I Wanna be a good healer

So i wanna be a good healer , I played DAOC for years and aways came back to my cleric and healer . so now im new to COH and the first thing i wanna say is that i love the fact that this game is nothing like DAOC or wow . theres so many ways to build and set up your toon and i love it ,but im a bit confused on how to make a good healer.IM leaning on a RAD/THERM cor but not sure if RAD/pain would be better? I also was wondering about MM i know they can heal but how well and i would think pet managment could get in the way of heal managment.

There are very few true "healer" builds in this game although many with excellent support. You want to build with some healing in mind but also mezzing, buffing, and debuffing.

The closest to a "healer" I've played is Ice Control/Thermal. It's very low damage, has somewhat unreliable mezzes, and relies on being able to heal-through damage being lobbied at the team. I consider it a fairly difficult build to fully leverage although it shines in situations other builds tend to struggle (e.g. against large numbers of bosses, because slows and knockdowns aren't affected by boss level mezz protection, and against enemies with defense because 2 AoEs disresgard ToHit rolls of any kind).

For your purposes, I might recommend Earth or Plant with Thermal or Empathy as a secondary. Keep in mind that neither set stays a "healer" forever--your other powers are often as important as your heals.

You're also probably going to be told by at least some people that healing is not very good. Do not believe this. While healing is not a trump card like it is in some games it is a very useful ability to bring along as long as you leverage it alongside your other powers instead of leaning on it by itself.

The short answer is that you don't (or at least not in the manner you mean). Unlike other MMOs CoX is not really balanced around healing but instead balanced around buffs and debuffs in general rather than heals. Additionally all of the ATs that can do buff/debuff have a second powerset which they are (in general) also expected to use rather than sitting around waiting for someone to need healing.

I'm assuming you posted this in the wrong forum and actually meant to post in the Corruptor forum but I'm actually going to talk about Buff/Debuff sets in general. There are 4 ATs that can take Buff/Debuff sets: Controllers, Defenders, Corruptors and Masterminds.

Controllers get Control Sets for their Primary and Buff/Debuff for their secondary. Their control sets allow them to protect the team (and deal damage) by locking down the enemies so they can't attack. Their damage is pretty poor at low levels but it does pick up quite a bit at higher levels.

Defenders get Buff/Debuff sets as their primary and have the most powerful buff/debuff powers of any AT, their secondary is Blast sets and they can do respectable damage with them.

Corruptors are the opposite of Defenders, they get more damage from their blast sets but pay for it with slightly weaker buffs/debuffs.

Masterminds get Pets for their primary set (and a few weak blasts). They do minimal damage directly but can use their squad of pets to deal a lot of damage. Due to the need to control pets they do have a higher learning curve than the other buff/debuff ATs.

Now if you specifically want to play a set with significant healing ability then Empathy, Thermal Radiation or Pain Domination is the way to go since those are the sets which have both an AoE heal and one or more single target heals. They generally aren't considered top tier sets but they are solid enough. The important thing to remember for all three sets is that the heals are the weakest powers in the set (which is why you get them early) as you level up (especially once you hit about level 30) the healing is less important than the other powers the set offers.

As for your other set there are a number of options depending on which AT you select. For Defenders and Corruptors Dark and Sonic are both popular Blast sets. Dark Blast provides to hit debuff capability with all attacks (and some limited control powers) which can be an effective way of further limiting the incoming damage. Sonic provides resistance debuffs with every attack which helps your team deal more damage (something that the sets listed above are weak on).

Wow fast replys and tons of info thanks everyone !!! O and yes i did post it in the wrong forum oops Noob . I guess after all my years of playing mmo's and useing the internet ,I never picked up the "read forum heading" skill

I think my first question is, if you're thinking of a Corruptor, what are you doing in the Controller forum? I'm going to assume you either confused the two "Co" names, or clicked one link too far up. (Oops, didn't notice your reply, or that anyone else brought it up. )

The second thing is, there is really no such thing as a "healer" in this game. You can heal, but you are not a healer. Every AT which is capable of healing has a second power set that is just as important for support of the team. This is the blasts of the Corruptor or Defender, the control powers of the Controller, or the pets of the Mastermind. In other games like WoW, the healer usually has some other kind of capability that is somewhat like this, like a cleric being able to fight in melee, but this is usually a secondary role. CoH ATs are more balanced, they are expected to both support and fight.

