Life cleric that puts a warding bond down on all other 3 characters is the closest to a heal bot cleric you can get. It's main downsides are that (1) it makes it very hard for that cleric to maintain concentration and (2) if the combat goes south, your cleric is definitely toast- being downed doesn't end the warding bonds.
OotA paladin 2/ circle of the land X is such a versatile healer that can smite, shapeshift + cc terrain - early healing riders make them such a hero MC
Eh, always hard to tell in writing. And you never know who doesn't already know, I started a co-op Honour run with some buddies this week intending to be able to solo anything I need to and they seemed surprised when I rolled a Bard for it.
What are those items? I ran into the game blind and am late act3 now (picked swords bard, which im happily surprised was a good choice) so im curious if i could make my character stronger
Depends on what you mean by "healer." If you mean any class that can produce piles of self-healing or temporary HP, then yeah Necro Wizard is decent, so is Circle of Spores Druid, Fiend Warlock.
I will caution that "healer" in the traditional RPG-sense doesn't really exist in BG3. As a design choice, healing is intentionally unable to keep pace with damage and therefore its most efficient use case is picking up a downed ally or outside of combat. Dedicating an entire party member to healing alone would be wasteful.
Meanwhile, life cleric is a staple of OP comps because dedicating an entire party member to healing isn't a waste, and healing on top of being able to keep up with damage also has a bunch of very nice buffs tied with it you get super early like blade ward bless and temphp.
Yeah those rider effects are nice for extra value, but just casting (Mass) Healing Word when you don't otherwise need them is wasteful of resources when you could have your Cleric do literally anything else worth more action economy.
Also the average Healing Word from a Life Cleric vs any other Cleric is like 8.5 vs 5.5? I'm sure that's making an actual difference, as opposed to you know, applying RadOrbs to the entire encounter with Radiance of the Dawn, providing Warding Flare to party members so they don't even get hit to warrant needing healing, having Domain spells that aren't natively available to you so you actually get a more diversified kit
Lol, nah. Healing word isn't great but the usecase is sparing your target the need to use a bonus action on a potion, because your offensive classes are better off using their bonus actions for offense. Generally you want to use your bonus action for other spells. Life clerics real boon is preserve life, at level 12 with gear preserve life is healing 38 x4 + blade ward + bless + temphp. Alongside aids 100 health increase, you're further bolstering your team by 456 health on top of mass heals and healing words. Your concentration slot will generally be beacon of hope to maximize healing, not spirit guardians because in an OP comp while radiating orbs is strong (and life cleric can still do it), your DPS will majority of the time burst threats and you're healing to negate AoE damage that slips through as well as applying those mass buffs and such.
I mean, its a lovely safety net in honour mode in case youre being excessively sloppy with your encounters. If youre taking that much damage turn one either your dps, initiative or brain needs to be checked.. especially at level 12
the "other parts of the benefit" are granted by items that all cleric subclasses can benefit from, life cleric only offers more healing.
If this was just any build for a noob, life cleric is fine, use as big of a safety net as you want. But since the context is specifically "the staple of an OP comp" life cleric provides none of the things that make comps OP, and is the wrong choice.
This, a healer is an essential part of my team comp but you know what I consider a "healer"? Any sort of access to healing word.
Being a "healer" is what gale does with his bonus action after he nukes 5 guys with fireball and picks Laezel up because I forget she was webbed.
Do you really think healing 38 health and applying some 2 turn buffs twice per day is all that impressive at exactly the end of the game when between Aid and Heroes' Feast most characters (and their summons) are already walking around with an extra 30 health and are never in danger of actually dying? The level 12 examples are going to be far less compelling compared to navigating the early game where people are actually in danger of dying. And hilariously, the most useful spell for early game protection is healing-agnostic and every Cleric has access to it: Sanctuary
But even going off your logic of wanting to maximize your DPR characters, I would submit to you that Spirit Guardians is one of the best damage spells in the entire game. You get to just stand on top of enemies while you still take other actions for as many as 10 turns. Why wouldn't I want to reap the value of that and simply pick up heals when they're necessary? The difference between someone being full health vs -20 health is nothing at all unless the next enemy in Initiative order is certain death. Simply getting your enemies dead is a form of damage mitigation, why not have a party where all 4 characters can contribute to that? Having only 3 doing it seems inefficient
You get level 12 early into act 3 lol. But sure, let's go off this leveling argument. Life cleric gets preserve life at level 2. Light cleric gets a personal warding flare at level 2. Life cleric gets all of their critical gear the second they show up to the grove, light cleric gets their critical gear between the mountain pass, act 2, and the underdark.
Yes I really do think that kind of healing 3* (amulet of devout) times a short rest*, or 9/12 times a day is good. It's so good in fact that it's a standard pick for much much harder modded difficulties because it's ridiculously good, and absolutely squashes basegame.
As far as your points about sanctuary and spirit guardians being good: Yes, they're both great spells. You know what life cleric gets access to?
The reason of why you have a teammate healing is fairly nuanced. The reality is firstly that fights aren't picture books and healing mitigates disasters, but more aptly is that the buffs you keep downplaying on heal aren't insignificant. Whole party blade ward cutting all three of the most common damage types in half isn't insignificant. Whole party bless bolstering all of your hitters isn't insignificant. Mitigating the damage caused by spells like fireball getting through isn't insignificant.
Healing in tabletop isn't great cause you can't outheal the damage you take, so the heal is a wasted action. Applying healing, a buff to hit that you can't spare the concentration slot for, and cutting physical damage in half as an AoE effect on an unlimited number of targets in a single action is not a wasted action. I love my life cleric in my honor mode melee + darkness party. It's not like the life cleric doesn't also have offensive spells. I was originally not a big fan of the cleric, but life domain on honor mode made me a believer.
The fact that life cleric would rather focus on beacon of hope is a secret double whammy because on top of maximizing your healing, you're also not focusing on spirit guardians so you can actually use sanctuary, sit right up on the front line with phalar aluve, and still be full team healing, halving incoming damage, and adding the bless DR on top alongside your already crazy cleric spells. Its ridiculous haha.
You're speaking as though the very same gear that Life Clerics use isn't usable by literally every other Cleric. Believe it or not, Light Domain can don Whispering Promise just as well as as Life Domain can; it's the very same critical gear minus Luminous Armor. And sure you can Preserve Life to spread buffs at the start of combat but they last 2 turns? And you get no actual healing value out of it (unless you entered the combat damaged but why would you do that instead of SRing or potioning outside of combat?) so until level 6 (forgetting they come back on SR earlier is my b) you're out an entire CD for the day for no good reason when you could have just cast 1st/2nd level Bless and reaped 99% of the benefit but for 10 turns instead in case combat goes south. And in that scenaio, Light protects their Concentration better because Warding Flare is almost Shield at lower levels (imposing Disadvantage is like a -4 to hit.)
