Do people in this game not comprehend the concept of shield healers?

The issue is the devs obsession for accessibility, balance and casualism. Means that ultimately everything is incredibly forgiving. Which in turn is the biggest issue healers have.

Incoming damage is so firgiving that Shields are rarely necessary.not just shields but gcds in general. (Cant tell you the last time my scholar used psychic) Hell most of the time it's so forgiving tanks don't even "need" cooldowns.

The other problem with Shields. For scholar at least is there all gcd. Which means if you don't 100% know the script of a fight they're useless, as 95% of the time if you started casting Shields the instant you saw a bosses cast bar its already to late to shield the damage.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

The issue the devs obsession for accessibility balance and casualism. Means that ultimately everything is incredibly forgiving. Which in turn is the biggest issue healers have.

Incoming damage is so firgiving that Shields are rarely necessary.not just shields but gcds in general. (Cant tell you the last time my scholar used psychic) Hell most of the time it's so forgiving tanks don't even "need" cooldowns.

The other with Shields. For scholar at least is there all gcd. Which means if you don't 100% know the script of a fight they're useless as 95% of the time if you started casting Shields the instant you saw a bosses cast bar its already to late to shield the damage.

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I see your point and I agree with you.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

The issue the devs obsession for accessibility balance and casualism. Means that ultimately everything is incredibly forgiving. Which in turn is the biggest issue healers have.

Incoming damage is so firgiving that Shields are rarely necessary.not just shields but gcds in general. (Cant tell you the last time my scholar used psychic) Hell most of the time it's so forgiving tanks don't even "need" cooldowns.

The other with Shields. For scholar at least is there all gcd. Which means if you don't 100% know the script of a fight they're useless as 95% of the time if you started casting Shields the instant you saw a bosses cast bar its already to late to shield the damage.

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Tanks don't even need anyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMgT..._channel=Cindy

Certainly makes you laugh all the more when someone insists healers should be healing and not DPSing. Dungeons are tuned so pathetically low, you literally don't need healers. Granted, this also highlights how comically powerful Nascent Flash and Clemency are.

In any case, this is why shield healing has especially been negatively impacted throughout Shadowbringers. In an effort to make everything accessible to even the worst of players, content just doesn't hit hard enough to warrant much (or sometimes any) shielding except at the Savage level. Healing as a whole this expansion has easily been in the worst state ever because of the dev team's obsession with accessibility above everything else.

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Originally Posted by Eien713

Not really. I've been in many encounters where after the raid-wide aoe, the party members take no damage for the next 30 seconds and the shields fall off. Also, is it useless then to pre-shield a tank about to get hit by a tankbuster? While doing Alphascape 3, I've seen the tank get deleted by the tankbuster more often than not because they didn't mitigate and the shield healer didn't shield. Granted, the main issue is the tank not mitigating, but in such cases, the shields would've prevented their death.

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I already addressed all of this. Your reply adds nothing new to the argument and doesn't refute anything I've said.

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Originally Posted by Eien713

I've been in many encounters where after the raid-wide aoe, the party members take no damage for the next 30 seconds and the shields fall off.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

There is always another attack coming in the next 30s, or the heal could have safely been delayed 5s~10s so that the shield would last until the next attack, or it doesn't matter.

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If the shields fall off before damage is taken, then you could even have waited 30s before healing at all.

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Originally Posted by Eien713

Also, is it useless then to pre-shield a tank about to get hit by a tankbuster? While doing Alphascape 3, I've seen the tank get deleted by the tankbuster more often than not because they didn't mitigate and the shield healer didn't shield. Granted, the main issue is the tank not mitigating, but in such cases, the shields would've prevented their death.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Shields are only worth precasting if you would die without a shield.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

If a full health tank or full health party would die to a hit or an immediate followup, precast the shield. Otherwise, cast it after the hit.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Aggressive tone

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The part you quoted was meant to talk about the case where the tank was mainly at fault for not mitigating. Since it can be tough to always predict/spot if the tank will mitigate in time or not, this means that it's probably always safer to pre-cast shields anyway just in case. I sure as hell always try to put Benison on tanks when I spot a tankbuster whenever I can. In any case, let's just drop this matter. I got some informative answers from some people around here and that's good enough for me.

