Guide:Healer

This is a general progression and mechanic guide on the Healer Class introduced in the Thorium Mod. This guide will go in depth into the inner workings of the class, how to be an effective healer, and when it is best to play as one.



Class Background
Death in Terraria is the only major setback a player can encounter, and occurs after a player has made multiple mistakes in movement or judgment. In vanilla, these mistakes can only be remedied in a handful of limited ways such as Healing Potions, the Nurse, enemy-dropped hearts, and far later into the game, life stealing equipment. As a healer, however, the player has the unique ability to "undo" these mistakes themselves at will and contribute towards a team that may lack skill or defensive equipment.

This ability, however, comes with a price. A majority of healer equipment decreases the effective damage of melee, ranged, magic, summoning, throwing and symphonic weapons. These damage reductions heavily impact the DPS potential of the player, and serve to balance out the extremely potent ability to heal and protect allies. However, healers have their own set of weapons that are empowered by their equipment and serve as a means of defending themselves, should they ever feel it in their best interest to strike back at enemies.

These weapons have their own unique damage type, known as 'radiant damage', and typically have a secondary effect associated with healing or supporting allies. In the case of a weapon like the Pill, its left click allows the player to damage enemies and its right click allows them to temporarily increase the life recovery of allies. Most, if not all, radiant weapons have a similar ability to support allies while simultaneously being able to damage enemies.

Knowing Your Role
It should be no surprise that as a healer, the primary goal is to heal your allies and keep them from dying. You have many ways to go about this in the form of healing spells, support spells and in some cases radiant weapons. The amount of upkeep and things to keep track of make healer a very stimulating and rewarding class to play. That said, healers should constantly survey how the fight is going and change to act accordingly. Since the tide of battle can change at any moment, its up to the healer to decide what they feel is a more pressing matter, but a very basic priority list for a healer is as follows.

Drop Aggro >> Heal Allies > Set up Support > Damage Enemies



Drop Aggro: A dead healer is a useless healer (in most cases), so getting the enemies off your back and properly targeting another ally should be your first and constant goal. You have the ability to heal the ally that receives the aggro, while they do not, so getting out of harm's way is a top priority. That does not mean you do 'nothing' as you try to shake them off, but it should always be your goal when moving around during moments of constant pressure.

Heal Allies: Always keep your allies healed to a healthy amount. You should be aware of the tanking abilities of each of your team mates, so prioritize allies that are getting hurt with low defense or constantly taking aggro. In general, should your mana allow it, keeping players topped up near maximum life is the goal. But when things are getting hectic, especially during invasions and boss fights, you have mere seconds to decide who is in more danger of dying than everyone else. So topping off an ally may not be the smartest idea, instead going for some split healing to keep multiple allies away from dying would be a better choice.

Set up Support: There exist many support items that do not directly heal allies, but contribute towards their protection regardless. Damage reduction, life shields, life recovery, heal over time effects and the like take time to prepare, but can save lives when a ramp in danger occurs. During down moments in fights, a healer can prepare or dish out support abilities to better prepare for a phase or a dangerous and incoming attack. If your allies are pretty healthy, and you have not refreshed your support effects recently, it might be wise to set them up.

Damage Enemies: If you are not in immediate danger, your allies are at an acceptable level of health, and your support spells still have a good bit of time on them, then it is time to start helping the cause. Your radiant weapons offer a way to dish out some damage, while still providing supportive effects, should things start turning ugly again. Just be sure not to drain all of your mana with radiant spells; should your allies start getting heavily damaged again, you may lack the necessary mana to save them.

Progression
The following is a very simple progression guide for new healers. Many items lie behind boss and enemy kills, town NPCs, events, and crafting requirements, so your ability to get certain items is made easier or harder by RNG. The list is broken into sections of the game, where prominent or important sets of items become available to a healer.

Blood Moon
Prior to encountering a Blood Moon, the choice of items is rather limited for a healer, so the progression starts at the Blood Moon itself. The Blood Moon offers healers their very first healing spell as well as their first armor sets.

Eater of Worlds / Brain of Cthulhu
After defeating the boss of the world's evil, you have access to a few items. This guide assumes you have defeated every previous boss and have not encountered the Goblin Army yet.

Pre-Skeletron
Before fighting Skeletron, a number of items are available to the player. This guide assumes you have defeated every previous boss, the Goblin Army, the first tier of Old One's Army and have entered the Jungle or the Aquatic Depths.

Post-Skeletron
After defeating Skeletron, a large amount of new healer items will be made available to the player. This guide assumes you have defeated every previous boss, event, and have explored the world thoroughly.