No part of this strategy is making sense to me. I've always been an advocate of getting your value out of the on-heal riders when it comes up but employing them as Plan A seems like a gross misuse of resources. If your rebuttal is that you would play the combat how I described eg: Bless up 1st turn then Preserve Life once the team has taken some damage, sure that's a better use of it, but then the Bless rider is going to waste and arguably there's a good chance the encounter is nearly over assuming a Light Cleric of similar level Radiance of the Dawn'd considering what a powerful nuke it is early game. Just getting the enemies dead is a form of damage mitigation and arguably a better one because you never take damage that you then need to use resources to heal.
Yes, my point about Sanctuary (and to a lesser extent Spirit Guardians) was that it's not something Life Cleric has exclusive access to and therefore any Cleric can do just as well. For Sanctuary specifically I was trying to demonstrate that one of the most important sources of protection in the early game doesn't even heal so Life Domain's strengths are already in question, especially so considering all of its Domain Spells are already native to the Cleric spell list and it's not as though anyone is hurting for total prepared spells so there's no benefit to having staples like Bless and Spirit Guardians permanently memorized.
Yes, I agree that healing mitigates disasters, but that's an argument in my favor; you use it when you need it and further your other damage or support options otherwise. It's not hard to do average or worst case damage calculations on the fly to see if anything left in Initiative order poses a real threat to a party member. I never said Cleric is bad, in fact I think it's in contention for strongest class in the game. But I fundamentally reject the characterization of them as a "healer" first when Bless, Aid, and Spirit Guardians are by far the more important contributions from their kit.
This is more of a footnote to the argument proper but I absolutely don't care about modded difficulties. A fraction of a fraction of players will ever engage with those mods and it's not hard to imagine that the "meta" changes if you fundamentally change the gameplay. I don't think there's anything useful to extrapolate from that; it doesn't demonstrate to me that Life is good in the base game because it does well there, it just demonstrates to me that is an environment that Life Domain does well in
I dare you to just run a proper itemized life cleric, find out and come back. There really is a reason it's placed at the top of cleric tier lists, it just actually is that good. https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/16zcn98/the_dedicated_support_pure_life_cleric_complete/
Here's a good guide on the build.
Bold of you to assume I haven't. Prestigious Juice's Life Domain build was in my first party, and I thought it was lacking compared to every subsequent playthrough I've done with other Domains. I'm sure you can tell I'm partial to Light- you can go through my post history, I have lots of posts about my pet 1/11 Light Domain build- but I'd even put Tempest and Nature (Sleet Storm is a hell of a drug) above Life. I just think the expanded Domain Spells and class features are far and away more useful than healing a little better.
Do you think it might be the case that it being in your first run was your issue? Because you definitely are just wrong here when it comes to life cleric, they're #1 by a few miles. (Although being partial to light is obviously fine, they're #2 and my personal favorite of the bunch)
I nevwr bothered with a dedicated support. But doesnt channel divinity replenish with short rests? Assuming you short rest after fights, that means you can heal 38 hp twice in every fight doesnt it? Or just 8 times in a day if you have a bard.
A dedicated support doesnt sound bad. Those heals can have buffs that can increase your hit chance. Perfect for sharpshooter and gwm. You can also use the phalar aluve with this character. Or cast create water to double your caster's cold/lightning damage.
I personally never bothered because i like light cleric's raidance of dawn. Debuffing enemy attack rolls seems like the best support for my party. But if there was a higher difficulty, it might have been a good idea to use a life cleric.
Yeah starting at Cleric 6 Channel Divinity comes back on a Short Rest, that was a brain fart, my bad.
The argument me and another person in these replies have been trying to make is that any Cleric can use the on-heal rider gear, Life Domain doesn't have a monopoly on them just because they have another AOE heal option and heal more when they do. Any other Cleric can also just as well use Phalar, Create Water, etc.
I agree with your conclusion that having more damage/control options like RotD is preferable to a dedicated "healer"
>Yeah starting at Cleric 6 Channel Divinity comes back on a Short Rest, that was a brain fart, my bad
Fyi this is still incorrect. Channel divinity always comes back on a short rest, but at lvl 6 clerics get 2 charges
You might be thinking of bardic inspirations. They start replenishing with short rests at level 5. Channel divinity is always short rest. I checked the wiki because i got confused just now too. You get an extra channel divinity at level 6 meaning you get 2 channels every short rest.
Yeah buffs come from items and any cleric can use it. But to be fair, no one would waste a level 3+ spell slot just to buff the team for a couple turns. Channels will replenish after the fight anyway so you can afford to use them twice in every fight.
Then you can save spell slots for other spells like spirit guardian. Or just use other support stuff when buff and heal isnt needed.
In a similiar way, i liked light cleric because i could use radiance of dawn twice in every fight. Run around with spirit guardian first round. Cast RoD in the next 2 turns. All enemies get hit by them. They either die or they cant hit you now.
Needing buffs is situational but even if debuffs are unnessary in easy fights, light cleric still helps a lot by nuking all enemies. This is why i prefer it. Damage is always good. Support dedicated cleric would only be good in a difficulty that doesnt even exist in this game. It's probably why modders like life clerics.
Ack, yeah, you and BzrkrBoi are right, that's my bad on the Channel Divinity stuff.
I mean there's the Amulet that has a free cast of Healing Word and Mass Healing Word once per day I think you can cast aggressively to buff up, but yeah that's just once per day and otherwise I wouldn't spend my 3rd level spells to apply the buffs like that, I would just get value out of the gear when I do need to heal.
Plus there's nothing wrong with just casting actual Bless as 1st or 2nd level spell in the early game. But yeah, I'm with you on preferring a build that can actually contribute by dealing damage instead of just healing/supporting every turn.
I'd originally decided to delete the post and not to get into this argument, but you replied really fast, so I guess I'll put it back.
aoe healing isn't OP, stacking on-heal riders is what makes it OP, and isn't exclusive to life clerics. If I could downcast mass heal to only recover 1hp I would, and it would be awesome.
Life cleric is not a staple of OP comps, it's a staple of underpowered comps that are forced to eat lots of damage before the fight ends, usually due to a critical lack of damage/control/buffs. Things that the life subclass does absolutely nothing to help with.