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Originally Posted by Eien713

I've been playing this game for a very long time, and in this very long time, I can probably count on one hand the number of shield healers I've come across and who were actually doing their job properly. At least 99% of shield healers treat it like normal healing, casting their shielding spells after the attack hits, which is pretty pointless. I'm really confused. Does the game not explain anything about how shields work?*snip*

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I totally get where you are coming from, Eien713. I played a Holy spec/ Discipline off spec healer in WoW. When I dove into playing a Scholar this expansion, I expected it to be the same. I pre-shielded every encounter, kept up regens, etc...

Then, I found out this is the wrong way to play a Scholar. Quite simply, Scholars are discouraged from using their primary shield spells, Adloquium and Succor.

It's all about being a green dps with a 24 step opener! I wish I was kidding. It's a pretty messed up situation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...de_to_scholar/

I blame Square Enix for this issue. Unless they are willing to provide content which promotes a proactive healer to be a proactive healer then you will continue to see Scholars and Noct Astrologians not using their shielding abilities proactively.

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Originally Posted by ZedxKayn

Well, when most healers don't know how to heal in the first place, expecting good shield usage is hopeful

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Aaaand there's the swipe at healers.

As if every other role was played perfectly. :rolleyes:

I would argue shields and hots are also about comfort for some healers.
Shields make people extra protected.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

Aaaand there's the swipe at healers.

As if every other role was played perfectly. :rolleyes:

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Well, this is a thread about healers.

People get the concept. But you need to have foreknowledge of mechanics to shield properly and... unless the want to spoil everything for themselves that is not going to happen. Add on to that the fact shields feel largely useless in most content. I hate scholar but I main AST, it is my main job. Noct ast feels like garbage to me though, it is so sub par. The shields are tiny and skill shields you would hope would stack for a fat fat shield for a tank buster for ex don't.. Scholar I know can make a beefy shield with the right prep but otherwise when I tried that job the shields feel tiny and not worth it at all compared to just blasting a regen after a raid wide and letting everyone passively heal while I spam malefic.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

I blame Square Enix for this issue. Unless they are willing to provide content which promotes a proactive healer to be a proactive healer then you will continue to see Scholars and Noct Astrologians not using their shielding abilities proactively.

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Unless every TB will one shot the tank even with tank mitigation and every raidwide AOE will one shot non-tanks without shield then I can't see how they make contents that require more proactive shielding than they currently are.

What they need to do with the shields to make them viable is to make them oGCDs, without heals. Gobskin by BLU is a good example of a good way to do shield healing in the future. Instant cast shields for use whenever, but we'd have a cooldown. This would allow them to merely change the current heals to also give damage mitigation for the next 10-15 seconds to continue the shielding in a fashion.

Examples of some changes to encourage shielding:
Succor gives a 10% damage mitigation with the AoE heal
Adlo gives a 20% damage mitigation with heal.
Emergency Tactics gives a 20% max HP shield along with 20% damage mitigation.
Deployment Tactics giving an AoE 10% max HP shield along with 10% damage mitigation.
Lustrate becomes a (up to) 3 charge oGCD that gives a 20% max HP shield.
Fey Blessing becomes an (up to) 2 charge oGCD that gives an AoE 10% max HP shield.

Succor is useless 99% of time. Just cast broil.

The very reason why I play Noct AST, and will level Sage to play. I shield tanks on busters, and toss a regen as they get hit/just before to mitigate as much as possible and start casting an AoE heal as the boss casts. I do Tower so much, I'm literally healing as the party takes damage, from learning the fights and my shields get taken off.

I see what OP describes a LOT with SCH that play, and have no idea about mitigation. I've been with maybe two SCH that actually galvanize properly. But, as any baddie plays the game, they will tell you something about how people play how they want and its not needed in the state of the game.... or some such nonsense about justifying why they are so bad at playing a class, they don't even understand it.

