I just repost what I wrote on unofficial discord just yesterday…
We use both, musky and bard, what is best depends on bosses and also who is playing them and how he’s geared… the advantage of bard is the constant broad AoE group heal, no need to aim heals and it contributes more dmg than muskys do, normally, too (but not necessarily; musky weaknesss orb can be powerful, boosting the whole group). The downsite is Bards got no shield and cds to build up tankheals can be (too) long, musky got more chances to aid with oh f…-situations in a row and deal with heavy dmg-income or badly geared tanks.
The musky needs to mainly practice his aiming, while the bard needs practice his movement while still hitting all notes and also needs to manage when to release his bigger heals and when not to.
Ok thanks i get you, so if i were to say a pure or tank healer…that sounds like a musky. And an off healer sounds like a bard? What would you suggest for running in a 2 man group with my cousin, a musky to start?
Musketeer is by far the more capable healer now than bard. Once you hit 30 you can have a shield orb that not only mitigates damage but heals as well, on top of an empowered turret (more healing) that you can put your renew spell on the turret and a cure wounds to make it heal even more. You are also able to mass cure wounds and renew which is also incredibly powerful.
On top of all that, in duo situations you can just bring a little bit of healing and bring your damage orbs and a weaken to help dps.
I love my bard and play it to great effect in high end content, but for a newer healer to the game the Musketeer is pretty darn versatile and the cool downs are easier to manage vs the crachendos of the bard.
You likely don’t have total dmg (which sadly requires unreleased 3rd party tools to figure)… shamans top everyone in groups, js, even the most crappy ones.
to be fair, i havent played a shaman in end game (only beta). what i meant wasnt that their dps was bad, but that the mechanics of throwing orbs and totems i think would work better for a healer than a dps.
If you are playing in a group as the main healer you should be a musky. They are better at single target healing. If you are not the main healer you should be bard as bard is really good for healing an entire party.
I agree it would be very cool to have a healer-spec on the shaman.
As for bards not supposed to the main healers, well… that is an interesting prejudice, because they are in fact the main healers, and often the preferred ones in progress guilds. It’s not that they can’t heal single target, they got very strong heals even which just need to be timed properly; and with the right talents chosen it shouldn’t be an issue keeping the tank up.
I guess too few are playing bard, yet, to really notice what their abilities are.
Do they even beat rune mages marshmellow? Because i seen a guy do like 10 spells in like 15 seconds surely a shaman cant do as many spells as that? I thought rine mages beat everyone at damage