Do you always need a healer?

[someguy216]

It seems from my experiece the a healer is always essetial and as a result I pretty much always use vestal in my team comp, which in turn makes the game very repititive and boring.
I'd love to experiment with diffrent comps but ones without either vestal or occultist seem to fail badly on non novice level missions.

So is it just me or are there some team comps that don't 100% require an occulist or vestal to actually survive? Please let me know because I'm sick of training vestals and occultist doesn't really do the healing job to well, so I usally end up picking vestals instead.

[Sir Francis]

Pretty much, like in any other team RPG.
You can use a arbalest as a healer or / and you can make teams with lots of self heals, many possibilities.
The alternatives are always harder, having a dedicated healer is the save way to play but you dont have to :P You need the real management skill but i guess you dont have that yet. Keep it up^^
Also occultist is clearly superior if used correctly bc of both synergies and healing potential.
i also tend to find playing with a vestal pretty boring.

[Comrade243]

I've managed a few Medium-sized dungeons without a dedicated healer, although it usually invovled classes that had self-heals (Hound Master, Leper, Hellion, etc.). It's possible.

[Black Hammer]

Healing in some form is usually required. However, that can also come in the form of several self-heals bolstered by careful use of camp skills and food, or even minor augmentation from a "weak" healer like a Plague Doctor, Arbalest, Crusader, or even Antiquarian to top people off. Houndmaster is the only character who combines a self-heal with a guard skill, if I recall, making him sort of self-sustaining.

Obviously Vestal and Occultist both heal better than anything else while bringing plenty of other useful skills to the table. Occultist has tentacle rain, marking, some other debuffs, and of course a no-ambush after camp skill. Vestal has the only AoE heal, several debuffs including stun that also raise torch level, and of course some great camping skills.

[Captain Keen]

It is by no means impossible to forego a healer. By bringing more damage dealers, obviously you clean up fights faster. But then again, when that doesn't work for some reason - ie you get surprised - that's a bad thing.

[Polyester™]

Bringing a healer is only neccicary if you don't want someone to die.

[timmy]

It's definitely possible. I've had huge successes with a triple HM team and any number of 4th heroes (PD, Arb, Jes, MAA, Lep). If you don't have a healer, make sure to have lots of minor heals (think Arb, PD, or Crus) and self-heals (HM, Lep, Hell).

[Black Hammer]

Also, making canny use of +HP trinkets to maximize the effectiveness of food as healing can make a surprising difference.

[Garbage Factory]

It's usually good to have someone who can heal others on your team, but a crusader or arbalest can handle it just fine once you've learned how to properly control fights. A lot of the time I can use a PD or ANT to cover healing. It helps to learn how to stall fights, just in case something goes wrong.

[zaeroid]

To me, healers are only mandatory in Champion lvl dungeons.

[HeavenlyBrush]

I run PD-PD-damage dealer-Helion a lot in cove and ruins and it works really well, with crusader in ruins and bounty hunter in the cove. I get a truckload of return on my blights with all the stunning since second PD is free to just stack it on everything.

I don't think you need dedicated healer at all, depending on your composition and synergies, healing with just food and tactical camping seems to be very much viable.

[3 Ducks In a Man Suit]

I've goten by with 2 Arbalests and extra food before. It depends on the mission and size of the dungeon.

[Arreghas]

Originally posted by dixon sider:

you should really only heal when there are only a couple enemies left, or someone is on deaths door. letting your teammates get to low health, damaging the larger groups with your healer, and then healing with food or camping is an ENORMOUS benefit. stun locking the last enemy with a dot ticking is a great time to throw in a few heals. but dont heal with a group of 4 enemies there unless your on deaths door, or have an enormous dot on someone.

I will respectfully disagree with this part.

I always run my Vestal with 2 +heal trinkets so that her party heal at level 6 is 5-7 which is amazing to replenish health pools, and I will usually start the healing on the first turn merely to reduce the odds of a bad focus or an untimely crit that brings you to death's door (and because Vestal is often among the last to play). It is so frustrating to risk losing a character, especially at high levels, that I feel it is a good thing to start outhealing an enemy encounter's damage ASAP so that by the end of the batlle you are in a good position to start the next one. It also saves me some food on longer runs.

