Ive played a Hammerdin, Smiter, Zealer, an Avenger for a bit... but now I wanna try a Healadin whats the ideal stats I want to have base str/dex? (then vita whore)and most importantly what skills you want to max, from first to last and what gear should I be looking out for? and how should I go merc wise?

Thanks for answering the questions

20 prayer
20 holy bolt
20 HS
20 bhammers
20 FoH

plus 1 point wonders
medetation, redemtion, rez auras, defiance

Merc wise, id sugest a5 merc or a2 prayer merc
use it to tank and kill for you. while you heal him from the back line.

So would I have prayer as my active aura or meditation? and I use holy bolt to single target heal correct? sorry lol still l2ping a healer.

You'd normally use Cleansing aura, since Meditation-on-equip is available from a couple runewords ("Insight" is the easiest to make). The Prayer synergy for Cleaning and Meditation works with soft points, so Prayer is almost completely redundant once the other skills are available. You might use Prayer for those occasions where it's radius is needed (non-poisonous boss fights I guess).

HBolt is a single target healing spell, the HBolts from FoHeavens do not heal. HBolt can be hard or impossible to use well when your party includes lots of summons, since they'll get in the way of the bolts. Also, players often have to move and will end up evading the bolts. Both of those problems are overcome by just using the aura as the source of healing (this is also the only way to heal yourself aside from potions, so try to get your Prayer really high).

no point in using cleansing as the meditation from insight has the reduce duration bonus and they do not stack. prayer also gives extra health regeneration ontop of the heal pulse. If you use insight and have a point in cleansing you will get the heal pulse, the reduce duration pulse and the mana recovery all from meditation. Then you can stack the heal from prayer and gain extra life replenish from prayer. you cant do that with the reduce duration. it wont stack

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I know this is an old thread, but have the skills for healers changed since then? I was looking to make a healer and it doesnt seem that bhammer and FoH affect the holy bolt healing anymore. So to make a healer now, you would just have to max 20 holybolt, 20 prayer, and 20 holy shield? Is this really a 60 pt build for a healer?

lots of healers just go with hammers because holy bolt is already being maxed and synergizes both hammers and foh. besides, its possible to nab another conc aura from a second hammerdin in a party, therefore having 2 characters with high hammer damage AND healing

my healer has 1 point in every available aura. When running with a good sorc i use conviction and let medi do the healing. fana helps the melee builds out if they are attacking slow but conviction is usualy better (to lower enemy def). I switch between most auras quite alot to minimise damage to the party. If there is Lr around I`ll use salvation. If theres conviction around (horadrim ancients etc) then i`ll use conviction to counter that conviction and stop the effects kicking in. I went for as many def auras skillers as I could. His foh damage is pretty bad but he is only really there to make things easy for others. FoH is ok in undead areas so you have something to do.

He is at level 62 prayer at the min (Im aiming for level 80 prayer eventualy). the radius on it at the min is 92 yards. That covers a hell of alot of ground and with medi aura from purity no1 ever runs outa mana (including myself when spamming FoH) With medi and prayer running he is healing 1004 life or something like that. Prayer has 25% party life regen also and 50% life regen for me. Along with the self regen from holy shield he recovers health at an insane rate

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So even with your lvl 62 (80) prayer, you use cleansing as your main aura because of the bonuses and then have meditation equipped from an item (purity or insight)? Is this how you usually run your setup?

Also, what type of scepter should I be shopping for? +3 prayer or holy bolt or what other skill? It seems like prayer is the most important skill.

if you think youll be using holy bolt often, go with a redeemer. if not, just stick with a +3prayer hoto and you should be fine.

purity shield is good, it adds a ton to prayer (like +7 or something) and then has a very high level meditation on top of it. it also adds skills to conviction and fanat, which saves you a lot of 1 point skills later on that you could use elsewhere if you wanted (things like actual moves that deal damage, or hshield/defiance, or any other number of possibilities).

yeh purity can give a total of +10 to prayer, +7 to prayer (perf roll but I only got +6 ) and +3 def auras.
I use a +3 prayer +2 holy bolt HOTO, helps my res, and boosts my dex to keep my at an easy max block. Its no problem getting one into every aura. Before purity is available its nice to have conviction etc. especialy as you usualy wont have purity till early/mid hell.
I pretty much never need to run prayer and rarely do. Its mainly to provide a good heal boost to meditation on equip. I am usualy always running an offensive aura against trash (convic/fana/conc/holy freeze. It makes things move along alot quicker and such high heal is overkill against most trash mobs. Against bosses with high ele damage i`ll run a resist aura to keep everyone from taking very heavy damage and minimise the need to heal many people all at the same time. It lets me focus on the one or 2 main tanks. It can sometimes be hard to make your bolts hit the target you want due to random summons etc. Thats why its good to have very high heal prayer to keep the ranged builds who can suffer from bosses AoE from needing potions. When I done hell diablo with a few friends for the first time we got along without using a single potion. Its a little harder to keep that record if the group is 6-8 players though. I have all my skill quests in all difficultys still to get also so I could max hammer damage pretty easily if i could be bothered puting the time in. I dont play him alone though as I didnt bother leveling a merc and I hate leveling them anyway. I only need to use him for main groups or when someone asks for him. Glorified walking potion FTW! That being said:

I keep saying this but people are still missing it sometimes. Don't use cleansing along with medi aura on equip. Your medi aura gets the bonus from cleansing and the cleansing reduce curse duration is ALWAYS active as long as you have medi on equip and a point in cleansing. If you use cleansing and medi the % wont stack together. The radius of cleansing will be shitty compared to prayer and you will lose out on the extra life regen from prayer. The regen is very handy as its a constant stream of health instead of just having the pulse every 2 secs to heal you. Any healer who runs cleansing along with meditation on equip is very misguided and is not utilising the full power of prayer (massive radius etc.)

I tested the reduce duration last season and it was the same then too, yet I always seen people running cleansing. even after repeatedly telling them it is a waste of time if you have medi on equip. It is alot more noticable when the levels of cleansing are very high. I dont remember my exact cleansing level but its over 30 with 1 point in. Since its % curse/poison reduction synergie is a soft point synergie it gets very strong. If you run a healer run around an area with alot of curses (zaka fort is good) with a point in cleansing. Run prayer and a Medi aura on equip item (insight). check the duration of the curse roughly. then take the insight off and just run prayer. You will see that the medi has the reduction % on it already. Then run both cleansing and medi and check the time you are cursed for again. It wont change from when you were running prayer as long as you have medi on equip.

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Ok, I wanted to check it with you because you know what you are talking about. Prayer it is with medi on equip, one point into cleansing but dont use it. Offensive auras when needed. Sounds like a plan. Thanks a lot.

Don't be so sure about that.

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iz a secret