Medic!

Let's take a look at the Healer class.  We'll call this class Daja, since there are multiple classes with healing capabilities, and "healer" is so generic of a term as to invite confusion.  Dajas are the class with the highest healing output potential, both in terms of burst and long-term healing, although certain Fallad subclass preventions can rival Dajas abilities in raw healing.  (Fallads will be our next class.)  Over the long term, and certainly without the use of very long preventions, dajas have the greatest amount of raw healing.

In addition to their healing, dajas have several key defensive and utility-style abilities/buffs, and are a pet class, with one powerful same-stat pet (angel) and one very special pet, the gesko (willed protector before major remort).  They rely heavily on their pets for offense, with their only offensive spells being lightning and mini-lightning (static charge).  Let's take a look at the attributes:

Strength: 0 (ostensibly a part of lightning damage, but largely considered irrelevant)
Dexterity: 0
Agility: 0
Speed: 0
Intellect: psychic shock, white flames damage, casting damage, regale, sixth, buffs if cast, pet if cast, certain prevents
Wisdom: same as intellect plus all heals, ascension, meek, the shielding prayer, light shield
Constitution: moderate degree of reliance on preventions
Willpower: evasion, bestow vision, some spells in conjunction with int/wis

Primary Attribute: Wisdom
Secondary Attributes: Willpower, Constitution, Intellect
Trash Attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Speed


Of special note is that the angel (a daja's best pet for running purposes) uses the character's best stats.  Therefore, while it is never advisable to wear physical attributes, if you have the sun stones to spare, putting them into willpower followed by the physical attributes will boost your angel.  One might be tempted to suggest that int/wis/wil gear is the de facto best gear for dajas based on this list; however, that misses two characteristics of crafted gear that I will introduce here:

(1) All item bonuses have a set value, and the difference lies in cost.  Therefore, an int/wis/wil piece will necessarily have less int and wis than an int/wis piece.  And given the supreme importance of wisdom, it may be advisable to force wisdom higher.
(2) Crafted gear has many bonuses available, including hit, dam, nr, quick, and significant pools.  Because heal power is based on the size of the total health pool, wearing hp/wil gear can yield significant defensive bonuses to the daja.

A bit of hit and damage are helpful for a daja to wear, in addition to quick/nr.  A dajas has very little class-based damage, and time spent healing is time not spent spamming lightning.  While lightning has a limited influence on the daja's overall run speed, time spent outside of combat spamming heals earns close to 0 plat.  However, it is vital that the daja have an excellent amount of wisdom in order to fuel all her preventions and special attacks and to the power of her gesko (assuming she has enough int/wis to cast her gesko).

When we consider races, we give special consideration to races with special abilities.  Time-walk/bend has an exceptionally important influence on dajas, since all of their non-pet power lies in lag and prevention-based abilities.  A good amount of wisdom is considered vital when selecting a race, but special abilities such as sights, flight, physical resistance, and even massive size are not because dajas have those areas covered.

My top choices and explanations in the next post!