The White Mage - the healic guide | The Wizards Community

#2 May 04, 2010 1:51:17

Joined Feb 2006

3178 Posts

Healic Features and Known Clichès

Fortunately i waited for may errata to write this guide, so we can focus entirely on the class features i prefer for the healic: Control.

Most people think, in fact, that the pacifist healer brings only healing to the battlefield and that the may 2010 nerf nearly destroyed the build viability. This is in my opinion wrong, because the most interesting features were not touched from the nerf and can now be rediscovered inside the "pile of healing" that hid them.

Let's divide the class in the section LDB created for his warlord handbook and that are commonly used in most handbooks:

I use the standard colours to rank the ability of the class:
Gold: Prepare to be considered more than human (mandatory choice)
Sky blue: you are an inspiration for the masses (5/5)
Blue: you are a staple of your church (4/5)
Black: you prayers are weak but your deities listened to you (3/5)
Violet: you will have to atone for the violet sins sometimes (2/5)
Red: if you choose many red options, you have to pray often for mercy (1/5)

Healing: this is the staple of the build, as we know. A level 1 pacifist cleric using healing word heals little more than a 16th level warlord. Your healing word at first level is so powerful that you should use it only when your ally is seriously bloodied. This is a constant for all levels. Your astral seal helps with little damage and then you drop your 2-3 bombs during the encounter healing excess damage. This is without any other feat, power or item.
Before this dreaded "nerf" i could keep up a 6th man party without even allowing the defender using second wind. It was over the top, and the DM actually made monsters stick to me because i was the real dread in the field. Now things should be a little more balanced
Many other healic attack powers heal damage without using a healing surge. No other class can make it, remember, and this is never a bad thing because it adds peculiarity to your build.

Debuffing: This is the other thing you like to do. You make your friends deal more damage to enemies, or you make your enemies dear less damage to your allies. You can do both things together, but usually you follow a predetermined pattern:
- Heroic tier: your powers give -x to defenses or -x to enemy attacks
- Paragon tier: your powers give terrible vulnerabilities to enemies
- Epic tier: your powers seriously cripple your enemies with status effects like stunning, domination or directly remove them from the board.
The question i asked myself was: why should i retrain denunciation if it's so great? Why should i skip moment of peace? This is one of the selling points of this build. You can keep the powers that fit your party better. For example, if your party needs an help to hit enemies, you can keep 1-2 heroic tier attack powers. If your party has 3 strikers is better that you change 1-2 of them to make foes vulnerable to heavy damage. The epic tier powers are more flashy and fun to use but aren't necessarily more powerful for YOUR party (except for healing).
More about this topic in the last post.
There isn't a real "debuffing scaling" as for healing, but you are surely on the podium. The only leader that can compete with you in debuffing is the Bard

Saving throws enabling: one of the best cleric at will, sacred flame, makes ally get a saving throw. Mark of healing makes ally get a saving throws. Healer's mercy gives you AoE saving throws. Many high level powers grant saving throws as candies. You are not better and not worse than any other cleric: this means that you are #1 in this field.

Buffing: you are better with debuffing, really. Since buffing and debuffing are sides of the same medal, you actually don't need to buff a lot

Movement enabling: very very little, you are not good in this field. Only few powers grant movement to your allies. You are much better in enemy movement denial: prone and blinded are two common effects in your powers.

Action enabling: no. You are not warlord. You don't grant any action, people has to earn them.

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Survivability: you have to work to be tough. Feats for armors or offhand defensive weapons are frankly needed. Your party needs you, and you are a fundamental piece of the chessboard. The Messenger of Peace Paragon Path is an important help for your living, and it brings your chances to live to higher levels. Fortunately you're still a ranged even if you are usually near the defender (more of this in the tactic section).
Your NADs, too, are not the best. Will is ultimately powerful, Fortitude can be decent but reflex will dabble in the 35-36 range at 30th level which means that you will be hit 85-90% of the times.

Secondary Roles

Controller : yes, you are good. See debuffing section.

Defender : you have to work hard, but you can be heavy armored and grant flanking here and there. Generally you won't exist for moving monsters, they will often give you many Opportunity attacks, since you can't hit them most of the times with your mace. But don't despair: monsters will go for you 99% of the times if they don't attack the defender. So we can say that you are, unfortunately, a VERY good off-defender ^^

Striker : rofl.

