How to build a healer

[Lampros]

I've tried to read through various build threads, but there doesn't seem to be any that specifically address this point in detail.

In particular, am I supposed to build a "pure" healer or buffer or a hybrid that can do some damage? And do I rely on one healer or bring a second at least part-timer for emergencies?

[⭕TheSodaman]

Hi Lampros,

I can't say I'm far into the game, so I'm still learning as I go along also. I've been finding that one dedicated healer has not been cutting it for the way I've been playing. At least for this first playthrough, I recommend at least one dedicated healer.

I suspect there's ways to game the system, overpower certain encounters, and certain class combinations / tactics that may allow you to get away with one healer or even no healers. At this time, I'm pushing forward with at least one unit with the Mender kit and at least a second unit who can provide some backup in case the healer goes down.

Things I'm kicking around at the moment:

A high Speed unit such as a Scoundrel / Ranger / etc that has the Peddler passive that doubles item potency. Their main job would be to deal physical damage. The hope is that with their high turn speed, they may be in a position to use an item to do emergency healing or status removal to keep the battle flowing in our favor. Their secondary job might be to run someplace safe and revive the healer if the healer unexpectedly dies OR just run up to someone that is low on HP and smash a potion in their face.

An Alchemystic with reduced MP cost passive from Sorcerer and the start battle with 15 MP passive from I-forget-which-class. The hope here is that between the Alchemystic's Side Effects passive that restores HP when applying a buff, the Mass Renew that is like a group regen, but most importantly for this, the Mass Haste as early on in the battle as I can get it, so that my team is getting more turns overall.

A Plague Doctor with double cast passive from Druid and Combat Casting from Wizard. Still working on this, but the hope is to apply Slow to the enemy, keep my team cleared off negative buffs, sneak in some damage with Poisons, and heal a wider spread.

Playing around with keeping a high Defense unit with the Knight / Chivalry skillset to reapply Protect on my primary healer due to the beating my healer took in the last map. The healer ended up having to heal themselves and was no longer in a position to aid two of my other units that sustained injuries.

As for the Mender themself, I'm pursuing Lu Bu the Sorcerer's passive to reduce the MP cost of spells at a minimum. I'd like the Double Cast from Druid to ideally like to be able to chain Heal 2 spells together round after round, but may end up borrow Heal Burst from Plague Doctor without worrying about healing the enemy (so Combat Caster from Wizard). I'm keeping an eye out for a passive that prevents Mute / Sleep / Berserk / Charm, etc. If not a passive, then an accessory, lest I work Barrier into my tactics (and my brain muscle parts are not handling that very well right now).

In terms of Mender gear, I'm pushing a staff, undecided on which armor, and then the rest are duplicate MND accessories until I see other options that blend better with what I'm trying to do.

We shall see.

Edit: As much as it pains me to keep pressing forward with an Injury, I will typically try to slog through a battle that feels like a losing battle and might clear the scenario, but with 1+ injured folks on the bench. Lately, this tends to be the battles where I don't have access to story characters that I invested in (and now I'm reassigning the important roles to non-story characters so I'm not in that position again).

[Mechalibur]

Here are a few healer builds I like:

Mender/Alchemystic with Economy and Side Effects. With Mender's mana font (make sure to equip boots) and economy, you'll end up with ridiculous amounts of MP. Use buffs when no one needs healing, and use Revive II to bring back your units at full hp if they fall. Menders aren't super tanky, so you might want a Phoenix Band.

Anatomist/Plague Doctor with Smart Casting and Economy. Basically use heal burst every turn for massive aoe healing.

Princess/Mender with Mind Expert and Economy. This build has a good mix of damage and healing, especially with Godsleg equipped. An engineer with energizer can really help if you want to go crazy with double cast.

Generally for healers, I like Haste as a reaction, but Evade X and Total Shield are also decent options.

[Toxic Spammer]

This game seems to be really flexible to me, so I think you can experiment a ton and many things would work, if you've played the arena you would find that the unconventional classes used there are really effective

As many people know mender plus alchemistic is probably the best pure healer

I use a lich/mender you never have to worry about not having mp, with economy and dual casting, seems to be working fine

[Conan The Librarian]

Lampros-

The above posters have some good advice for you, and I wanted to remind you of what I had put in a response to one of your other threads:

Originally posted by Conan The Librarian:

For some ideas on how to build a "solid base" of abilities for your troops, see this:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/699170/discussions/0/1642038749326249240/#c1642038749326501005

Specifically:

Originally posted by Conan The Librarian:

While I see what you mean, that's where "experiment and see what works best for you" comes in.

