We cast Prayer of Healing fairly regularly, usually while the wizard is ritual casting Detect Magic.
That's interesting, I haven't heard before of Prayer of Healing getting regular use.
At your game, Healing Spirit may be a welcome relief, because your playstyle doesn't allow for the alternatives.
Not at all, in fact, nobody has even bothered to cast it up to this point. We tend to find rests sufficient for between combat healing, so I end up using 2nd level slots on spells I will get more use out of, like the afforementioned Pass Without Trace. Again, although I think Healing Spirit is a good spell as written (I rated it
GREEN in my Xanathar's guide (4/5), which is my "good" rating, but not my best rating), it's nowhere near the most powerful spells for their level.
(I expect there are also differences between our games in terms of pacing, and encounter difficulty.)
Pacing is all over the place in the games I play. It's not uncommon for a single encounter in a day, so between combat healing becomes irrelevant. Encounter difficulty is all over the place too, though who is DM'ing makes a big difference.
It was just designed poorly
Here's my final thoughts for our conversation:
- neither of us know the intentions of the designers, so let's not bother guessing.
- I think a lot of players banned Healing Spirit under the untested assumption it would ruin their game if they allowed it.
- I suspect a lot of those same players allow Polymorph, Animate Objects, Leomund's Tiny Hut, Arcane Eye, Pass Without Trace, Goodberry, Find Familiar, Find Steed, Simulacrum, Contingency and Glyph of Warding.
- If you are worried about Xanathar's power creep from spells, I recommend looking at Find Greater Steed, Soul Cage, Absorb Elements and Thunder Step before worrying about Healing Spirit
- All those spells I mentioned are more powerful for their level than Healing Spirit, and more likely to break their game. I've undoubtedly missed many others.
I began this conversation with this observation about Rope Trick and Healing Spirit:
"I still don't get it, and nobody has been able to explain to me why one of the above spells I describe is absolutely fine, and the other breaks the game."
Considering your last post on the matter was concession that the two spells were probably similar in power level, I think I can safely say that the lack of explaination remains.
For the record (btw), I rated Rope Trick as purple (3/5) in my wizard guide - nowhere near the top of 2nd level spells.