Post-Wall of Flesh
After defeating the Wall of Flesh, Hardmode begins and healers gain access to many new healing, support and radiant weapons. This guide assumes you have defeated every boss up until the mechanical bosses.

Post-Mechanical Bosses
After defeating the three mechanical bosses, more items are made available through the Souls, Life-Powered Energy Cells, Hallowed Bars, Strange Plating and the Solar Eclipse.

Post-Plantera
After defeating Plantera, the Jungle Temple, Frost Moon, Pumpkin Moon and their items become available.

Post-Golem
After defeating the Golem, the Martian Madness event, third tier of the Old One's Army, Celestial Towers, and their items become available.

Post-Moon Lord
After defeating the Moon Lord, you will have access to The Primordials fight and its items. This guide assumes you have done everything else in vanilla and the mod.

Mechanics
The Healer class has various unique mechanics that are relevant to their success. A simplified version of this list can be found on the main Healer page, but this guide will go slightly more in-depth in this section.

Additional Healing
Most healing sources heal for a base amount as stated in their tooltips. Several items provide additional healing power to the owner, allowing them to increase their healing output. Usually these bonuses to healing cannot be used on the casting player wielding the items, but with spells like the Holy Staff, Twinkle and Renew the player can receive these bonuses along with their allies. Being afflicted by Mana Sickness after drinking Mana Potions also afflicts the player with Out of Touch, negating bonus healing. This negative effect encourages healers to better manage their mana consumption and punish healers who may try to spam Mana Potions.

Life Recovery
Life recovery is a special form of healing that functions as a heal over time effect. It works separately from life regeneration and continues to work even when life regeneration does not due to effects like Bleeding. The recovery rate is unaffected by movement, taking damage, dealing damage, or anything other than its timer. Every second, unless under the effects of the Ra's Whisper, the player will heal life equal to their life recovery amount. All forms of life recovery provided by the healer come from accessory effects and work as buffs on the healed ally.

Since life recovery effects are applied and last their full duration after only one trigger, it works well in situations where the healer may lose line of sight of their healing targets. It also works well in fights that are drawn out, where sustained healing is more important than burst healing. Healing spells that affect a large number of allies also work incredibly well with life recovery effects, as they can trigger a large amount of life recovery cycles with a single cast.

Barrier Life
Barrier life is a decaying, temporary increase to a players maximum life. Taking damage will take health away from the barrier before truly effecting your health pool. Essentially, it works as a buffer against the next attacks against you. Many healing items and support spells give barrier life, though it can be granted by other items and effects as well. It doesnt take up a buff slot, so the ability to have 25/50 more maximum health is an incredibly powerful effect. A players barrier will decay by 1 every second until they have no more barrier life.

Auras
Auras are temporary rings of various sizes that surround the cursor of the owner when activated. They apply beneficial effects to any allies that touch the aura, but do not benefit the casting user. These auras do not have to be channeled, and last for a reasonable time after only one use. With one use of the chosen aura, the healer can then switch to whichever healing spell or weapon they feel is needed, and still grant special effects to allies they touch. The auras allow healers to improve the damage of their team and survivability passively, with minimal effort and upkeep.

Heal Streak
Heal streaks are a primarily informative feature that displays the amount of healing done by a healer over a certain amount of time. After three seconds of not contributing towards a heal streak, a large green number will appear above the head of the healer displaying the total amount healed over the course of the streak and signifying its end. Currently, three actions will build up a heal streak:

Healing Players: Directly healing an ally player or the caster themselves through healing spells such as The Good Book or Holy Staff.

Mitigating Damage: Reducing the damage allies take through items such as the Ancient Aegis and Protection Staff.

Stealing Life: Stealing enemy life using radiant weapons such as Leech Bolt and Blood Transfusion.

Radiant Damage
Along with the healer class' new healing abilities, a new damage type has been created specifically for them known as Radiant Damage. They can increase radiant damage through healer armors, accessories, items, and even a buff potion. Radiant weapons have special secondary effects that support allies and even the healer themselves in some cases. Radiant weapons are categorized into three unlisted subgroups: Light Radiant: Weapons that help to heal allies or the caster. This heal may be a direct heal, a heal over time, or heals that persist in the world for others to grab.

Dark Radiant: Weapons that steal or cost life. They support allies by transferring some of the casters health into nearby hurt allies or stealing the life of enemies.

Benign Radiant: Weapons like the Scythes, which do not fit into the other two categories. They do not typically offer secondary supportive effects, and work more like traditional weapons.

