The Archmage and Shaman do very good damage, and while suited more for quick spellcasting and weaving back and forth between damage and healing, they are able to hold their own regardless. How well can they do so, and what differentiates them from other class types such as the even purer “healers” like the Runepriest/Zealot? Look inside!
The main difference between these “secondary” healing classes and the “primary” ones (Runepriest, Zealot) is that they are most effective when balancing the two, often exceeding in bursts what the “primary” ones could do if their cards are played right. The downside in exchange for this is less of each tool type than the “primary” classes of each archetype would get that they draw their abilities from, with more focus on utility spells such as buffs/debuffs. Their general DPS and general healing is a bit weaker, but with the combined abilities these “secondary healing” classes can exceed the “primary” ones in many situations. Of course, your Mastery and Tactic choices can swing the class either way, or just balance things out anywhere in between that you prefer.
As far as the “primary” healers go, the Runepriest and Zealot are more like the Smite Cleric in the very early days of Dark Age of Camelot (DAOC). They have a lot of good damage tools, a few utilities, huge survivability with a large number of various ways to heal (quick casting heals, heal + heal over time, heal over time, damage absorption shields, damage absorption shields that also heal once they are depleted, longer casted heals that are very prone to being pushed back or interrupted, heals that heal over time then jump to several nearby targets with the same effect, group heals, and more). The healing tools in particular greatly increase their survivability, as they can stack several effects to help mitigate the effects that incoming damage will have on them. One important thing to note is that the absorption shields make it so you won’t suffer from spell interruption or pushback from damage that they absorb.
I’ll use the Runepriest of the Order side as my main example here to help answer this question. Without any mastery abilities or tactics, he does “light nuker” damage with his spells (as well has having a medium-damage PBAOE that damages all targets within 30 feet of him), “primary healer” amounts of health when he heals, and “light crowd control.” Now, here’s the big thing: He has mastery paths for each one of them. You can invest heavily in the nuking path and improve your damage to high levels, allowing your instant nuke, instant pair of Damage Over Time spells, normal direct damage castable nuke that uses light amounts of Action Points, etc. and your PBAOE to be highly effective. However, by doing this, if you invest too heavily you won’t gain some nice goodies for crowd control or healing. Likewise you won’t become quite as strong at say, damage, if you focus more on crowd control and healing, though even without any investment you still maintain a good baseline ability set and amount in each path.
For the Runepriest, each path at six points into it gives you a “Master Rune” that you can place on the ground with just a two of second cast time. These are a major tactical decision for any given battle, and you can obtain all three if you spec your Masteries for them. You can only place one at a time (placing a second one destroys the first), and each lasts one minute with a one-minute re-use timer (”cooldown” in WOW terms). Each has a large radius (65 feet in all directions in a circle) that covers a good area of the battlefield. The three types he gets are:
1) A spell-haste rune that reduces all build-ups for abilities for groupmates, including casting by 0.25 seconds (1/4 a second), which is huge since most spells are 2 seconds casts, some are 1 second, and very few are 3 seconds (that comes to 25% on the one-second casts, 12.5% on the two-second casts, and 7.5% on the 3-second casts). It affects all of the groupmates within a 65-foot radius
2) A healing rune that pulses every three seconds, healing all groupmates for the equivalent of a light quick-casting heal each time so long as they are within the 65-foot radius.
3) An Action-Points rune that gives a 20% chance to replenish 50 action points (a full bar is 250 points, so that’s 20%) to any groupmates within the 65-foot radius, every time they activate an ability (including melee attacks, spells, pretty much everything).
Further in the mastery paths are entire new abilities that can dramatically alter the play of the class, as well as tactics. Each point not spent on an ability also increases the effectiveness of most of the abilities or spells based in that path by a few percent each. The maximum number of points in a path is 15 points for the base. You are able to buy an ability once you have specced to the amount of points required to buy it, and are not automatically granted it upon reaching that level of Mastery. So, if an ability is located at five points up the ladder, it would take one more (for a total of six) to actually buy the ability. If it is one you don’t want, you can skip it and use that point to go another level higher. Points spent on abilities do not improve the abilities or spells in that path, only the ones used to climb the ladder do.
Overall, even when focused on healing paths, they still do respectable damage (certainly enough to justify using those abilities when they’d be useful for the group), enough to solo in RVR with even. The same applies vice-versa in all directions.