Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback IS HEALING OVERALL NOT WORTH IT?

I might be just me but throughout my playthroughs, having a healer seems useless. Mainly due to enemy damage is far greater than the amount you can heal at a given time. I would like to suggest a minor buff to healing to make a healer more viable or change healing spells to a bonus action. I found your better off using a damage dealing spell than a heal. Again it may be something I am not understanding but I have 100 hours in the game and found no reason to use a healer. thanks

It's far more worth it than in regular 5e, where the best course of action is only using Healing Word to bring back downed folk. BG3 has items that make healing fantastic. Without them, healing is really meh. Anyway, a Life Domain Cleric with the right items is absolutely amazing and I've never had so much fun playing a healer in D&D.

Mass healing word is a bonus action spell that heals every friendly creature in range for 1d4+5 hp (1d4+10 on a life cleric). Add "the whispering promise", "boots of aid and comfort" and "hellriders pride", all of which can be found in act 1 to grant all targets you heal the effects of the spells bless and blade ward and 3 temporary hp on top. In my opinion that's very much worth it.

Sure, depending on your party composition you can survive most fights without healing spells. But especially for those fights where you have friendly npcs that you might want to keep alive, a cleric with healing gear is nice to have.

I actually really dislike the absurd synergy healing items get (and super early on too!) that makes them really OP. The thing is Larian actually nerfed some of the usefulness of healing by making it so that characters healed back from unconcsciousness lose their actions. (They also nerfed some of the unique effectiveness of healing by making healing potions super plentiful and allowing you to heal people just by throwing potions at them.) They seem to have a weird design philosophy with casters in general, where they gave them a bunch of nerfs, and then distributed the things they could uniquely do to all other classes (by making scrolls usable for everyone, for example). The usefulness of healing is also effectively diluted by the fact that you can rest pretty much endlessly most of the time with no penalty.

But it is true that in-combat healing classes are less necessary in 5e than they have been in any other editions. They can occasionally be clutch for a tactical heal, but as you said much of the time it's better to use them offensively. This has its ups and downs. Personally I think Larian should change it so people healed back from being downed would get their actions on their next turn. That would increase the usefulness of combat healing.

Edit: Also remember, you do heal more with the same healing spell when you upcast it with a higher level slot. Cure wounds can actually give back quite a lot of health when cast at higher levels.

This is a mistake I think a lot of people make, the purpose of healing in combat is not to overcome the damage received but to keep the team alive long enough to finish the fight.

On my first playthrough i had life domain cleric. It was really helpful and ... after act 1 if something unexpected happen, i was able to recover. Every new run i change class in this slot to test support viability, college of lore bard can work and circle of the land druid. Maybe you don't need one, but having that aoe heal sometimes save a day.

Healing spells for anything that's not a Life domain cleric are horribly undertuned. Life domain cleric is pretty much mandatory to make healing spells not trash and worthwhile over throwing health potions.

For reference, a Mass Cure Wounds, for a whopping lv5 spell slot, cures for a measly 17-25 health. Channel Divinity from Life cleric, 2 charges per short rest, heals aoe for 40. Healing spells are absolutely worthless outside life domain cleric passives propping them up, just throw potions at people instead for far superior healing. It's not like potions are hard to come by.

If Larian wanted Bard or Druid to be alternatives to cleric, they failed miserably. Between Channel Divinity, Bless, Sanctuary, and Life Domain sub perks, cleric cannot be supplanted as a class in a party by either of those. They could easily make druid and bard possible alternatives to cleric if they gave them the life domain cleric passive to boost healing done and minimum heals, and gave Bless to both Druid and Bard spellbooks. The other problem is Bard and Druid, but especially druid, are strangled by 95% of the spellbook being concentration spells. Clerics only have to worry about Bless or Guardian spirits, and have plenty of powerful nonconcentration utility, heal, and nuke spells.

This has also bad gameplay impacts. You will feel compelled to run Shadowheart in your party every single playthrough instead of having alternative companion party comps unles you're willing to break RP and respec your companions.

I mean I think that it is exactly because of this that you SHOULDN'T feel compelled to run shadowheart.