Item Specialties
A variety of items had a specialty purpose in mind when they were added to the game. On the off chance some are lost to players, this list aims to inform the player on why you may want to use a handful of items in particular, given some of their questionable attributes.

War Forger: The War Forger is a post-Eye of Cthulhu support item that grants all nearby allies up to a 25 life shield when used by a healer. It's ability to effect an infinite amount of allies in the area with one use is rather potent in its stage of the game. It works incredibly well as a pre-boss boost to you and your allies' maximum life and survivability. At the meager cost of about 80 mana, assuming you have no bonus healing or mana cost reductions, an enumerable amount of allies can have an extra life crystal worth in health for as long as the life shield persists.

Cleansing Water Pouch: The Cleansing Water Pouch may seem a little weaker in terms of healing potential at a glance, but its ability to heal targets again at an incredibly reduced mana cost allows for far greater mana conservation. In situations where allies are taking sustained damage and not burst damage, the pouch excels. When the moment arrives that some burst healing is in order, you will have an ample supply of mana to dish out the necessary amount of healing to protect your allies.

Whispering Dagger: The Whispering Dagger is an interesting item that encourages a high risk, high reward situation. Sacrificing 80% of your health may seem like a ridiculous idea, but the damage increase it provides is massive. You get a full minute of increased damage before the negative effect actually goes off. So for situations where time is of the essence, a healer would find it in their best interest to pull out the dagger, such as when day time is approaching against Skeletron Prime.

Phoenix Staff: The goal of a healer is to prevent your allies from dying, so a shoulder guardian spot taken up by a feature that only works when a player has died may seem questionable. The reality is casual players will encounter deaths in their playthrough, especially in Expert Mode. Difficult invasions like the Pumpkin Moon, Frost Moon and Martian Madness deal an incredible amount of damage to players in a very hectic way. It's not uncommon to suffer a death or two in these events, so with a phoenix out, every nearby ally can get back into the fight much quicker and with more health. It should be noted that the percentage amounts the item uses are influenced by bonus healing at a 1.5 ratio. I.e it starts at 6% but with 5 bonus healing, it would be 13.5%.

Martyr's Chalice: Deliberately causing your own death may seem like a backwards idea after what has been discussed in this guide. But the ability to heal all allies, with infinite range for a large portion of health can save some fights. If everyone in your group has been battered down by an invasion or boss, and your death seems imminent, you can sacrifice however much health you had to give 100+ to everyone else as well as some brief invulnerability. The larger the group, the higher the amount healed in a single use. A more comedic situation is to use the chalice to save a mortally injured ally that may be exploring away from the group. Since the range is infinite, if the healer is in base, away from monsters trying to steal their money, they can save that person with a small cost of some time to respawn.

Support Set Ups
When it comes to support entity placements, two dominant strategies exist:

Setting up shop is the strategy of placing all, or most, of your support spells in one central location. This allows hurt players to gravitate towards the spot you've chosen if they have suffered a large amount of damage recently. Generally, it exists as a safe spot that the healer will focus on during an invasion or boss fight. It can simplify movement for players, works as a beacon for your allies, and allows you to recover ally life incredibly quickly. The issue with this strategy however is boss placement. If a boss is currently occupying your shop spot, then it wouldn't be wise for allies to stick around it. When this occurs, a large amount of support time, mana, and possibly life will be lost as you either wait for the boss to move again or reposition your shop.

Full Coverage is the other prevailing strategy. To put it simply, you place your supports around the arena in a systematic fashion so that allies are always in reach of some sort of support spell. With this strategy, the support is not as potent or centralized, but is never in danger of completely vanishing. The bosses position is not nearly as important to the healers success and allows your allies to focus on dodging attacks rather than trying to reach a specific point where they can rest for a moment. However, if your team takes a considerable amount of damage rather quickly, this strategy may lack the burst potential of the shop strategy.

Ultimately, it is up to the healer to choose, as some boss fights and invasions suffer from the cons of each strategy far less than others.

Other Items
Mana Delight: is excellent for restoring mana as it avoids Out of Touch which reduces healing. It is acquired from the Cook.

Final Comments
The healer is undoubtedly the most unique of the seven classes available to players with the Thorium Mod. While the focus of the other six players lies on the enemies and bosses they are fighting, the healer has to split their focus on his allies and nearby monsters. With the many tools available to a healer that only continues to grow over time, it makes for an unique and incredibly stimulating experience that requires quite a bit of thought and effort. This effort amounts to something incredible, however. An experienced healer can make his team seem nearly invincible. Good luck to all you healers out there, keep your friends alive!