Healer

Healer is the 8th troop of barrack which means you can unlock healer once you are upgraded to barrack level 8. Healers can heal any ground unit but they will never going to attack any kind of troops or buildings. Though heal spell can heal both ground and air units, healers only can heal the ground troops. Healers have long angel like white wings and short white hair and she wears a golden dress in level 1 and 2. She has a circular aura around her. At level 3 the colour of her dress and aura both change from golden to purple.

Healer is the only unit of clash of clans which has the ability to heal other troops. Though heal spell can be used for healing purpose, healer is the only unit to do the job. Unlike every other troops of COC, healers are measured in HPS (Healing per Second) instead of DPS (Damage per second). Healing per second of various level healers is shown bellow. Keep in mind that HPS on heroes will work 50% less as they work on other ground troops.

Healers are air troops. Which means any ground defence such as mortar, cannon will not target or attack healer. The only problem is air defences. Several shots from air defence can kill her. So while you’re deploying healer be aware of air defences. Destroy them before deploying healer or deploy healer out of its range.

Healer can not only heal a single unit. She can even heal a group of troops. Healer’s heal splash radius is 2 tiles. So whatever ground troops are inside that range will be healed. Multiple units healing power is so much effective. You can deploy a group of giants along with a healer and giants will stick together and take damages together while the healer will heal the group nicely. This attack is the most used attack for th6 war bases. Because there are only 1 air defence which n easily be destroy and the healer will be safe.

Healer has an awesome range of 5 tiles. That means they can heal any unit being 5 tiles away from them. It is useful for healer itself. The air & ground units like archer towers and wizard towers can’t target them as she heals other troops from behind them. So towers will attack the troops first. But the best use of healer’s range is with the archer queen. Archer queen also has a range of 5 tiles. So healer can heal archer queen from 10 tiles away from a building. This is fair enough distance to be safe from any kind of defensive buildings. Perfectly implemented archer queen and a couple of healer can destroy and loot a lot of resources from town hall 8 and even 9 bases.

Movement speed of healer is 16. It is probably not a good speed for ground units. But keep in mind that healer is a flying unit. So any kind of obstacles/walls/buildings will not going to stop her for a moment. And most importantly she is not attacking any building. She is going to heal rest of your troops from damages. So 16 is a fair enough movement speed for healer.

Healers have a low training cost compared to other troops. A level 1 healer will take 5000 elixirs to train. It becomes 350 elixirs for per housing space. This is pretty cheap compared to other troops of tier 3. The other two troops of tier 3 Dragon and PEKKA requires more than 1000 elixirs for each housing space. Upgrading healers in the laboratory will help gradually increase their costs up to 10,000 elixirs. Costs of healers are:

The biggest turn off is a healer having any damage power. It’s frustrating to have a 14 housing space unit left deploying and the attack ends. But healers literally do not attack any building/unit/heroes. If you have one or more healers left but the rest of your troops are dead the battle will end there unless you have any earthquake/ lightening spell left.

Healers have good hitpoints from the very beginning. Initially they got 500 hit points which can be upgraded up to 1176! It’s good enough hitpoint to survive from multiple shots of archer tower, wizard tower and even air defence! The increase of hitpoints after upgrading healers in lab is:

Healers require 15 minutes to train each. It is a long for a troop to train. Healer requires more than 1 minute to train each supply cost. But it is not suitable for farming purpose while a giant requires less than 25 seconds to train each supply unit. The training time is the biggest reason to avoid using healers in farming multiplayer battles.

Another problem with healers is its target area. Healers heal only ground units. It can not heal any of the air units like Balloons, Dragons, Minions and Lavas. It can’t even heal itself or another healer. You can heal a healer using a healing spell but you can’t heal a healer using a healer! It’s a weak point of every air troops that there is no healing troop for them. The only way to heal the air units is using the healer.

Healers takes a lot of space in the camp. It requires 14 housing space. Though healers were initially required 20 spaces, but later supercell decreased the housing cost as well as training time for her in May 2013 update. Still it’s a lot of space. Newbie players need healer a lot but their clan castle capacity is not enough to take a healer.

Though healers do not do any kind of damages to the opponent base, they could have preferred unit to heal. Like heroes or high hitpoint units like Giants or PEKKAs. It happens a lot of time while healer becomes distracted by your low hitpoint troops (Like archers and barbarians) and starts to heal them leaving the Giants or PEKKAs. It is very much frustrating for a attacker. Having a preferred target would solve the problem in many cases.

Offensive strategy with healers will sound hilarious as they do not have any offensive ability. But they have effective assist in many attacks. Healers are used widely with giants in town hall level 6 to 9 and sometimes with PEKKAs as well. The strategy is simple, Giants and PEKKAs can take a lot o damages because of their high hitpoints. Archers/barbarians/goblins/wizards are used with Giants to help improve the damage but healers are not implemented to heal them. The reason is they do not have good enough health to survive from a couple of shots from defensive buildings so that healers can heal them.
Healers are great unit to be used in war. Healers make great support for large group of Giants or even P.E.K.K.As, Golems, or even the Witch’s Skeleton summons. They are also good with heroes (Barbarian king and Archer Queen).

For farming bases up to town hall 8, healers are not regularly seen to be used for farming purpose. Because of their long period of training time most of the players do not use them. Moreover you can efficiently farm for elixirs and gold without the need of a healer. But you’ll need healer when you’re attacking for dark elixirs. Usually every player defends their Dark Elixir Storage with maximum priority. And that’s why when you’re looking for Dark Elixir, you should use healers with your Giants and PEKKAs.

Rage Spell does a good job with healers. If you apply a rage spell while a healer healing your troops, it almost works as a heal spell as well. It increases the speed and DPS of your troops and also increases the HPS of your healer. Heal spell can only heal a healer. So if your healer is getting hit by Air Defense tower the Healing Spell can help keep your Healer alive for sometimes.

Healers are usually a not recommended troop to be used to defend your village. They are barely seen to be used as CC troops in war. The reason is clear, they have no DPS. They usually heal the other cc troops and heroes. When they are defeated she will just fly around until she got killed as well.

Till September healers were capable to heal damaged buildings, but it’s no longer available.
The best defence against healers (and all other air units) is to maximize your air defence. It’s recommended to max out your Air Defence tower from the beginning. The air defences should be placed in the middle of the base. So that giants or other troops cannot destroy them easily, and your defensive buildings will get more time to defeat the enemy. Triggering the traps to air target no longer work against healers. Air traps are not triggered by healers anymore.