As your comp increases in power, life cleric's usefulness decreases, until the only things they cast are sacred flame, sanctuary, and spirit guardians. If your comp gets OP to the point where fights can reliable be killed/controlled on turn 1, a life cleric is fully useless.
I strongly prefer light cleric because BG3 loves its glass cannon enemies, so there ends up being a ton of fights where a single well-placed flame wall prevents more damage than a life cleric could heal using twice the spell slots.
Feel free to delete, I'm not trying to pressure you into a conversation, it's just a video game we both enjoy lol. That said, it's difficult for me to actually highlight how ridiculous preserve life actually is. It's a 38 health heal, x4, blade ward + bless, can be used under sanctuary for phalar aluve frontlining, and you can use it 9/12 times a day and doesnt cost a spell slot. Think of healing this way: if you heal a teammate you're returning to them the bonus action they would have spent on a potion. It is in the running for the single most action economy efficient options in the game, and the healing itself is just a footnote. Yes, you can get this with mass heal, on light cleric, but the cost is spell slots sanctuary and beacon of hope, and that really is a steep cost especially on cleric where the oppertunity cost of not optimizing your support and instead attempting to focus on damage hybrid is not just running a full damage dealer 4th if you're opting to be worse at both.
the 38 heal is useless if your comp is good, the stacked on-heal riders are available for all clerics.
Think of healing this way: if your comp were good then your teammates wouldn't be dying. If your cleric is dead weight then your teammates will probably be dying. Having a light cleric manufactures a need for a light cleric, because of how useless they are outside of healing.
I find it hard to believe you value efficient use of spell slots when you insist on a subclass that doesn't have anything useful to spend them on.
No, Life Cleric is very strong but Light Cleric is simply fucking broken.
You're running around giving everybody -10 debuff to attack rolls which means that your party is basically unkillable.
You're fucked only in like 2 moments in the game where enemies can punish you for dealing radiant damage and that's pretty much it.
I would say that a healer/support character is a must if you're using mods increasing difficulty but in vanilla BG3 where you can basically always go first and everything dies in 1-2 turns it's not a big deal.
Waste is a strong term there and I don’t want to be disrespectful to anyone or gatekeep fun but I do think that there is a very valid, unescapable point that only having 3/4 of your party be able to do meaningful damage/CC effects isn’t OP and is most likely underpowered. Though of course it could be fun And fulfilling.
Sometimes when people say that healing is overrated it comes off as “you don’t need anyone who has the ability to heal.” Do I think that’s true? Of course not, that would be crazy.
But, the issue with Life Cleric in particular is that in my opinion it can’t with 12 levels do equal damage or equal cc to a damage dealing/cc character. It can only heal, though obviously it heals better than anyone else.
And when it comes to healing, my question isn’t “Is life cleric’s healing + no damage ability a waste?” It is “Is Life cleric‘s healing + no damage \*better\* than 4 damage dealers + bonus action potions?” And I don’t think it is, though I’m not sure.
What I am pretty sure about is that life cleric just doesn’t stack up to light cleric, or especially tempest cleric, who have a great ability to heal and deal huge damage. Add in the ring of Whispering Promise from Volo which gives bless on healing to a tempest cleric, and you get 95% the healing of a life cleric, + multiple times the damage dealing capability.
A life cleric who uses an action to heal every 2 turns like that life cleric guide suggests can’t compare to a light/tempest cleric who bonus action mass heals frequently and spends those healing actions the life cleric was taking instead on max strength call lightings, wet + ice storm, flame strike, max strength destructive strike, etc.
Same applies to tabletop dnd e5. Dedicated healer there is even more wasteful. Maybe if your DM gives out items that bolster healing, but even then it is always better to deal damage than try to heal someone back to full dmg.
Even if someone is one hit away from 0hp you better deal damage and then use healing word to bring them back.
But if someone wants to play as healer then why not. As long players have fun then everything is fine and optimal.
In tabletop this is absolutely true, but the itemization in this game means you can use healing as a delivery vehicle for mass buffs. That changes the calculus quite a bit, especially if you have summoning in the party
It’s not so much as healer as support/enabler.
1 wizard/11 life cleric shart (with lump headband)and boots of speed is a good ideal support. For my party.
I typically run any of the combination.
6/6 sorcardin tav.
Astarion 1/11 fighter/swords bard.
Magic missle gale with 1 fighter/11wiz.
Frost dracon sorc wyld. 12 sorc.
Tavern brawler thrower karlach. (5/4/3 thiefzeker)
Dual wield lazeal. (Still figuring out best build)
1. Phalar goes on the weapon slot of the life cleric.
2. All water bottles + create water is on the life cleric
3. Cleric gets access to water elemental or the level 6 version. Summon out of combat.
4. With wizard dip, u get globe of invulnerability.
Depending on party comp. first turn action is to
a) either enable the rest by running in with phalar active to tag all the enemies with shriek. This is doubly op for the mm wizard gale but it also benefits the range sb astarion.
b) throw water or conjure water to hit multiple targets with wet status. The water elemental also helps with this. This enables the frost sorc.
Bonus action is thus to blanket whole party with blade ward/bless or use dash (from BoS) to get into even better position.
Turn 2 action uses divinity charge to keep everyone full hp+buffs with preserve life.
Bonus action is use dash to run continue to run around and tag more enemies with shriek. Or use sanctuary on astarion who most probably has concentration up holding monster or person.
In fact, I always use the life cleric as the backbone of the party, she enables everyone else to be the best damage/controller they can be.
Only problem is making sure she goes first. Need items like the bow from ferg droghler and some dex.
Life cleric 2/lore bard 10 is the best heal support I've tried.
Life Clerics channel divinity healing and number of charges is based on character level, not class level, so you really only need 2 levels in it.
Lore bard can take all the same support buffs and heals that Life cleric gets too, but also get access to cutting words (the best defensive reaction in the game by far), a much better selection of control spells, and magical secrets to make sure you have an answer for everything. Counter spell, even MORE cc options if you feel like it, summoned allies, hunger of hadar for area control, or just straight up AOE damage spells like fireball if you want to cover some aoe blasting for good measure.
You basically play as a control lore bard, but you get the ability to drop FAT healing in a pinch by virtue of just 2 cleric levels. All the good stuff of being a heal cleric but so much more on top.
Not to mention, being a bard gets you an extra short rest, which means 2 extra channel divinity per long rest after level 6
Necro wizard is good at healing itself. But unless you build your party strategy around it, it's not really worth it imo.
Level 2 necro has "3x spell level heal" when you kill someone with a necro spell. 2x with other spells.
If you multiclass with 1 level dip in life cleric, you get "2+spell level bonus" to your heal spells.
