Can we stop punishing shield healers for playing together?

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

Aye, they would if it comes to that, I mean in meta set ups of course. I figure maybe it'd be unlikely because I expect a dual shield healer set up would spend more on healing buttons to compensate any handicap as the OP is complaining about said handicap. But then yeah, it all still depends on balance, if like 5.0 and shield heals become inefficient and if SGE and/or SCH output that little extra damage then that's what's gonna count with meta. And if shield healing goes the way of 5.0 then I think outside of meta set ups, then people will just take their preferred jobs anyway.

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The only problem SCH+SGE have is that their GCD shields overwrite, which is not really an issue. Apart for that, it's a really powerful combination. You have less pure healing, but you also need less pure healing when you have Panhaima, Consolation and an almost permanent 10% DR. Not to mention the great synergy some of their skills have (Protraction+Krasis, FI+Pneuma...).

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Originally Posted by EaMett

SCH/SGE works great. You shouldn't be GCD healing anyways, and if you absolutely need GCD shields, the SCH is the best person for that. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a fight where they don't work.

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That...is really disappointing to hear. So far my experience has been that of a shield healer, but I'm only now just about to start doing post-MSQ stuff and gear my SGE and I am getting more efficient with it. The oGCD's feel weaker but if the incoming damage isn't frequent of hard enough, then I can see using them is an advantage, I think with "new shiny shiny" stuff feels tougher, it was the same for ShB.

Though thinking on the actual healing potential, couldn't shield be more efficient on a tank? If the shield is going to be eaten, then it's 840 potency pre-crit (heal + shields) and a Toxicon proc, which can later be useful when mobile. Druochole is 600 and Taurochole is 700 + 10% damage reduction. Or once conditions are better that what I've had going through MSQ that the potency difference doesn't matter and you don't spend those oGCD's so frequently? And with the added Haima that can get used.

Because from how you're describing it, it's sounding like what I feared and why I was cautiously optimistic about SGE for launch.

I am pretty much curious, because I am also still in the state of improving my SGE play. But ngl, if it's oGCD healing like SCH was in 5.0, I'm probably gonna switch back to AST because AST feels better for it. I am invested in SGE for shield healing not oGCD pure heals.

AST is pretty fun. I know some folks dislike the 2 charges on Draw, but I personally like it. It’s more forgiving and I feel like I can delay a bit pulling a new card if I get caught up with mechanics and stuff.

The pure healing is amazing. I usually main SCH, but have been looking for a second healer. SGE is getting a little aggravating for me, so I decided to take a look at AST.

Overall, I love how it plays similar to SGE and SCH in a different way. SCH mitigations focuses more on thick shields, SGE focused on damage reductions/regens, while AST has delayed heals. All of them require some predictive preparation.

And the AST MP recovery feels great. I died in the first EW trial and was able to get back up MP-wise pretty fast with double card, Lucid Dream, then kicking in Astrodyne later with the 3rd card.

I didn’t enjoy AST too much in ShB, but I’m really enjoying it now. I’ll prob be running SCH/AST this time around. I don’t know why, something feels more organic about it.

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Originally Posted by ToodlesElNoodles

AST is pretty fun. I know some folks dislike the 2 charges on Draw, but I personally like it. It’s more forgiving and I feel like I can delay a bit pulling a new card if I get caught up with mechanics and stuff.

The pure healing is amazing. I usually main SCH, but have been looking for a second healer. SGE is getting a little aggravating for me, so I decided to take a look at AST.

Overall, I love how it plays similar to SGE and SCH in a different way. SCH mitigations focuses more on thick shields, SGE focused on damage reductions/regens, while AST has delayed heals. All of them require some predictive preparation.

And the AST MP recovery feels great. I died in the first EW trial and was able to get back up MP-wise pretty fast with double card, Lucid Dream, then kicking in Astrodyne later with the 3rd card.

I didn’t enjoy AST too much in ShB, but I’m really enjoying it now. I’ll prob be running SCH/AST this time around. I don’t know why, something feels more organic about it.

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AST is my next job to level to 90. When I looked at the changes, it definitely felt like 2 steps forward 1 step back. IMO there's good improvements in there and I have been feeling it now that I am levelling it and I mained AST during ShB.
- I think giving seal to Astrodyne instead of Divination is better. You feel the difference in using it. But you didn't with Divination, because lets face it, 4%, 5% and 6% don't feel that different to each other. Whereas, Refresh + 10% spell speed/recast reduction + 5% heals/damage is something you notice. So this is in improvement
- Minor Arcana - I like they made it unique again, though Lady of Crowns is less desirable in most situations, but I guess the recast is long enough that have a good chance that you can make use of it. But it's a nice changes from when everything was a variation of "The Balance" from 3.0/4.0. But I think this can be condensed down to 1 button
- 2 Draw charges, I'm not bothered by the changes. Not the 1 redraw charge, I didn't like spamming redraw to fish my card.
- Removing Sleeve Draw IMO was a bad idea. The "1 step back" is that with the Draw/Redraw changes you're more at the mercy of RNG than before and keeping Sleeve Draw would have alleviated the pain here. Especially as Minor Arcana no longer uses your Major Arcana, so it's not like you can convert the cards into Lord/Lady either. This was a 3.0 complaint that was affectively resolved in 4.0 by Minor Arcana and further alleviated in 5.0 and now we're back to square one on the RNG I feel.

