Question about healing? new to EQ2 but not MMO's

Hello everyone, over the years I've heard about eq2 an etc, but never tried it personally. Basically some friends of mine I've known for years played eq / eq2 in the past and is now returning. I have been playing WoW since release, and in WoW, Rift, Swtor, and whatever game MMO wise I play, I'am always a healer and if I can't be a healer like in gw2 then I support. Healing is my thing, I love it, so I'm not very knowledgeable with EQ2 yet, obviously. So tomorrow I will be becoming gold membership then when it comes time buy both expacs, reason I say this is I do not know if any of the healing classes come from the expansions, anyways.

Question finally lol is:
What healing class would you suggest playing? Remember, if you did read above, I'm not new to healing, I know the general concept, so I don't know if the difficulty is different for each of these classes but if so do not base it off that. Is there like a healing class that is pretty good in pvp and pve, but its play style or whatever is pretty tough and therefor not a class played very much? I don't know so lol, what class do you suggest? what class is under played and why is it under played?

Underplayed classes generally are underplayed after 8 years of history because they are not fun to solo while leveling. If there were content developed that needed max healing potential to be realized, then Templar and Defiler would be the default MT healers. You'll probably find less of them that other healing classes because they lag far behind their Inquisitor and Mystic counterparts, as well as both Druid classes when it comes to efficient soloability. They won't die, but watching paint dry can seem fast in comparison to leveling. ( This is an exaggeration, but it is true the two "best" healing classes are the slowest to level on your own)

FTP healers are limited to Clerics (Templar/Inquisitor). Gold unlocks all races/classes. No healing classes are tied to any specific expansion so will all be available. The three different healer types heal in different ways. Shamans (Defiler/Mystic) heal mainly via wards, which prevent damage before it occurs. Clerics (Templar/Inquisitor) Heal with reactives, which trigger a heal when the player takes damage. Druids (Warden/Fury) heal with heal over Tine spells that replenish health after damage takes it away. Due to these mechaincs, when parsing, Wards are spent first, then Reactives, and finally HoTs.All healers do have both direct single target and group heals to augment their class defining healing spells

With current content, all healers are well equipped to do the job of healing in almost all content. Druids run into trouble with big AEs that will one shot people, but are given other abilities to compensate, Check out the various threads, with a wary eye of a MMO vet to see the difference between legit concerns and people who want Godmode.

what the defiler has issues soloing are you serious? i didn't have any issues soloing on the defiler especially now if you have AoD and can have a mercenary grab the Shadow knight mercenary out of neriak as early as you can set him to attack anything that so much as looks at you funny and its a cake walk to lvl.

Templars have spells that are normally placed on the mobs and heal the tank that way. Inquisitor reactives are placed directly on the tank or group. i know this cause i also have the inquisitor and a friend has a Templar so we sat down and discussed the differences between the 2 class's and how they heal and cure. i have no real comment about druids as i haven't made one yet so i am not 100% familiar with how everything they have spell wise works.

my biggest advice is find the class you like and play it don't let someone tell you oh you must play this or that in the way of a healer class make your own choice i made my inquisitor back when no one wanted an inquisitor as a healer this was before the mythical cure the inquisitor got in RoK. I made her for the specific purpose to prove that inquisitors could heal as well as any other healer class in game and you know what i was right. Why you may wonder its simply because the ability of a given class has nothing to do with the class itself it has everything to do with the person who is playing said class.

The least played healer class is probably Fury. In my experience over 8 years, I've also met many more furies that are absolutely terrible than any other healer class. I don't know if it's because of difficulty, but that's just how it is.

Inquisitors are extremely powerful and much desired.

For myself, I"ve been a defiler for 8 years and wouldn't trade it for anything.

I have a 95 Fury, Inquisitor, and a Mystic. That's one of each archtype (a druid, a cleric, and a shaman). Out of my personal experince playing the three, I enjoy playing the Fury the most.

They heal mainly using Heal over Time spells, and inflict damage with elemental spells with a arsenel of AoE's. My fury is a strong healer. In raids, I have no problems solo healing/curing the squishy mage group while doing decent DPS. My mages do not die usually unless its going to be a full wipe anyways I can also solo heal any instance, easy mode, or challenge mobs. I love grouping with the Fury because our main tank (a guildy) is a Monk. He loves to pull a lot of mobs at once, so it keeps me on my toes healing, curing, and mass mobs gives me the chance to AoE and do a lot of DPS at the same time as healing.

My mystic is fun to play, but I do not enjoy solo healing with one as much (again, this is my personal opinion). It's more difficult to keep up with cures on the mystic. Also, sometimes it can be challenging to keep up group members when wards are down.

My Inquisitor is also fun to play. They are easy to cure with, do good melee dps, with the ability to heal very well.

In order from my favorite to play, in both raids and solo healing groups, it is Fury, Inquis, then Mystic.

Again, these are just my personal opinions. In the right hands, any healer class is highly desirable if you ask me

It's common misconception that furys are bad healers. They are not. They are also can dps decently while healing solo mage group. You can see more and more furys looking for groups now days considering what they were given with regards to prestige abilities.

