Why Dragon's Dogma 2 Skipping a True Healer Vocation Makes Sense

Highlights

Dragon’s Dogma 2 offers a variety of vocations, each with unique strengths, from long-range archers to tough warriors.
The absence of a healing class in the game is intentional, as combat heavily emphasizes damage-dealing strategies.
The Trickster vocation, focused on support, faces challenges due to relying on unreliable AI pawns for damage output.

There are 10 different vocations to choose from in Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma 2, each with its own advantages over the others. While some vocations, such as the Mystic Spearhand and Warfarer, might be considered better than the rest due to their versatility, every vocation has its merits. Archers and Magick Archers, for instance, can chip away at their enemy’s health from a distance with a wide variety of ranged skills. Fighters and Warriors, on the other hand, prefer to fight up close, but are harder to kill than other vocations and can deal high damage when given the opportunity. Unfortunately, one playstyle has been left out entirely, and it’s actually for the best.

Of the 10 vocations available in Dragon’s Dogma 2, there is no true healer class. Certain vocations can heal and offer support, but none of them are strictly considered a healing class. This is largely due to Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s demanding combat and the absence of true co-op gameplay, so a vocation fully focused on healing is not necessarily missed. Still, it’s worth examining why it wouldn’t be worth it to have a healing class in Dragon’s Dogma 2, and how the game makes up for the lack of one.

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Why a Healing Vocation Wouldn’t Work in Dragon’s Dogma 2

Dragon’s Dogma 2’s Combat Largely Requires Players to Be Damage-Dealers

Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s combat is demanding to say the least. Nothing is easy in the game unless players manage to reach the end of the story and start a New Game Plus, which allows them to retain their gear and skills and thus has the potential to make them an overpowered killing machine.

With how taxing Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s combat can be, it largely requires players to be damage dealers, so that they might subdue their foes before they are subdued. As such, there is little room for a pure healing class in the game. Instead, players are given access to a few healing spells provided by the Mage and Sorcerer vocations, as well as a variety of recovery items that they can use on themselves or give to others.

The Trickster’s Support Gameplay Makes It a Huge Risk, and a Healer Would End Up in the Same Boat

The Trickster is one vocation in Dragon’s Dogma 2 whose skills primarily revolve around providing support for the team. As its name suggests, the Trickster uses illusions and deception to trick its foes into bringing their own demise upon themselves.

Despite how enticing the Trickster’s gameplay may sound to some, the vocation has wound up at the bottom of most
Dragon’s Dogma 2
class tier lists, primarily because its damage-dealing attacks hardly deal any damage at all.

Instead, the Trickster largely has to rely on its Pawns to deliver damage, and since Pawns have been known to be wildly unpredictable, this makes playing a Trickster rather risky. In the same way, a vocation strictly focused on healing would depend (perhaps even more so) on its Pawns dealing the bulk of the damage while it remained at a distance and attempted to keep them alive.

In the demanding open world of Dragon’s Dogma 2, for instance, this would be less than ideal. If Dragon’s Dogma 2 was a true multiplayer experience, having a healing vocation might make more sense, as the healer would then rely on real players instead of notoriously janky AI.

As it stands, Dragon’s Dogma 2 provides players with all the necessary types of classes, perhaps except for a Wayfarer vocation. There is really no need for a healing class, and there is arguably no room for one, either. Instead, players can utilize the support provided by Pawn Mages and Sorcerers to keep their party alive.