This aint your momma's mmo

Healing... im one of those crazy ass individuals who actually enjoy playing this vital group role. Without a healer pretty much any group you are a part of is doomed to failure.

You would think that such a vital mechanic of the gameplay more people would try to understand how it works so that they know how to go about making sure the classes that CAN do it CAN do it for them when they need it.

Kiddos this is how healing works in AoC incase you did not know. I want you to take every damn thing you ever knew about MMO style group healing and toss it as it does not apply in this game. (going to talk from a tempest of set point of view here)

99.5% of the healing i am going to give you is going to come in the form of HoTs (Heal Over Time) what this means is i cast the ability and instead of giving you the heal in one big bulk package it delivers it out in equal parts every few seconds up to a certain amount. I am able to keep these abilities going on my entire party pretty much the entire fight. I have one "emergency" heal that heals for about 800 damage at the moment. Once i use this ability on you once it has a long cooldown timer and i CANNOT use it on the same target for one minute after it initially hits them.

If you see me doing DPS its because all of my HoTs are working and nobody requires the big heal at the moment. Infact i get certain feats that allow my damage spells to pulse healing around them or even my healing spells to pulse damage around them. As a result you will see me sometimes doing damage as well as healing. This is normal and infact i am doing my job as a healer by doing this. I CAN and WILL add pretty damn decent DPS to the group while maintaining the health pools of everyone.

My heals work in an CONE effect.. what this means is if everyone is spaced out to far it makes my job incredibly difficult as i might not catch everyone in my cone and end up having to search for the target that was missed by it.

What this means for you is you should always be positioning yourself in a manner that will not require your healer to run around or spin around to much to heal ..


In this game it is WISE to bring at least two healers with you most anywhere you go.. my personal recommendations are either a Priest of mitra / bear shamen or a Tempest of set/bear shamen. All three priest classes can main heal just fine but they have different effects that come along with there healing abilities.


Tempest of set - Great added AoE damage and bad ass mana regen for the entire group
Bear shamen - great help for the melee people in your party as they can help regenerate stamina mid fight
Priest of Mitra - adds in some great CC and decent damage to there primary healing.


Healers MUST function differently in this game in order to survive. Learn to adapt your group tactics around this.


I hope this was semi helpful to the people who obviously did not bother to look this up and instead are yelling at the healers they come across in the game because they think the healers should stand in the background and heal bot which is impossible in this game anyways.

I might even make a video on this later today.