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Voidbane wrote:

Does the Cleric’s Healer’s Lore ability apply to cross-class powers?

No, it only applies to Cleric powers with the healing keyword. So it doesn't apply to powers your cleric picks up by MC feats, feat powers (like the Raven Queen one), or PP powers.

What would the best equipment be for this character
for enhancing their healing abilities?

I believe there's an armor that lets you heal an ally. Also, there's a belt that improves allies healing surge amount by its enhancement bonus.

AlphatheGreat wrote:

Question: how do stacking rules apply to healing?
I.e., does healing count as a bonus, or an instantaneous effect?
Obviously the collective value of these items hinges on this question. Can a cleric with a +4 Mace of Healing, +4 Healer's Brooch and the Gloves of the healer really add d6+8 to all his healing powers?

All untyped bonuses stack, including those from the same source. (as nothing says that same source doesn't stack, and the default is to do what is written, i.e. for effects to stack unless specified otherwise, similar to how you don't need a rule to tell you that 2 damage and 3 damage 'stack')

That isn't even relevant here though. Most of them are new effects created or simple additions to values rather than bonuses, (if I understand correctly, bonuses are always specified as such) only the Mace of Healing giving an actual bonus.

AlphatheGreat wrote:

The answer will also have a major impact(in my opinion) on the total potential of healers in 4e: healing surges have added an inherent limitation on the raw healing a cleric can do, dependent not just on his own power but also the durability of hit teammates(this is for good reason, given the absurd healing potential healers had in 3.5e).

Evaluated at lvl 19, when you can possibly obtain all 3 items:
Without items/feats/powers that add to the value healed, a healer's potential is completely dependent:
--He can heal a fighter with 12 surges and 108hp a total of 324 hp in a day. --Healing word raises this to 324+12d6, an average of 366.
--A cleric with Wisdom 20 raises this to 426.
--Adding the Mace of Healing +4, Healer's Brooch +4 and Gloves of the Healer brings the total to 564, a total 74% increase in the amount of hp healed over the basic healing surge potential.

Now take a laser cleric of the same level using a +4 Symbol of the Warpriest.
--Assume a 50% hit rate
--Assume encounters average 6 rounds.
--Assume 4 encounters per day.
(3hits/encounter)x(4encounters)x(4healing per hit)=48 healing total, at 12 per encounter. Note that unlike most other healing, there is no upper bound on this healing. The more encounters and hits the cleric gets, the more healing he does. 5 encounters at 8 rounds per encounter would net 80 healing, increasing hit rate on the original 4/6 assumption from 50% to 70% would give 64-68 healing per day, and 112 per day for a 5/8 setup.

This means that at 4/6/50%, the healing mace gives an expected 14.8% increase in daily healing over the basic healing surge potential, which is an 8.5% increase over the decked-out cleric.

*This is all based on the healing potential of Healing Word alone*
Adding single-target encounter and daily heals obviously improves the cleric's healing potential. This increases even more when applied to multi-target healing powers.
Multitarget healings, however, only significantly alter the cleric's burst healing output, rather than their daily healing potential.

Given all these facts, on to the optimizing of the heroic tier cleric:
A Level 4 cleric may have:
--Holy Healer's Weapon +1: add enhancement bonus to Healing Word, and 1/day grant a healing surge at +5+wismod.
--Healer's Brooch +1: add enhancement bonus to healing powers

As you move on to lvl 7 and 8, you can upgrade to a Mace of Healing +2, and upgrade your healer's brooch.

As you level(and more splatbooks come out), the key elements to look at are:
1. Burst healing potential. This is what you're already focusing on when you consider how many different ways there are to allow a target to spend a healing surge.
2. Healing beyond the surge. Any little bit of healing you can squeeze in in addition to the surge value will improve not only your burst potential, but your long-term healing as well.

One issue of note:
At level 2 with a Holy Healer's Mace, your healing word grants 9.5 average extra healing above the surge value. On a level 2 fighter with 37 hp, this is actually more than his healing surge value. This means that if you only use healing word, you are more than doubling your healing potential. As seen in the earlier analysis at lvl19, your % increase goes down as level rises via healing word. This means that in order to keep up the same relative potential as a healer, you not only have to focus heavily on itemization, but also rely heavily on healing encounter powers/dailies.
--In general, as level rises, investment to remain about the same in relative healing potential rises as well. This is in keeping with the general 4e trend(that as level rises it takes MORE effort to stay on top of the curve of a particular niche), which drives characters towards heavier specialization than at lower levels.

Any criticisms of my analysis are welcome.

Interesting analysis. I mostly agree with your analysis, but disagree about the comment about needing to specialize further for the same relative potential. While this is likely the best design for things, and is probably also how things are intended to be designed, there are multiple examples where it is not the case. The first and most egregious would be action denial (stun-locking is an example.) The more you have, the more deadly it is, as the percentage of attacks/actions that you deny increases dramatically with more of it. It's the same with your defenses; the more you have, the better a bonus is. Fortunately, 4e has done a remarkably good job of keeping the defenses (I'm including AC in 'defenses', by the way) around a good range, making it nearly impossible to get good enough to be unhittable in any defense and yet keeping it so that they're almost never low enough that a bonus to it is useless. Another example would be saving throw penalties. A little is okay, but a lot breaks the effects that have (save ends).

There are of course plenty of examples of things that do scale linearly so that an increase isn't as valuable at higher levels. Damage is one example, with bonuses to damage mattering less when you have more of it (which doesn't mean you shouldn't get more if you're a Striker or have multiple attacks, only that the relative increase is reduced for each bonus) Bonus actions would be another example, though since the bonus actions can often have other useful effects it's largely considered better than action denial (also, that it feels better to get an extra attack than to deny one to an opponent probably plays a role in its valuation as well.) And of course there's hp, healing surges, and multiple other things. Optimizing these is normal optimization. Optimizing the non-linear ones leads to borked things (i.e. stun-locking, completely breaking (save ends) effects, which generally actually leads to stun-locking, and becoming unhittable, all after a simple threshold is able to be passed = number of creatures, -11+~5 penalty, and +~10 over average)