Originally Posted by
Rongway
As long as shields are on the GCD, pre-shielding will never be an effective healing style. Shields are only meaningful if an unshielded hit will KO someone or if shielding prevents a fight-losing debuff. If everyone has enough HP to survive without shields and there are no critical debuffs to block, it'll always be more effective to use regens or oGCD heals after the fact. And because light parties only have one healer and the DF will probably not force regen+shield healers except in Raid Finder, every non-Savage non-Extreme non-Ultimate fight has to be survivable without shields.