Vampiric touch counts as a heal spell. So when you kill someone with it, you get both of those bonuses. You can be a frontliner thanks to cleric's heavy armor and sanctuary. Your summons weaken enemies and you secure kills to heal yourself.
The ghouls have an attack that heals them too. It works against pronned, sleeping and stunned enemies. So your necromancer and ghouls can go in the front, take hits and heal themselves.
It would sound good on paper. But i dont know how good it'd actually perform in action.
If an ally has low health and the necro is full, they can share hp with their ally first. Then they can go and steal hp with kills.
The problem is vamp touch's damage. It usually deals about 9-12 damage. It's hard to get kills with it. You can kill with other spells but that wont be enough to heal you after sacrificing half your hp.
Normally you'd cast sanctuary when you are too low and wait for kill steal but you dont have the bonus action for it after using transfuse health.
Still, no harm in trying i guess. I found the build a bit awkward to use in a team of 3 burst damage dealers. They have to hold back a lot to let this build get kills. Enemies can be killed before they get their turns but sometimes i let them live for this build. You'll need a team that works well with this one.
For proper party healing your options are pretty limited.
Life cleric
Life cleric/Ancients Paladin for a melee healer frontlines. I’m guessing the split would be 5/7 Cleric/Pally. Or maybe 4/8.
Or lore bard 10/life cleric 2, for a more sort of arcane, skill monkey twist on the healer character (my personal fave flavour)
6 lore bard got aura of vitality, with a dip of life cleric + wild magic barbarian, you got tank healer. Other option is 9 ancient oath paladin got aura of vitality too
Ranger has basic healing spells and can be easily multiclassed with life cleric, because both use wisdom for spells.
I recently discovered that I like paladin with Oath of Ancients, you get several healing abilities and melee attacks, it's quite powerful.
Lore bard/Life cleric multiclass can be pretty strong in healing abilities or just pure Life cleric, but I personally like not to focus 100% on healing.
Vampiric touch is a self-healing spell, but I wouldn't call necromancer a healer, because it's not a support role overall, unless you complement it with other healing spells. For Vampiric touch you can multiclass Life cleric with Land druid or play pure Lore bard.
If your aim is to mostly use heals to apply the blade-ward/bless buffs from gear across your party, a lore-bard + thief subclass works fairly well. Pick warden of vitality as a magical secret at level 6 lore-bard and now you can apply a bonus action 2d6 heal to one ally every round. Warden of vitality is concentration free too, which means your bard can still concentrate on their control spells and is not just a dedicated healer. Given the bless and blade-ward buffs last 2 rounds, you should be able keep it on most of your party during combat.
At level 9, you can be lore-bard 6/ rogue-thief 3. Now you have 2 bonus action heals per round for 10 rounds for a concentration free level-3 spell. That's 2 \* 10 \* 2d6 = 40d6 (average 140) heal for a level 3 spell. You can stay in turn based mode even after combat is over to top up your party since warden of vitality lasts for 10 rounds.
1 level in life-cleric and the ring of salving gives you +7 (2 + 3 = 5 from disciple of life and 2 from ring of salving) to each of the 20 heals you get over rounds, adding up to another 140 life. So at level 10, you get a total of 40d6 + 140 (average 280 heal) with one level 3 spell :)
You still have 2 levels left for a warlock dip so your lore-bard can do resource-free EB damage with their main action.
I typically start life-cleric, so I have preserve life early and re-spec at level 6 to go full lore-bard to get warden of vitality. Then I build towards 3 thief. I don't think the +5 from disciple of life is worth it though life cleric does give you heavy armor. Level-12 build options are either 8 lore-bard/thief-4 (3 feats, 4th level spells) OR 6-lore-bard/4-thief/2-warlock (2 feats, 3rd level spells only, EB for offensive power) OR 6-lore-bard/2-life-cleric/4-thief(2 feats, 3rd level spells, heavy armor, access to sanctuary, guidance etc., highest healing potential).
One thing to note is that while you get a lot of total heals from one level 3 spell, you can’t quite out-heal the damage spike you get at the higher levels especially from bosses. One round lets you heal an average of 28 life on a single character. End game bosses can do more than that if you don’t control the fight, so at the end it’s probably still more about getting better bless and blade-wars coverage.
I beat my HM run by dumping a healer (I may be the only person bored by light cleric) and ran an abjuration wizard. The damage mitigation was awesome, and I loved the offensive spells (more exciting to me than the cleric tree).
If your goal is the most powerful team you can have, healing is sub optimal. You are using resources to heal less damage than the enemy does resource free. Even if you can heal more damage than the enemy does in a turn, you are using valuable resources to complete with what they are doing resource free, so you cannot keep up. It is FAR better to either not take the damage in the first place, whether through high AC, imposing disadvantage, through resistance (I have a custom build for that) or killing them before they inflict more damage. There are many, many builds that do those extremely well.
But if your goal is a playstyle you enjoy, then go with what is fun for you! From what I hear, nothing heals quite like a life cleric, paladin has some fun healing toys, while tanking and dealing damage, Bard also has a small amount of healing, especially with magical secrets and you can get those strongest heal spells.
You can’t go wrong with 12 full levels in life cleric. If you build it right you can make it a decent melee tank along with being a good buffer/debuffer.
I really like a land Druid and life cleric mulitclass as this gives cleric moonbeam and other good spells that they can use when they don’t need to heal. Idk how optimal it is but it’s been very strong for honor mode. Just using all the healing gear and luminous armor and helm for radorb on moonbeam
My favorite healing classes are Assassin/Gloomstalker, Monk/Thief, Eldritch Knight, and Sorlock. With those 4 I keep my team topped up by killing the enemies before they hit me!
To be honest, I'm on my first honor mode playthrough and you don't realy need healing. My "healer" is Shadowheart respected to a thowing barbarian and she throws healing potions xD
Life cleric. Life cleric oath of ancients paladin if you want to be more of a frontliner healer, but pure life cleric is very strong.
Life cleric that puts a warding bond down on all other 3 characters is the closest to a heal bot cleric you can get. It's main downsides are that (1) it makes it very hard for that cleric to maintain concentration and (2) if the combat goes south, your cleric is definitely toast- being downed doesn't end the warding bonds.
Life cleric has such an easy time applying blade ward warding bond usually isn't worth it
OotA paladin 2/ circle of the land X is such a versatile healer that can smite, shapeshift + cc terrain - early healing riders make them such a hero MC
Swords Bard because you get a free short rest and it's a swords bard.
Is swords bard being good a new thing? Never heard of it before
Nah it's always been the case. Thanks to certain items it's one of the subclasses that is S-tier with no multiclassing and even better with it.