Mender with [Heal I] [Panacea II] [Mass Heal I] [Mana Font] and perhaps [Blessed One] will give that hero a solid base for "I can heal"--regardless of what other mage stuff you learn later on. (Bonus points for also grabbing the counter of [Renew] for extra survivability)

So yes, they’re right: it’s quite flexible. To have an effective healer, you just need a mage type unit with high magic stat. This means that you don’t need “dedicates healers” because your best damage mages are also your best healers. That’s it. Just have some healing moves (like Mender or Druid or Princess etc) on your mage and you’re good to go.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by TheSodaman:

I can't say I'm far into the game, so I'm still learning as I go along also. I've been finding that one dedicated healer has not been cutting it for the way I've been playing.

Same here. I take 2 healers for now - and that also seem to let them go hybrid, whereas a single healer would have to be full-time. Perhaps this will change once I get over-powered end-game characters finished.

Originally posted by Mechalibur:

Here are a few healer builds I like:

Mender/Alchemystic with Economy and Side Effects. With Mender's mana font (make sure to equip boots) and economy, you'll end up with ridiculous amounts of MP. Use buffs when no one needs healing, and use Revive II to bring back your units at full hp if they fall. Menders aren't super tanky, so you might want a Phoenix Band.

Anatomist/Plague Doctor with Smart Casting and Economy. Basically use heal burst every turn for massive aoe healing.

Princess/Mender with Mind Expert and Economy. This build has a good mix of damage and healing, especially with Godsleg equipped. An engineer with energizer can really help if you want to go crazy with double cast.

Generally for healers, I like Haste as a reaction, but Evade X and Total Shield are also decent options.

Do you use 1 or 2? Also, how does the Druid figure in this ranking?

Originally posted by The Mole:

This game seems to be really flexible to me, so I think you can experiment a ton and many things would work, if you've played the arena you would find that the unconventional classes used there are really effective

As many people know mender plus alchemistic is probably the best pure healer

I use a lich/mender you never have to worry about not having mp, with economy and dual casting, seems to be working fine

Agreed - the game has a bewildering variety of options!

Also, again, how do you rate the Druid?

Originally posted by Conan The Librarian:

So yes, they’re right: it’s quite flexible. To have an effective healer, you just need a mage type unit with high magic stat. This means that you don’t need “dedicates healers” because your best damage mages are also your best healers. That’s it. Just have some healing moves (like Mender or Druid or Princess etc) on your mage and you’re good to go.

I am leaning in this direction now, too - albeit I am using 2 healers. Do you use 1 or 2?

[Conan The Librarian]

On a general basis, I tend to use two mages each battle. They can both damage and heal. Of course, I have heard of others who just use one “super healer”, and find that sufficient. All depends on how things go for you.

My opinion is biased, but I love druids. They have healing / damage / debuff / cleansing / dispelling / buffing. Very versatile skillset which you can put as your secondary on any mage.

[Toxic Spammer]

Druid is really useful, I had one of my characters with Druid abilities as I leveled up all the other classes on him

For your mages you're going to want dual cast and economy on them so you'll want to master the Druid and sorcerer for both of them

You might not need to do this but it seems those are the optimal abilities for mages, maybe late game you might discover a new class with a potent ability, but in general you want dual cast and economy

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Conan The Librarian:

On a general basis, I tend to use two mages each battle. They can both damage and heal. Of course, I have heard of others who just use one “super healer”, and find that sufficient. All depends on how things go for you.

My opinion is biased, but I love druids. They have healing / damage / debuff / cleansing / dispelling / buffing. Very versatile skillset which you can put as your secondary on any mage.

Sounds good; that roughly describes my plan - though I may have 1 pure healer and 1 hybrid.

I just started grinding Druids; so I will experiment with them.

Originally posted by The Mole:

Druid is really useful, I had one of my characters with Druid abilities as I leveled up all the other classes on him

For your mages you're going to want dual cast and economy on them so you'll want to master the Druid and sorcerer for both of them

You might not need to do this but it seems those are the optimal abilities for mages, maybe late game you might discover a new class with a potent ability, but in general you want dual cast and economy

What about Smart Casting? That's not an end-game passive?

[Toxic Spammer]

Originally posted by Lampros:

Originally posted by Conan The Librarian:

On a general basis, I tend to use two mages each battle. They can both damage and heal. Of course, I have heard of others who just use one “super healer”, and find that sufficient. All depends on how things go for you.

My opinion is biased, but I love druids. They have healing / damage / debuff / cleansing / dispelling / buffing. Very versatile skillset which you can put as your secondary on any mage.

Sounds good; that roughly describes my plan - though I may have 1 pure healer and 1 hybrid.

I just started grinding Druids; so I will experiment with them.

Originally posted by The Mole:

Druid is really useful, I had one of my characters with Druid abilities as I leveled up all the other classes on him

For your mages you're going to want dual cast and economy on them so you'll want to master the Druid and sorcerer for both of them

You might not need to do this but it seems those are the optimal abilities for mages, maybe late game you might discover a new class with a potent ability, but in general you want dual cast and economy

What about Smart Casting? That's not an end-game passive?