Healers aren't even raising anymore - they are so focused on damaging the boss, they ignore the DPS who died. I have literally run out of MP because the other healer is too busy casting Glare. It gets old, but what can you do? No one will call someone out, they are afraid to get reported, but we have to deal with the bad. Totally excusable with those still learning things, first few timers in new raids - I get that. the ones that just stand there and do nothing but DPS - well, that's been a sore spot for me for quite a while. Don't do that if you are healing - you came to heal and raise too, not just DPS. You wanna DPS so badly, roll a DPS instead.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Tanks don't even need anyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMgT..._channel=Cindy

Certainly makes you laugh all the more when someone insists healers should be healing and not DPSing. Dungeons are tuned so pathetically low, you literally don't need healers. Granted, this also highlights how comically powerful Nascent Flash and Clemency are.

In any case, this is why shield healing has especially been negatively impacted throughout Shadowbringers. In an effort to make everything accessible to even the worst of players, content just doesn't hit hard enough to warrant much (or sometimes any) shielding except at the Savage level. Healing as a whole this expansion has easily been in the worst state ever because of the dev team's obsession with accessibility above everything else.

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Just ran Ala Mhigo with a dead healer because they stood in stuff, killed Zenos without them from about 50%. Clemency + self heals + curing waltz = hehe

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Originally Posted by Greyhawk

The very reason why I play Noct AST, and will level Sage to play. I shield tanks on busters, and toss a regen as they get hit/just before to mitigate as much as possible and start casting an AoE heal as the boss casts. I do Tower so much, I'm literally healing as the party takes damage, from learning the fights and my shields get taken off.

I see what OP describes a LOT with SCH that play, and have no idea about mitigation. I've been with maybe two SCH that actually galvanize properly. But, as any baddie plays the game, they will tell you something about how people play how they want and its not needed in the state of the game.... or some such nonsense about justifying why they are so bad at playing a class, they don't even understand it.

Healers aren't even raising anymore - they are so focused on damaging the boss, they ignore the DPS who died. I have literally run out of MP because the other healer is too busy casting Glare. It gets old, but what can you do? No one will call someone out, they are afraid to get reported, but we have to deal with the bad. Totally excusable with those still learning things, first few timers in new raids - I get that. the ones that just stand there and do nothing but DPS - well, that's been a sore spot for me for quite a while. Don't do that if you are healing - you came to heal and raise too, not just DPS. You wanna DPS so badly, roll a DPS instead.

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If you want your cohealer to heal tbh don't cast heals when the damage isn't even out yet. A good healer is in no rush.
On AST regardless you pretty much should never use GCD healing because the oGCD tools are more than enough

Pre-shielding in casual content..


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztVMib1T4T4

After video comment ever seen what cockroaches do when you turn on a light..

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Originally Posted by Imora

Just ran Ala Mhigo with a dead healer because they stood in stuff, killed Zenos without them from about 50%. Clemency + self heals + curing waltz = hehe

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Had a ast co-healer in crystal tower who spent more time healing members of other parties then he did healing our group. Left me pretty much healing the group and the tank, he even let our tank flat out die when I got frozen on Scyllia. lol

The current design is generally fine. The balance is just a little off in a couple places (like ultra-low-damage instances).

Most content is designed to be casual, where you only need to use half your kit effectively to survive. Shields aren't necessary in this case, of course, but neither is good damage.

In Extremes (and Alliance raids IMO), shields are just an extra safety net for anyone who is newer or just making honest mistakes. Because that shield can be the difference between dying to mistakes or not.

And sometimes you shield people, and it turns out to be a waste, but you can say it's for comfort. Which I've found is actually quite important because some people fret about HP bars way too much, and you can save them the panic attack.

In Savage and Ultimate, shields are used the same as damage reduction (e.g. Reprisal), to survive one-shots rather than unexpected mistakes. Technically they're still not necessary most of the time, if your team has perfect use of mitigation abilities. But it's incredibly useful to have a spam-able shield ability during prog. Basically just an extra 10% max HP.