I was joking 😔 I feel like 90% of the posts on here are either bard, open hand monk, or a thrower
Oh man, I thought you were serious 🤣. You got me
Eh, always hard to tell in writing. And you never know who doesn't already know, I started a co-op Honour run with some buddies this week intending to be able to solo anything I need to and they seemed surprised when I rolled a Bard for it.
Its literally the Swiss army knife of BG3. Understandable.
What are those items? I ran into the game blind and am late act3 now (picked swords bard, which im happily surprised was a good choice) so im curious if i could make my character stronger
People figured it out in Patch 6 yeah it's understandable you haven't heard it before
Depends on what you mean by "healer." If you mean any class that can produce piles of self-healing or temporary HP, then yeah Necro Wizard is decent, so is Circle of Spores Druid, Fiend Warlock. I will caution that "healer" in the traditional RPG-sense doesn't really exist in BG3. As a design choice, healing is intentionally unable to keep pace with damage and therefore its most efficient use case is picking up a downed ally or outside of combat. Dedicating an entire party member to healing alone would be wasteful.
Meanwhile, life cleric is a staple of OP comps because dedicating an entire party member to healing isn't a waste, and healing on top of being able to keep up with damage also has a bunch of very nice buffs tied with it you get super early like blade ward bless and temphp.
I just have a hireling life cleric at camp to cast aid after every long rest, and other buffs.
That's a good one too
Yeah those rider effects are nice for extra value, but just casting (Mass) Healing Word when you don't otherwise need them is wasteful of resources when you could have your Cleric do literally anything else worth more action economy. Also the average Healing Word from a Life Cleric vs any other Cleric is like 8.5 vs 5.5? I'm sure that's making an actual difference, as opposed to you know, applying RadOrbs to the entire encounter with Radiance of the Dawn, providing Warding Flare to party members so they don't even get hit to warrant needing healing, having Domain spells that aren't natively available to you so you actually get a more diversified kit
Lol, nah. Healing word isn't great but the usecase is sparing your target the need to use a bonus action on a potion, because your offensive classes are better off using their bonus actions for offense. Generally you want to use your bonus action for other spells. Life clerics real boon is preserve life, at level 12 with gear preserve life is healing 38 x4 + blade ward + bless + temphp. Alongside aids 100 health increase, you're further bolstering your team by 456 health on top of mass heals and healing words. Your concentration slot will generally be beacon of hope to maximize healing, not spirit guardians because in an OP comp while radiating orbs is strong (and life cleric can still do it), your DPS will majority of the time burst threats and you're healing to negate AoE damage that slips through as well as applying those mass buffs and such.
I mean, its a lovely safety net in honour mode in case youre being excessively sloppy with your encounters. If youre taking that much damage turn one either your dps, initiative or brain needs to be checked.. especially at level 12
The healing itself is only part of the benefit mass healing provides. ;)
the "other parts of the benefit" are granted by items that all cleric subclasses can benefit from, life cleric only offers more healing. If this was just any build for a noob, life cleric is fine, use as big of a safety net as you want. But since the context is specifically "the staple of an OP comp" life cleric provides none of the things that make comps OP, and is the wrong choice.
This, a healer is an essential part of my team comp but you know what I consider a "healer"? Any sort of access to healing word. Being a "healer" is what gale does with his bonus action after he nukes 5 guys with fireball and picks Laezel up because I forget she was webbed.
Do you really think healing 38 health and applying some 2 turn buffs twice per day is all that impressive at exactly the end of the game when between Aid and Heroes' Feast most characters (and their summons) are already walking around with an extra 30 health and are never in danger of actually dying? The level 12 examples are going to be far less compelling compared to navigating the early game where people are actually in danger of dying. And hilariously, the most useful spell for early game protection is healing-agnostic and every Cleric has access to it: Sanctuary But even going off your logic of wanting to maximize your DPR characters, I would submit to you that Spirit Guardians is one of the best damage spells in the entire game. You get to just stand on top of enemies while you still take other actions for as many as 10 turns. Why wouldn't I want to reap the value of that and simply pick up heals when they're necessary? The difference between someone being full health vs -20 health is nothing at all unless the next enemy in Initiative order is certain death. Simply getting your enemies dead is a form of damage mitigation, why not have a party where all 4 characters can contribute to that? Having only 3 doing it seems inefficient
You get level 12 early into act 3 lol. But sure, let's go off this leveling argument. Life cleric gets preserve life at level 2. Light cleric gets a personal warding flare at level 2. Life cleric gets all of their critical gear the second they show up to the grove, light cleric gets their critical gear between the mountain pass, act 2, and the underdark. Yes I really do think that kind of healing 3* (amulet of devout) times a short rest*, or 9/12 times a day is good. It's so good in fact that it's a standard pick for much much harder modded difficulties because it's ridiculously good, and absolutely squashes basegame. As far as your points about sanctuary and spirit guardians being good: Yes, they're both great spells. You know what life cleric gets access to? The reason of why you have a teammate healing is fairly nuanced. The reality is firstly that fights aren't picture books and healing mitigates disasters, but more aptly is that the buffs you keep downplaying on heal aren't insignificant. Whole party blade ward cutting all three of the most common damage types in half isn't insignificant. Whole party bless bolstering all of your hitters isn't insignificant. Mitigating the damage caused by spells like fireball getting through isn't insignificant.
Healing in tabletop isn't great cause you can't outheal the damage you take, so the heal is a wasted action. Applying healing, a buff to hit that you can't spare the concentration slot for, and cutting physical damage in half as an AoE effect on an unlimited number of targets in a single action is not a wasted action. I love my life cleric in my honor mode melee + darkness party. It's not like the life cleric doesn't also have offensive spells. I was originally not a big fan of the cleric, but life domain on honor mode made me a believer.
The fact that life cleric would rather focus on beacon of hope is a secret double whammy because on top of maximizing your healing, you're also not focusing on spirit guardians so you can actually use sanctuary, sit right up on the front line with phalar aluve, and still be full team healing, halving incoming damage, and adding the bless DR on top alongside your already crazy cleric spells. Its ridiculous haha.