Class and build features:

Armor Proficiencies: chain. Unless you take Battle Cleric's Lore, then you will have scale and +2 shield bonus, all for free. If you want to take healer's lore, instead read the spoiler text, and prepare for some big AC problems.

Healer's Lore choice

Chain isn't bad but you have the reasons to need scale, expecially if you use the adventurer's vault special armours: high-level scale armours, in fact, add +2 to fortitude and you need that +2. 13 strength and 13 constitution is needed to use it, but if you don't want to invest in strength you can put there a good 11 or 12 and take it later in your chareer.
The same remark is good also for light shields, which, again, need 13 strength: these adds +1 to reflex so you may want to use one in your chareer. How far are the day when clerics could use the best armours and heavy shields...
You need only to invest 2 feats, and trust me, you won't regret this choice.

If you don't want to invest in strength (and then in heavy armors, and keep chain), you can choose to take the feat superior weapon proficiency and use one of the two off hand defensive weapons: the first, the cutting wheel (eberron player's guide), is an horrible rotating thing capable to save your ArCe; the other choice is the more "classical" parrying dagger (adventurer's vault). Both weapon can be enchanted by Rhytm Blade, which adds an additional +1 to ac and reflex.
This is a good choice but has a price: in fact shields have better enchant than bracers for leaders. So you keep leader's chain enchant, but you lose shields, +2 to fortitude and +1 to reflex.

Weapon proficiency: simple melee, but you don't care. Just wield your healer's mace and try to smack the occasional minion or non-bloodied enemy for a good opportunity attack (yes, you can do this, i did 3-4 times in my entire chareer)

Implement: you gain the best implement, the holy symbol. Why is it the best? Because it doesn't occupy a space. You can wear your divine symbol as a neck, waist, hat, armband, kneelpad: this is not important.

Channel Divinity: this is not one single ability but a set of abilities. As a cleric you have only to make a major choice: the devoted gets Turn Undead, the shielding gets Healer's Mercy. Stop. No other differences, because you are a A class, that is a class with 2 main stats (wisdom and strength) and one secundary (charisma) and each class with these characteristic has a separate build for each main stat.
You also get Favor of the Gods or Divine Fortune. The choice among those 2 powers is quite easy to make. An encounter reroll is pure goodness for your strikers.

There are many, many, many domain feats that add abilities to this features. Many domains are also good, but if you are the only leader in your party i suggest to stick with Healer's Mercy and then check after for feats. Turn Undead is situationally very good but obiously only versus undead.
The only thing you have to remember is that you gain only one use of your "deity" for each encounter. If you use Healer's Mercy you can't use Divine Fortune or your new fresh feat Channel Divinity ability. So, be careful.

Healer's lore: this was changed to affect only surge healing. When you make the target expend an healing surge (and not "heal as if the target spent an healing surge") you add wisdom bonus to the healing done. For example, a pacifist cleric Healing Word at first level will heal for: Surge + (1d6+charisma) + 1d6 + wisdom. Personally i consider Healer's Lore a bad choice at the moment.

Instead of Healer's Lore you can take Battle Cleric's Lore. This is an exceptional choice for all kind of pacifist clerics. +2 free AC, scale, and a +2 to hit bonus on your healing words and some attacks utilities.

Healing word: your leader feature, better than most except the arteficer, but definitely stronger than any other leader. Think about dropping the bomb only when really needed: 2x encounter, 3x encounter at level 16. Do you think they'll add a feat to make us use 4x as warlords? I don't think so.

Ritual casting: you don't need a wizard in your party, or any other ritual caster. This is often a overlooked ability but it's very good.

Last but not least, i'll put here Pacifist Healer. We got back this feat intact (D399 Templar Article) but the limitations now are harsher. So, i suggest you not to take damage feats at all.

Skills

Skill powers descripted here are in Player's handbook 3

You get Religion as a class skill.. It's useful for good divination rituals (like Speak with Dead and Consult Oracle) and Brew Potion. Religion skill powers are definitely bad for you.

You can choose other 3 skills:

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Arcana is a good skill for all clerics, for the large number of rituals and utility. Its skill powers are bad, except for Insightful warning. This is a pearl, a very good defensive power which can save your party. I would take it as a feat since you have Spirit of healing and stream of life. This is obiouvsly dependant on your DM: if he/she likes controllers and arcane monsters, this may be your best bet.

Your best bet is to be the party face and take Diplomacy, if your party needs. Diplomacy skill powers aren't that bad, expecially Cry for mercy, which is sanctuary on steroids with a dash of free movement, and Noble sacrifice.