I may stick with SGE/AST myself. I really hope I'm going to get more use out of my SGE kit than some in this thread are suggesting.

Sage actually plays pretty well alongside SCH since its kit focuses more around Damage Reduction than Shields.
When i get matched with Scholars, i just avoid using Eukrasia since everything else stacks. Let the SCH handle shields and i'll use raw Prognosis instead. Needs a bit of timing/communication but ET-Succor -> E-Prog -> pepsis with Kerachole active is surprisingly effective.

Same when getting matched with other Sages. One agrees to avoid Eukrasia and they work well together.

SCH/SCH will always get screwed though lol. ET really needs to be 3 or 5 seconds. No real balance reason not to, ET Succor is generally equivelant to Medica for the most part.

Yeah I was worried going into the new extremes as a scholar when another sage joined but I didn’t have any issues. Savage may be different but the only time it sucks is when the Sage overwrites my deployment critlo shield which shouldn’t even happen and I hope is changed at some point to not be possible if only as a QOL improvement. I don’t want to have to call out a critlo deployment in every pug with a sage

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

That...is really disappointing to hear. So far my experience has been that of a shield healer, but I'm only now just about to start doing post-MSQ stuff and gear my SGE and I am getting more efficient with it. The oGCD's feel weaker but if the incoming damage isn't frequent of hard enough, then I can see using them is an advantage, I think with "new shiny shiny" stuff feels tougher, it was the same for ShB.

Though thinking on the actual healing potential, couldn't shield be more efficient on a tank? If the shield is going to be eaten, then it's 840 potency pre-crit (heal + shields) and a Toxicon proc, which can later be useful when mobile. Druochole is 600 and Taurochole is 700 + 10% damage reduction. Or once conditions are better that what I've had going through MSQ that the potency difference doesn't matter and you don't spend those oGCD's so frequently? And with the added Haima that can get used.

Because from how you're describing it, it's sounding like what I feared and why I was cautiously optimistic about SGE for launch.

I am pretty much curious, because I am also still in the state of improving my SGE play. But ngl, if it's oGCD healing like SCH was in 5.0, I'm probably gonna switch back to AST because AST feels better for it. I am invested in SGE for shield healing not oGCD pure heals.

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Well, shield healers rarely ever used gcd shields anyways. Which made the whole Pure vs Shield healer this expansion a really weird choice. But here we are. So I the end, there's no change there. Not for SGE, not for SCH

SGE gameplay is a lot about maintaining at least 10% mitigation on the party and buffing 10% healing on the party or up to 30% for specific players. Pneuma covers a lot of the pure healing scenarios you need and panhaima sheilds/heals covers all other outgoing damage (or they can be used together). Everything stacks with other healers and players (tank, dps mitigation) so honestly, half the time you have little to heal and the remaining ogcds are enough.
Of course, we have yet to see Savage, so we'll see. But so far the damage output has been as expected from extreme so I don't expect much change in savage. If anything, our kits are even more overpowered so it feels like even less healing is required. On SGE I'm constantly throwing unnecessary heals out for the mana because I would otherwise overcap my resources constantly.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

Well, shield healers rarely ever used gcd shields anyways. Which made the whole Pure vs Shield healer this expansion a really weird choice. But here we are. So I the end, there's no change there. Not for SGE, not for SCH

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To be honest, I think this is especially weird, since 95% of the time you only use oGCD heals. That means that pure healers tend to use shields more than the shield healers while the shield healers use regens more than the pure healers.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

On SGE I'm constantly throwing unnecessary heals out for the mana because I would otherwise overcap my resources constantly.

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I think this was the main thing I disliked when playing SGE, I wish there was a way to convert an Addersgall into pure MP without resorting to overhealing like crazy.
I also wish the Addersgall resource timer could keep counting upon reaching 3 stacks, kind of like how on BLM you can get 2x Polyglot stacks for Foul/Xenoglossy and be still generating a 3rd one on the timer, so you still have some 'time' to use it before the resource overcaps entirely.

It's funny how Sage was designed to copy most of the Scholar gameplay and no one thought it would need an "Energy Drain" equivalent. Healing for no reason just to get MP feels kinda dumb even knowing it's the right thing to do. At least Scholar gets to do damage with extra resources so it doesn't feel like a waste of time. Sage definitely needs another spender for Addersgall even if it doesn't do damage. Being able to use a charge to reset Icarus would be neat. I love being able to resolve mechanics with a gap closer and having the option more often would be great.