Dragon Age: Origins’ Spirit Healer is one of the most important specializations in the game. It’s critical that you have Wynne in your party because she can literally bring your party to a whole new level with her support abilities. I often found myself constantly tweaking the tactics of Wynne but eventually I just decided to manually control her (shifting from character to character) each time the battle was tough.

Getting Wynne on your party is pretty simple. Just do the Mage Circle quest in the Tower and she’ll join you in your quest to rid the tower of demons. After you complete the quest, she’ll offer to join you permanently. I strongly suggest you accept her offer, hehe.

DRAGON AGE ORIGINS: SPIRIT HEALER GUIDE

This guide is divided into four sections:

1. Becoming a Spirit Healer
2. Spirit Healer Attributes
3. Spirit Healer Abilities/Spells
4. Spirit Healer Spell Builds
5. Combat Tactics

BECOMING A SPIRIT HEALER
Other than Wynne, life will be infinitely easier if you also have one of your mages take up the Spirit Healer spec. To unlock it, all you have to do is to go to Denerim and head on over to the Wonders of Thedas store. Talk to the Tranquil Proprietor and you can buy the Spirit Healer manual from him. You can also get the manual from a vendor in the downloadable content Warden’s Keep after finishing it.

SPIRIT HEALER ATTRIBUTES
MAGIC: This ability affects your spell power score which basically determines how powerful your heals are. This is obviously a very important attribute for healers. However you shouldn’t put everything here. One of the biggest weaknesses of the Spirit Healer is that they run out of mana fast. If you’re not the type that will chug down Lyrium potions like water, then you should invest points in the next attribute.

WILL POWER: Like what I said above, this attribute is also important because it determines how big your mana pool is. If you find yourself running out of mana all the time, then you might want to pump this up a bit. However, I don’t think that you’ll avoid using Lyrium pots especially during big encounters.

CONSTITUTION: Problem with Wynne and most Spirit Healers is that they’re so soft. I’m not saying that you put a lot of points in this attribute, but you may want to put some especially if you’re not the type that can micro manage properly.

SPIRIT HEALER ABILITIES
The Spirit Healer ability tree is by far one of the most useful sets in the game. All four spells can have a major impact in game play (save for the last). What’s better is that the first skill that you get is probably one of the best skills you’ll ever need in Dragon Age: Origins. In my first run, I actually had 3 Spirit Healers in my party just to get Group Heal (my main PC, Morrigan, and Wynne). This also gave me three life wards and revives.

Group Heal

Cost: 40
Upkeep: 0
Fatigue: 0
Range: Yes
Cooldown (sec): 20
Area of Effect (ft): All allies
The caster bathes allies in benevolent energy, instantly healing them by a moderate amount.

Revival

Upkeep:0
Fatigue: 0
Range: Yes
Cooldown (sec):120
Area of Effect (ft): 2
The caster revives a fallen party member, raising them from unconsciousness and restoring some health.

Lifeward

Required Level: 12
Cost: 55
Upkeep: 0
Fatigue: 0
Range: Yes
Cooldown (sec): 30
Area of Effect (ft): 0
The caster places a protective ward on an ally that automatically restores health when the ally falls close to death.

Cleansing Aura

Required Level: 14
Cost: 0
Upkeep: 60
Fatigue: 5
Range: No
Cooldown (sec): 30
Area of Effect (ft): 10
While this mode is active, waves of healing and cleansing energy emanate from the caster, restoring health to all nearby allies every few seconds and curing the injuries of allies very close to the caster. Though the spell description does not say it, this spell constantly drains mana when you are in combat (in addition to the Upkeep that reserves mana from your pool).

SPIRIT HEALER SPELL BUILDS
While the Spirit Healer abilities are cool, you also have to think about what other spells you’ll invest points on. My personal preference for a Spirit Healer is that she/he should really be a full support character. Healing drains a lot of mana so you’ll barely have enough room to have your Spirit Healer also cast offensive spells. The following are some pretty cool spells as well as their applications that you might want to consider in lieu of the usual fireball.

Creation
Heal: Uhm, kinda a no brainer right?
Rejuvenate: Use this on classes that rely heavily on mana/stamina. Cool skill to use especially if you’re trying to cut down on potion usage.
Regenerate: Keep this constantly on your tank or whoever is taking damage.
Mass Rejuvenate: Another very useful and powerful spell that will give additional mana/stamina regen for everyone.
Heroic Offense: Very nice buff to weapon-based DPS classes. Put this on your rogue or berserker and watch waves upon waves of enemies fall down.
Heroic Aura: Combine this with Alistair’s anti-missile shield skills and you have one impenetrable warrior.
Heroic Defense: A good spell to pre-cast prior to heavy battles.
Haste: Another powerful buff skill.

I strongly recommend that you get all the skills I listed above. After that, it boils down to personal preference. If you want your healer to augment offense, maybe you can explore taking up the Glyphs in the Spirit tree. There are some pretty powerful spell combos available there (Paralysis Wave) and there’s also a Glyph that adds buffs. You can also go for the Telekenetic spells. Mind Blast can get you out of trouble quickly and the crowd control Force Field and Crushing Prison brings to the table is just awesome.

COMBAT TACTICS
Pre-casting can make the major difference in battle. This is something that you should practice if you want to make life easier for you (especially if you’re playing on Hard mode). Other than all the buffs I mentioned above, you should also make sure to cast Life Ward regularly. It will save Heal cooldowns since it will automatically heal the target when his/her HP goes low. Very useful spell! In fact in my previous run, I had three life wards always active since I had three Spirit Healers, haha.

If you’re using Wynne, you should spend time fixing her Tactics, especially if you’re not micro managing. The default setting is that Wynne will use Arcane Bolt on opponents which will quickly sap her mana. Take that out and just set her skills to healing allies and maybe using the occasional earth spike on frozen opponents. Like what I also mentioned above, the number 1 opponent of a healer is cooldowns. That’s why it helps if all your mages have Heal and it will even be more cool if you have 2 Spirit Healers in your party.

Lastly, I urge you to finish Wynne’s personal quest. It will unlock more abilities for her which you can definitely use to your advantage in battle.

That’s it for now, I’ll update this again sometime over the weekend. Cheers!

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