Cleric, Shaman or Druid?

[Gnomeland]

They all have their plusses. A lot of mages don't go with a healer box and go with a bard / necro instead, which I think is a great option until your cleric mercs bug out in missions and against named scripts. Then it's horrible and you end up missing the ability to have a player healer.

The biggest advantage Shamans have over other healers is that they have very high mana regen from cannibalization and spiritual channeling. Druids and clerics have their own mana regen options, but they are not in the same ball park. Shamans are able to sustain very well in long fights.

The downside is that their single target heals are crappy, and their CC is worse than druids. Their buffs also do not scale well with mage pet buffs, but on the up side focus does stack with merc healer hp buffs, and the lethargy series is great for holding aggro.

Druids have the best CC, the best get out of jail tools, and decent ST heals. I don't know a lot about them beyond that.

Clerics have the best ST and group heals. When you need to bring the hp of your pet up to full from 10-20%, there is no beating a cleric. Clerics have crappy dps, however - shamans and druids are able to double for DPS when they need to; clerics are not able to double for DPS.

All three healers have decent damage mitigation. We're past that old EQ phase where shaman slow > all. Druid cripple and cleric vie are both adequate for damage mitigation. What shaman slow gives you, though, is the ability to counter HASTE. This is what a lot of people don't understand. There are several nameds in VoA who buff themselves with huge haste % buffs - an example being Krongar the Enrager in T2 Valley, who buffs himself with a 100% haste buff every 20-30 seconds. Without slow, you have no way to counter this effectively and end up getting owned.

[Soulcrates]

I have found that after i put all the proper AAs into the Mage pet, and got the pets dmg mitigation up to where i can handle tough mobs, along with the proper pet focus. I can hammer them with the Necro, and even use a DMG caster, and Healer merc combo.

If i lean on the DPS with the Necro and Mage, with silent casting things die super fast. So my vote goes for high DPS, Necro and Mage all the way. Proper AAs with both and i can pretty much handle it all at this point, group wise of course.

Plus the necro can pull easy, and with COH you can have alot of fun pulling. Along with corpse summoning, u can get to any camp virtually.

Sc.