I did it!!

[Wheatstone]

I passed the 2nd circle healer test!
And during Bawkmas, too!

Now, any suggestions about how to use the 2nd circle trainers?
Until now, I've trained almost exclusively Eva, with a bit of respia thrown in so that I usually slowly recover my spirit while healing (rather than slowly lose it).

Any thoughts on whether a slyphstone ring is worth 30 ranks when I could put it into, say, Horus?


Wheatstone

[Lorikeet]

I love my sylphstone ring. It is an indispensible item if you have a lot of Respia, like to kill stuff and/or chain. I know of healers who think it was a waste of ranks, so you probably want to think about what kind of healer you want to be. I am very glad I trained it, but I am a high Respia healer so my spirit bar fills fast. Every time it is full, I get a little healing pulse regardless of what is in my hands. That means there is no problem with the balance tax if I want to coin hunt by the lake, and I can heal myself while running with people on a chain.

As for Horus, well......the old codger has seen better days. You can always train with Lorikeet ;)

Oh, and congratulations!

[Kiriel]

Congrats Wheatstone!

Regarding the sylphstone, I recommend you only get one if you plan to chain, cad or fight frequently. For a healer that doesn't do any of those things it's probably not worth it because it's less efficient than standard self heal and you won't need to switch items often enough to use it. It can be a lifesaver for a chainer since you can't heal yourself otherwise without dropping your chain.

I highly recommend getting at least 50 ranks of Horus (or Lorikeet :). That should be a good base amount for a 2nd circle healer and should greatly increase the amount of rescues you can do without a 2nd healer in the types of areas you should be hunting at that level. Regarding Awaria, most folks say not to train her, and I'd tend to agree unless you have some very specialized training style that she might actually be useful for. Hidden could probably give some useful advice on that.

Of course the nicest part about 2nd circle is you can get yourself those distinctive white pants to go with whatever color toga you like. As a thoom you probably don't have a lot of trouble with folks not realizing you're a healer, but the white trim is still quite stylish.

[Bob the Archer]

Congratulations!

/action Hoists a glass of fishoil in salute.

Ptthuggh! Ack hrg pfft ptttpttt sptt.

/ponder Next time stick to the dwarven celebrations.

[Hidden]

Kiri is right -- 50 horus is great for a 2nd circler, especially if you do rescues a lot -- though by the time you pass 3rd you should probably aim for around 100. As for Sylpha, I honestly can't reccomend sinking the 30 ranks until you have either 30 loovma or 100 proximus. Other than that you should be sticking to your moonstone, which is roughly three times more efficient for self-healing, and having the top skimmed constantly off your spirit bar if you are a few seconds late in hitting "/use" can be annoying.

Now, Awaria... is really a mixed bag. I'd suggest training between one tenth and one quarter of your # of faustus ranks in Awaria, because beyond that it isn't terribly effective. Right now I have around 250 faustus, and training 33 awaria (to get Eva to bow to me) I saw a significant, if not dramatic increase in my self-healing speed.

[Edit: Oh, and Congrats! <G>]

[Konoko]

Congrats Wheaties!

[Himitsu]

Great job!

Do you have a visionstone?

[Mehan]

Don't let them pressure you into getting horus! You don't NEED it! Stay away from the dark side, wheatie!!!

I love awaria, I noticed drastic improvement of my self heal once I got 30 of it. Wheeee! And slyphstones rock, imho.

Congrats lil thoomy!

[Wheatstone]

Thanks for all the advice and congratulations.

There's no visionstone - I didn't really expect to pass!
I do have a sketch, though, if folks really think it belongs in an archive someplace.

As for training, I think I'm going to hold off on the slyphstone ring for awhile. Kiriel's point about using it to avoid the balance tax is an excellent one - that bothers me when I feel safe enough to try to grab tags. My self healing speed is really fine, though I wish it was more effective. So, my plan, then is to train horus (or Lorikeet, if I can find her!) for the moment. I encounter too many fallen that are just a bit beyond my ability to raise (quite or lms), so I think that would be helpful (sorry, Mehan!).


