Because “healer” is a really tiny role as this thread is trying to put across. Also most characters can DPS. All tanks can DPS. The only thing that differenciates a tank from not a tank is their hp pool…which may be another discussion we need to have. But the point is a lot of teams have a “support”, it doesn’t have to be a “healer”. And most supports help people not die, just because it isn’t miko providing a constant health effect or refilling your health doesn’t mean the support isn’t a “Healer”.
Heck, anyone who’s focusing on building stuff and grabbing shards could be considered a support, regardless of the character, and that freedom to fill a role as any character is what makes this game great.
What he was more saying is that miko causes a bit of stagnation because people are seeing him as “the only healer”, and some people consider his impact on the game to be too large. So he’s getting picked. A lot.
I think quite a few characters can deal with a miko hiding behind another character, just send a rath after him for goodness sake. There’s a lot of raths, tell him to go kill the miko. Tell your marquis to take off miko’s dumb flat head. It just requires more thought than “Aim gun at the target I see first”.
I don’t know what to do about miko, if people simply aren’t getting how to beat him. If this was a perfect world I’d just tell everyone to focus more on dealing with a miko. Send your melees, your snipers, any character with CC after the miko. But people don’t get it. He’s a priority target like a marquis, go kill him. Don’t sit there and complain you’re getting plinked, go stop him. Or start picking a character who can stop him. (Rath eats both of these characters, so does phoebe and boldur. Even attikus, the poor bastard, can have his way with marquis and miko)
To answer the original topic of this thread, miko is not the only healer. If we want to get technical, ambra can heal, and can grab a helix to heal pretty much just like miko (Some people say she heals faster). Kleese keeps up with miko in heals, and gives it to everyone around him. But ambra can heal from level 1, she is by all means a -healer-. Kleese functions like a much much better miko ult, and excells at refilling health post battle.
Ambra could be considered the most functional combat healer because she can drop sunspots that heal allies and damage enemies, while healbeaming an ally. They all do different things, miko does what he does.
Should there be more supports? Of course. Should there be another character that functions like miko? Absolutely not. Even oscar mike and whiskey foxtrot do very different things despite literally being clones. Rath and pheobe do different things. Marquis and thorn do different things.
I’m sorry if this post comes off as frustrated, but… I dunno, I find this discussion is getting silly. It’s went many directions, like miko being overpowered, other supports not matching up to his strength, something something heal stations, I just dunno what to really contribute at this point. The original idea has been discussed to completion I feel. Maybe if we want to talk about what healing actually should be in this game, we should break off into another thread and put up some numbers? If someone wants I’ll do that.