I don't believe heals are too strong. What is too strong is their correlation with INT. at level 3 of the skills. At level 1 of Heal or Group heal, even with 55 INT I only heal around 400-500. But when I have level 3, I can heal over 2000.
Given that a Paladin can heal 700 without even having Int, I think 2000 is fair. It's also our only salvation in a pvp fight. Melee can murder SM's because of attack speed, better single target skills, no cast times, and stuns. Also, if a SM is healing in pvp, that means they can't do anything else. For instance, when I am in a hot situation, My skill chain is > Poison Cloud >Heal >Dark Scourge > Heal > etc. Doing this chain only allows about 1 skill per 2 seconds vs 3 melee attacks.
If anything, I think the heals balance out the fact that Casters have alot less defense than melee classes, and about the SAME Dodge as melee classes. In other words, Melees don't need the heals that SM's do. For a SM to tank, they take serious damage.
That's my next point.
SM armor at level 30 has only 60-102 Defense per piece, and 80-272 Evasion.
Melee armor at level 30 has 80-232 Defense per piece, and 80-232 Evasion.
Pve, that means Melee can both tank and dodge mobs, making them near immortal. Casters Cannot. In extreme situations, a caster's HP looks like a yo-yo. Without the heals they have, they would die in every decent pull.
Runes of Magic Fetal Hit drop rate does not seem to exist, and as of yet, the only sources seem to be Ledise's Rune box Quest, and one person claims to have sold a Magic Crit +30 Blue rune (I have combined over 3000 runes and never got a single one).
On the other hand Deathblow drops as a common rune, in the lowest level region.
Please fix the drop rate on those runes.
@Mpure: The key here is "Dedicated Support SM's" If you are dedicated support, your damage skills are moot, and there is a serious trade-off. Healers are supposed to keep raids alive, correct? Also, they can be shut down. 2 SM's can easily be stunned at the same time, interrupted, and killed within 3 seconds of stun.
I disagree with Sellvehtarm and Brian about Dot being a SM's best Dps. My SM hits 510-600 normal damage with skills. The DoT on the poisons hits 80 at best. 5 ticks later, 80 = 400 total damage. I normally do 90% of my damage in direct damage. If anything, the Dot is similar to Shaiya's Frost Barrier, which offers their healer class a way to solo grind. But they are in no way stopping a major damage dealer's grind. (I started a second SM to get Dark Cauldron), and equipped it with runes; by level 12 I was killing things in 2 hits; by level 18 I was killing whole pulls in 2 hits).
(Keep in mind I said my normal hits are 510-600. I also have 97 Magic Crit, which hits up to 900 on high level mobs).
I think the MP regen is a good balancer. I have +102 at level 35, so it "helps" but doesn't eliminate pots. It makes the gold sink useful. I do run out of MP if I don't pot, but it usually takes 5-6 huge pulls to cause me to run out. Imo, the faster we kill, the better our Mana management is. (Theory is if you kill in 2-3 hits, you use 40% less MP than if you killed in 5-6 hits, saving your MP).
Would be nice if one of the skills was a 3 second stun.
Overall I think alot of people like SM's the way they are. They're enjoyable and have a good farming pace/grind pace. Once you get into pvp, you figure out you are the support/low guy on the totem poll. There should be some skill implementation to prevent this. But for the most part it helps balance the "good at PVE aspect."
Darkness is a pretty useless skill with the way Magic Attack is implemented (something I'll get to later). I already have 1198 Magic attack. Adding 75 more at the cost of 20 MP degen is rough. The impact of 75 is pretty low.... like an augmented 10 damage-30 damage.
Nature Aspect is a relatively useless skill for what it offers. 45 minute cooldown for 30 seconds of use. If this skill was 45 second CD and 30 sec duration, I would agree with Bryan that Heals are OP. Instead, Heals are the only thing we have because of this skill. AT worst it should be 5 min CD with 30 sec duration. At best it should be 30 sec Duration with a 3 min CD.
My next concern is Magic Attack versus the damage it actually does.
On a melee class, damage reflects the toon's actual Physical melee attack from the Sword/their STR. On a Caster, I can have 1198 Magic attack, and only do 500. I don't understand that. Is every mob/class in the game 50% resistant to magic? It'd be nice if the magic attack system actually reflected the damage it did, instead of being a multiplier of it. If my gear = 598 Magic Attack instead of 1198, the Darkness Skill might actually mean something.
One of the last notes: the Skill addies for SM are really not advantageous. Level 1 Dark Scourge literally only offers 20 less damage than level 3. If some players got their way, and the trees no longer required 3 points in a skill before moving on, I guarantee no one would max them at all. They'd simply pick up every skill in the entire class at level 1. We need leveling a rank 3 skill to offer some form of potency.
No Stun/pvp skills .... Ditto.