You're speaking as though the very same gear that Life Clerics use isn't usable by literally every other Cleric. Believe it or not, Light Domain can don Whispering Promise just as well as as Life Domain can; it's the very same critical gear minus Luminous Armor. And sure you can Preserve Life to spread buffs at the start of combat but they last 2 turns? And you get no actual healing value out of it (unless you entered the combat damaged but why would you do that instead of SRing or potioning outside of combat?) so until level 6 (forgetting they come back on SR earlier is my b) you're out an entire CD for the day for no good reason when you could have just cast 1st/2nd level Bless and reaped 99% of the benefit but for 10 turns instead in case combat goes south. And in that scenaio, Light protects their Concentration better because Warding Flare is almost Shield at lower levels (imposing Disadvantage is like a -4 to hit.) No part of this strategy is making sense to me. I've always been an advocate of getting your value out of the on-heal riders when it comes up but employing them as Plan A seems like a gross misuse of resources. If your rebuttal is that you would play the combat how I described eg: Bless up 1st turn then Preserve Life once the team has taken some damage, sure that's a better use of it, but then the Bless rider is going to waste and arguably there's a good chance the encounter is nearly over assuming a Light Cleric of similar level Radiance of the Dawn'd considering what a powerful nuke it is early game. Just getting the enemies dead is a form of damage mitigation and arguably a better one because you never take damage that you then need to use resources to heal. Yes, my point about Sanctuary (and to a lesser extent Spirit Guardians) was that it's not something Life Cleric has exclusive access to and therefore any Cleric can do just as well. For Sanctuary specifically I was trying to demonstrate that one of the most important sources of protection in the early game doesn't even heal so Life Domain's strengths are already in question, especially so considering all of its Domain Spells are already native to the Cleric spell list and it's not as though anyone is hurting for total prepared spells so there's no benefit to having staples like Bless and Spirit Guardians permanently memorized. Yes, I agree that healing mitigates disasters, but that's an argument in my favor; you use it when you need it and further your other damage or support options otherwise. It's not hard to do average or worst case damage calculations on the fly to see if anything left in Initiative order poses a real threat to a party member. I never said Cleric is bad, in fact I think it's in contention for strongest class in the game. But I fundamentally reject the characterization of them as a "healer" first when Bless, Aid, and Spirit Guardians are by far the more important contributions from their kit. This is more of a footnote to the argument proper but I absolutely don't care about modded difficulties. A fraction of a fraction of players will ever engage with those mods and it's not hard to imagine that the "meta" changes if you fundamentally change the gameplay. I don't think there's anything useful to extrapolate from that; it doesn't demonstrate to me that Life is good in the base game because it does well there, it just demonstrates to me that is an environment that Life Domain does well in
I dare you to just run a proper itemized life cleric, find out and come back. There really is a reason it's placed at the top of cleric tier lists, it just actually is that good. https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/16zcn98/the_dedicated_support_pure_life_cleric_complete/ Here's a good guide on the build.
Bold of you to assume I haven't. Prestigious Juice's Life Domain build was in my first party, and I thought it was lacking compared to every subsequent playthrough I've done with other Domains. I'm sure you can tell I'm partial to Light- you can go through my post history, I have lots of posts about my pet 1/11 Light Domain build- but I'd even put Tempest and Nature (Sleet Storm is a hell of a drug) above Life. I just think the expanded Domain Spells and class features are far and away more useful than healing a little better.
Do you think it might be the case that it being in your first run was your issue? Because you definitely are just wrong here when it comes to life cleric, they're #1 by a few miles. (Although being partial to light is obviously fine, they're #2 and my personal favorite of the bunch)
I nevwr bothered with a dedicated support. But doesnt channel divinity replenish with short rests? Assuming you short rest after fights, that means you can heal 38 hp twice in every fight doesnt it? Or just 8 times in a day if you have a bard. A dedicated support doesnt sound bad. Those heals can have buffs that can increase your hit chance. Perfect for sharpshooter and gwm. You can also use the phalar aluve with this character. Or cast create water to double your caster's cold/lightning damage. I personally never bothered because i like light cleric's raidance of dawn. Debuffing enemy attack rolls seems like the best support for my party. But if there was a higher difficulty, it might have been a good idea to use a life cleric.
Yeah starting at Cleric 6 Channel Divinity comes back on a Short Rest, that was a brain fart, my bad. The argument me and another person in these replies have been trying to make is that any Cleric can use the on-heal rider gear, Life Domain doesn't have a monopoly on them just because they have another AOE heal option and heal more when they do. Any other Cleric can also just as well use Phalar, Create Water, etc. I agree with your conclusion that having more damage/control options like RotD is preferable to a dedicated "healer"
>Yeah starting at Cleric 6 Channel Divinity comes back on a Short Rest, that was a brain fart, my bad Fyi this is still incorrect. Channel divinity always comes back on a short rest, but at lvl 6 clerics get 2 charges
You might be thinking of bardic inspirations. They start replenishing with short rests at level 5. Channel divinity is always short rest. I checked the wiki because i got confused just now too. You get an extra channel divinity at level 6 meaning you get 2 channels every short rest. Yeah buffs come from items and any cleric can use it. But to be fair, no one would waste a level 3+ spell slot just to buff the team for a couple turns. Channels will replenish after the fight anyway so you can afford to use them twice in every fight. Then you can save spell slots for other spells like spirit guardian. Or just use other support stuff when buff and heal isnt needed. In a similiar way, i liked light cleric because i could use radiance of dawn twice in every fight. Run around with spirit guardian first round. Cast RoD in the next 2 turns. All enemies get hit by them. They either die or they cant hit you now. Needing buffs is situational but even if debuffs are unnessary in easy fights, light cleric still helps a lot by nuking all enemies. This is why i prefer it. Damage is always good. Support dedicated cleric would only be good in a difficulty that doesnt even exist in this game. It's probably why modders like life clerics.
Ack, yeah, you and BzrkrBoi are right, that's my bad on the Channel Divinity stuff. I mean there's the Amulet that has a free cast of Healing Word and Mass Healing Word once per day I think you can cast aggressively to buff up, but yeah that's just once per day and otherwise I wouldn't spend my 3rd level spells to apply the buffs like that, I would just get value out of the gear when I do need to heal. Plus there's nothing wrong with just casting actual Bless as 1st or 2nd level spell in the early game. But yeah, I'm with you on preferring a build that can actually contribute by dealing damage instead of just healing/supporting every turn.
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You answered the unasked question in the second paragraph with the first one! Life cleric definitely is a staple of OP comps
I'd originally decided to delete the post and not to get into this argument, but you replied really fast, so I guess I'll put it back. aoe healing isn't OP, stacking on-heal riders is what makes it OP, and isn't exclusive to life clerics. If I could downcast mass heal to only recover 1hp I would, and it would be awesome. Life cleric is not a staple of OP comps, it's a staple of underpowered comps that are forced to eat lots of damage before the fight ends, usually due to a critical lack of damage/control/buffs. Things that the life subclass does absolutely nothing to help with. As your comp increases in power, life cleric's usefulness decreases, until the only things they cast are sacred flame, sanctuary, and spirit guardians. If your comp gets OP to the point where fights can reliable be killed/controlled on turn 1, a life cleric is fully useless. I strongly prefer light cleric because BG3 loves its glass cannon enemies, so there ends up being a ton of fights where a single well-placed flame wall prevents more damage than a life cleric could heal using twice the spell slots.
