Quote Originally Posted by Carighan View Post
It's funny how much the overfocus on balance in numbers in raids has reduced healer design space in particular. Back in older MMORPGs you had a single game that had these four healers:

* A pure healer, with a cleric stance like thing they had to go into or out of to even be able to deal any damage at all really.
* A buffer, who could actually heal a fair bit but... indirectly. Like you could give someone very short buffs to their absorption or so, like external 40% DRs. In return, weaker heals and damage was also indirect via buffing people. Since all your buffs were casted + short, you were quite busy.
* One healer that gave their own health away via a mix of heals and HoTs, and then constantly had DoTs on enemies to drain health back to fuel this. High overall output, but fragile if there's ever a gap.
* Lastly a healer that designated a target and then went melee, causing healing around them and on that target.

Were these balanced? Not in the slightest. Were they fun? Hell yeah!
...Warhammer?

Because I can tell you that in almost every scenario, Chalice off hand healers were superior. The others could get the job done, but you almost always, without exception, wanted the Chalice healers.