Please Nerf Shield Healer Pure Heals

Everyone needs some form of burst healing. Imagine trying to cleanse Living Dead style mechanics without burst.

Solo Shield Healer: I could spend four GCDs trying desperately to keep you alive. But I only need to spend one oGCD to raise you. *Casts Broil*

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Everyone needs some form of burst healing. Imagine trying to cleanse Living Dead style mechanics without burst.

Solo Shield Healer: I could spend four GCDs trying desperately to keep you alive. But I only need to spend one oGCD to raise you. *Casts Broil*

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Lustrate I'd say is suitable for that. We still had Lustrate back when this shield healer approach worked.

However, I have addressed it my original post:

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

For sake of clarity. I am not saying we nerf it into the ground, I've used 2.0 SCH as a point of references where Lustrate was useful for getting health up quickly, but of course was a limited resource that wasn't frequent or strong enough to compete with SCH's shield healing aspect. So I am of the view we need an evolution of this approach/philosophy that's relevant to current content. And by comparison, although WHM and AST are pure healers, they still have shields and they're frequent enough to be useful in situations they're needed but aren't at a level where it becomes their healing style. It's more about nerfing them (and buffing shields) to a level that shifts the focus from pure healing to shield healing, rather than removing any potential of pure healing. In short, I don't think their goal is achievable without shifting the balance of their existing shield healer and using it as a point of reference for balancing the new one. Simply because as it stands SCH is only a shield healer by name and not in how it's played and in how it's balanced.

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With regards to letting people die for DPS, this would inefficient. But the premise misses on a point, which is that they would be shielded in one GCD (or if taking somebody else's suggestion in the thread, one oGCD).

Whilst in this hypothetical scenario it takes 4 GCD's to get them to full health, if balanced right and if, say, 1 heal got them from 2,000hp to 27,000hp then they'd have a 25,000hp shield (or a lot more if it crits) if we're basing it on Galvanise logic. During that time they're shielded your faerie is helping with Embrace. If that's not enough, she has Whispering Dawn. You also have Lustrate if you're free to spend it. Or you can use another shield heal if their shield is depleted or near depletion for a more efficient use (if efficiency is what you're going for, as those who are pushing max deeps will).

In short, a 25,000 heal with a 25,000 shield would be as efficient as a 50,000 heal in this scenario. The efficiency loss is if they don't take damage, which suggestions have been given for such as a longer (or even infinite) timer. And the other loss is if you spam said shield heal, but anybody who optimises their healing would unlikely do that.

I welcome the shield buff but sch's pure healing spells have lower potency than WHM already, there is no need to further nerf them.

I'm not sure if to say directly to nerf the raw heals but maybe give more priority to shields/damage prevention spells? One would consider SCH a "shield healer" only during ARR levels and that's because they don't have most of their ogcd yet, mid HW and onwards it becomes more and more about pet management to the point the barriers are kind of just... there until the boss does their big bad aoe of doooooom ability

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Originally Posted by ksuyen

I welcome the shield buff but sch's pure healing spells have lower potency than WHM already, there is no need to further nerf them.

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I think for balance's sake I'd expect they would need to nerf pure heals to make way for better shields in shifting that balance. Plus there becomes an upper limit where it doesn't matter if WHM's potency is greater than SCH's, especially given SCH's pure heal potential is at a point where it makes WHM's identity as a pure healer redundant. Else we run into the HW problem of where SCH was OP, despite the fact WHM had better pure heals back then too.

Lustrate is a waste of Aetherflow charges, when it comes to healing a Tank. You have to burn through all of them, and most likely smoke your fairy for more, just to pull even. Also, it doesn't even benefit from the Fairy's buff to healing, since it is an ability, not a spell.

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Originally Posted by Lesan

Lustrate is a waste of Aetherflow charges, when it comes to healing a Tank. You have to burn through all of them, and most likely smoke your fairy for more, just to pull even. Also, it doesn't even benefit from the Fairy's buff to healing, since it is an ability, not a spell.

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In most cases you would not have to use Lustrate so extensively, because in most cases the damage isn't coming quick enough. If we're talking Savage level content, then the devs are emphasizing on this dichotomy of shield healer and pure healer, so for example you wouldn't have a SCH/SCH set up so if it was really needed your co-healer would close the gap. With that said, if you're nerfing pure heals & buffing shields, the trade-off ends up in the shield itself. Whether a tank has 70k HP or 40k hp + a 30k shield would mean the tank has just as much survivability in both scenarios. But ultimately it's about shifting the focus to rely more on shields and less on pure heals, because if they want to achieve a shield healer...then it needs a shield focus, which in its current balance does not have. Otherwise it's a pure healer with shields on top.

Lustrate works for now, but the entire point of differentiating healers into 'pure' vs. 'shield' is to encourage you to diversify. If your shield healers have access to burst healing options like Lustrate, then pure healers are going to want having a few shield abilities too. Eventually you're back to four healers with the same toolkit. But if pure healers are the only ones bringing high output burst heals to the table, then heal or die mechanics simply don't work in single healer content.

Which is fine. Living Dead was a terrible ability to begin with.

I think players need to embrace the fact that they can't have an answer to every situation, and have to be reliant on others to contribute. So what if you can no longer toss out a lifesaving Lustrate and have to rely on your co-healer to do it for you? You're the only one who can shield the team from the upcoming raidwide. In the end it makes you individually each more valuable as healers, because you don't have the luxury of having a backup healer who can carry you through content. It also probably means that you don't have to compete to feel like you're contributing to the survival/healing side of things.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I think players need to embrace the fact that they can't have an answer to every situation, and have to be reliant on others to contribute. So what if you can no longer toss out a lifesaving Lustrate and have to rely on your co-healer to do it for you? You're the only one who can shield the team from the upcoming raidwide. In the end it makes you individually each more valuable as healers, because you don't have the luxury of having a backup healer who can carry you through content. It also probably means that you don't have to compete to feel like you're contributing to the survival/healing side of things.

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I mean, I'm not against it, why not, but shielder healer gameplay should then offer more than what we have currently. Being able to stack multiple layer of shield or damage mitigation (% based) if their raw healing is nerfed (like removing indom or lustrate).
Because whenever the pure healer dies in the worst situation, it means it'll always be harder for a shielder to keep the party alive.
Cause brainlessly spamming succor and hoping it'll be enough won't feel really great.

That's of course an example if shielder lose their raw healing/regen capacity.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

I mean, I'm not against it, why not, but shielder healer gameplay should then offer more than what we have currently. Being able to stack multiple layer of shield or damage mitigation (% based) if their raw healing is nerfed (like removing indom or lustrate).
Because whenever the pure healer dies in the worst situation, it means it'll always be harder for a shielder to keep the party alive.
Cause brainlessly spamming succor and hoping it'll be enough won't feel really great.

That's of course an example if shielder lose their raw healing/regen capacity.

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For sure the tool kit should be more diverse than spamming Succor/Adlo. We have some tools already that could have their use improved, like Seraph, Sacred Soil and of course we've got Recitation. We used to have other types of mitigation that could have been improved upon like Supervirus (which has been split into Feint and Addle at a lower potency) and Eye for an Eye. And some of our DPS moves would apply blind, disease (which had a slow moving effect - so a use with big pulls) and slow, albeit they were really only used for on trash mobs, but they still could have been improved upon.