Healing (XC2)

For other articles titled "Healing", see Healing (disambiguation).

Healing is a mechanic in the combat of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Torna ~ The Golden Country. When a character is healed, their HP increases by a certain amount. If this would increase their HP above its maximum, it is capped at this maximum instead. Blades with the HLR role typically focus on healing the party.

Overview

Several Driver Arts/Vanguard Arts and Specials heal the entire party. The former may have healing the party as their only function, such as Healing Halo, or they may heal indirectly as a result of dealing damage, such as Strong Shot. Almost all Driver/Vanguard Arts that heal anyone heal the entire party; Steady Beam and Swift Gale are the only exceptions, healing only the user. Specials only ever heal as a result of dealing damage, and may heal the entire party or only the user.

HP Potions are one of the most common sources of healing. They are green-glowing vials dropped by enemies when party members use certain Driver Arts and Specials or inflict later stages of the Driver Combo. When a party member walks over a potion, it is consumed, healing the entire party.

Several effects also grant healing. These are most commonly offered by Battle Skills and Accessories; the latter can be found by sorting the accessory list via "Special Healing" in-game. Such effects include:

• Healing over time (e.g. Sea of Plenty)
• Healing when a Chain Attack is initiated (e.g. Recovery Symbol)
• Healing after an auto-attack (e.g. Alexandrite)
• Healing from inflicting critical hits (e.g. Avant-Garde Medal)
• Healing from canceling an auto-attack into a Driver Art (e.g. Beatific Medal)
• Healing upon performing a Blade Switch (e.g. Beary Healing).

Enemies may heal themselves, although this is much less common than party sources of healing. Examples include from enemy Arts such as Benjamin the Brain's Circle of Healing, and passive healing over time such as the Infernal Guldo when Enraged.

Outside of combat, each character's HP recovers quickly to full over time. This occurs in discrete ticks, healing 10% of the character's maximum HP every second. This does not occur if they are in a source of terrain damage.

When a character is incapacitated, the only way they can be healed is by being revived. This heals them for approximately 50 percent of their maximum HP. This value can be increased via effects such as that of the Friendship Ring.

A character that levels up is instantly restored to full HP, if they are not incapacitated. This includes enemies.

The Nullify Heal debuff causes all healing effects on the afflicted character to heal 0 HP. This cannot be sealed, but it can be resisted via effects such as that of the Belemnite Bangle.

Healing conserves recoverable HP in Torna ~ The Golden Country: if a character has (say) 300 recoverable HP before being healed, then they will still have 300 recoverable HP afterwards, unless the healing would bring their total normal HP plus recoverable HP above their maximum HP value (in which case the recoverable HP decreases to keep the total at the maximum).

Healing formula

The amount of healing from many sources is specified in their description (or, in the case of HP Potions, on their wiki page). This can generally be affected by many effects from Driver Skills, Battle Skills, Pouch Items (primarily Veggies), and Accessories. Such effects often impact only some sources of healing, such as HP Potions.

It is also globally affected by the Player Health Restoration difficulty setting (100% in Easy and Normal difficulty, 50% in Bringer of Chaos, and customisable in Custom difficulty).

The one case in which it is not obvious is in Arts which directly heal the party. In this case, the amount healed is very similar to the Damage formula:

healing_amount = (AutoAttackStat * StabilityRoll + Ether) * (DamageRatio / 100)
                 * (1 + sum of TargetHealingBonus + sum of SourceHealingBonus)
                 * Crit
                 * PlayerHealthRestoration

where:

• AutoAttackStat is the auto-attack stat (not to be confused with an actual auto-attack) of the active Blade (determined by their weapon and Core Chip;
• StabilityRoll is a random multiplier between 1-Stability and 1+Stability every heal, where Stability is the stability stat of the active Blade (again determined by weapon and Core Chip);
• Ether is the Ether stat of the current Driver;
• DamageRatio is a value that determines the total power of the Art used;
• TargetHealingBonus consists of effects on the character being healed that increase the effect of healing Arts (e.g. Veggies), and SourceHealingBonus consists of effects on the character doing the healing which increase these effects (e.g. the Affection Necklace);
• Crit is explained below;
• PlayerHealthRestoration is the Player Health Restoration difficulty setting.

Critical healing

Similar to critical hits, which randomly deal more damage, healing Arts can be critical. The effect is to multiply the amount healed by 1.1 + sum of CritPower, where CritPower consists of any effect that increases the strength of critical hits (note that the base multiplier is 1.1, whereas it is 1.25 for ordinary critical hits).

The chance any healing Art will be critical is half the character's ordinary critical rate.

Strategy

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Crit healing

One effective means of healing the party is by using effects which heal a character upon landing a critical hit. This is commonly called crit healing (not to be confused with healing Arts which can "crit" to deal more healing, mentioned above). Since such healing scales with damage dealt, and damage numbers dealt by a well-equipped party will often be much higher than damage taken, it will often be the case that the healing effect will be enough to heal the character in question to full on every critical hit. This is not necessarily optimal damage-wise, as it usually requires giving up a precious Accessory slot on every Driver; however, it is very easy to execute in practice, making it a popular strategy for casual play.

Crit healing is naturally more effective with higher crit rates. As such, it benefits the strategy to use weapons with naturally high crit rates such as Megalances and Chroma Katanas. The strategy can also work with middling crit rates, but those with extremely low crit rates such as Shield Hammers and Ether Cannons may require external sources of additive crit rate increase (e.g. Warrior Valkyrie) to be self-sustaining with this strategy. Crit healing is strong against enemies which deal damage more continuously over time; it provides no protection against strong hits able to incapacitate a character from full HP.

Crit healing shines most in lategame and early postgame, due to the availability of the Avant-Garde Medal which has the strongest such effect. However, it can be pulled off as early as when Mor Ardain is first reached via the Classic Medal. Note that in earlier stages of the game, the damage numbers dealt by the party tend to be more in line with the party's own maximum HP. While crit healing is still effective at these stages, it is much less so due to lower party damage leading to less HP healed on hit, generally lower crit rates, and the relevant accessories having weaker effects.

Gallery

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