In general you might not want smart casting because if you have resistances over 150 those can heal you, so you might want to target your own characters with fire, or an element of your choice to heal them, in general it's less useful than getting more casts per turn, especially with buffing or debuffing mages

[Lampros]

Originally posted by The Mole:

In general you might not want smart casting because if you have resistances over 150 those can heal you, so you might want to target your own characters with fire, or an element of your choice to heal them, in general it's less useful than getting more casts per turn, especially with buffing or debuffing mages

Thanks for the lucid explanation. In particular, I did not know that resists of 150 can heal you! Holy cow. That completely changes how I might approach this indeed.

Speaking of which: What resists poison? I got 1 poison resist ring on each character, but it seems to do nothing? Do you actually need 2 of them on each character to get effective poison resists?

Finally, I noticed that you can equip 2 of the same accessories that doesn't make much sense - e.g. gloves. Is there a point to this - or is it a bug/oversight?

[Toxic Spammer]

Originally posted by Lampros:

Originally posted by The Mole:

In general you might not want smart casting because if you have resistances over 150 those can heal you, so you might want to target your own characters with fire, or an element of your choice to heal them, in general it's less useful than getting more casts per turn, especially with buffing or debuffing mages

Thanks for the lucid explanation. In particular, I did not know that resists of 150 can heal you! Holy cow. That completely changes how I might approach this indeed.

Speaking of which: What resists poison? I got 1 poison resist ring on each character, but it seems to do nothing? Do you actually need 2 of them on each character to get effective poison resists?

Finally, I noticed that you can equip 2 of the same accessories that doesn't make much sense - e.g. gloves. Is there a point to this - or is it a bug/oversight?

You can equip more than one set of gloves because it's more fun I assume, and I'm OK with that, who's to stop you in the real world for wearing 5 sets of gloves on your hands

I never had a problem with poison once I used rings for it, later in the game you'll find more equipment with poison resist, I assume once you get resistant to an effect that means you won't get it, because I never experienced it

On the other hand elemental resistances have a number associated with them to determine damage

[Conan The Librarian]

Indeed, the poison resist ring makes the wearer IMMUNE to poison. Poison is merely a status effect, not one of the 6 elements in the game. You therefore only need ONE poison ring to be immune to poison, not two lol.

Also, agreed, [Smart Casting] has its uses, but is oftentimes outclassed by other passives later on in the game unless you have a very specific strategy which utilizes [Smart Casting].

As mentioned in the pinned FAQ:

Why can my character equip multiple pairs of boots, is this a bug? This is NOT a bug! When it comes to equipment, 6 Eyes has purposefully kept things very flexible for your character's loadout. With your 6 equipment slots, there are a few limitations: 1. Only one Headgear and Chestpiece can be on at a time. 2. Your heroes only have two hands, so they can have a 2-H weapon, a 1-H weapon and a shield (provided that hero has the ability to equip a shield), or (with special passive) can dual wield two 1-H weapons. Also be aware that the 6 item limitation per character is not effected by the size of the item; as in, a 2-H weapon still only takes up one item slot.

The point to having multiple of the same accessory is to get more of its stats. Obviously, having multiple instances of a debuff resistance (like mentioned about the poison ring) won't make a difference, but perhaps you like the stats of certain boots or gloves and want more of them. It essentially just adds flexibility to your loadouts.

[Mechalibur]

Small correction, you only need over 100 resistance to get healed by that damage type, not 150. Basically you heal 1% of the normal damage per point of resistance over 100, to a maximum of healing the full damage at 200 resistance (anything past 200 is wasted).

[Mechalibur]

Originally posted by Lampros:

Do you use 1 or 2? Also, how does the Druid figure in this ranking?

Typically I only use one healer, but 2 is fine in most fights. Having 2 can fall apart on Elite difficulty mode when you're getting attacked by 9-10 enemies - at that point I usually just rely on my reviver.

Druid is fine, but it's not a healer on its own since it only has the standard heal spell. They're more of an off-healer when the need arises.

[Conan The Librarian]

Originally posted by Mechalibur:

Originally posted by Lampros:

Do you use 1 or 2? Also, how does the Druid figure in this ranking?

Typically I only use one healer, but 2 is fine in most fights. Having 2 can fall apart on Elite difficulty mode when you're getting attacked by 9-10 enemies - at that point I usually just rely on my reviver.

Druid is fine, but it's not a healer on its own since it only has the standard heal spell. They're more of an off-healer when the need arises.

Which to be fair, Mechalibur, I disagree with: [Doublecasting] [HealI] is sufficient for 90% of my healing needs. I hardly ever use [Mass Heal] or [Heal II] really--[Heal I] is perfectly valid, and I use Druids as my main healers.