Mixed Healing

[Arihan]

A little over 3 months ago, I tested this version of healing on a halfling Rogue and a human Conjurer (that's a Ranger), and both turned out rather well. In fact, the halfling Rogue was much, much better than I had expected. I think I'll let the community know how this works in case someone wants to try it out for themselves, because I'm going to stick with full healing on my Caveman Rakshasa for a while.

I don't like that full heal requires large numbers of clovers.
I don't like how slow the regeneration rate is for using mana shield and meditation; and usually it involves training some healing for when the hits get past your mana shield a little bit.

So on my halfling Rogue, I invented something different altogether. I don't know what to call it, but it works like this:

Meditation: 20
Lore: 10
Incantation: 10
Healing: 0

On a halfling Rogue, your HP/SP are really similar. They're both going to be around 200/200 in higher levels. That means that you don't have enough HP to full heal effectively (you'll waste way too many clovers) and you don't have enough SP to mana shield effectively (the mana will deplete too quickly).

I trained the described skills, and drank a potion of mana shield. These potions are identical to a cast shield of 5 spirit magic. That means that the division of damage between HP and SP is going to be around 40%/60%. This is safe because: hard-hitting monsters, like LQs, can't one-hit you anymore because your mana shield protects you from extremely heavy blows and gives you a chance to recover quickly; weak blows are altogether eaten up by meditation, making you relatively immune to small hits; medium-damage hits are split between HP/SP, giving your SP plenty of time to recover using your higher meditation. When HP gets low, just cast heal once and you're set again.

Again, in a simpler tone...

Train meditation, lore, and incantation. Drink a potion of mana shield.

Weaker hits (1-10): will be absorbed completely by mana shield, or deal 1-3 damage to HP; the rest will be quickly recovered with high meditation.
Medium hits (11-50): will hit SP at a much slower rate, allowing you to naturally recover sufficiently. HP will be taking a hit too, but one cast of Heal will replenish you completely.
Heavy hits (51-***): will allow you to survive where you would not have been able to survive before, by splitting the damage between HP and SP. A mana potion or two will allow you to live past the hit.

Essentially, to die, you need to be hit with more than 400 damage within the time it takes you to drink a potion of move away and heal.

I think that this would open up a path for a LOT more capable Rogues/Rangers. On my Ranger, I trained 5 spirit and just cast the spell when I needed it, but I had to overtrain incantation to use heal effectively. Really, Rogues are easily better suited to do this, and it really is very effective.

The Pros here:
1. You get to play a Rogue.
2. You get to play a Rogue, well.
3. Less clover use than full healing.
4. Less potion use than mana shielding.
5. The new Amethyst Dagger will let you RD and LQ as well as anyone.

The Cons here:
1. You use more skill points than either method, BUT as a Halfling/Human, often enough you have the points to make this turn out well.
2. It takes a while to get to the point where this is effective (around level +15), BUT it's possibly to live solely on normal healing until then, easily too.

Any questions, post here. And tell me if your Halfling/Human Rogue has seen any results using this pattern of healing. It should economize your use of clovers and mana potions, as well as maximize your survivability.

To Exile: Not so much for human Rogues, and I definitely recommend 10 incantation. It's not even that much, and it's completely worth it. Full heal with 10 incantation costs 14 SP. I don't know the value for 5 incantation.

To Steovanni: After trying it on Xerxes, I could easily see how a halfling Ranger could pull it off much better than I could even dream of. Looks like this is mostly for halflings anyway, because of the HP/SP ratio and 4 skill points per level.

To Dragif: Technically, nothing but full healing would work for good melee PvP survival. But then again, Wyvern's PvP is skewed completely, and most players just want to succeed in PvM.

To Happyrabitz: How about reading the post first? The point was to allow you to survive situations where just a mana shield would doom you, like a roomful of mana traps or an LQ fight. This way is much better in harsher situations; to "just be done with it" means you're going to die in rather easy places, and often.