I think these illustrate a good balanced design, and I wouldn't want to mess with it. Shields currently sit in a spot where they are nice to have, especially when struggling, and necessary in a few situations. And you have to carefully consider when they are actually necessary and when they can be dropped for optimization.

I don't want them to be buffed (aside from making Succor = Asp. Helios), because I don't think they should be good to spam all the time. Stronger shields -> more max HP -> damage must be higher to be dangerous at all -> shields are necessary all the time. It's more fun when they're optional and I have to think about when they are worthwhile. If you've played WHM at lvl 50 (where Medica II is the solution to every problem), you know what I'm worried about.


I'd much rather they upgrade shield healers in EW by giving Scholar and Sage one (1) more cooldown for a strong shield. But with no heal attached, and with a shorter duration. Something better for blocking upcoming damage when timed correctly, but isn't spam-able. ... I just realized that's literally Shake It Off. Give me Shake It Off, I guess.

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Originally Posted by Fland

Unless every TB will one shot the tank even with tank mitigation and every raidwide AOE will one shot non-tanks without shield then I can't see how they make contents that require more proactive shielding than they currently are.

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Whether or not they can do this in the future will depend on which contents force matching 1 regen healer with 1 shield healer. Any content that allows matching two regen healers obviously cannot compel preshielding on tank busters and raid busters.

Currently, only Savage raids in Raid Finder force all three DD types in matching. Savage raids in Duty Finder and Extreme trials don't care about the DD types and will put four of the same DD together if that's who's available in the queue. It's quite likely they will go the same route with healers, forcing regen + shield in Savage Raid Finder but matching any available healer pair in Duty Finder. In that case, nothing would change from what we have now. Savage would have hard hitting tank busters and raid busters, and story mode won't care whether you precast shields, postcast shields, or don't shield at all.

Only damage shields that are effective is either TBN, Manaward or a really good high end Scholar. Most of the time outside of TBN damage shields in this game aren't really good. Which is disappointing to me.

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Originally Posted by Ayche

I would argue shields and hots are also about comfort for some healers.
Shields make people extra protected.

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Trying to keep up shields on the tank is beyond crazy, on the party? Okay you're scared.

Keeping 100% uptime on regen? Especially if you're a whm, meh it's pretty cost effective.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Only damage shields that are effective is either TBN, Manaward or a really good high end Scholar. Most of the time outside of TBN damage shields in this game aren't really good. Which is disappointing to me.

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Damage shields are amazing, that's why you can't stack the same ones, it's the skills that they're connected to that are usually garbage and the way they function.

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Originally Posted by Eien713

Don't get me started on overhealing healers because that's a frustrating can of worms I'd rather not open.

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Does it really matter so long as the healer do a good job of keeping everyone alive?

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Originally Posted by Dzian

The issue is the devs obsession for accessibility, balance and casualism. Means that ultimately everything is incredibly forgiving. Which in turn is the biggest issue healers have.

Incoming damage is so firgiving that Shields are rarely necessary.not just shields but gcds in general. (Cant tell you the last time my scholar used psychic) Hell most of the time it's so forgiving tanks don't even "need" cooldowns.

The other problem with Shields. For scholar at least is there all gcd. Which means if you don't 100% know the script of a fight they're useless, as 95% of the time if you started casting Shields the instant you saw a bosses cast bar its already to late to shield the damage.

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Besides the point of the topic...
I got a SCH in mt gulg who was just a pure physick bot. i mean i have no idea how somebody could be that bad . he just didn't know how to play it? So i suggested using recitation<adlo, and using adlo over physick. he just spammed adlo nonstop till he ran out of mp. Completely forgot about excog and lustrate on that particular pull. Honestly there is no point in helping some players lol

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

Aaaand there's the swipe at healers.

As if every other role was played perfectly. :rolleyes:

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I get the distinct feeling that many in this forum just could not function without the necessity of always lamenting the incompetence of FFXIV community compared to their own.

