How and When to Heal

[No One]

It seems the answer is not well-known, so I will explain.

The basics aren't complicated.
Have one dedicated healer, with a +heal path or trinket.
Have one dedicated soother.
Have one dedicated damage-dealer.
The leftover is a wildcard, who can also be damage.

First round, alpha someone down. It weakens the enemy party by almost half.

Enable doing this safely by healing obsessively on non-1 rounds, so you enter fights at high health and low stress. If you can heal, use the dedicated healer, and do.



Example: OCC-JES-FLG-HEL

OCC who is either a ritualist or has a protectorate, a FLG who has stress resist (due to the nature of endure), and both skills are mastered.
Opening turn I can launch a massive alpha strike on the back rows, almost certainly killing something.
After that, if my OCC or FLG can throw damage, that's merely a nice bonus. If there's something to heal, heal it. I would use chaotic offering specifically to empower the OCC's heal, unless he can heal right away.

Due to Lanchester's square law, party power goes as the square of its size. A 4-man enemy party has power proportional to 16, whereas a 3-man party has power proportional to 9. If you somehow don't kill something turn 1, continue skipping healing until something is dead - or at least guaranteed to die before it can move, e.g. by my jester showing up in the turn indicator.

Likewise, a party loses more than half going from 3 to 2, 9 => 4. While you're keeping up with incoming damage by healing, the damage guys should be constantly working towards lowering incoming damage by murdering the sources. This will let your dedicated healers get ahead of incoming damage - ideally far enough ahead that everyone is healed and they can add their own damage.

If someone pops to 5+ stress, then swap JES and FLG. FLG hits, JES uses tune. As long as someone is doing damage, I can taunt or adrenaline or whatever with the hellion. What you want to avoid is a turn like wyrd-tune-endure-revelry. Unless there's only one guy left and he's going to die from poison on his next turn. Basically if you're not 100% sure it's safe to heal, leave it to the dedicated and equipped healers.

Once OCC can't heal anyone and stress is already too low to make endure+ worthwhile (2 or 1, your choice), then I can start using deathless while the OCC flings attacks.



One reason HWM seems so good is that you can't simply stop damaging with him. He prevents you from making that mistake. You're always advancing towards having won the fight.

one reason MAA seems so good is that if you try to tank with him while everyone else is distacted and not doing damage, he does damage anyway. He buffers you against that mistake - at worst you do something like bolster/retribution+/repeat.

One reason DoTs seem so good is because, if you get distracted and stop doing damage, the bleeds and blights don't. They continue to burn things to death.


You'll find even a janky healer like Alhazred, if fully outfitted, will easily outheal e.g. a leper's solemnity. Unless you want the soothing portion too, let the healer heal. Only double up if the fight is already over.


You can also outfit this party in reverse. Give Damian the protectorate, give jes jingles responsibility for all stress, and if Alhazred wants to throw a spare wyrd here and there, it's a nice bonus.

Alternatively, note that if Alhazred insists on rolling zero, Damian can quietly prevent door checks with deathless or undying. Preventing 0 HP is the only thing more important than ensuring damage keeps rolling.



Dumb amusing example, total dedication to healing: VES-RUN-FLG-MAA

This one can't alpha burst as hard, but it can certainly make life very difficult for row 2 or 3.

The benefit here is once you're down to 1-2 enemies, you can use a smokescreen+/rampart combo. (Do use a bulwark.) Very unlikely the enemy will resist both blind and stun.

I would use sanctuary+ and endure+, while leaving bolster unmastered for the times Damian is at exactly 6 stress, to avoid leaving him at 4.

comfort-fortitude-mantra-grace-sanctuary

Give her a protectorate or two.

This might make VES seem good because you can't not heal with her. She will prevent you from making that mistake. Everyone will be recovering at all times.

Open with divine comfort, then slap down consecration of fortitude and aim to master mantra ASAP. Bless, throw mantra twice, then sanctuary, then repeat. Beefy grace-nuke available on demand. It's fine to sub in sanctuary for either the soothe or the guard, except on the second mantra turn, which would cause a forced move/pass unless someone is low enough to grace. Perhaps use a confessor. Might as well decurse with your mantra spamtra.



Consider how advantaged your healers are when their enemy can't take every turn and the turns they do take are at 50% efficiency.



If you manage to master Junia's full kit, plus sepsis and deathless, it should be extremely difficult for anyone to die.

[Guzu]

Good breakdown and some solid advice.

There are some points in the second half of your post I'd disagree on:
Mantra isn't really worth using on any of Vestal's paths or Wanderer. It requires 3 actions, a mastery point and it doesn't do enough even under these circumstances.

It's somewhat weird that on one hand you mention killing 2 enemies asap but then proceed to lay down a 5-6 turn rotation for Vestal. If you can recover you should but that's not always the case.

With the mentioned comp of VES-RUN-FLG-MAA which has 3 healers and 2 taunters you don't need to play this defensively on your Vestal. It's also not a good comp for a Vestal because you have 2 dotters and 0 characters with high enough base damage to make CoL good. You can play a Wanderer Vestal and just spam Judgement but then every other rank 4 character would be better than her for this comp (Occ/PD/GR). A Warlock would actually fit well in this comp, providing more Combo and better r3/r4 reach and he'd be very safe.

Bolster is by far the superior stress heal and should be mastered before Sanctuary. Yes you can jiggle around trying to precisely keep Flags stress <4 under every circumstance but you are sacrificing a ton of action efficiency and 2 mastery points you won't be using at the mountain. Just master Bolster, play as usual and equip base Endure for the fights where you can squeeze extra recovery. There are enough ways to reduce stress from 4 to 3 without spending precious mastery points.

[RopeDrink]

I hate to say 'welcome back' and immediately admit to skipping chunks of the post, but you can trust me to be blunt and honest about it.

Regarding VES - I almost exclusively run soothing guard (Sanc), party regen (Comfort), token/stealth melt (Illumination), and bread+butter of choice. If playing range, you can dedicate the HoLight slot to something else -- be it Grace, Consecration, or whatever suits the team. If I suspect a boss fight won't need token-melting (eg. Denial), grab a consecration (damage or defence and slap it on whoever is appropriate before all the AoE blasts kick in).

Seeing as I almost always play Confessor, you can say hello to planned Weak/Vulns to improve other people's damage, reduce predictable intake, or simply dedicate spare Conviction towards DPS. Given you will receive a token every turn, it's easy to plan for - and trinkets like Icon + Smoldering have good synergy - given Comfort now allows more freedom for her to spam DPS instead of needing meatier heals.

I see many people grossly underappreciating 3p3 regen on the entire party - topping up the team or nullifying DoTs while you do whatever else you wish - and with absolutely no threshold. Pop that brainless junk and let it restore intake before, during, or after pushing for the win condition - and if you're not comfortable with that, you have two alternatives to consider. Coupled with Guard - it's not much different from DD1. The meta is to win quickly and efficiently, but when you suffer inevitable intake, Vestal can get you through it in numerous ways.

I greatly enjoy DD2's spin on OCC, and having a no-limit RNG backup heal is very handy indeed, but so long as the 0-heal-memes and sporadic low-rolls reign supreme, I simply cannot trust him beyond pushing for quicker fights and having a serviceable emergency topup.

FLA right now is the undisputed king. Slap some stress-res on him, and voila, you can potentially heal 3-pips per round at no cost (down to 0), alongside obnoxiously good healing, self-healing and protective guard as a DoT spreading beefcake. Lend him a bit of support (eg. VES, CRU) and all you have to worry about is plan how you wish to deal damage.