I myself have a Druid and Ventari and I have been investigating, testing and generally asking around for opinions regarding their effectiveness in being a healer.
First and foremost, however, is that, unlike other MMO, neither of the healers can provide constant stream of healing non-stop. That is to say there will be down time between each healing session. So the debate about which is the best healer usually comes down to: who can heal most during each session, how readily available of each healing session, how long is each session, and what else a healer can do outside the healing session.
Outside CA, a Druid can use Staff 1, 2 and 3, Healing Spring and traited Glyphs to maintain a basic level of healing as well as regen. It is more like a top-up than an “emergency rescues”, which appears to be the most sought after feature of Druid. Note that the current stage of Staff 1 is so fiddly to use and I personally hate the constant reminder on the screen if you are not targeting at someone within range.
The major heal comes from Celestial Avatar, which only lasts 15 seconds. If you use Glyph of Empowerment during that time, your heals will be rather significant. After that, it will go on a 10 seconds cooldown, during which you have to rebuild your Astral Force again. How to build Astral Force has become a mystery to me these days after the recent changes. From my experience, if you have Natural Healing and Signet of the Wild equipped, you may have a chance of having CA ready as soon as it comes of cooldown. Suffice to say that building towards CA is not as easy as BW3 any more and you have to work for it.
On top of the basic “top-up” heal and the “emergence rescues” heal, Druid also offers DPS buffs in, most commonly, four unique ways: Frost Spirit, Glyph of Empowerment, Grace of the Land and Spotter. The advantage of these four buffs are that they are fire-and-forget buffs, meaning they have very low maintenance and will be running at the background freeing you to do other things meanwhile.
Of course, there are the pets. They offer various functions but the one that is most important is DPS of course: after all raid is a DPS race against the timer. The reality is that, even though pets DPS may not be that high, they can still contribute some of the damage while the Druid is healing elsewhere.
After all, after you have got over with the frustration of building up and using CA (or perhaps staff as well), you will find that Druid can offer 3 things to a team, namely Heal, Buffs and DPS all in one neat package.
Ventari relies on its tablet, which is a dedicated healing item with a number of healing functions. The basic is that you can have it traited for providing constant stream of regen, which I find it rather useful when combining with Project Tranquility and Ventari’s Will for “top-up” level of healing. But I would advise choosing Tranquil Balance for an extra 20% out-going heal instead. It is because, combining with Invoking Harmony (a bit fiddly for my liking) and Selfless Amplification, and together with Rune of the Monk and Sigil of Transference (a luxury item for the time being, I know), your out-going heal is significantly higher.
Natural Harmony is the “emergency rescues” level heal that is available to Ventari. On a single use, it is nowhere near the burst heal level of a Druid in CA with Glyph of Empowerment on. But you can use Natural Harmony a few times before you run out of energy. Together with the “top-up” heal already running at the background, the total heal output works out more or less close to (or could even be equal to) a Druid on its burst healing phase although I strong recommend someone runs the number to confirm this.
Staff itself provides two heals as well: Rejuvenating Assault and Renewing Wave, which also remove 2 conditions. Those are also useful heals with short cooldowns. Also, most people often forget about the Ventari’s Elite skill, which also does a reasonable amount of healing and is a blast finisher too. I often use it when I am low on energy and is about to switch Legend. My rationale is that: I am losing the tablet anyway, may as well make the most of it before it disappear.
Druid has the painful hassle of building up Astral Force; Ventari also has its own trouble to deal with, namely energy management. Personally I do not thing it is half as annoying and all-consuming as building up Astral Force. Once you have a good tempo of your heal rotation, you can actually keep going for a while. Besides, switching Legend will guarantee a 50% energy back and it is only on a 10 second cooldown; whereas there is no guarantee a Druid will get its CA ready as soon as it comes off its 10 seconds cooldown. To achieve a 10s CD-15s CA-10s CD-15s CA… cycle requires a lot more work. Good thing is that most of Druid other buffs, and its pets, are fire-and-forget.
Ventari does have a host of offensive buffs as well: Glint. If you really exhausted all your energy in Ventari, just switch to Glint. Glint’s buffs, if properly applied, will last a long while covering your team when Ventari is on cooldown. It is noteworthy that Roiling Mists with Facet of Darkness will give a 40% crit chance instead of the regular 20%. Bolster Fortifications will certainly be helpful in Ventari as well. So overall, Ventari/Glint is no worst off than a Glyph/Spirits/Spotter Druid.
That said, a Ventari does have to work harder for keeping up with its personal DPS contribution though. Druid has a pet that can maintain a basic level of DPS even when the Druid is doing nothing. When a Ventari is not doing anything, it is not contributing even a little damage. So even though Ventari has a easier time healing, offers a plethora of offensive and defensive buffs (could be better than a Druid), it falls short on the DPS department. That said, Revenant does have a good choice of damage dealing weapons – just have to be more pro-active with them.
So, these are my impressions on Druid and Ventari. I will keep testing them because I too love to be a heal/support player and am in the process of finding the right class and setup for myself.