5e has a different approach to healing from previous editions and a lot of other rpgs. They wanted to avoid battles of attrition with the healers propping people up. So in-combat heals are small, but potentially clutch. A single heal CAN make the difference in many cases. But very often those cases don't arise, and you don't want a healer, you want someone else with offensive options, which is why all healing classes also have a buffet of offensive options to choose from as well. Healing would be more useful for sustaining you over the course of a day if this game didn't have effectively infinite free rests, too.

But the point remains you can make do without a healer or with healing/damage mitigation capabilities spread out over multiple people instead of focused in just one class. It is absolutely not necessary to take shadowheart or a healing-focused character at all.

It is absolutely gamechanging.

I'm sorry, but a 40 HP aoe heal 4 charges total per long rest that applies 50% physical DR, bless with mystra staff from arcane tower for 2d4 attack rolls and saving throws, 3d4 spell attack roles is entirely game changing. So is sanctuary. In any good aligned playthrough where you want to keep ally NPC's alive or even in tougher fights like taking on Balthazar in the Shar Temple instead of at the Nightsong, or Orthon Yugir without dialogue checks, Shadowheart makes a world of a difference. It's not even close. She's adding over 20%+ increased hit rate, heals you for 1/3 of your health aoe, applies 50% physical DR, and makes you highly resistant in saving throws all in one button push while still having access to guardian spirits/insect plague/flamestrike and sitting on heavy armor with a shield at high AC with divine strike for when she needs to melee.

Bards and druids don't hold a candle to her as a force multiplier or a healer.

Could I replace her with 2 fighters (or 1 fighter, 1 paladin) 2 sorcs or 1 fighter, 1 bard, 2 sorcs? Sure, can make that work and kill things before it's a problem. There's a slight problem with that, none of your companions allow for that unless you're fine with discarding RP and retconning their origins and aesthetics.

If you're not retconning your companions and wish to respect class and character aesthetics, Shadowheart is absolutely miles ahead with Lazael and Karlach compared to the other companions, followed by Gale. Wyll, Halsin, Jaheira, and Minsc might as well be in the trash bin, and Astarion is not bad as rogue is pretty strong as well so you can sub a martial for him if yo like his story.

But half that stuff you said is stuff that comes from (the stupid, imo) items that synergize with healing and are not dependent on having a life cleric at all. In fact it's so unnecessarily OP and that's why I consider it absolutely not necessary. And no, you don't even need to respec your companions. I've got a bard Tav right now (who barely ever heals), running with an Abjuration Gale, Fighter Lae'Zel and Rogue Astarion. Playing on tactician, I do not need Shadowheart along at all. Between spot heals from my bard, second wind, damage mitigation from Gale, it just means that I have to occasionaly drink (very plentiful) potions. Even if I wanted all the unnecessarily OP healing synergy item effects, I could trigger them off my bard's healing (pretty sure they would trigger from song of rest too), I just don't care to use them because that level of healing is totally over the top and unnecessary and I'd rather have more offensive-focused gear in my equipment slots. Shadowheart is 100 percent unnecessary, Life Cleric is 100 percent unnecessary, all those stacking healing effects are 100 percent unnecessary because that level of healing is 100 percent unnecessary. You do NOT have to bring Shadowheart along.

From my oberservation you reach a point in the game, where you can kill stuff faster than it can hurt you. Most of the time short resting after a big fight provided everything I needed in terms of heeling. In pathfinder on the contrary my healer is my mvp, without him I stand no chance whatsoever as his main job is to keep my tank tanking.

healing is fine. i'm currently playing with a group of 3 others and we mess around all the time and make mistakes. mass healing has been a saint

Potions heal without wasting spell slots so healing is meh.

There are a bunch of necklaces, boots, gloves and rings to augment healing. Eg heal more, buff the targets. Often when I use my healer it's attack with action (usually a cantrip) and then aoe heal with bonus action if needed. If not needed I summon out a magic weapon with the bonus action.

With all the different healing options the game offers, whats the point?
The game is easy without a healer, the game is even easier with a healer.
Larian balance for us = As long as its fun who cares.