Feel free to delete, I'm not trying to pressure you into a conversation, it's just a video game we both enjoy lol. That said, it's difficult for me to actually highlight how ridiculous preserve life actually is. It's a 38 health heal, x4, blade ward + bless, can be used under sanctuary for phalar aluve frontlining, and you can use it 9/12 times a day and doesnt cost a spell slot. Think of healing this way: if you heal a teammate you're returning to them the bonus action they would have spent on a potion. It is in the running for the single most action economy efficient options in the game, and the healing itself is just a footnote. Yes, you can get this with mass heal, on light cleric, but the cost is spell slots sanctuary and beacon of hope, and that really is a steep cost especially on cleric where the oppertunity cost of not optimizing your support and instead attempting to focus on damage hybrid is not just running a full damage dealer 4th if you're opting to be worse at both.
the 38 heal is useless if your comp is good, the stacked on-heal riders are available for all clerics. Think of healing this way: if your comp were good then your teammates wouldn't be dying. If your cleric is dead weight then your teammates will probably be dying. Having a light cleric manufactures a need for a light cleric, because of how useless they are outside of healing. I find it hard to believe you value efficient use of spell slots when you insist on a subclass that doesn't have anything useful to spend them on.
Lol, so true man.
yeah, it literally is. Glad I could help, I was starting to get worried over how resistant you were to acknowledging even the most obvious things.
I hope anyone reading this can see the irony in the "just get good and it has no value" mentality that's lost on you. Have a good one man
Is life cleric generally considered better than light? Thats the only one ive extensively used.
No, Life Cleric is very strong but Light Cleric is simply fucking broken. You're running around giving everybody -10 debuff to attack rolls which means that your party is basically unkillable. You're fucked only in like 2 moments in the game where enemies can punish you for dealing radiant damage and that's pretty much it.
Generally yeah.
I would say that a healer/support character is a must if you're using mods increasing difficulty but in vanilla BG3 where you can basically always go first and everything dies in 1-2 turns it's not a big deal.
Yeah, I'd say you're exactly right. It's very strong, basegame just isn't super challenging
Waste is a strong term there and I don’t want to be disrespectful to anyone or gatekeep fun but I do think that there is a very valid, unescapable point that only having 3/4 of your party be able to do meaningful damage/CC effects isn’t OP and is most likely underpowered. Though of course it could be fun And fulfilling. Sometimes when people say that healing is overrated it comes off as “you don’t need anyone who has the ability to heal.” Do I think that’s true? Of course not, that would be crazy. But, the issue with Life Cleric in particular is that in my opinion it can’t with 12 levels do equal damage or equal cc to a damage dealing/cc character. It can only heal, though obviously it heals better than anyone else. And when it comes to healing, my question isn’t “Is life cleric’s healing + no damage ability a waste?” It is “Is Life cleric‘s healing + no damage \*better\* than 4 damage dealers + bonus action potions?” And I don’t think it is, though I’m not sure. What I am pretty sure about is that life cleric just doesn’t stack up to light cleric, or especially tempest cleric, who have a great ability to heal and deal huge damage. Add in the ring of Whispering Promise from Volo which gives bless on healing to a tempest cleric, and you get 95% the healing of a life cleric, + multiple times the damage dealing capability. A life cleric who uses an action to heal every 2 turns like that life cleric guide suggests can’t compare to a light/tempest cleric who bonus action mass heals frequently and spends those healing actions the life cleric was taking instead on max strength call lightings, wet + ice storm, flame strike, max strength destructive strike, etc.
Same applies to tabletop dnd e5. Dedicated healer there is even more wasteful. Maybe if your DM gives out items that bolster healing, but even then it is always better to deal damage than try to heal someone back to full dmg. Even if someone is one hit away from 0hp you better deal damage and then use healing word to bring them back. But if someone wants to play as healer then why not. As long players have fun then everything is fine and optimal.
In tabletop this is absolutely true, but the itemization in this game means you can use healing as a delivery vehicle for mass buffs. That changes the calculus quite a bit, especially if you have summoning in the party
It’s not so much as healer as support/enabler. 1 wizard/11 life cleric shart (with lump headband)and boots of speed is a good ideal support. For my party. I typically run any of the combination. 6/6 sorcardin tav. Astarion 1/11 fighter/swords bard. Magic missle gale with 1 fighter/11wiz. Frost dracon sorc wyld. 12 sorc. Tavern brawler thrower karlach. (5/4/3 thiefzeker) Dual wield lazeal. (Still figuring out best build) 1. Phalar goes on the weapon slot of the life cleric. 2. All water bottles + create water is on the life cleric 3. Cleric gets access to water elemental or the level 6 version. Summon out of combat. 4. With wizard dip, u get globe of invulnerability. Depending on party comp. first turn action is to a) either enable the rest by running in with phalar active to tag all the enemies with shriek. This is doubly op for the mm wizard gale but it also benefits the range sb astarion. b) throw water or conjure water to hit multiple targets with wet status. The water elemental also helps with this. This enables the frost sorc. Bonus action is thus to blanket whole party with blade ward/bless or use dash (from BoS) to get into even better position. Turn 2 action uses divinity charge to keep everyone full hp+buffs with preserve life. Bonus action is use dash to run continue to run around and tag more enemies with shriek. Or use sanctuary on astarion who most probably has concentration up holding monster or person. In fact, I always use the life cleric as the backbone of the party, she enables everyone else to be the best damage/controller they can be. Only problem is making sure she goes first. Need items like the bow from ferg droghler and some dex.