Wheatstone

[Altir]

Congrats Wheatstone!

Altir

[Himitsu]

Originally posted by Wheatstone
There's no visionstone - I didn't really expect to pass!
I do have a sketch, though, if folks really think it belongs in an archive someplace.

Go to the Uploads (http://www.windsofdawn.org/uploads.html) page and there's a link on the top of the page where you can upload your picture after you put in the name and password that Kiriel probably gave you already.

Then you can link to it from the timeline page or even put the image in a post on this forum.

[Blaise]

A Hearty Congratulations, my good Thoom!

[Twilth]

A hearty congratulations to you, friend Wheatstone.

[Steady Foot]

Congratulations!!! What a nice gift for Bawkmas!!

[Farhope]

Congratulations, Wheatstone!

[Delirium]

Congratulations Wheatstone!

Some more advice:

Now, some people will tell you I have slightly different views. That silly Zo who stands outside the training hall told me that I reminded him of those who passed 3rd circle more than 4 years ago (IC). Obviously, he doesn't know what he is talking about, because I still can't kill the NW's within the time limit.

Anyway, Horus is a good trainer, but Koric or Lorikeet are better teachers, in my oppinion. I mean, Horus just stits in the training hall all day, but Koric and Lori are out in the field all the time. 50 lessons with any of them will make nearly all those currently "quite" fallens healable, but the "lms" will still be too fallen. I have more than 200 lessons with Koric.

I don't know why Hidden mentions Proxi - he isn't even a 2nd circle trainer. Besides, from what I've seen Proxi just makes healers fall. Not directly, mind you, but I haven't seen a fighter yet who knows how to stand still while being cadded in a battle and when a fighter runs from a cadding healer, it hurts the healer - very badly if the healer doesn't have a tremendous amount of proxi. I'd guess that it would take a minimum of 200 proxi to cad effectively in the situations I find myself in. When I consider whether I'd like to train 200 proxi or 200 ranks with other healer trainers, I go for the others. Someday, I will train some proxi - perhaps after I get ledgers with all the other healer trainers. I'd have to become 3rd circle to do that in any case.

I rotate training until the message changes between: Eva, respia (x2), spirtus, horus, and higgy. This gives me slightly more than a 3:1 respia:fastus ratio and I love my slyphstone ring. The ring also helps when you wander into a mist, as I do all too frequently.

-Delirium, who possibly has more ranks than any other 2nd circle healer who comes out of the library

[Moon Kitty]

Originally posted by Delirium
Now, some people will tell you I have slightly different views. That silly Zo who stands outside the training hall told me that I reminded him of those who passed 3rd circle more than 4 years ago (IC). Obviously, he doesn't know what he is talking about, because I still can't kill the NW's within the time limit.

I believe the Zo who stands outside the Healer Testing room is judging you on how most healers pass the test and that is making sure the tough critters are not hitting you and focusing on raising Glory. I don't think the Zo considers alternate ways of passing the tests in how he judges healers so his message to you might change if he knew that.

While trying to kill the Midnight Wendeckas is an interesting way of passing the 3rd-circle test, I have high doubts that it will be successful. On the other hand, I'm sure you'd love to prove people like me wrong so good luck with this goal.

Anyway, Horus is a good trainer, but Koric or Lorikeet are better teachers, in my oppinion. I mean, Horus just stits in the training hall all day, but Koric and Lori are out in the field all the time. 50 lessons with any of them will make nearly all those currently "quite" fallens healable, but the "lms" will still be too fallen. I have more than 200 lessons with Koric.

Horus can't be all that bad if he was good enough to teach Koric and Lorikeet everything they know. There's something to be said for studying the theory of how something works and I think Horus is the one doing that. He's reading ancient texts on raising badly fallen and teaching that to Koric and Lorikeet when they get his advanced lessons as well as learning from them when they do their research out in the field. I've trained with both Horus and Koric and I think they are equally good at raising fallens and just have different methods. They are very complimentary to each other.

