EVE Online – So You Want To Be A Healer?

Good news! You can be!

In EVE Online there are various ships that essentially allow you to heal your fleet mates. Pilots of these ships are most wanted and rarely get turned down from any fleet activity.

What ship class can fill this role :-
Frigate
Cruiser
Carrier

Mostly used in :-
Fleet operations
Large scale PvP
Large scale PvE (Level 4, Wormhole Sites, Incursions)

What basic skills to focus on (Depending what race you fly) :-
Mechanics Science
Targeting
Power Grid
Capacitor
Drones

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Caldari carrier: Chimera

Healers are known as Logistic pilots, and they fly ships that are set-up purely for remotely fixing up their fleet mates and so aren’t useful for solo flying. For this reason it would be unwise to focus on training/fitting a Logistic ship unless you have a Corporation that is willing to help you out. Most players focus on combat and train up their Logistics on the side.

Healing in EVE Online works by remotely fixing up other ships’ shield or armour. As a Logistic pilot, you will need to lock onto your fleet mates and then activate your remote armour repair or remote shield transporters to keep them alive, sometimes transferring capacitor to keep them firing. This allows your fleet mates to focus on locking up the enemy targets being called to them by the fleet commander.

Every race has Logistic ships but they focus on different roles. For example Amarr and Gallente have remote armour repair, while the Caldari and Minmatar focus on shields. I would recommend flying either Amarr (if you fly in armour fleets) or Caldari (if you fly in shield fleets) as they also have energy transfer that keep people from running out of capacitor. If you prefer to boost the damage output then you might want to consider Gallente or Minmatar instead.

There are also Logistic drones that will fly out to your fleet mates and circle them while they do repairs to their armour or shields.  These drones are very handy and drone skills should be trained up along with other Logistic skills. Drones can either be micro-managed to fly to different fleet mates or kept on a single target if they are getting a bit too much love.

The main focus for training up to flying Logistics is to get to tech 2 cruiser level. There are frigate class ships that can remotely help but it will be more common for your fleet to use something bigger. If you want to go higher, you can also train up to fly a carrier.

Carriers are larger support ships and come with lots more goodies than a simple cruiser. This will be a long term goal and not something you want to try to jump to immediately. Since carriers are such massive ships, there are restrictions on where they can be used.

Being a Logistic pilot isn’t without its dangers. If you remote repair someone, there is a chance you might get aggression towards you, so be careful if you decide to be all loving and supportive of random pilots. Also make sure that the fleet has engaged the enemy before starting to fix people up, otherwise there’s a chance the enemy might focus on you instead.

Being a Logistic pilot in EVE is as rewarding as being a healer in any other MMO. It might not play exactly the same way, but is as important in a fleet as any other pilot.

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Amarr tech 2 cruiser: Guardian

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