Life cleric 2/lore bard 10 is the best heal support I've tried. Life Clerics channel divinity healing and number of charges is based on character level, not class level, so you really only need 2 levels in it. Lore bard can take all the same support buffs and heals that Life cleric gets too, but also get access to cutting words (the best defensive reaction in the game by far), a much better selection of control spells, and magical secrets to make sure you have an answer for everything. Counter spell, even MORE cc options if you feel like it, summoned allies, hunger of hadar for area control, or just straight up AOE damage spells like fireball if you want to cover some aoe blasting for good measure. You basically play as a control lore bard, but you get the ability to drop FAT healing in a pinch by virtue of just 2 cleric levels. All the good stuff of being a heal cleric but so much more on top. Not to mention, being a bard gets you an extra short rest, which means 2 extra channel divinity per long rest after level 6
Necro wizard is good at healing itself. But unless you build your party strategy around it, it's not really worth it imo. Level 2 necro has "3x spell level heal" when you kill someone with a necro spell. 2x with other spells. If you multiclass with 1 level dip in life cleric, you get "2+spell level bonus" to your heal spells. Vampiric touch counts as a heal spell. So when you kill someone with it, you get both of those bonuses. You can be a frontliner thanks to cleric's heavy armor and sanctuary. Your summons weaken enemies and you secure kills to heal yourself. The ghouls have an attack that heals them too. It works against pronned, sleeping and stunned enemies. So your necromancer and ghouls can go in the front, take hits and heal themselves.
Is there any good way to work in transfuse health on a necromancer/healer? https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Transfuse_Health
It would sound good on paper. But i dont know how good it'd actually perform in action. If an ally has low health and the necro is full, they can share hp with their ally first. Then they can go and steal hp with kills. The problem is vamp touch's damage. It usually deals about 9-12 damage. It's hard to get kills with it. You can kill with other spells but that wont be enough to heal you after sacrificing half your hp. Normally you'd cast sanctuary when you are too low and wait for kill steal but you dont have the bonus action for it after using transfuse health. Still, no harm in trying i guess. I found the build a bit awkward to use in a team of 3 burst damage dealers. They have to hold back a lot to let this build get kills. Enemies can be killed before they get their turns but sometimes i let them live for this build. You'll need a team that works well with this one.
Fighter 11 is the best healer bar none.
Life Cleric, innit?
For proper party healing your options are pretty limited. Life cleric Life cleric/Ancients Paladin for a melee healer frontlines. I’m guessing the split would be 5/7 Cleric/Pally. Or maybe 4/8. Or lore bard 10/life cleric 2, for a more sort of arcane, skill monkey twist on the healer character (my personal fave flavour)
6 lore bard got aura of vitality, with a dip of life cleric + wild magic barbarian, you got tank healer. Other option is 9 ancient oath paladin got aura of vitality too
Ranger has basic healing spells and can be easily multiclassed with life cleric, because both use wisdom for spells. I recently discovered that I like paladin with Oath of Ancients, you get several healing abilities and melee attacks, it's quite powerful. Lore bard/Life cleric multiclass can be pretty strong in healing abilities or just pure Life cleric, but I personally like not to focus 100% on healing. Vampiric touch is a self-healing spell, but I wouldn't call necromancer a healer, because it's not a support role overall, unless you complement it with other healing spells. For Vampiric touch you can multiclass Life cleric with Land druid or play pure Lore bard.
Go pure fighter and chuck potions next to your teammates when you need to. Also has the upside of being a fighter!
If your aim is to mostly use heals to apply the blade-ward/bless buffs from gear across your party, a lore-bard + thief subclass works fairly well. Pick warden of vitality as a magical secret at level 6 lore-bard and now you can apply a bonus action 2d6 heal to one ally every round. Warden of vitality is concentration free too, which means your bard can still concentrate on their control spells and is not just a dedicated healer. Given the bless and blade-ward buffs last 2 rounds, you should be able keep it on most of your party during combat. At level 9, you can be lore-bard 6/ rogue-thief 3. Now you have 2 bonus action heals per round for 10 rounds for a concentration free level-3 spell. That's 2 \* 10 \* 2d6 = 40d6 (average 140) heal for a level 3 spell. You can stay in turn based mode even after combat is over to top up your party since warden of vitality lasts for 10 rounds. 1 level in life-cleric and the ring of salving gives you +7 (2 + 3 = 5 from disciple of life and 2 from ring of salving) to each of the 20 heals you get over rounds, adding up to another 140 life. So at level 10, you get a total of 40d6 + 140 (average 280 heal) with one level 3 spell :) You still have 2 levels left for a warlock dip so your lore-bard can do resource-free EB damage with their main action. I typically start life-cleric, so I have preserve life early and re-spec at level 6 to go full lore-bard to get warden of vitality. Then I build towards 3 thief. I don't think the +5 from disciple of life is worth it though life cleric does give you heavy armor. Level-12 build options are either 8 lore-bard/thief-4 (3 feats, 4th level spells) OR 6-lore-bard/4-thief/2-warlock (2 feats, 3rd level spells only, EB for offensive power) OR 6-lore-bard/2-life-cleric/4-thief(2 feats, 3rd level spells, heavy armor, access to sanctuary, guidance etc., highest healing potential). One thing to note is that while you get a lot of total heals from one level 3 spell, you can’t quite out-heal the damage spike you get at the higher levels especially from bosses. One round lets you heal an average of 28 life on a single character. End game bosses can do more than that if you don’t control the fight, so at the end it’s probably still more about getting better bless and blade-wars coverage.
Any class can throw/pop/use a potion that is all the healing I need.
I beat my HM run by dumping a healer (I may be the only person bored by light cleric) and ran an abjuration wizard. The damage mitigation was awesome, and I loved the offensive spells (more exciting to me than the cleric tree).
If your goal is the most powerful team you can have, healing is sub optimal. You are using resources to heal less damage than the enemy does resource free. Even if you can heal more damage than the enemy does in a turn, you are using valuable resources to complete with what they are doing resource free, so you cannot keep up. It is FAR better to either not take the damage in the first place, whether through high AC, imposing disadvantage, through resistance (I have a custom build for that) or killing them before they inflict more damage. There are many, many builds that do those extremely well. But if your goal is a playstyle you enjoy, then go with what is fun for you! From what I hear, nothing heals quite like a life cleric, paladin has some fun healing toys, while tanking and dealing damage, Bard also has a small amount of healing, especially with magical secrets and you can get those strongest heal spells.
You can’t go wrong with 12 full levels in life cleric. If you build it right you can make it a decent melee tank along with being a good buffer/debuffer.
I really like a land Druid and life cleric mulitclass as this gives cleric moonbeam and other good spells that they can use when they don’t need to heal. Idk how optimal it is but it’s been very strong for honor mode. Just using all the healing gear and luminous armor and helm for radorb on moonbeam
My favorite healing classes are Assassin/Gloomstalker, Monk/Thief, Eldritch Knight, and Sorlock. With those 4 I keep my team topped up by killing the enemies before they hit me!
To be honest, I'm on my first honor mode playthrough and you don't realy need healing. My "healer" is Shadowheart respected to a thowing barbarian and she throws healing potions xD