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Originally Posted by LaughingBanana

I get the distinct feeling that many in this forum just could not function without the necessity of always lamenting the incompetence of FFXIV community compared to their own.

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I mean what do you expect when the normal content is so faceroll?

An issue shields, at least sch, is that their best shield heals are hard cast gcd, which is basically a no no with endgame sch if they want to even compete with the other healers. So yeah... we'll need to wait and see what big changes they have for sch and the rest of the healer.

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Originally Posted by LaughingBanana

Does it really matter so long as the healer do a good job of keeping everyone alive?

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If they're overhealing too much, it's not a good job

Overhealing means less MP for what's important. Pew Pew! Since let's be honest, we can spam our efficiency heal as SCH with Physick and never drop low. Now, if you're spamming Aldo, I do worry though. But with the poorly scaling fairy skills, even with the horrible delays they have. Overhealing is the only way to drop in MP a lot.

People already explained why good AND bad SCHs don't pre-shield: If your bad you don't know what to pre-shield FOR. If your good, you understand your GCDs are like... kinda legit bad and your not playing a SCH for GCD healing, you are doing it to have some raid utility and have access to quite a large array of oGCD tools that can solve a lot of problems on the spot. This is part of why SCH sits pretty firmly in the 'middle' of healing priority for both GCD and oGCD, the only reason WHM is below us in heal priority once you get to GCDs is because the WHM is doing more damage and so it falls on us to sacrifice a broil to get a heal out, but in reality their GCDs are far FAR more impactful in an emergency.

I don't play Astro, but from they want to be regen stance anyway just because its so much more efficient, and even in shield stance they too tend to not want to pre-heal just because GCD shields aren't very good in XIV's design where every healing ability needs to be justified in preventing a death to be 'worth it.'

In other MMOs, like WoW, incoming damage is more random in both intensity and target, and healers have fewer resources with mana being a much bigger constraint on their ability to heal, which results in shield vs regen vs burst vs mitigation vs AOE being an interesting quality in a healer: A holy priest can get a LOT of healing out VERY fast but can struggle with longevity, while a Resto druid can heal a ridiculous amount of damage for their MP but can struggle to burst. Shield healers make a lot of sense in that design because the shield is conserving an important resource, and resource management under pressure is a huge part of healing.

In XIV there is still resource management, but its much less about extending the amount of healing output you can provide in scenarios where suddenly heavy damage is incoming or an unusual target eats a hit, and far more about conserving healing resources that don't take time to use and efficiently spending or saving job resources (Like aetherflow) as much as you can in order to do damage, because content is neither random enough nor demanding enough on healing resources to justify 'wasting time' healing damage that you know for a fact won't ever matter. This leads to the weird reality where WHM has the best shield (because its on an oGCD) and SCHs have arguably the best regen (because, again, oGCD, though the WHM's GCD regen is a far better tool than the SCH's GCD shield in most cases because, unlike shields, regens have a much broader timeline of use where they save you a heal).

Until or unless XIV healers are under a resource crunch (mana, OGCDs, whatever) where you will need healing often enough that shielding after an initial hit with regen already on will prevent you from needing to do another GCD heal down the line, or you need to shield to prevent death, you are not going to see people pre-shielding. That is a super specific scenario and almost certainly won't happen even outside of casual content where you either legitimately barely need to heal or you got a co-healer just slapping medica 2 the second anyone in the party takes damage.

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Originally Posted by ZedxKayn

If they're overhealing too much, it's not a good job

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I meant in the end if everybody is alive and no one dies throughout the whole fight, then it's really not a big deal because as a Healer, that what counts the most.

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Originally Posted by LaughingBanana

I meant in the end if everybody is alive and no one dies throughout the whole fight, then it's really not a big deal because as a Healer, that what counts the most.

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It's still bad though, it's like a DPS only ever pressing one damage button is doing their job. They're technically doing their job, but lazily and horribly.

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Originally Posted by ZedxKayn

It's still bad though, it's like a DPS only ever pressing one damage button is doing their job. They're technically doing their job, but lazily and horribly.

