Tell me what you think.

Also what are your thoughts on Bedevil? Ethelon tells me its not that great but if you have any information that would be wicked.

Well if you let your opponent load you up with afflictions and make sure ya don't die to it, then use bedevil, heal your affs, hope your opponent can't cure them, you've got a useful weapon .

Healing's greatest use lies in the amount of herbs and potions you save with it in my opinion, makes out of arena combat much less expensive. I'd pick it over tarot and hexes just for that reason if I had the choice.

I voted that Tarot is more useful for PK. This coming from someone who's trans Healing and never had Tarot. Still, I feel I've a fair grasp of what people can do with Tarot, having guildmates explain them at length to me, as well as occasionally being on the receiving end of Tarots.

Not that I'd pick Tarot anyhow. Healer's more my thing.

Bedevil, I wish would go away for something more healer-ish, or become a more guaranteed self-cure. When you use it, all afflictions go to a target, in theory. In practice, I've found that often times many afflictions do not hit the target. This may be a bug, and I'm waiting before I assume that certain afflictions cannot be passed.

In theory, there's a chance that your afflictions get cured on a per-case basis. In practice, I've not found this to be particularly useful for purposes of clearing my afflictions. I would consider it a nice side effect that you should be thankful happens at all.

For 1k mana cost and typical equilibrium use, well, I seldom if ever use it. I'd rather cure afflictions as they hit me than wait and hope I don't get locked so I've a good amount of afflictions to throw back at someone. It's a risky gambit... be on the losing end intentionally, so that you get to a moderately even footing later. Ideas for fixing Bedevil as opposed to scrapping it? Make it use power and far less mana, or allow it to be used regardless of current debilitating afflictions. Even so, that still caters to PK use and I'd rather see Healing gain the ability to Farcure and Farheal people who are indoors, and be able to Succor at range, or my favorite idea, a 'cure all afflictions' effect one can target for the same 1k mana.

On the other hand, I've saved a nice chunk of money on herbs and vials. Not enough to make up for the credit costs of transing Healing, but every bit helps. For me, choosing Healing was a purely RP decision, and though it has strong combat utility, I'm convinced that Tarot is better for PvP use.

For transed Moondancer Herbalists who want PK power, I would suspect that Healing is even more questionable, but that's likely a different topic.

The skill of healing can be just as effective as Tarot. However, I haven't seen anyone use healing where it benfited them in a pk fight and thus I removed healing and took tarot. I believe healing's main focus is for those such in celestines or moondancers to take more of a defensive role then an offensive one with tarot or hexes. This is just my opinion on the matter

I guess it does save on vials a fair amount, but still, I'd rather pay, say, 400 gold for a choleric vial I can drink on affliction vial balance 60 times (or whatever it is) than spend 100 mana on normal balance, PLUS all those lessons. By the time I realised this, though, I was at Virtuoso, so I'm not likely to be hexing anyone anytime soon I think that, quite apart from the actual healing skills, there ought perhaps to be a few more less related skills - an allheale variant for a lot of mana or power or what have you, long distance succoring/farcuring (as in longER), or just...anything like that. Never used bedevil, seeing as I don't have it, but if it doesn't actually cure you of your afflictions as you do it it seems a bit meh. Does it transmit wounds too?

healing is useful in Group PK, so as the support member, helping keep a Warrior ahead of the game with their healing. So yes its useful in combat, but not in a conventional way.

I was also wondering for those who are transcendent how well AB HEALING HEAL works. Does it increase in the amount of damage it heals the more you learn within healing?

For bedevil to work well I think a fighter who combats with Healing should be able to absorb afflictions to a point where he can barely do anything at which point he transfers them and puts on all his reflexes and annihilates the enemy.

One thing I don't like about healing is that sometimes you can't heal because you have a broken leg and cannot stand off the ground. Thus it makes it impossible to devote all your healing to strictly revolve around this skillset. This as well as succor's equilibrium cost is rather harsh. If Healing is a specialized skill why not make succor function where you need equilibrium but it doesn't take it. I remember in the beginning of the game it didn't take equilibrium away.

I'm not trans yet but from what I've noticed the higher you are in healing, the more you heal at one time. (Good or bad, depending on how low your ego is at the moment.)

I tried to go the 'combat medic' route, but found it frustratingly impractical.

Since succoring and curing others takes equilibrium... by the time I succor to see what an ally has, they've gained and lost afflictions. Sure, it's helpful be to able to cure locks, but you'll never cure someone as fast as they can acquire afflictions, particularly as self-curing through conventional means is instant. I don't know how many times I've cured someone of an affliction they just cured, or they try to cure something I've just cured them of, but it happened often enough that I saw that I was wasting valuable time.