I had my heroes smacked from 100 to 0 % health in one crit from a Treebranch Smackdown and I now heal every time the whole party is hurt or someone got beat up bad. Of course, if you stack defensive stats like PROT and DODGE then this may be different.

[RopeDrink]

The short answer is no, you don't always need one.

The most common (re. safest) choice is to bypass that and go with a dedicated healer.

A solid alternative is to opt for self-sustaining heroes who can manage themselves without relying on a dedicated healer. An example of this would be a comp such as Arb>HM>Hel>Leper/Crusader. The Arb can perform off-heals if required, but for the most part, your HM / Leper can self-heal themselves (which can also be complimented by the Arbs +Healing buff from bandage in desperate situations, or +Healing received trinkets if you really want to take it up a notch), or even use Guard to pump damage into a single target to reduce need for mass-heals. Crusader can also off-heal if you'd rather a bit more versatility compared to self-heals-only. While the Hel's own heal won't actually be all that noticeable until levelled up and/or with a trinket or healing buff, it is a self-cleanse and can get her off deaths door without interference. It can be quite decent with the likes of the blue coral +SelfHeal trinket, though obviously that's not as optimal compared to slapping on a DPS focused trinket. Comps like these may be a bit riskier compared to dedicated healer comps, but they function just fine.

The lesser played but somewhat viable alternatives are high dodge or high prot/guard comps and/or those that can survive using food and camping buffs alone. Jesters, Guards (MMA/HM/Antiq's spring to mind here).

As far as I'm concerned, whenever I'm in "I want to 100% complete X", I will always bring a dedicated healer. The safety is invaluable -- but also not a guarantee. I'd recommend you just experiment while playing. Do short runs with dedicated Arbs + a few self-healers and see for yourself. It's not hard to guage whether you'd be comfortable taking them into longer/harder areas.

[Red Bat]

No. I've done several dungeon runs without one. Without a healer though you want fairly high speed and damage on your whole party. It's been a while since I last played, but if I recall correctly the Vestal's heals eventually start to trail behind a bit later on anyway.

You generally want at least a tiny heal just to get people out of death's door. Even something like Battlefield Medicine is OK for this. This game usually isn't too kind to strategies that rely on a lot of healing, but it's also pretty unkind to setups that don't have any, especially given how crits work in this game.

For the record, my most commonly used healer for my last playthrough (admittedly a while back) was Crusader. Then again I had about 6 Crusaders. So that might have been a huge factor.

[Raven]

Originally posted by someguy216:

It seems from my experiece the a healer is always essetial and as a result I pretty much always use vestal in my team comp, which in turn makes the game very repititive and boring.
I'd love to experiment with diffrent comps but ones without either vestal or occultist seem to fail badly on non novice level missions.

So is it just me or are there some team comps that don't 100% require an occulist or vestal to actually survive? Please let me know because I'm sick of training vestals and occultist doesn't really do the healing job to well, so I usally end up picking vestals instead.

Technically nooooo? I recently did a Long Veteran run in the Warrens with no healer, so it's definitely possible. (Comp: 2 Arbalests, 1 Crusader, 1 Hellion) I just REALLY REALLY REALLY recommend having a Vestal/Occultist always ready for EVERY difficulty (at least 1 in lvls 0-2, 3-4, and 5-6).

If you're having problems with Occultists/Vestals, I'd recommend looking for some +Healing% trinkets so their heals are actually worth something.

My favorite Vestal setup: Judgement (self-heal and a bit of damage), Illumination (bit of damage, -20+ Dodge, +Torch), Divine Grace (obviously), and Divine Comfort (party heal, anti-Death's Door).

My favorite Occultist setup: Abyssal Artillery, Wyrd Reconstruction, a Hex (usually Vulnerability), and either Daemon's Pull (for those pesky stressers) or a second Hex.