How does a healer work?

[nordetsa]

Tried few times, didn't do that well. Because healing abilities are invoked rather than cast, I thought I could go as melee who can pacify/heal in case of emergencies. Or is this class more of a spellcasting type? Based on the starting equipment I'm assuming it could go like light-armored evasive UC fighter...or is it?

[crate]

  Code:

<Wenzell> healer guide[1/1]: <crate> pacify all the dudes until lair and then do whatever

In all seriousness the "then do whatever" part is true. If you want to use Ely lategame mainly as a source of nearly-infinite potions of triple heal wounds, that's entirely fine and good for anyone. Having an instakill smite-targeted attack is good for anyone also, even if it doesn't work against every single enemy you run into. At 27 invo Ely is almost certainly the strongest god in the game, but that should be expected since she also demands the most investment to be useful.

My healers usually end up killing most things with melee weapons, but this is also what most of my characters in general do. It is the simplest way to play a healer (you need some sort of way to kill non-pacifyable enemies unless you want to do tedious things to deal with vampire mosquitos and slime creatures and such) since finding a decent melee weapon reasonably early is something you can expect to happen, and melee works against everything. But if you find an early book of conjuration or something you can go that route instead.

[snow]

I remember pacification having a brutal hunger cost. Has this changed? I tried a centaur healer and starved to death. Also doesn't healing yourself have a huge piety cost? It doesn't seem near infinite. By the way this is coming from someone who's never made it to the lair with a healer so keep that in mind.

[particleface]

I believe pacification requires 1 MP and 100 food which is essentially a grape. Centaurs, however, have a fast metabolism and are herbivorous which can lead to starvation without due caution.

[KoboldLord]

Lesser Healing has a pretty sizable hunger cost for an ability that's available on D1, and Greater Healing has a larger one, but if you check out any glowing weapons you see on the way down to Lair you're eventually going to find something like electrocution or venom. Preferably on a light, fast weapon, since you won't be putting much xp into weapon skill until partway through Lair. Even if you can't find a really good weapon, a vanilla short sword or something is just fine for killing rats to eat, and a better weapon makes the list of safe kills bigger. Plus there will be some permafood, which you should use liberally to get through lean periods.

The trick to playing a healer is to carefully manage the threats that are not possible to pacify, yet or ever. You will very often run into an ogre or a unique before you have the raw invocations power you need to pacify it. You can also run into hungry ghosts or wights which are theoretically pacifiable but will be completely out of range for a very long time. Finally, there are jellies and wasps and so forth that are just flat-out immune. Any of these cases means you either need to avoid the problem or you need to burn a consumable to get rid of it. Occasionally you can pacify a nearby monster, and it will fight it out for you while trying to escape, but for the most part use what wands and potions you have to clear out breathing room. There will be plenty of time to stockpile that stuff later.

Once you find Lair, your game is basically over. You get a large multiplier to pacification attempts, which means you can comfortably land Lesser Healing even on dragons and hydrae and death yaks in two or three attempts at most. With the bounty of safe xp this brings you, you can build up whatever you feel you need for the rest of the game in relative safety. I usually pick a melee weapon skill, but pretty much anything but necromancy will work if the appropriate loot is available.

[Konebred]

Is there some sort of optimum level for invocations in the mid game? I found myself just dumping all my xp in to it and had it to like 16 at no time. When is a good level to start working other things?

[BlackSheep]

When you have no trouble pacifying things with Lesser Healing.

[KoboldLord]

Is there some sort of optimum level for invocations in the mid game? I found myself just dumping all my xp in to it and had it to like 16 at no time. When is a good level to start working other things?

Turn it off when it hits 27. You want to be able to use Greater Healing to get rid of Wiglaf and Rupert and Louise and all them, right? Just BAM and they're gone. At 27, Lesser Healing will one-shot shadow dragons most of the time, and you'll be able to get stone giants and whatnot after a few attempts, so even if you have to blow some piety real fast you can build it back up without Abyss-trawling or something similarly horrible.

12 is safe enough for starting Lair, but eventually you're going to run out of animals in Lair that you can pacify. Better to have really killer invocations for your instakill invocation paired with mediocre weapon skill for killing popcorn to eat than to have decent invocations that can't affect really hard things and decent weapon skill that can't kill really hard things. As long as you have 'enough' of either/or, you're good, but if you have 'not quite enough' of both you're still screwed. That mediocre weapon skill you finished Lair 8 with will continue to build up while you start instakilling orc sorcerors at the edge of LOS before they get a chance to cast.

[crate]

The actual answer to how much invocations you want with Ely is "it depends". If you want to deal with most enemies by pacifying them, then by all means go all the way to 27. If you want to use Ely primarily for healing in combat, then you still get benefits by going all the way to 27 invo but you don't have to. I recommend playing some Ely games and deciding for yourself.