I think the Gotcha! Rules FAQ thread needs an entry on the Talented Healer trait attachment, but i don't have all the answers, hence this thread to work them out. Searching the forum for Talented Healer throws up a confusion of obsolete and current bug threads, so i'm not quite sure what's currently true. The following is a mix of my experience, things i've gotten from forum threads, and guesses. So read the statements as questions and please respond if i've got things wrong and i'll update. Things that trigger Talented Healer: - Targeted heal cards like Heal, Minor Heal, Greater Heal. Even when the target has full health or blocks the heal. - Lifesuck attack cards (Sapping Touch to Invigorating Touch). Even if they are blocked or do no damage due to armour, or the player has full health. - Some untargeted heal cards: Team Heal, Help The Weak. Things that don't trigger Talented Healer: - Heal over time cards: Healing Blessing, Soothing Darkness. - Some untargeted heal cards: Inspiring Presence, Healing Pulse.(1) - Reactive healing from Holy Armour or Boosted Heal. - Lifesuck attack cards that trigger a reactive move (like Dodge, Jump Back or Reflexive Teleport) that takes the target out of range/los.(1,2,3) - Targeted heal cards aimed at enemies that trigger a reactive move that takes the target out of range/los. The biggest surprise for new players is the combo with lifesuck that (uniquely?) creates cantrip attacks. I've had players accuse me of hacking when i've used it. The most bug-like stuff is the inconsistency around untargeted heal cards. The interaction with blocks and reactive moves seems weird - blocks are supposed to cancel attacks while the reactive moves just evade them, yet it's the moves that break the cantrip cycle. I quite like this because it means the game has both a technique for blasting through blocks and counters to cantrip attacks, but reversing things would be more logical, but from reading the bug threads i think they just plan to stop the moves defeating the cantrip. The idea of using Talented Healer to heal the enemy to draw out their blocks ahead of a big attack only just occurred to me - i haven't tested it yet. (I agonised over which forum to put this thread in- it's not exactly feedback or suggestions though it contains some, it's not a bug report though it mentions possible bugs. It's focused on understanding the mechanics so i plumped for general chat, though i'm still not sure.)
gah, just found this relevant discussion: https://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/upcoming-balance-changes-21-aug-2013.3162/ feel i'm late to the party.
Talented Healer will trigger whenever you play a card with the "Heal" *keyword*. Having examined the master entries for various cards which do and don't trigger Talented Healer, I'm still not sure what distinguishes between "Heal" as plaintext and as keyword, aside from being manually formatted with an underline in the card text. Both of these behaviors are bugs. As noted in linked threads, the latter should be fixed in an upcoming release. To my knowledge, the devs haven't responded re: Inspiring Presence, but that's fine because cantrip multi-card draw shouldn't exist. Yes, that would work - but if you trigger a Hard to Pin Down, they can still move away from your attacker.
The message box lists a blocked attack as [card name] was cancelled. It seems to me that a cancelled action should not call a follow-on cantrip. This game does even weirder things, though, so I guess I'll just add it to the list and take full advantage of it.
I never got a response over the last 4-5 months as to why inspiring presence doesn't proc talented healer. I know that it doesn't because heal isn't a keyword, but, inconsistencies abound in this game, at least, without explanation as to why they are the way they are.
