Most laid-back healer?

I'm just returning to EQ2 again and would like to level something other then my ward(L39) for pure grouping. I found my ward needed to spam his heals a fair bit (teamed with crappy tanks a lot) and felt like playing whack-a-mole. Can you guys recommend to me the most laid back group healer? Solo efficiency doesn't matter, neither does raid efficiency(won't raid).
Cheers.

Playing a healer in EQ2 is almost never a laid-back job. Only if you have a over equipped tank it wont be. But the healer that if played well will have the easiest time healing would probably be a Templar. Not only 'cause of his healing but also 'cause of his daze that significantly reduced the damage output of a mob. Also his heals are on a long recast time so you can't even play whack-a-mole even if you want to / have to. Beside this both shamans should be fine as they also have slow casting heals with a higher reuse. But you really must predict who will be damaged playing these classes and you will need to use their debuffs to decrease the the incoming damage as they are good at preventing damage with wards (and debuffs) but if that doesn't suffice they have a hard time using their normal heals to fill the gap.

I really have no idea what you mean by 'laid-back' healer but honestly my assumption is that for normal grouping content while leveling and at 90, Warden is honestly the easiest to heal with.
If you're going to have 2 healers than a Shaman might be an okay choice, but I think they're the hardest to solo heal a heroic group with because of how slow they are and wards not making HP go back up as much (AAs do help this now though finally)
Inquisitor is a great solo healer for DoV but they don't shine until 90 and they have their unmyth and detriment spam isn't as big a problem if you aren't raiding, so Templar would be better for pure healing in that case.
Fury takes some button mashing to heal with due to lots of fast small heals, so I'm guessing that isn't what you want.

Hmm, was thinking templar/inq though I haven't played them or shammies.

By laid back I mean:
I used to heal on my warden on eq2x that I put lots of work into, AA slider set to ~75%, expert3/master heal spells, MC armor/weapon/shield. I always seemed to have to heal often using 3-5 different spells cycling between them, was a pain. Grouping with people was lots of fun, but usually tanks were very crappily geared.
Then one of my friends re-rolled an Inq and I played with him on a dirge and saw how in treasured gear, adept spells he had an easy time keeping everyone alive (think due to the group reactive?). He would even joke and brag he went afk for short amounts of time, and yet we all survived.
I don't know much about the mechanic shammies and clerics use so I was asking so I could see if these other classes were like the situation above, don't have to spam all their heals, though maybe Inq would be the best for group content after all?

Any good player can keep a general group alive as any healer and any excellent player can probably solo heal 99% of the heroic content there is as any healer.
The general opinion of myself and most of my friends through the years is that Warden in 1-89 content (and most 90 heroic content with some gear) is healing on complete easy-mode. It is just that, an opinion, and I'm sure people find the cleric playstyle easier. My raid inquisitor can heal nearly anything without breaking any kind of a sweat but taking a raid healer into most heroic things is like using a nuke to kill a rabbit.
That being said I've found cleric reactives are very power hungry (especially Inquisitor) at low levels, and Inquisitor struggles with power until they get Inquest and AAs to improve it. If you don't like cycling between even 3 spells, I'm not really sure healer in general is going to be a good class for you.
Comparing a random data point with an Inq healer isn't really a good way to compare the whole class, you may have had a better tank that time (a good tank can obviate the entire need for a healer for large segments of time, especially as you get higher up).
Finally, despite what I just said, remember the first point which is that a good player can keep a group up with any of the healers. If you find yourself drawn to Inquisitor, you should play it. It's a powerful class, especially at 90, mixing strong healing, DPS, and buffing, but it's a bit of a slog to get there.

The Inquisitor has the smallest heals of all healers (and on a short recast) and so needs to cast them more then any other healer. You might end up casting nothing else then heals with an Inquisitor, thanks to the long cast times, low heal values and short recast. No other healer has such a "bad" combination. either they have long cast and recast times (templar, and shamans) or they have short cast and recast times (druids). This only changes after you gain your mystical spell and high end gear. before that Inquisitor is actually the healer that has to do the most to keep his group alive. Sure, he can do it, but it needs "more work" then with any other healer.

Calberak@Valor wrote:

I know that this doesn't come into play in solo healing conditions, but it is worth noting for if/when an inquisitor begins raiding, that their reactive heals tend to sit underneath wards and be largely wasted if the shamans and druids are keeping up with the damage being done. It is not unusual for inquisitor reactives to simply expire unused due to this, and it can be hard for an inquisitor to parse high on heal parses under such conditions. Not only that, but the Templar reactive heals tend to be stronger than the Inquisitor's reactive heals, and thus overwrite them on application... a further waste of power/healing potential.
What used to make the inquisitor shine was their ability to regen power via their special abilities. When many other healers were going out-of-power, the inquisitor would be able to take over and save the day... since their heals were no longer being overwritten. I think a lot of the other healing classes are now much more power-efficient than they used to be, so I don't think that's quite the case anymore.
I always looked at it as though there was a hierarchy of heal types where ward > HOT > reactive in terms of HP healed per power used, since many reactive heals go unused or only partially used.
Also there's a hierarchy for reactive heals where Templar's > Inquisitor's
So, that kind of put the inquisitor into the low-man-on-the-totem-pole status in raids... unless special circumstances arose that allowed the inquisitor to really shine.

