Training Question for Healers

[Aethelred]

Some comments from Fist and Sargon rather "inspired" me to ask this question of the WoD healers in general, and Corwin in specific:

How effective do you find Awaria to be? Is she worth putting ranks into over, say, more Respia? I have heard from some that Awaria is a waste, and from others that she doubled their self-healing speed.

[Althus]

I have no confirmation on this, but I think Awaria's effectiveness is largely dependent on your Faustus. For example:

Thuja has 100 Awaria, and probably the equivalent of 3-400 Faustus in trained faustus ranks and Eva. (Again, not sure of numbers) She has a great selfheal in itself, disregarding respia.

I, on the otherhand, once untrained into Awaria on a Wild Wednesday. It sucked. If anything, since I had no faustus, my selfheal was WORSE for the Awaria.

[Corwin]

My self heal is definitely faster, but still limited because I haven't trained much in Sespus. I gotta do something about that one of these days, but, damn!, Sespus is about the most boring, unsexy trainer there is!

Being able to self heal while running from a beast that took a big chunk out of my hide is something I appreciate. Depends on your priorities, I guess.

Corwin
Action Clown

[GrayGradi]

Awaria has a bit of a bad reputation, but there seems to be a history behind it.

Long ago, Awaria seems to have been able to quickly teach some awfully effective self-healing skills. Then, after a rift war, her teaching effectiveness, and the effectiveness of the skills exiles had learned from her, mysteriously, and significantly, diminished.

Understandably, exiles were quite disappointed with this, and some seem to have expressed that (unfairly) by denigrating Awaria personally.

Objectively, I believe Awaria skills are still valuable, but must be considered less of a priority in terms of most healer's training schedule. And note that training Eva yields some Awaria -- I have heard the figure of 6% mentioned.

Indeed, regardless of how much Awaria one has, self-healing will always be a substantially less efficient conversion of spirit to health than being healed by another. Two or more healers working together will always provide much more healing power than the sum of what they can do individually (assuming they refrain from self heals, and devote appropriate attention to each other). Frankly, I feel devoting my training time to Awaria, or to a sufficient amount of Respia to be able to not run out of spirit while healing others AND myself, is selfish. I can contribute much more to a group effort by not attempting to attain self-sufficiency, but rather maximizing skills which, when supplemented by others, produce the maximum group return.

[Flame on] IMO, the oft repeated mantra of healers "Respia is God" is misplaced. One should acquire enough Respia to be able to not run out of spirit while healing others for a reasonable period of time -- say several minutes. (In other words, enough that there is only a slow drop in spirit level while healing another healer, a shared fighter or mystic, or a fellow clan member*.) One should not forgo other important training opportunities so that one can easily self heal -- I'll rely on others for that -- or to heal non-shares -- I say screw 'em until they learn that immediately sharing with the exile healing you is a survival skill, not merely a social obligation. While it is true that the Respia component of Eva is a bit light by this standard, it really doesn't take a whole lot of specific Respia training to make up the deficit. [Flame off]


*To my fighting (and mystic-ing) fellow clan members: I was surprised, after joining WoD, that healing a non-shared, fellow clan member is not the same spirit drain as healing any other non-shared fighter. It may use a bit more spirit than healing you if you are shared, but not much. In other words, as you are being healed, do put up your shares with any non-clan healers as rapidly as possible; worry about me and other WoD healers later. Sharing with us may be a social obligation (and the extent to which all of you honor it is both humbling and greatly appreciated), but is not a survival skill.

[Farhope]

GrayGradi wrote: "... healing a non-shared, fellow clan member is not the same spirit drain as healing any other non-shared fighter..."

Oh oh, are you sure, Gray? I had never heard something so! It is a nice addition, I feel, for belonging to a clan :-)

[Lilly]

"Remember the dead, but never let their memory keep you from the living" is a saying from my homeland. As a healer I have chosen the route of defending the living (which includes myself as well as others) as opposed to trying to raise the dead. I admire and salute all of those who turn their attentions to the dead, but i plan on returning to my birthland someday - and when someone is dead there, they dont come back no matter what you do to them with a moonstone.As such I see no irresponsibilitty or selfishness in the route of self-healing at all. As for people who do not share, I do not understand the mentality of not healing them if they choose not to spirit link, because I have never seen a healer anywhere in Puddleby ask a person if theyd like to be healed before just walking up and doing so (myself included). If we healers asked people if they wanted healing before distibuting it to them, I could see where it would be rude to not recieve a spirit link, but since we dont do that, I just make the assumption nobody is ever going to do so and train accordingly.

