In Lord of the Rings Online, you don’t need a healer… until you do. And then, who are you going to get? Well, you could use potions, but they have a 1 minute cooldown, are fairly expensive, and don’t heal much.
Only two classes have a group heal – minstrels and captains. The captain has a small heal (about 160 points at the current level cap of 15, vs a player’s typical hit points of 700-800 at that same level), followed by 30 seconds of 6 (yes, s-i-x six) hit points every five seconds. And this wimpy heal is on a one minute timer and can only be cast when a mob has just died.
A captain’s heals are only adequate when nobody really needs a heal.
That leaves only the minstrel with adequate healing for a group.
No other game has so little healing available. LotRO’s close cousin, World of Warcraft, has several – both factions have priests, druids, shaman and paladin, all of whom can easily heal a normal group and specced correctly (in the case of non-priests), some harder instances. EQ1 has clerics, druids, shaman and paladins, all of whom can heal a group (paladins maybe not so much in some encounters). EQ2 has a dizzying number of healing classes. Even DAoC had at least two per faction.
This is one of those “OMG, what were they thinking?” things. And it will hurt LotRO even more than the game’s linearity.
LotRO needs to upgrade the captain’s heal so that they can heal a normal group with their heals-over-time. Leave minstrels the masters of quick, instant heals, but take some pressure off them. In a game with three tank-able classes (guardians, champions and captains), having just one heal class is… insane… and will block groups from progress. Already minstrels are in such desperate need that many instance/epic groups in LotRO just simply can’t continue past a certain point.
As a player with a long history of playing healers, I can say with certainty: that sort of stress will drive people away from playing minstrels and away from the game.
Also, throw some healing the lore-master’s way. A single target heal that drains health from the lore master and passes it to the target, necromantic-like, would be nice.
Okay, I got that LM thing from a LM who said she would like a way to heal a group. So I had bad information. It turns out they do have some heals. It also turns out burglars can trigger group heals but I have never grouped with a burglar and wasn’t sure they existed past the newbie instance.
There may well be healing beyond what I have encountered thus in the game. But none of the fellowships I have been in used anything beyond minstrel heals; one used a captain’s heal but we died horribly. All other fellowships showed no healing. So; if there is healing, it is so obscure or hard to use that it is not used. At least to this point.
The fact remains: Minstrels, rightly or wrongly, are too much in demand for healing, and the Captain heal should be upgraded to a useful heal over time. in my opinion.