both effectively let you do it, alongside other damage reduction things (Protector Tree seems good). Directly raising defenses in general is rarer than raised offenses, but there are a few ways to do it. There's also plenty of spells that don't do a ton when cast but allow healing later, like Life-Giving Form and most of Divine's other healing spells. And there is truth to the old joke that the best healing is incapacitating enemies before they can hurt you. It's all connected and there's plenty of pure defense one can conduct to effectively pre-heal; it might just be hard to get all of it on one build.
The general lack of easily accessed Spells to grant Temp HP makes pro-active healing nearly impossible in PF2 unless you're rolling specifically a Bard
There are a few: False Life, most of the Battle Forms spells.
There are a couple of feats like Vivacious Bravado and Renewed VigourBut yes there is no Aid spell or easy access for clerics to do this.