Arteress Lai

[Aerick]

Not to disagree, but for the record, I have asked before healing on occasion.
Usually when a fighter is sitting in town, wounded, I check to make sure there isn't a reason for them to be that way. Ever since a rash of abuse and BK from the Nox Sorora (or imposters of them), I've been a mite paranoid.

-Aerick

[Konoko]

What's the story behind this abuse you mention?
They don't want healers healing or what?

[Lilly]

Never said it didnt happen. Just that I had never encountered it <grins> There are exceptions to all generalizations.

Arteress Lai

[Aerick]

The Priestess of the Nox Sorora periodically undergo rites, during which they cannot be healed by any males. If a male tries to heal them, they depart to try and maintain their purity.

Now, in my talks with Indigo, apparently, the specific people who I had problems with weren't Nox Sorora, and were against being healed by males for some other reason. I have no idea what or why.

Anyway, I'd be running around some (usually dangerous) area, and see someone fallen on the ground. I pop some healing into them before I'm surrounded by ferrets and vermine, swing around for another dab of healing, and this time, they depart. *blink* *confusion*
Then I get BK. Usually a couple. *blink* Then SS messages that can be summed up as just not friendly. So now, in deep yellow, alone, in some corner of the world, I limp back towards town, with no thanks for my efforts.

It hasn't happened in a long time, but I still get worried every now and then. The major thing that bothers me is that I made someone unhappy, actually. And it angers me that I am made to feel bad for trying to help people. And some rescues have been compromised while the (male) healers there checked to make sure they wouldn't get in trouble for healing.

Now, I've never had any incidents with anyone who Indigo intentified as an actual Nox Sorora member, so it could well have been a group of female imposters, throwing departs arounf to make the NS look bad. Or a rival chapter, or some such. I sure don't know.

[Konoko]

oh - ok. thnx.

You healers sure have to put up with a lot of stuff...
Poor you! :(

[Sargon]

Hi

Lilly wrote:
> There are exceptions to all generalizations.

So how would an exception to the above generalization look like? :P


Aerick: I'm sorry you had this bad experience.. I didn't know about the Nox Sosora and not being able to be healed by males under certain conditions until some zodiacs ago. It seems you (Aerick) ran into them without knowing about them too much. I'm sad to hear they reacted like you described below.. I mean, afterall you simply didn't know better before. And as far as I know this is the only group who doesn't want to be healed at times. I just wish they would have shown a bit more understanding that you didn't know that..

On occasion I healed exiles who didn't want to be healed because they wanted to test their Troilus abilities. None of them were angry at me then though. Sometimes I follow them out of town to make sure they don't fall while they're trying to become red again.

That said, it's extremely rare I meet someone in the lands who doesn't want to be healed and in fact I can't remember when it happened the last time.

Sargon

[Aerick]

On the Sorora, they went through a time when there were a lot of people being real jerks to them. Phiros could tell you better than I, but there was an incident with Aeneka (name spelled wrong due to faulty memory). She fell in GMV, got chained to town, politely asked to not be healed by males, and a bunch of guys mobbed her and healed her so she had to depart. They did do it just out of spite. I don't want the clan thinking that the Sorora was just out looking for reasons to get upset.

Sargon, good point on the Troilus-testers. I forgot about them.

[Aerick]

I have trained a slight dab of Awaria, and didn't notice any substantial difference. But I barely trained any, so I don't count.

On training, diversity is good. Glad to see we don't have "cookie-cutter" healers in this clan. I, for one trained to live. It works out that keeping a strong fighter alive sure helps me survive, so that's part of my training, as well as being able to be hit with three rocks and keep healing.

I originally trained to a combat healer, and practically be a fighter. With the balance tax, and getting into harder areas, that plan fell through. So now I try and be a backpack/brick. My self-heal is the major part of me that I wish were better. I think I'll train some with Lilly when she gets there. =)

[Tater]

Another set of exiles who may prefer not to be healed are those that use the Bloodblade. I'm not sure how they work. The lower their health is while they're using it, the more effective it is?

Anyway, I recently hunted with a fighter who has one of these. As a healer, it was unnerving to see him spurting blood everywhere, his health plummeting while he fought, but he didn't want to be healed unless he hit "red."

So, if there wasn't enough guesswork involved before, here's another one for you. ;)

-Tater