Bailu

The aptly named ‘Healer Lady’ is, as of the writing of this, the only other healer character available at launch besides Nat. She’s a remarkably powerful healer that has incredible staying power, much like Natasha. You may be inclined to believe that they are mostly identical in performance as well, but you’ll see why Bailu will start rapidly pulling ahead in certain circumstances.

Bailu has an interesting talent that has two effects, the first of which functions somewhat as an extension of her ultimate, and the second which is a one-time in-combat revive. Much like the only other death-activated talent, this is very rarely something that will find much practical use unless you’ve made a string of bad decisions in combat leading to a painful and likely embarrassing death; if you’re in the situation where you’re finding a lot of use out of the revive, you should probably look to invest in better ways to avoid dying.

This is however only half of Bailu’s talent, and the main part is a mechanic called Invigoration. Allies who are Invigorated will heal upon receiving a hit from the enemy, and this can occur twice. This is a way in which Bailu gains access to more ‘proactive’ healing, essentially healing off damage you’d be using your skill on in advance.

You gain access to Invigoration through Bailu’s ultimate; she instantly heals all allies, and any allies that are not Invigorated will become Invigorated. If an ally is already Invigorated, this status will be extended by 1 more turn, up to a maximum of 2 turns. Bailu’s ultimate has a below-average energy cost of 100, higher than Natasha’s 90, but still low enough to have good uptime on it.

Bailu’s skill is a targeted heal that then bounces twice to other allies and heals them, diminishing by 15% on each bounce. This is an unreliable AoE healing tool, because it could bounce between all your wounded characters, but it could just as easily bounce three times on a single target. It’s not insignificant healing either way, but just know that if you’re intending on healing a specific teammate, make sure to actually target them first.

As it happens, Bailu’s bonus traces do a great job of expanding upon the Invigoration effect and making it very potent. A2 grants Bailu the ability to overheal a target; if she heals an ally above 100% of their normal hp value, that ally’s max hp will increase by 10% for 2 turns. This goes a long way to improving overall team survivability, and important to note, even a single digit of overheal will increase the target’s max hp, so triggering this reliably is not a struggle at all, especially later on.

A4 allows Invigoration’s heal-on-hit to trigger 1 extra time, for a total of 3, which just extends Invigoration’s effective use, allowing for more time for Bailu to regain her ultimate before the next time when you’d likely need the Invigoration buff.

It’s the A6 buff that is extraordinarily strong. Invigorated characters have 10% damage reduction for as long as the buff persists. This is critically significant, as especially later on, shaving 10% off of incoming damage can quite literally be the difference between life and death, and this is a buff that will be active very very often, so to have this impressive of a defensive utility on your healer unit will only serve to improve the value of your other defensive units like shielders.

All of this combined creates a very very strong healer character that has good upfront healing, and a degree of passive healing built into her kit. This is especially useful for Bailu to take advantage of, since it means Bailu will be able to use more basic attacks and more freely, generating more SP for the rest of the team, much like how Natasha’s regen effects allow Natasha to do the same.

She’s really consistent, and will carry you far.

A comparison between Natasha and Bailu:

Now, inevitably, Natasha and Bailu will end up getting compared to one another, so here’s the breakdown of that. Natasha’s regen effects and talent allow her to be a remarkably powerful single-target healer, that has a strong low-cost teamwide heal as her ultimate, and most importantly, has a cleanse on her skill. I repeat, Bailu does not have a cleanse of any kind. In encounters where there is predominantly single-target damage coming out, such that Natasha can focus on one, maybe two allies at a time, the gap in performance is negligible, and especially if you require a cleanse in a fight, Bailu is automatically outperformed by Natasha.

However, as mentioned briefly at the start, Bailu starts to rapidly pull ahead of Natasha in certain circumstances, and that’s if there is persistent AoE damage. If the AoE damage is infrequent enough that Natasha can handle it with her ultimate, then she is fine in those cases, but if there’s more than that, Bailu will have the means to deal with that while Natasha will struggle.

It should be mentioned that at very high levels, in the late-game, healing can become strong enough to where every heal is essentially a 100% hp heal. This includes the regen from Natasha’s skill and the counter-healing from Invigoration. Especially in the harder sections of Forgotten Hall, enemies will begin dealing genuinely absurd amounts of damage, such that you will immediately need to be healing that damage off.

Natasha’s regen does facilitate this quite well… assuming you live until your next turn. Because of the way that the regen triggers, you need to make sure that you don’t die before your next turn so that the regen has a chance to even activate. So when enemies hit for the majority of your health bar every turn, you can see why in scenarios with hard-hitting AoE damage, Natasha can struggle to keep everyone alive.

This is where Bailu shines. With Invigoration providing its healing immediately after taking a hit, Bailu can essentially keep the entire party topped up between these hard-hitting aoe attacks, and will not fall behind anywhere near as easily. This coupled with the 10% damage reduction from her A6, Bailu is far better suited to these combat encounters, and in a way, almost acts as a pseudo-shielder of sorts.

This is not intended as a sleight against Natasha, nor is it unwarranted aggrandising of Bailu. Both are excellent healers that will always see use, but both truly excel in different circumstances when compared to each other, albeit with some significant overlap as well. The wildcards are Natasha’s cleanse, and Bailu’s Invigoration.

You are not only going to want Bailu for later, you’ll probably need her, because both teams in Forgotten Hall generally need a healer, and Nat can only be brought to one side at a time. Do not ignore Bailu for Natasha, and similarly do not ignore Natasha for Bailu.

Both. Both is good.