Other edits: For a Ranger, I found that training 5 spirit is easier than getting potions, simply because you get extra meditation in the first place to recover the cast, and because you get no negatives in spirit magic, and I usually use Imperial Crown anyways.

[Exile]

Would this still be beneficial for a Human Rogue? Since their sp is about 50 lower at HoF. And 5 Inc. in rogues = 30 sp full heal right?

[Steovanni]

I did the same thing with my halfling whipsman . I thought that using a partial mana shield beat using a full one ^.^. It really works quite well.

[Dragif]

This does sound good and all, but you have to think, this wouldnt work out well in a PK situation. But for training it would work very well :P

[happyrabitz]

Well i'd rather just go full mana shield on a halfling and have a competent skill set and be done with it

[Steovanni]

Well, the reason why not going to full mana shield is good is because mana basically becomes your hp. The mana to hp is like 1:1 ratio thus runs out much faster. Though with heal, the ratio on mana to hp is like what, 1:12 for a halfling? Much more worth it.

If halflings had higher hp, then scrap the mana shield altogether but in my opinion, a 50% one works more efficiently thus, running out of mana less often. For a halfling, no mana is like instadeath.

[Salkand]

I learned a trick that works even better? Don't get hit!

[Kabroz]

Why not just use this for a halfling paladin?

[Frosten]

Arihan, it took you long enough to present this idea to the public. Can't blame you, however, since it WAS a great idea.

Oh how I wish i had the time to take advantage of this strategy.

P.S. - the other strategy for human conjurer that we had is definitely more efficient :P

Would using mana shield potions or training 5 spirit and casting the spell be better for a halfling ranger?
This is what happens when you eat a binya burger:

[Godhand]

Seems good for lower hp races, but i think it requires to much skill points. Also if your fighting some hard hitting monsters(like lqs) and your mana goes to zero(very fast), your gonna be in a lot of trouble.

[Deaf]

Different races should have different healing styles. My current favorite is shrink heal for naga archers. Pixies should have mana shield. Giants should get twice the healing. Humans should have a spell that increases healing much faster while draining their mana.

[Burba]

I prefer skill healing. With 20 meditation and only 15 healing (5 less skill points) you can breeze through RDs as a whipsman without worrying about health. There's always something to put 5 skill points in. In fact, you can RD easily with less meditation and healing. Oh, and rangers get -10 incantation. Please don't tell me that you plan to train 20 points in incantation while still using mana shield.

You also must wear non-bungling stuff to heal effectively, which isn't an issue if you can get plats, but is otherwise a big deal.

Another negative is that you can't heal with no sp. That means reapers and mana traps will get you if you don't normally run out of sp before hp, which is far more preferable that running out of hp before sp.

I'd also like to point out that weak blows will go entirely to hp, not sp, though, in the case of recoil monsters, that's advantageous for rogues or whipsmen.

Finally, you're still limited by how much sp you regenerate. Casting heal is a great way to give yourself an extra bit of juice to get through a fight. The problem is that you only have around 200 hp as a halfling, which some creatures will take off in one round, not to mention surviving the next. To defeat a hard hitting monster that doesn't die quickly you'll be force to retreat, wait for mana to go up or use a mana pot, cast heal, fight briefly, and repeat. Oh, and I forgot that you'd still die if there's lag, though many characters probably would as well. For regular training, you will take just as long to heal sp as a skill healer, if not longer because casting heal takes sp.

The real advantage of this build is the spells that you can use. I would almost go through with all the negatives solely to be able to spam teleport. Now teleport is a real life saver! Far more effective than heal if you ask me. Identify and remove curse would also save a lot of money.

Anyway, I've had similar ideas similar to your mixed healing one. Until I learned how lame prismatic shield was, I planned a melee mage that would use a partial mana shield (40% I think) along with heal. It probably wouldn't have worked even if my issues with prismatic shield are unfounded, but I thought it was a great idea for a few days. Also, if I ever try to pk as a halfling, I'll try out a partial mana shield, but I've been inactive for a few months so I don't know if that will happen.

[Deaf]

With 15 healing, you don't need to train spirit for mana shield.