I'm wondering about healer tactics in combat, like what to heal before what? Also as a Celestine.

Combat wise all you really have is Bedevil and the best trick with that is sip alot of vials of venom and bedevil your target.

I think Narsrim was really good at using Healing for it's actual healing abilities, so you may want ot ask him.

Could be wrong, but I think she means it in the general sense; as in what afflictions should be cured first in combat.

Nah, pretty sure she means the healing skillset. As far as combat, I think everyone will agree that healing is probably the worst guardian/wiccan secondary skill. Besides the venom tactic, that's pretty much all there is. And even then not every affliction is transferred and you may end up completely messed up. Its primary use seems to be for curing stuff while bashing really.

So, why is healing so bad? What does it lack?

Offensive capabilities. Plus healing drains a rather large amount of mana/ego if used constantly. And burnout is nasty.

The ability to slow down or even affect one's opponent in any reliable way?

Offense.

'd

Its primary use only seems to be bashing.

Heh i was 'd twice.

And yea i liked bashing when i was healer i didnt needed almoust any herbs or potions except mana and health potions in my early days. But thats it. Right now i most ikely would be able to make nasty healing system on healing skills and would cure realy nice but year ago i wasnt able to make it.
If you could kill wichout astrology or tarot then healing could be really nice.

Healing is not meant for offence. It's meant for defence.
I imagine you should be really hard to kill with healing, but have little to no options to kill people. That seems to be this skillset's purpose, so does it fulfill it well?

I think it could be nice. You could heal from all your afflictions when you have eq/balance if some afflictions not stop you from using heal, like paralyse.
Each heal dont use eq or balance but cost mana.

There are those 'pacifists' in Celestines/Moondancers/Shadowdancers, it seems like Healing would be suited for them.

However, using a lot Healing to cure with, you will run out of mana very fast. I would love if someone used Healing to cure my hexes, makes it easier to toadcurse them.

The problem with Healing is that, if you need it to cure, you're probably not that great anyway, and if you're good to begin with, you don't need it and only use it during emergencies or to augment your curing. So you're giving up a large chunk of offense for a minor defensive upgrade.

with healing you pretty much render all wounding speed knights inoperable with the deepheal and whatnot.

As for tactics, like in groups it works if you find the player with the best offence, and keep them alive. I love it when i get a healer in groups since everyone targets me first (i have no idea why) and that lets me go on the offensive when a good healer has my back. just watch you don't kill yourself with healing

Regarding mana drain - it's not like you want to just stand there sucking all the afflictions and , more like heal and leave right...?

And, it still looks like it's a very valid choice for people who don't really indulge in combat and don't go out for a kill. They prefer to have more options for defending themselves, or others maybe.

Heh, maybe because they fear you, Murphy. Silly person.

As for deepheal, don't knights usually target one or two areas of the body at once? Deepheal has a relatively long eq recovery and can't be used for every single boo-boo unless you run away to heal.

The mana drain never bothered me as a Moondancer with healing. Nor should it bother a faeling shadowdancer. (Or any other shadowdancer.) It's for Celestines it's not that great.

That said, you just can't -do- much with healing. Deepheal is nice, bedevil is pretty great, farheal is nice as a noncombatant, but that's it really. You're left with bugger all offence.

use deepheal on limbs that get really messed up

Deepheal is damn nice, I've tested it and came out that it heals over 20k wounding per use. If you tried to heal that with a healing vial, that'd take 25 applications over a time period of 2 minutes. Deepheal and Bedevil are what makes Healing so great, everything is just crap.