If you're looking for "pure" support, your best bet is probably a Controller. You will be able to heal and buff, and use your control powers to keep foes locked down. Your powers will deal some damage, but it's not your main role. This might be more like the traditional spell caster from other MMOs, that doesn't deal a lot of damage but has a lot of varied utility effects.

Both the Defender and the Corruptor are the mage/support hybrids that deal ranged damage and buff allies and debuff foes. The Corruptor has more of an offense orientation, but both are really very similar. Some Defenders can get very close to the "pure support" ideal, but you should never really ignore your blasts, even on a Force Field or Empathy Defender. Rad or Dark are good choices for these because of the way the blasts debuff your foes.

Finally, the Mastermind, as you said, has pets which take some management. Not just directing them, but healing and buffing them as well. For the most part, the pets work on their own, freeing you to use your Secondary, but that Secondary is also much weaker than any other AT. So you won't be "as good a healer" as if you went with Defender. Defender will always be the best since it is their Primary, then Corruptors and Controllers are pretty much tied, with Masterminds the weakest. OTOH, with an MM your allies will be (hopefully) taking less damage since your pets will be there to soak it.

The final point, as everyone else has said, is to watch out for the term "healer". There is no Power Set that specializes exclusively with healing, the powers of the Buff/Debuff power set, as you would guess from the name, is buffing and debuffing. Far more than you are used to from other MMOs. A power set like Radiation Emission will allow you to anchor toggle powers on your foes that will keep everyone around the anchor weak, dealing lower damage, missing most of the time, vulnerable to easier hits from your allies, and taking more damage when they are hit. Plus you will be able to slow your foes, speed up your allies, give your team faster End recovery and a damage boost, and speed up their recovery from holds. You will also be able to create a cloud of choking smoke, or a flash of electromagnetic energy which will stun everyone around you. If any of your allies die, you can raise them and turn them into a mutated engine of distruction, or just make the body explode in an atomic cloud of fallout.

Oh, and you can also heal, with Radiant Aura.

Even Empathy, which is the set that specializes with healing, has powers that makes a single ally more powerful, doing more damage and giving him great defense. You can also boost the regeneration and End recovery rate of all allies around you. You'll have perhaps the best ability to protect allies from mez effects. All that on top of three powers that heal allies and one for rez. Pain is similar, but you will be able to boost your own damage on top of that, and debuff foes with an anguishing cry that will make them take more damage.

So don't think of yourself as a healer. Even as Thermal or Pain you will have far more to do than that.

Being a good controller means you can be a mediocre healer, because you'll rarely need to do it.

Actually, there are folks who consider their characters to be pure "healers" and build that way . . . and they underperform what they could be if they built to use their powersets fully. Most are Empathy Defenders who take few of their blast powers. Most are not very good players.

One way to be a pretty good "healer" character is to go with Illusion/Empathy. The Control and other utility powers in Illusion will help make it easier to heal and buff your teammates. If a teammate is being attacked, you can distract one foe with Deceive or let Phantasm draw its attention, or distract a group of foes with Spectral Terror or Phantom Army. You get full invisibility in Superior Invis and a team buff in Group Invis. That will let you "sneak" in to heal up a teammate without drawing attention to yourself. Recall Friend lets you pull teammates out of trouble for healing, or if you are too late, a rez.

As Mental Maden said, being a good controller means you don't have to heal much. Illusion is a great control set that can contribute to any team. But if you really, really want to be a "healer," then Illusion/Empathy would be a good choice, especially if you DON'T skimp out on the Illusion powers.

The best "healers" rarely have to heal.

In our game, damage prevention is far and away better than damage recovery.

I just want to mention that heals aren't useless in this game. In well-built, high-level encounters with good tactics, they're pretty much never used. But in less-than-perfect conditions they can be quite handy... say, a not entirely well-built pick up team, or a decent team trying to take on tougher enemies than they really should, or especially the low levels when nobody's that great yet.

Heals aren't bad. It's just that buffs and debuffs are good. Really, really good. Good enough to negate the need for healing. But heals can help patch holes in an imperfect team. Even so, I still agree... even if you're healing, you're not a healer. You're a Defender, Controller, Corruptor, or Mastermind, who has other support powers, attacks, controls, and pets to worry about as well. Try to get the most out of both of your powersets and you should be fine.

Post lvl 32 and dark servant, dark miasma defenders can pump out the most green numbers in any given time.

