Healing is an important element of Smite. Healers are characters that have strong abilities to restore the health of their teammates. Selecting a healer for your team gives you extra sustain that may allow you to outlast the opposition. Teams are likely to pick one themselves in response to a healer being drafted by their opponents. Teams may also save their last pick for a surprise healer to secure the edge in long fights. In this article, we look at healing in and out of combat, in addition to tank healers and items that revolve around healing.

In Combat Healing

The most obvious strength of healers is in team fights and skirmishes. They can prevent deaths while keeping their team as healthy as possible. This allows their team to deal additional damage and maybe buy enough time to unleash another rotation of cooldowns. A healer should be protected by their team so they can continue to provide sustain.

Healers have to have careful positioning in team fights. Because healers can provide so much utility and power to a fight, they are likely to be primary targets and focused down. A healer has to stay close enough to allies in need while staying away from enemies. Keeping a healer alive is the responsibility of the whole team.

The best healer in engagements is Guan Yu. The Saint of War is very tanky and mobile. This allows him to survive in fights where other healers could not as well as being able to move around a fight to heal injured allies. Guan also has a low cooldown on his Conviction spell and ways to lower it further, allowing him to spam out heals in fights. Guan’s other spells allow him to be an aggressive initiator or backline peeler. He has enough utility to do almost anything in a fight while keeping his team healthy.





Out of Combat Healing

In addition to in-fight sustain, healers also shine out of combat and between fights. Keeping a team healthy after a fight is important because it allows for a reengage and protects you in case the enemy reengages. Healers are also instrumental in setting up sieges when your team does not have the Fire Giant buff.

If a jungle fight is disengaged after 0 casualties, a team with a healer is in the superior position to one without. The healer can sustain their team back to high health and hunt for the enemy team to rekindle the fight. A healer can also ward off an enemy reengage by keeping his team healthy and not vulnerable to attack. A healer can also allow a team to take jungle objectives even if they were left crippled after a fight.

Sieges are common in high level Smite and are facilitated by healers. A siege is when a team groups up near an enemy tower and threatens to dive the tower either to take down the structure or fight under it. A healer can top off their team when setting up the dive as well as during and after an attempted or successful tower kill to set up for the next engagement at another structure.

Ra is the premier healer in terms of sieging and other out of combat scenarios. While it may be risky for your team to stack inside a Solar Blessing during a team fight, the ability shines after fights. When a team is disengaged, a Solar Blessing can top off allies for a reengage or an objective. Ra is also very powerful in sieges. He can place his heal in a tower radius during dives and after a successful dive to prepare for the next tower or fight.

Tank Healers

The most successful healers in the current Smite meta are tanks. This class consists of Guan Yu, Sylvanus, and Terra. Tank healers are superior to a squishy healer, such as Hel or Aphrodite, because they can take much more punishment before dying and are harder to lock down and blow up. A tank healer can survive in a team fight and then reset to heal their team, while a squishy healer is likely to be focused down.

There are situations where you can play a non-tank healer. A Mage healer can be played in the mid lane when you draft a composition that can protect them and the opponent doesn’t have a character like Odin who can shut the healer down. Ra is the strongest Mage healer because he does not need as much babysitting as other Mages and is a strong laner in his own right while still having all the benefits of being a healer.





Healer Items

There are a few items that are designed around healing. Lotus Crown is an item that grants additional protections to allies hit by your heals. Rod of Asclepius is a magical item that provides an aura granting additional healing received by all allies in the area. Asclepius increases all healing received, not just from its owner, so a magical character can pick it up to boost the sustain coming out of a Guan Yu.

There are also items that reduce the healing received by the enemy. Brawler's Beatstick and Divine Ruin reduce healing by 40% for 8 seconds on ability hits by physical and magical effects, respectively. Pestilence is a magical defense item that reduces the opponent’s healing by 25% in an aura around the owner. Lastly, the Curse relic reduces movement speed by 40% and healing by 50% for 5 seconds in an AoE.

Conclusion

Healers are important in Smite. They force your opponent to draft one to match their sustain or concede the advantage to you. Healers can carry their team through long team fights or keep their team topped up between skirmishes. Tanky healers generally fair better than squishies because they are less likely to be instantly killed in a fight. In all, healing is a part in Smite that can define a match.

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