I don't know why Hidden mentions Proxi - he isn't even a 2nd circle trainer. Besides, from what I've seen Proxi just makes healers fall. Not directly, mind you, but I haven't seen a fighter yet who knows how to stand still while being cadded in a battle and when a fighter runs from a cadding healer, it hurts the healer - very badly if the healer doesn't have a tremendous amount of proxi. I'd guess that it would take a minimum of 200 proxi to cad effectively in the situations I find myself in. When I consider whether I'd like to train 200 proxi or 200 ranks with other healer trainers, I go for the others. Someday, I will train some proxi - perhaps after I get ledgers with all the other healer trainers. I'd have to become 3rd circle to do that in any case.

Hidden was saying that he wouldn't train to use the Slyphstone ring until after he trains in Proximus which would be after passing into third-circle which seems to show that he doesn't think the Slyphstone ring will be useful until more Respia is trained.

You don't have to train with Proximus and I agree that when I had just 50 trainings, it was only useful to heal a fallen while standing a bit away so the large/giant vermine tried to bite me instead of the fallen. Once I got to 100 trainings, it became a lot more useful out in the field and especially when there's a fallen in town that needs a lot of Horus so I don't have to be right next to the fallen. As with fighters running from me, I'm pretty good at running after fighters when they get out of my range and I do plan on getting more so I don't have to do that too often.

I personally really like the flexibility that cadding gives but agree that Horus is becoming more and more important.

-Delirium, who possibly has more ranks than any other 2nd circle healer who comes out of the library

You're also among the most useful friendly rescuers out there and that's a heck of a lot better than a turquoise shirt. [:)]

[Wheatstone]

Thank you both for sharing your perspectives.

For now I'm training with Horus, and I expect I'll try training with Lorikeet as soon as I can find her in town. That way I can see the differences in their styles for myself. Until now, I've been training almost pure Eva with a bit of extra Respia thrown in here and there. I'll probably alternate with Horus or Lorikeet a bit now. How does Spirtus help me, practically speaking? I trained 10 ranks or so with him before I became a healer, but I've been concentrating on Eva since then.

Also, Delirium, do you find your training with master Higgrus to be very helpful? How so? I haven't trained with him at all (though Eva teaches some of his methods), and tend to believe that its more important to strengthen my ability to heal rather than take hits from monsters.


Regards,
Wheatstone

[Hidden]

1: Just so you know, the Lorikeet/Horus/Koric styles is a purely RP thing. All three teach the EXACT same thing. It's still a cool story, but it's a bit confusing if you don't know the background.

2: Spirtus provides many of the same benefits as Eva, though not as much in some areas because it provides an additional (and vital) component of Rodnus. A good 80% of my training is in Spirtus and I love it.

3: A healer without Higgrus may as well be a mystic, because when you're fallen, you can't heal. Also, the more out of balance your higgrus and faustus get, the faster your health will drop to 0, unless your respia is truly excessive (something like 6:1 resp:faust). It's not always possible to dodge critters, and a healthy padding of health will help as well when a cadded exile runs away.

[Moon Kitty]

I hope you don't mind if I answer these questions too.

Originally posted by Wheatstone
For now I'm training with Horus, and I expect I'll try training with Lorikeet as soon as I can find her in town. That way I can see the differences in their styles for myself. Until now, I've been training almost pure Eva with a bit of extra Respia thrown in here and there. I'll probably alternate with Horus or Lorikeet a bit now. How does Spirtus help me, practically speaking? I trained 10 ranks or so with him before I became a healer, but I've been concentrating on Eva since then.

Spirtus is like Eva in that he trains you in different healing skills but in a different percentage. Spiritus teaches you Respia, Faustus, Spiritus, Higgrus and Rodnus. Rodnus lets other healers heal you faster as well as improving your self-heal. I don't know if Spiritus has a percentage bonus like Eva but it's a likelihood.

I have 100 Spiritus myself and plan to get more for the Rodnus mainly. I've noticed that it's a good (if not great trainer) because it teaches you the basics of healing while enabling you to heal yourself better and in being a rod if necessary.