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Well, I wouldn't agree with that. If the healer is still new and learning, and everyone's alive and they just healed, I'd count that as a good sign. Comparing to DPS, who have to follow rotations and position placement, isn't very fair. I'm sure once they learn their class more, and progress into harder content as they see fit, they will learn when to heal and what to use, then start doing damage, as they heal.

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Originally Posted by LaughingBanana

I meant in the end if everybody is alive and no one dies throughout the whole fight, then it's really not a big deal because as a Healer, that what counts the most.

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You can play good as a healer and still have lots of dps die. Healers are not really designed for correcting a lot of bad play. Once the dps burns through all your resources you will be left with your baby heals and that's just not worth casting. They will die regardless and resurrecting them costs 2400 MP. If this is the 2nd time they are getting resurrected and you don't have swiftcast, you are better of spamming glare. Rezzing them is a dps loss for the party. They will get up die again and say in chat "Got rezzed in mechanic xD". When someone is rezzed they obtain the transcendence status for 4-5 seconds, you are basically invulnerable to any incoming damage as long as you don't use any actions. The last priority of a dps that got ressed for the 2nd time is to deal dps while on 10% hp. They should make sure that they stay alive for till the -50% dmg buff wears off. And the least they can do is give enough time for the healers to top them instead of striking the moment they get raised only to eat another aoe and die again.

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Originally Posted by Komarimono

Well, I wouldn't agree with that. If the healer is still new and learning, and everyone's alive and they just healed, I'd count that as a good sign. Comparing to DPS, who have to follow rotations and position placement, isn't very fair. I'm sure once they learn their class more, and progress into harder content as they see fit, they will learn when to heal and what to use, then start doing damage, as they heal.

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DPS have to go through a learning phase too, they need to figure out how to do their rotation like a healer has to figure out when to heal and with what.
If someone is grossly overhealing, the job wasn't learned well and cannot be called good.

Because the damage output on a vast scale isn't high enough to justify outside critlo on tankbusters, making it better to heal while shielding for the next attack in the process, which is precisely why some bosses spam AoEs repeatedly. Anything else is a waste of MP, something SCH burns through.

The problem isn't with the players, but with how encounters are designed. If the damage was higher, and shields were moved to oGCDs on SCH while heals were GCD, precasting before the castbar on a boss shows up would actually be of value.

if the shield didnt prevent a death, it is a wasted shield. and most content just doesnt have enough damage on their aoes/tbs to do just that

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Originally Posted by Komarimono

Well, I wouldn't agree with that. If the healer is still new and learning, and everyone's alive and they just healed, I'd count that as a good sign.

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There's a difference between new, still learning and doing your best and being max level, ignoring huge chunks of your toolkit and sitting around twiddling your thumbs because "eh, it's only my job to heal". A surprisingly large number of healers fall into the second category. Because it's possible to clear many fights doing nothing but spamming Medica II and throwing out an occasional Raise, that's all they bother with.

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Originally Posted by johnnylogen1337

if the shield did not prevent a death, it is a wasted shield. and most content just doesn't have enough damage on their aoes/tbs to do just that

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Not true. The scholar doesn't have clutch heals. The shields are supposed to keep the amount of incoming damage manageable so the scholar can keep the party up without difficulty.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

Not true. The scholar doesn't have clutch heals. The shields are supposed to keep the amount of incoming damage manageable so the scholar can keep the party up without difficulty.

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Not really. Like the damage in this game is completely predictable and there's only very few mechanics that require you to be super topped off and none of that are in normal content so....

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Originally Posted by MPK

Not really. Like the damage in this game is completely predictable and there's only very few mechanics that require you to be super topped off and none of that are in normal content so....

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Yeah. It's the problem of what scholars are as presented to the player when they are level 30 versus to what they are at level 80 in normal content. It's a real shame too because the job's description is cool as hell. It's what SE has done to healing in FFXIV which undermines the purpose of a shield healer.

Damage should matter. Damage mitigation should matter.