Zimbros wrote:

Heal overwriting happens when two of any subclass are together trying to heal the same thing. Granted we haven't had a templar on a raid in forever, but I'm 99% sure that in today's world if both classes have their reactives at master the Inq can overwrite the Templar too.
Unless I specifically call for it by asking healers to heal through a mob, I tell anyone I see overwriting my single target reactive not to do it, and we try to rotate Chilling properly for the same reason. However this a problem the OP should never run into given he doesn't want to raid.
Sitting under a shaman's wards is indeed a problem in group content where the healing needed is not over what the shaman can put out, but that's true for any non-shaman healer's specialty heals.

Zimbros wrote:

I'm pretty sure it goes Ward>Reactive>HoT. The Ward eats it worth. Damage hits and the reactive triggers. HoT then fills anything that's left to fill

Sitting under wards is partially why inquisitors have such nice DPS ability and templars have such nice stoneskin ability.

Torri@Lucan DLere wrote:

It only might look like this if you look at parses if not your full healing potential is needed (so most of the time). If you have two healers in a group wards win most of the time, 'cause wards are used 1st, then reactives and then HOTs, but that does not mean that a ward can heal as much as a HOT. it only means it heals it 1st giving it an advantage in the parse, but not in gameplay.
Since Sentinels Fate all unused HOT healing is "conserved" and added to the next tick. So if you need any healing between the start and the end of the HOT the HOT will use 100% of it's potential to heal. That and the fact, that the total amount healed by a special heal is higher for HOTs then for reactives and reactives have a higher potential then wards makes them at least the 2nd best special heals.
So if not much healing is is needed or there are some huge spikes it's wards > HOTs > reactives.
If huge amount of healing is needed it is actually HOTs > reactives / wards as HOTs can use 100% of the heal and have the highest potential. Reactives might heal more then wards in this circumstance, but wards still help better vs spikes so they are about equal.

Calberak@Valor wrote:

no it's not. they scrapped that idea during sf beta. it was actually a HORRIBLE idea.

My opinion .. shams gawd we are so laid back and lazy =P ward, watch tv, ward, oh crap grp heal the dumb ranger (or dont), ward .. you get the point.
But no matter how you look at it if you are a healer thats what ya do.. you heal, the harder the content the more you heal. If you grab a tank whos not geared you heal more again.. have a grp who gets in front of mob or ripping aggro and eating up the wards guess what.. you gotta push buttons more. Also depends on your gear and aa on how laid back you wanna get. Best bet is try them out see how you like them and like playing them. All of them are capable of being lazy it wont be til you try them out and fit your playstyle before you know whats truely 'laid back'.

Warden is still my highest healer (got a myst and inq also)as I've been playing BL before they get nerfed (so much fun). I think the issue I have is that the heals seam so weak/underwhelming. I looked at my inq(or was it temp?) merc and he could heal for over 2x+(his adept vs my master) that in a single cast (not counting the small hot added onto our two main heals. What happens is I spam photo, bloom and embrace and even need to spam group heals to keep the tank alive. The problem is that the full healing potential of a spell will be realized at 6-10s after the heal is cast, which by then the tank could/has died. I end up frantically spaming all macro keys to see what next heal is available so I can get whatever healing I can in asap.
I think it would have been better if they combined bloom and embrace together into one spell as they are very similar and just plain weak.

I'd think it would be unwise to compare a computer controlled healer to a living person playing their healer.

Aneova@Kithicor wrote:

What I was comparing was more the spell they get. On that topic however a week ago I was in a group with 3 healers on my BL, and I would have picked my merc over all 3, and no I'm not exaggerating. No-one was curing and I died multiple times to mobs/places where I would duo with my merc, fun times.

Must have been the Templar. They have by far the direct heals with the highest value. But that comes at a cost. They have more then double the cast time as the direct heals of an Warden and they have more then double the recast. (big heal is 3s cast and 8s recast if I remember right).

Yes this also means they need to push the least buttons to heal. If that is what you look for for laid-back, then you are right, that Templar are the most laid-back healers.

But if you want to say they can heal more then a Warden you are wrong. Actually if you look purely at the numbers no healer can heal as much as a Warden in the same timespan.

'Cause laid-back for a Templar can also mean: "I'm looking at the life of my tank going down and I can do nothing but wait for my heal to refresh ... oh I can start casting .. Arg tank down before my heal was casted." I don't think that this is to laid-back even if you can't do anything.

I'd say Warden by far is the most lazy and easy mode healer for group content. Sit around and touch 2 buttons and your golden. Utterly boring though.

Mystic has grown on me more and more. Nice long heals that are effective imediately after being cast, not to mention Umbral ward, just love it. There are times when things are hitting me it can be difficult to cast however I'm not the tank/offtank so if people start pointing fingers its easier to say "sorry I coudn't cast anything with mobs agroed on me".

I put my 2cp for Warden. They conserve the most power and if you have a good group, you can just run off of your HoT's and residual HoT's from cures alone.
As a Fury, in a good group, I must say I can do well keeping the group alive by rotating Autumn's Kiss and Hibernation; and splash heal the tank with Regrowth and Back into the Fray when needed though. But that is an involved process of [paying attention.
As a fury in early levels, I actually got great results meleeing with the strength line too for splash heals. I would only imagine it would work better as a warden though.