Heal skill powers are bad, and you shouldn't need the skill. It's strange to have a shielding cleric without heal, but it can be done (i think ^^). It is blue because the most beautiful "healing themed" rituals are all heal-based.

History skill isn't that great, and you have only one good skill power, strategist epiphany, which causes you to be a mini tactical lord once a day

Insight: this is one skill you want, because it's VERY useful ingame. It also gives a great skill power, the level 10 Prescient Defense: if you know that your DM goes for you often, take this and love it

Races

I don't have other tips to add to Gelatineous Octahedron's handbook, so follow his advices. Just to point out fast (for the TL:DR fans), the best races are certainly Kalashtar (EPG) and Deva (PHB2). I prefer Deva, but Kalashtar is incredibly good too. These are followed by Dwarf, Human, Elf, Drow, Minotaur, Wilden and both types of shifter.

The Base of Your Power: At Wills

Astral Seal and Sacred Flame are, naturally, the best choices. The first is the only non-damaging at will power in the game. The second is one of the best at will powers in the game, because it offers extra versatility between saving throws and an extra shield (in form of temporary Hit Point) for one of your allies. Heroes of the Fallen Lands added Brand of the Sun as a variant for Sacred Flame.

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Astral Seal (Divine Power): this is your only (for now) at will power designed specifically for the pacifist cleric. As i write there's a quarrel in the leaders forum about its viability. As a pacifist cleric you just need the power, I have no more to say. Fortunately it's still a very good power, because it's accurate (A) it helps your allies to hit your enemy (B), has scaling healing (C) and an extremely good domain support, maybe the best (D). I quote a post of mine in the leader forum "Debuffing an enemy is already enough to be good. The heal should offset for the lack of damage, but the damage you don't deal is dealt by your allies with greater accuracy. So you get double effect, the heal and the dpr accuracy.I'm not even adding domains like knowledge, torment, tyranny and life."
You don't gain Healer's Lore wisdom bonus for this power, but your heal is increased by some items (for example Healer's Weapon from Adventurer's Vault and Healer's Brooch from Adventurer's Vault 2). The healing is approximately 12-15% of your ally's health, more than half of their healing surge.
Domain choices are VERY good for this power:
Note: if you take more than one domain feat, you can apply only one domain per cast
Fate adds +1 to hit with astral seal if you hit a bloodied foe. Nice but not so needed.
Knowledge domain adds a +1 to all defenses when you use the power: this is more than a real feat, so imho it's nearly an autopick.
Life domain add another healing bump, this time in temporary hit points, which is a very rare effect for the cleric.
Torment domain is in my opinion the best choice. It adds Combat advantage to the healing effect on next hit: nice for adding DPR. It's not hard to justify in game the torment domain: for example Illmater in Forgotten Realm seems a good pick. Also the Silver Flame's eternal struggle can be a symbol of constant torment
Tyranny effect is very nice if your party is full of arcane characters or allies that abuses of save-end effects. Another -2 to saves can change your allies playstyle, freeing a slot from a cunning weapon, for example. Most important, the effect is automatic on the target, whether or not you hit
Vengeance is imho the worse of these domains. If the target attacks you or an ally, it takes damage. You won't be stunned by this damage, but the effect is so negligible that it's not even a deterrent.

Sacred Flame (Player's Handbook) : This is usually your second at will. It deals damage, so pay attention not to hit bloodied enemies. This is generally useful because it clears the board of minions and gives a choice between a save (always nice) or scaling HP. At the end of your chareer this will heal way less than astral surge (but you can choose the target more easily) and it's temporary hit point and not real healing so pay attention because you will waste surges at the end of the encounter. There's no domain support for this power but it's very good.

Brand of the Sun (Heroes of the Fallen Lands) : As a variant of sacred flame you can take this at will. There are a lot of things to say about it. On the negative side it is a melee attack, and it obliges you to engage in melee. Usually Healic defenses are decent (at least if you follow my guide) and this isn't a great issue. On the positive side it doesn't really require you to hit to gain the saving throw... sometimes is even better to miss the attack, especially if you took pacifist healer.

Gaze of defiance (Player's Handbook Heroes): only human healics should take this, it's very similar to lance of faith and it's a static buff. The difference is that it targets will, so it may be situationally useful.

Chauntea/Lathander/Torm Cleric since 1995 My husband married a DM - καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός

#3 May 04, 2010 1:57:00

Nausicaa

Joined Feb 2006

3178 Posts

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