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Originally Posted by Shadow Ravenwolf My favorite combo is Faceplant/DebtCap with the TeamWipe Ancillary

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Originally Posted by Dispari Yeah, I like Blasters too.

I think it's overshooting to say that healing is not useful. It is very, very effective for the first 20 levels or so, and less so later. But it never makes a full exit. Just because building an entire character around it is a mistake doesn't mean there aren't times when switching to a healing/buff mentality is a good idea for a specific encounter, or segment of an encounter.

Another way to put it is just because I don't think of myself as a "healer" doesn't mean I'm not watching teammates green bars on top of everything else that is going on. That's on my Thermals but also my Darks and Kins and whatever. Ignoring green bars, IMO, is no different than ignoring what enemies are doing, and to that extent "healer" is not a totally inaccurate description, as long you don't get lost in the trap of a "pure healer" who doesn't take advantage of the full reach of his or her abilities.

Proper way to make/play a healer:

Start with an empathy defender, secondary doesn't matter because you are a healer.

Take the heals obviously and tell people to stick close to you when fighting. The last thing you want to do is to run off to heal someone and put the rest of the team in danger. Remember, you are the healer, you are the star, teams can't function without you!

Take the rez asap, people will thank you for it. Make sure you take recall friend. When the fighting starts go hide in a safe place so you can start teleporting dead teammates to rez them, because you are a healer and getting in the thick of it is way too risky! Remember, you are the healer, you are the star, teams can't function without you!

The only exception to the above is if there is a tank on the team, then he gets your full attention, put him on follow and put healing aura on auto so he is constantly being healed. If a tank dies then the team is in trouble! In that case go back to the above procedure. Remember, you are the healer, you are the star, teams can't function without you!

Don't bother with fortitude or clear mind, you are a healer and can't be bothered to use those because you are busy healing! Or, if you got them already, always give them to the tanks and scrappers because they are more important than everyone else! Also, people should ask you for them politely before you give it out. Remember, you are the healer, you are the star, teams can't function without you!

Take regen and recovery aura though, one heals the green bar and the other heals the blue bar. People like both. Be sure to shout "GATHER FOR RA!" at least 3 times so that everyone gets the message and comes near you for it. And don't fire it off till everyone gets near you. Remember, you are the healer, you are the star, teams can't function without you!

Take adrenaline boost too, it heals both the blue and green bars but it only does it to one person so it's not as good. Chances are you'll never use it because you are busy healing with your other powers, but it looks good on the character info screen.

Some extra dedicated healers take the medicine pool for an additional heal and a second rez, so they can be twice the healer they can be. This is commendable because there will be situations where a second rez and another heal will come in handy. You don't want to fail as a healer so you should take them. Remember, you are the healer, you are the star, teams can't function without you!

Okay, seeing the H-word makes me feel a bit...



Now, there are more effective ways to deal with damage than healing.

In order of preference:

1. Buffs/Debuffs and Damage. Kill the enemy first. Dead enemies do no damage.
2. Buffs/Debuffs and Defense. With enough defense, the attack misses and just does no damage.
3. Buffs/Debuffs and Resistance. While you still may get hit, increasing resistance lowers the overall amount of damage actually taken. Sometimes reducing it to a level so trivial the hero's native regeneration barely registers it as a blip.
4. Heal it up afterwards. The least desirable option. This means you've essentially muffed three superior methods of mitigating damage. Sure, you healed the damage afterward. That's like taping cardboard over a broken car window. It also effectively limits the range of your teammates if they can't leave your general presence without croaking.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Which of these would you rather be?

1. A good healer.
2. An effective team participant whose contributions include, but are not limited to, healing.

If you want to be the first, you have picked the wrong game! People who "just heal" are not a good contribution to most teams. I mean, they may be better than nothing, but they are nothing like as useful as, say, people who contribute in a variety of ways.

If you want to be a pure healer, and you're dead set on doing it in CoH, pick a Defender, and take one of the sets with a couple of heals, and resign yourself to using about three of your twenty-four power picks.

If you want to be a powerful and effective character who can heal among other things, then you can do fine with any of defender, controller, corruptor, or mastermind. Of these, defender and corruptor will typically be the best at the buff/debuff sets, but controllers and masterminds are also useful.