Hidden can talk more about Spiritus but here is an interesting thread.

rodnus thread (http://www.windsofdawn.org/forum/showthread.html?s=&threadid=1402)

Also, Delirium, do you find your training with master Higgrus to be very helpful? How so? I haven't trained with him at all (though Eva teaches some of his methods), and tend to believe that its more important to strengthen my ability to heal rather than take hits from monsters.

I'm not Delirium but there's my 2-cents.

I have 200 Higgrus and, since I can't self-heal while healing others, having a decent Higgrus amount lets me heal longer before I need to stop. Also, it lets me take more damage in the field while I'm running to a rescue and there's less of a chance of getting killed in one hit.

Since I don't plan on having a really high respia:faustus ratio, having 200 has been a great help and I'll most likely get more through Spiritus rather than training directly as I have been.

[Lorikeet]

I expect I'll try training with Lorikeet as soon as I can find her in town.

I'm pretty hard to find in town because I hate standing around, but you can always sunstone me. If I'm not doing anything else, I'm solo hunting at the lake. I am really on at all different times, but I haven't seen you recently. Is there a special time you are around?

OOC
I know all of us really train the same, but it's more fun for me to train with an exile than an NPC. Maybe you will feel the same way.
/OOC

Remember there are probably as many ways to train as there are exiles. Some of us who chose different paths didn't pass the tests as quickly as some of the others. I got the "Those who have passed are weaker than you" message for months and months [;)] before I passed.

I haven't trained Faustus in over 3 years (OOC). He and I don't see eye to eye. I don't like Eva either, so I get most of my Faustus from Spirtus. I am up to a 5.5/1 ratio of Respia to Faustus. Mephisto's training (Higgy) helped me pass the fourth circle test in the end. I wanted to be able to burst heal since I don't cad either. As you can see, I have a rather different style. Have fun with whatever you decide to do. We can all be useful ;)

[Talin]

I will add my humble opinions on some aspects mentioned in the thread.

On the sylphstone ring: I like it alot, and not only when I cad. I started chaining when I was still first circle. The sylphstone helps me *tremendously* in chaining! Can hardly tell how much so. Second, whenever a kind fighter takes me tagging, its just too cool to self-heal while tagging away. As the monsters that are still exp to me grow thinner, that use gets more and more obsolete, of course. Agreed though, that if you dont cad, dont chain, have a self-heal macro for the odd rat biting when you are asleep, I can hardly think of why you should train it.

On Proxi: I have to admit, I started to find Proxi useful at about 10 ranks :) It gave the fighter in certain situations just that little free movement space needed - in noids for example. The 100 I have now are nice with critters without feral AI. With monsters with feral AI I agree, that 200 is necessary, I would say, even more than that. Other stuff mentioned by Hidden, I would add the possibility to help cad KI fallens from the water - very useful, and not that rare.

On the fighters moving away: As Hidden I got quite used to move with the fighters. If I am too slow (or they too fast :) ) I am very fast at breaking the cadding, if the situation calls for it. I have the moonstone on a wheel macro and just give it a little touch to get back to self-healing.

On Spirtus: He lets you self-heal better (thats the rodnus part - the other stuff mentioned by Hidden). I think, that is something one might easily undervalue. Lately I hunted with a healer that had more or less the same higgy-respia relation as I, but way less spirtus. It was amazing to see the difference! Self-heal is absolutely VITAL imho for a battle healer (way less for town healers and slow hunts, of course) My advice would be, get like 100 pretty soonish in the game. (have to admit that I find Spirtus boring, heh, thats why I advice to get it early when ranks come easily)

On Higgy: If you want to be a battle healer, get a nice amount. I am 3rd circle now, and have like 90 raw + what eva gives me - too little higgy in many situations I face. I will soon go higher. One falls way less with some higgy. Many horus healers tend to be a bit frail, methinks. I find it important for horus healers, though, as they are the ones that just HAVE to stay vertical, or at least healable on a hunt.

