I shared your opinion on the card until about a week ago, IvoryHeart, and since then I've tried a few different builds with my one Focused Healer and now it's clear to me either the item or the card is too powerful. There are counters, as you say, but as someone using a talented healer priest in multiplayer I'd rather face a deck stacked with these counters than face another talented healer team. The threat of healing to full puts enormous pressure on the opponent to make an all-in and commit to bursting me down, which itself can be countered pretty easily with blocks, mobility cards and tricksy wizard cards.
Apparently you are. How can you anticipate how much damage you need to do? Every talented healer build I've made (and most I've seen played) has the entire team at full health at the end of every turn. They also hold onto the large heals for the focus fire you are talking about. If they are going to lose the heal war, they drop a nimbus and heal the character back up to full again. Don't forget that you'll also need enough moves to keep up with the character you are trying to burst down and somehow ensure that they don't have blocks. The largest problem though is that they can just go infinite and hit you with 3 damage, over and over until you die while you are out of plays and are just sitting there hitting pass for 10 minutes.
First, the only class that can reliably burst are warriors, and there are many blocks in this game that will counter strong warrior attacks. Parry and weak parry come to mind. Second, the problem with counterspell or forgetfullness is that they are useless against warriors, and can be countered with wizards of their own. Additionally, if they are running multiple priests with talented healer it will not matter how many counterspells you have. They have 3 rounds of unlimited heals and you may have 1 or 2 rounds of discarding two cards off one character. Talented healer is the much stronger position to play from, and I'd much rather be the guy with talented healer vs. the guy trying to counter it.
I'm currently having fun with a counterspell focused build to counter talented healer meta. Redrune Staff is very decent for getting your wizard into line of sight to burn down the priest's card. Once he is out of card you can begin delaling dmg and focus him down. It wasnt an amazing counter or anything, but it definitely put my party back to an even playing field with the talented healer's team. (ie, trading your wizard to completely disable the priest, turning the game to a 2v2 or even 2v2.5) Drawf Wizard Level 4 Dwarf Wizard Counterblast StaffRedrune StaffSpellbane ScepterCrisping RodBefuddling StoneFarzil's Perplexing HornRobe Of LightnessGoat BootsPerfect ToughnessElectroporter Novice3 x Short Perplexing Ray1 x Immovable1 x Dangerous Maneuver1 x Hot Spot2 x Sorcerous Blast1 x Dimensional Traveller2 x Toughness1 x Cloth Armor7 x Counterspell1 x Rusty Armor1 x Spark Inductor2 x Hover1 x Spark Generator1 x Wall Of Fire1 x Force Bolt1 x Maze1 x Wall Of Illusion2 x Acid Blast1 x Jarring Block1 x Surging Blast1 x Perplexing Ray1 x Weakened Armor2 x Dancing CutThe only party I seems to have problem with counter-spell is the 2 warrior - 1 priest combo. It is harder to target the priest with these warrior on the front line and if the wizard does not have sight of the priest, counterspell is useless on warrior.In short, there is a counter to Talented Healer if you build for it. However, it still need some small nerf given its current power. Might just be duration could be fine.
Changing the duration makes it somewhat harder to set up infinite draws, but doesn't get rid of the infinite draw possibility. I think whatever BM implements has to get rid of the infinite draw problem.
Would it be enough to limit reshuffles to the draw phase? Then the healer can only draw their deck once per round.
As this posting is getting more input on the matter, I am reposting from my older post, if that makes sense? Post is from, Talented Healer needs a tweak. Maybe there could be a range requirement of the heal to give a card draw, IE: if the priest is not at least 3 squares away from the heal target the non line of sight heal works fine but the Talented Healer bonus for drawing a card does not apply, or even both line of sight and distance is required. Thus making the priest more vulnerable to attack. Also the team as a whole is more vulnerable to wind or move type attacks if you can keep the priest a set distance from the target then the drawing of cards is limited.
A) Is reducing range an "issue" B) Not needing range due to self healing only eliminates the need for any range.