Basically, if you want the kind of "Wow, I'm Helping" feeling that you would get in WoW from playing, say, a pretty much pure healer, then you probably want one of the classes with some healing options, but you will find that the most helpful things to do are very often nothing to do with healing. Instead, focus on preventing damage:

* Defense shields (for allies) and to-hit/recharge debuffs (for enemies) mean fewer successful attacks on your teammates.
* Mezzes on enemies mean fewer attacks on your teammates.
* Mez resistance and protection for your allies mean your allies are out of the fight less.
* Resistance shields (for allies) and damage debuffs (for enemies) mean that successful attacks on your allies do less damage.
* The counterparts to all of the above mean your allies can kill enemies faster, also meaning fewer successful attacks.

In Another MMO, I used to play "healers". You know what one of the most valuable things I did was? Watch for interruptible enemy spells, and interrupt them. Quick pop quiz: What is a more effective heal?

1. Preventing an enemy spell which, if it hits, will do 29,000 points of damage to your tank, using a fraction of a percent of your available mana.
2. Waiting until after that spell lands, then healing 17,000 points of damage with your big expensive slow heal, using about 10% of your available mana.

CoH has similar mechanics going. If you can prevent attacks from being made in the first place, you are going to have much greater efficiency. If you have -regen debuffs you can land on enemies, that can effectively do more damage than pretty much any single attack, or even any couple of attacks. I once helped a group defeat a Giant Monster. How? I came in and dropped a single buff/debuff power -- "poison gas trap". What's it do? Eliminates enemy regeneration. They'd been fighting the boss monster in question for about three minutes when I came in, and he was at about 98% health. They got him to zero within about a minute once he stopped healing.

If you learn to do this well, you will be awesome, and if the game you came from had mechanics at all similar to the ones from World of Internet Dragons, you will probably find that buff/debuff sets complete the experience and make it much better.

The best heals are no heals at all

Seriously though you may want to do more of a support character who isn't pain domination or empathy. I suggest Force Field. There the best Defense Buffs in the game. Plus once you hit lvl 41 you can take your Mastery Power. With this on a Force Field defender take a power called Power Build Up. It makes your already great buffs even greater. There for your teammates aren't needing heals because there deflecting nearly everything, and fore those dicey situations you can take a Pool Power called medicine, this gives you some mediocre healing skills.

At the risk of posting too much in this thread, and doing it too hot head-edly, I don't know what it is about this topic that always makes the conversation lose all bearings of common reason. It's like we know there's a group of people who are very-pro healing and feel only an equally extreme opposite reaction can counterbalance that fervor.

Frankly, the "healing sucks" crowd is just as bad, if not worse, than the "pure healers." If you play Empathy, Thermal, or Pain, you should take your single target heal. Because you will use it, unless you play only against enemies that are too easy. Taking the tier 3 "super heal" is indeed optional, but mainly because the one you get before it is already very good and recharges quickly.

Meanwhile, both Empathy and Pain should take the heal over time/regen power/whatever because restoring HP/healing/keeping bars full/whatever, while not the be all and end all of the game, is still an effective tactic. The challenge is doing it on top of your other activities, not chucking healing out altogether; doing that just brings us back to the Fail-Kins who come to the boards to boast of their inability to manage Speed Boost with other tasks, bringing them to the conclusion that the best tactic is to just ignore it.

There are the following mitigation walls in this game, in order of importance:

1. Defense/Enemy ToHit: Did the enemy hit? Enemies can reach 5% chance to hit in this game pretty commonly, and this is the main form of mitigation. You can reach that 5% using ToHit debuffs and Defense buffs.

2. Resistance/HP/Enemy Damage: How hard did the enemy hit? Resistance, -Damage debuffs and Max HP determine how far down your HP bar goes when you're hit.

3. Healing/Regen: Recovering from a hit. HP bar spiked down? Healing is the answer. HP bar went down a bit? No need to waste casting time on heals when regeneration can keep up with the damage.

4. Resurrection: Sometimes you will go down, and the only way out will be to resurrect. Resurrection powers allow you to resurrect with full HP/End and/or other bonuses, without the disadvantages of the Awaken inspiration(self-mez, low HP, no end).

There's also Damage, as you know dead enemies can't fight. However this really depends on the pace of your team. Some teams will have enemies around them constantly so this doesn't account for mitigation as much. This is more about downtime as mitigation.

And since this is the controller forum, I have to say that an enemy might have a 5% chance to hit, might have his damage mitigated by 90%, but he will still do damage. Controls will make sure he has no chance to do anything.