Conversely, I could be contributing to the efforts of the ally to put down the enemy, which seems generally a more useful goal. Even webbing an ally's attacker is more useful for keeping afflictions off the ally.

And you remind me of another irksome matter. Healing Heal is wasted on Celestines for the most part, due to Puella. Unless I'm out of mana and in dire need of healing beyond the emergency health potion quaff, I don't use Heal. Perhaps we could get the Heal power in Healing to be more effective than Puella? Would seem to make sense that... well... Healing is best at healing than anything else...

Yes I agree with you there. The HP heal in Healing doesn't seem to have much of an advantage over Puella until you get very high into the skill which I think is a problem.

The term of 'combat medic' would be more appropiate if you could syphon afflictions into your own body from a player giving you that affliction. It could work as a channel affect as you constantly channel every affliction out of their body. This is useful because as you said Succor takes equilibrium and it is hard to set up any reflexes around it that use heal.

So an opposite of Bedevil would be rather nice and it would work a lot how Demon syphon works. Keeping your warriors alive should become more fluid for the person healing and it should have more variety of uses overall.

Another idea I thought would be interesting to add to the Healing skillset is a revive defense for when you get below a certain amount of health? Like vitality?

Well.. bedevil is extremely useful. Lets use.. Narsrim for example, I'd have my demon give hima bunch of afflictions, have him aeoned, and everything. He'd just give it all to me, and he can heal faster me with his ents healing him and the forest or something, I don't really understand the Moon light stuff. So whats the point of loading someone up with afflictions if you know for a fact that they'll just give it allb ack to you? Plus, it takes up no power and 1000 mana, which can be really easy to get back.

If you're a basher, Healing is wonderful. The only things I noticed that it can't cure are shivering and disloyalty. In combat, you can cure twice as fast; you get herbs and vials, and then healing on top of that.

I used Bedevil once to get rid of shivering, because I didn't have a fire vial. A few tests in the arena showed that it wasn't really worth the problems of letting afflictions stack up. It only gave 3 or 4 at a time, and didn't always cure them all. I'm sure it could be useful to keep your opponent wary of afflicting you, though.

In general, healers can be good fighters, but you give up a lot of firepower and have a much different style. If I still had healing I'd probably use pooka to empty mana vials, use pixie and healing to make them drain mana into insomnia, and hope my banshee would help bring them into toadcursing range.

It was also nice to be able to help all my fellow commune members, especially since few people had many cures. After a while though, I switched to hexes because healing just had too little firepower. I'd rather have tarot, but hexes at least gives me something to do other than whore aeon and healing insomnia.

I just performed some rather extensive testing on Bedevil...the more afflictions you have, the more it does transfer. When I had ten (unlikely in combat, I know), it was giving 8 or 9 every time, and curing anywhere from three to eight. Rather nasty, depending on the situation. Granted, it's random, which makes it questionable...but if your ego is low and you need a quick way to shunt off a lot of afflictions, it adds up. Especially as bedevil doesn't give the messages for the afflictions it gives.

The main problem I have with bedevil is the fact that its mostly with chance. If you have 10 afflictions and 3-5 were serious that you needed to use bedevil in the first place and they get cured during the transfer, the effectivenss of the skill is then weakend in combat. Bedevil is just like gambling where it can be deadly as any other skill but just hope it works out for you

Lusternian Healing is less combat-oriented than Achaean Healing, which is what most of you seem to be thinking of. Succor of every kind uses eq, not just diagnose-succor. You can't spamheal neurosis to drop someone's mana to zero, or heal all of Val's friends' blindness when he starts showing off his gem. Honestly, I'm not that impressed with the skill. It's nice to be able to keep the contagious afflictions away while squatting under Grace in the middle of a fight, but it's annoyingly hard to pull off when you're a target.

I think its a nice skill. Not EVERYTHING in the realm has to be combat orientated after all, and this certainly suits those of us who don't wish to join the front-line but are quite willing to help those in need.

Looks like we are divided down the middle.

YES: 8
TAROT: 8

One thing that is beyond frustrating is how healing yourself requires balance. I just made a whole system off curing myself with Healing and it is just impossible.

Why is healing here in the first place if you can't heal off balance like herbs? Its not really adding anything and I end up having to switch to herbs instead of using the skillset for what should take precedence over herbs.

Healing also takes a ton of mana the higher the skill you use which also is frustrating. Curing a blood affliction takes 300 mana for example. I just think curing yourself should be more flexible with reflexes like herbs are.

Besides bedevil I think it would be nice if we could channel our afflictions into other people one at a time.

Yeah, it least it only takes balance rather than using it, though. Still, I think it could use some tweaks. On the other hand, I'm told Moondancers using it are about a billion times harder to fight than those with hexes, so either healing needs something lowering as well as raising, or hexes needs a massive boost...