Just my 2 cents :)
Talin

[Lorikeet]

Talin says One falls way less with some higgy. Many horus healers tend to be a bit frail, methinks. I find it important for horus healers, though, as they are the ones that just HAVE to stay vertical, or at least healable on a hunt.

I couldn't agree more. Everything I train is geared to staying alive. The Horus healer should be the last one to fall. Not only is it discouraging to be too dead for others to heal, but as long as the Horus healer is up, the party has a chance to recover. I'm not a bad rod point for emergencies now, but it makes everyone else nervous. [:D]

[Mjollnir]

So far everybody has talked about what to train but not when to train it.

Depending on your tastes ie whether you are impatient like me you may want to train the skills that you can see working right away and will make you a better healer sooner.
Respia some faustus and higgy.

I find horus useful when i actually do train it (which is rarely) i find it the perfect thing to train during long periods in the library, Horus provides too many text books to wade through out in the field.

Never spend too long training any one thing (except maybe Respia) as that will throw all your other training out of balance, too much faustus and healing others will suck you dry, too much higgy and you will be harder to heal to full and have to spend alot more time self healing.

I find Slypha useful while cadding and chaining and at 30 ranks its not too much of a waste unless you are one of those purists who believe that any rank not spent on the "pure" healer skills that make you heal others better, but be warned Slypha goes hand in hand with respia, to make it truely effective you need a good amount of respia or you will lose health faster than your ring can replace it.

Ive rambled long enough and chances are im 100% wrong so please let the contradictions begin

[Delirium]

Also, Delirium, do you find your training with master Higgrus to be very helpful? How so?

I got pretty good at the self-heal early on - I went for a 3:1 respia:fastus ratio to help me stay on my feet. Before I got to "Lady," I could self-heal from red to full in less than a minute. But then I gave Noth a try. All the self-heal in the world doesn't help with things that 1-hit you. I consider my 150 or so Higgy to be a minimum for places like Noth - I can take 1 Hel Noth bolt with some room to spare. I'd really like to be able to take at least 3 Hel bolts, which is why I consider Higgy an important trainer to continue with.

Everything I train is geared to staying alive. The Horus healer should be the last one to fall. Not only is it discouraging to be too dead for others to heal, but as long as the Horus healer is up, the party has a chance to recover. I'm not a bad rod point for emergencies now, but it makes everyone else nervous.

I must be training a bit like Lori, because I could have written this.[;)] Especially the bit about making the rest of the group nervous.[:D]

As for Mjollnir's point about training "too long" with 1 trainer - as I've said before, I train with a trainer until the message changes (so that's in slightly less than 50-rank blocks because spirtus and eva are in the mix). I still see some small shifts in the balance of my skills as I do this. I think the only skill that throws the others out of balance in a bad way is Fastus. It's true is will take you longer to heal to full if you have 200 higgy than if you have 100 higgy (with the same other skills), but the 200 higgy healer will take no longer than the 100 higgy healer to heal to the point where they can take 100 higgy damage. Proxi and Horus do not affect the healing balance, but do affect your ability to do things in the field.

-Delirium

[Sunoril]

Some very interesting posts in this thread. [:)]

Here's my 2c:

On Sylpha: First thing I did after I passed 2nd was train Sylpha. But I had a reason: I won a chain in the Newbielympics, and I didn't like the way I lost health with things hitting me while I was chaining. I think my other skills need improving though, because my self-heal (even with my moonstone) ain't all that good.

On Spirtus/Eva: I have roughly equal amounts of these two (45 Eva and 42 Spirtus, according to Scribia), and will continue to train both (though at the moment I'm leaning toward about a 2:1 Eva:Spirtus ratio).