Any class can molo (solo with a merc) and healers do that especially well. That being said.. all the healer classes can truly solo.. ie no merc.. it just takes some longer then others.
Warden, inquisitor and mystic are the melee healers (with the appropriate AA) and all do good solid dps an healing. I've had a blast with all three.
Fury is good dps, but is mostly ranged/spell based.
Defiler is still a melee healer, mostly, but they tend to be lower dpsing then the above three.. nearly impossible to kill, but lower dps.
I haven't played a templar, but they've got good solid healing, should melee for max dps, but are not strong on the dps side.

Others have covered the different types of heals the classes have.

Not a single mention of a Paladin?

Can be both a tank and a healer. I tend to run mine solo/molo but have been in groups as a tank and this last time as the primary healer.Maybe there is a drawback I dont know about.

Paladin's cannot realistically heal endgame content. Maybe as a second healer, a backup, but 9 times out of 10 they won't stand a chance as a solo healer.

No offense meant, but you're just completely wrong.

Less than 10% of a defiler's dps comes from melee and a defiler has no CAs. The vast majority of our dps is casting/spells.

Unless of course I've been doing something completely wrong for the past 8 years. If you have any defiler parses that are over 200k and more than 50% melee, by all means, share them and I'll happily go rethink my entire playstyle.

To the OP, I would recommend a mystic to you. They're an extemely solid healer for all types of content and they offer a fair degree of utility and dps buffing as well.

I suspect you would also enjoy some of the 'pure' healer classes in eq2 like the defiler and templar, but these classes have some limitations in certain content and would not be what I would recommend learning the game with.

If you truely love healers, you'll find 12 months from now you'll have 3-4 level 95 healers and you like a different one for doing different things.

Just to be clear, I was in no way suggesting that Furies are bad class. Only that they're a badly played class much more often than other classes. At least in my experience.

I think i've met like 3 good furies in my 8 years of play. And dozens of decent players of every other healer class. Maybe it's just my bad luck.

Of all the healers, druids to me seem the most "traditional" in terms of healing.

By this I mean you see the HP go down and you throw heals to make it go back up.

Obviously all healers have a few of these "straight heals" but clerics and shamans are more proactive in terms of healing. Their class defining heals are cast almost to prevent health from dropping (especially shamans).

Druids are also slightly proactive as you sometimes have to start the heals early to take advantage of the heal over time (HoT) component, but to be honest all but the toughest encounters on my warden seem fine with just the initial straight heal part of his HoTs, the extra heals from the HoT are more a bonus 9 times out of 10.

Sort of, but not in end game groups. Also, the OP is a WoW refugee, so you don't really want to suggest Paladin as a healer. In WoW, Paladins really ARE healers. The OP would level a Paladin, get to end game, then hunt you down.

To the OP: What sort of healing do you like to do? Of course everyone that joins a group or raid hopes they can do well and make a difference in the success of it - but what about some of the other healers that you've played do you like? That might help us recommend a class you can try first.

If you respec all the spell ranged <stuff> on your gear, the melee auto-attack damage on defiler will be close to 50%of their damage.. or at least it is for my defiler and the handful of others I know that melee. For me that suggests melee is the way to go. Auto-attack is 'free damage' and gives way more bang for the buck then the spell ranged stuff. Plus, on the shaman page, defilers get plenty of melee AA options, just not the art conversions of the mystic/inquissy/warden.

Defilers can absolutely go both ways. For some players they'll do better one way or another.

However if you want to come down to pure number crunching, a spell spec'd defiler solo healing a mage group is going to out parse any melee spec'd defiler. In terms of raw potential, currently the spell spec has the edge.

This hasn't always been true, and it may not remain true, but today I believe it to be so.

I'm aware of what auto-attack does. As well as reforging. In my DPS setup, i have virtually all the melee-related AAs and 600 multi-attack. I have an excellent 2-hander. Yet my melee is never more 10% of my DPS parse. I must be doing something wrong. As i said, can you post a defiler parse that's over 200k dps that has more than 50% of that as melee? I'd just like to see the breakdown of what spells are being cast (and not cast).

Oh and i'm in the MT group with Dirge and Coercer - so melee buffed too.

I don't raid on my defiler and my experience with my own defiler is admittedly pre-CoE.

Reminds me that i do realy want my critheals back
I still stick to inqui, i just love the class ^^
Doesnt mater where, soloheal, epicheal(solo grp) or duo ^^

I'm an OT group defiler (coercer, dirge usually) and regularly see as high as 30% or more of my parse being melee auto-attack on 300k+ DPS parses in a raid (with a large amount of my damage contribution coming from group members). Due to overall raid healing not really being an issue in the last couple of expansions, I do try and squeeze whatever amounts of DPS I can out of my defiler through reforging and AA's. [cue defiler DPS jokes and maniacal laughter here]

If you factor in procs from the parse that are triggering off of my melee auto-attack hits, it is conceivable that the majority of my overall damage is being generated directly or indirectly from my melee auto-attacks. Any time that I back off and stop my melee auto-attack (but change nothing else about my behavior), my DPS will drop significantly (staying within range enough to allow for Avenging Ancestor hits). Swapping to spell-auto netted laughable results at best, with my overall DPS plummeting.

I'll check over my parses when I'm back in front of my own computer and let you know, or just toss the parse results up for you. Our gear looks to be fairly close.

Personally I'm still smiling inwardly at the idea of discussing defiler DPS--two years ago I would be making fun of myself!