Better healing for Reina?

[Hermit Trismegistus]

I've played Reina on normal difficulty before and didn't notice so much, but playing on God Slayer really drives home the difference between Wyatt and Reina's healing options. Wyatt starts with two outright healing spells (three if you count the drain from his air+dark soul) and can take advantage of dark alignment for life/spell leech as soon as he get related stats high enough.

Reina, by contrast, has only one healing spell, and because her starting souls are neutral she can't even go dark until almost halfway through the game. The only other option seems to be to fight the Yeti and Raven ASAP (to find the weaponsmiths and get the totem material, respectively), then upgrade her totem to get more healing.

I guess it also comes down to skills, too. It was easy to turn Wyatt nearly immortal with his bleeding heal and spell leech skills, but I don't really know how to build Reina's skill trees for healing synergy like that. Suggestions?

[Dust]

I've gotten reina up to a huge increase of regen MP wise easier than HP wise. That said, it will take INT build with light magic focus for HP regen of a higher type. Though Healing Builds don't concur with my strategies, i'd ask the others around this forum for some type of advice regarding the issue.

[ayy_lmao]

If you're doing an Agi or even Luck build, you can pick up the Bloodletter's Crest in Ishk, which gives crits 5% life leech in return for -10 armor/resist. If you want to boost Refresh you can upgrade the Guardian soul from the magic skill tree, and there's a skill from the middle tree that boosts all healing by something like 30%. Since Reina starts with Faolan, it's a lot easier for her to just spam spells, as DustSky said. Additionally, if you invest in skills that boost the chance and damage of Reckoning, you should take the 3rd or 4th tier skill in the middle tree (Zeal?) that heals you when you afflict Reckoning. The totem is pretty nice too, I used it on my first Godslayer run on a Luck build and hardly ever ran out of health.

[myhr2]

The thing is, Reina is called an "advance character". And she does require a little bit more planning and skill than Wyatt.

The most important thing, in my eyes, is that Reina gets Faolan really early, meaning she has MP regen right at the beginning. In that regard, Reina has superior healing capacity out of combat. But it also means she can cast powerfull spells that prevent damage more often, like Aegis or Golden Raid. As you said, with Reina, it's best to avoid the damage than healing it.

If you really want early and powerfull healing, then your options are pretty limited : go Int and grab Divine Will to up your Soul of the Gardian to level 2.

[BoswerLK]

just get level 2 refresh. it's 2 points for fast casting burst heals and an amazing attack speed boost. zeal in her defense tree is nice too, but takes more points and pigeon holes you into using god hand

the advance character thing is a sham. reina is much easier to play than wyatt. refresh is a much faster heal than both of wyatt's, she has a lot more mp to waste by getting faolan so early, and her starting finisher charges a lot faster than wyatts, for even more effective hp/mp. and that doesn't even get into her infinite invul dashes from golden raid, cc removal from aegis, starting with a low mp cost weapon buff, starting with an accessory, not needing to upgrade her weapon, or that most of her combos are much easier to execute

[myhr2]

Yes, Boswer, but all those points require at least some knowledge of the game. When you start, Wyatt has more reach, hits harder, can take more hits, his combos are more straight-forward and "visual", his synergies are more obvious, his starting magics are easier to use (not more effective, mind you)

Crazyhermit is not the first person that asks for some advice regarding Reina.

Granted, she's not THAT difficult to play, but her options are less obvious.

[BoswerLK]

reach doesn't really factor in in a game without touch damage, where every attack lunges you forward so you're glued to the target anyways. and with god hand, reina hits much harder than wyatt until later in the game

dunno, I've always struggled a lot more with wyatt when I first started. not very many boss attacks are blockable, and purgatory has awful mobility while attacking, and takes forever to recover from attack animations...which really limited dodging to just using up SC or knowing the boss pattern very well to stop way before they start an attack animation. reina always had the option to dive kick away, or cancel into golden raid/aegis if on the ground any time you see a boss so much as look at you funny

never found wyatt's combos straight forward at all. he always requires a different mix of lights and heavies to deal with each boss, with heavies being too slow to properly combo on many bosses, and of course, lights being able to be parried. ...reina can deal with almost the entire game just mashing heavy a lot


both my friends that played this game similarly struggled with wyatt, then found reina ezmode. ...one of them never even managed to beat the game with wyatt even on normal.............

[Hermit Trismegistus]

Thanks to everyone for some good advice. I've basically had to re-learn Reina's style, since I was using Wyatt for all the difficulty achievments, but I guess I wasn't thinking laterally. After some more practice, I feel like Wyatt is a more "rushing" type of character, just charge in swinging and breaking guards, take the hits, pop regen and keep going. Reina really is built more to move at a slower pace (at least at first), blocking and avoiding damage rather than running in and taking the lumps.

Originally posted by myhr2:

The most important thing, in my eyes, is that Reina gets Faolan really early, meaning she has MP regen right at the beginning. In that regard, Reina has superior healing capacity out of combat. But it also means she can cast powerfull spells that prevent damage more often, like Aegis or Golden Raid. As you said, with Reina, it's best to avoid the damage than healing it.

It's the "out of combat" part I had to adjust to; it's hard to sit still and wait for your healing sometimes in a game like this, especially in the frozen crypts. On the other hand, I had nearly forgotten what a breeze the abandoned gardens and the Raven are with Aegis :) I also got a lot of use out of Divine Decoy early on too. I haven't seen it mentioned in other threads, but it's a cheap, useful "fakeout" skill for harassing enemies, and the decoy is also nice for taking hits meant for you. I mostly stopped using it once I got the ice soul, since Ice Pillar does a better job blocking projectiles.

Golden Raid is still tricky for me though; I never know which side of an enemy I'll stop on, and even though some folks treat it like extra skill cancels, I swear I've gotten hit during the dash anyway.

[DangerMoth]

I dont even worry about healing as either character. Wyatt can go stealth and walk for a moment and unload some damage once hes out of cancels, and reina has her offensive shield spell which requires better timing, but you should rarely get hit once you get a bosses attacks down, and by quickly dodging you also get to get back to swinging much faster than if you run away/get hit.