On ratios: right now, if I look at trainer messages, I have about 50 Respia, about 30 Sespus, and about 40 Faustus. That doesn't seem to work out to a very good ratio. [:(] BTW, I threw Sespus in there because my goal is to get and maintain a ratio of about 3:2:1 Respia:Sespus:Faustus. OTOH, according to Scribia, the numbers are 66, 21, and 20. I trained a lot of Respia all at once, just prior to passing 2nd, for several reasons: (1) my self-heal sucked, (2) I often had to stop and rest while healing others, (3) I wanted to get the ratio up, (4) I was having trouble passing the test, (5) my self-heal sucked. [:)] In addition, I'm not sure how accurate Scribia's numbers are because (a) I lost a couple of logs, so the data never got entered, and (b) ISTR having edited Scribia data at least once because the trainer message indicated I had more ranks than Scribia did (no doubt because I was also training Eva/Spirtus). In retrospect I think that was a mistake.

I just scanned all my logs into a new Scribia file, and it says Respia 53, Sespus 20, and Faustus 13, which is some better. (Actually, it doesn't pick up the Sespus, due to a bug - I think the message you get when you rank while training with Sespus changed since the last time Scribia was updated - but I remember that I trained 20 ranks with him). So on this basis the ratio is close to 5:2:1, at least as far as actual training is concerned.

From a practical standpoint, you should figure these ratios from the trainer msgs, I think. Which means I need to add about 50 Sespus and about 60 or so Respia, while keeping my Faustus gain down to only Eva.

On Horus/Awaria: can't say much about these yet, as I haven't trained either of them directly yet. I expect I'll train at least 30 Awaria, based on what I've read here, and put a lot more effort than that into Horus.

On general training philosophy: I like to keep things balanced - although I didn't really do that when I first started out. Where I'm at now is that I have defined several "training blocks", and try to alternate blocks as trainer messages change. The blocks I'm using now are:

Block 1: Eva/Spirtus (2 Eva/1 Spirtus)
Block 2: Bodrus/Bracis/Higgrus
Block 3: Respia/Sespus/Faustus, in 3:2:1 ratio (e.g., 15 Respia, then 10 Sespus, then 5 Faustus)
Block 4: Non healer trainers. Current priority: Loovma, Stainfinger, Skea, Dentir
Block 5: Sylpha/Awaria/Horus

In addition, in each cycle, I train block 1 twice and each other block once. I just started doing this, so I have no idea how well it'll work. Note that both block 2 and block 5 contain trainers that have caps - and one of those I've reached. Not sure what I'll do when I've maxed Bodrus and Bracis. We'll see.
[;)]

One further note: I see that both Eva and Spirtus give me the message for 40-49 ranks ("good pupil"). A fighter friend of mine says that he trained 2 ranks with Bodrus before he got his dagger, and then switched to Eva, and now his messages from Master Bodrus change 2 ranks before the ones from Eva. I suspect that the difference is that Eva and Spirtus each check the things the other doesn't train (Horus/Awaria for Eva and Rodnus for Spirtus), but that Bodrus and Eva train all the *same* things, although in different ratios, so neither can tell whether the ranks came from his or her training, or from the other's. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

[Himitsu]

Originally posted by Sunoril
One further note: I see that both Eva and Spirtus give me the message for 40-49 ranks ("good pupil"). A fighter friend of mine says that he trained 2 ranks with Bodrus before he got his dagger, and then switched to Eva, and now his messages from Master Bodrus change 2 ranks before the ones from Eva. I suspect that the difference is that Eva and Spirtus each check the things the other doesn't train (Horus/Awaria for Eva and Rodnus for Spirtus), but that Bodrus and Eva train all the *same* things, although in different ratios, so neither can tell whether the ranks came from his or her training, or from the other's. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

Here's an example of what I think happened (I'm not entirely certain I understand).

I trained the full 100 times with Bodrus and much later on met a mystic trainer that is similar to Histia/Higgrus. I never met her before that day yet she told me that I was one of her better students. Why? Because Bodrus teaches part of what she does and so her message to me changed similarly as if I had trained directly with her.

There are many trainers who contain other teachings in addition to what they tell you. I've heard of Atkus and Darkus teaching you some Balthus and Faustus containing Sespus. This is why the best way (in my opinion) to determine how much you know in a trainer is to go by the messages they tell you when you talk to them.

P.S. Has anyone found the message after the 1000 one?