How would you feel if shields had no upfront healing?

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Hard disagree here. Yes, challenging content like learning new savage and extreme fights is engaging, but maintaining your optimal rotation during grindy content is far more entertaining than doing it as a healer. I switched to be a Dancer main in ShB and I have fallen in love with the job since. Sure it's very simple to play in comparison to some other DPS, and I would certainly appreciate a bit more depth getting added to the job, but I like how I'm always paying attention to my procs and I feel excitement every time I get through any given 30 seconds where I was able to avoid any amount of clipping and my Standard Step goes off cooldown exactly as that last GCD refreshes because I know that I did my job perfectly for those 30 seconds.

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Is it exciting and entertaining for you to play Dancer against a striking dummy?

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

Well, I was only addressing the one-to-one comparison between M2 and AoW. If you want to compare SCH's entire dungeon DPS toolkit between SB and ShB, that's another question. It might be interesting to math that out. But it would be tricky, because the SB calculation would depend on how long it takes the mobs to die, and perhaps also on the number of mobs (I vaguely recall that Bane had a falloff). AoW is giving you an extra 60 potency per mob per GCD, compared to M2. Would the dot potency from Bane and Shadowflare oughtweigh that deficit? I don't recall the details of these abilities well enough to answer that.

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Put simply, SCH outright melted mass-pull dungeon runs in StB, frequently outperforming DPS. Now? Nah.

Now, that capacity doesn't really matter to me, so long as it meets a decent parity. But the gameplay certainly feels worse for having reduced all that DoT-centric play with which Bane could so synergize in favor of slapping the ground repeatedly.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Put simply, SCH outright melted mass-pull dungeon runs in StB, frequently outperforming DPS. Now? Nah.

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There's a website where you can fact-check this claim. If you look at the ranking of jobs for dungeon DPS, you'll see that SCH's position in the ranking is basically the same in both expansions.

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

Is it exciting and entertaining for you to play Dancer against a striking dummy?

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Stop, you're just being an asshole now. I'm so sick of how you look down on casual content. We get it, the only thing that matters to you is TEA. You don't do roulettes. You don't do hunts. You don't play Bozja. You don't go after EX mounts. You don't play through the MSQ. All you do is TEA. You log on and TEA. Anyone who plays casual content should be spit upon and looked down on for wanting to enjoy it, and we should feel bad for wanting it to be fun. I get it. Now enough of your condescending responses.

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

Is it exciting and entertaining for you to play Dancer against a striking dummy?

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Maybe not, but it at least activates the attentive parts of my brain a helluva lot more than Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

There's a website where you can fact-check this claim. If you look at the ranking of jobs for dungeon DPS, you'll see that SCH's position in the ranking is basically the same in both expansions.

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Sorry, I'd meant earlier to say just "mass pulls". Regardless...

(1) Take a look at how many mobs you can actually pull then and now (the densest pulls of StB were notably denser than ShB), or what portion of total damage done in a dungeon falls onto trash rather than bosses. As the portion of total damage increasing falls under such pulls, difference in AoE effective ppgcd has a larger effect on the overall, especially if the given pull falls under but near to a single churn of Bane. What was lost accounted for more ppgcd than the difference between Miasma II and AoW's initial potency. Optimized, SCH trucked, especially when it, in combination with range or LoS limitations on the gather itself, scarcely allowed else to set up:

(2) SCH's StB damage was absurdly easy to apply on the run, given Bane's spread radius and its propegating from the target, rather than from oneself (a limiting factor mid-gather, as any melee DPS will have seen when AoEing less than perfectly stacked mobs as they chase the tank).

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Stop, you're just being an asshole now. I'm so sick of how you look down on casual content. We get it, the only thing that matters to you is TEA. You don't do roulettes. You don't do hunts. You don't play Bozja. You don't go after EX mounts. You don't play through the MSQ. All you do is TEA. You log on and TEA. Anyone who plays casual content should be spit upon and looked down on for wanting to enjoy it, and we should feel bad for wanting it to be fun. I get it. Now enough of your condescending responses.

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I apologise if my question seemed facetious. It was a genuine question.

The reason I asked about the striking dummy is that this reduces playing a job to merely executing its DPS rotation. I submit that this is not very engaging even for DPS jobs (at least after you've learnt the rotation and developed muscle memory). At the end of day, it's just pressing buttons in a predetermined order, plus in some cases, occasionally pressing buttons in response to random events. Sure, doing Dancer's rotation may be more engaging than doing White Mage's, but the difference is small. And the difference is negligible in comparison to the difference between, say, grinding FATES and doing ultimate. It seem to me that, in terms of engaging gameplay, the difficulty of content has a much larger impact than the complexity of DPS rotation. So I find it strange to hear healers saying "Please give me a more complex DPS rotation so I can have more engaging gameplay in casual content". If it's more engaging gameplay that you want, then this will be much more effectively achieved by doing harder content.

And as it happens, I don't look down on casual content. I enjoy doing lots of casual content, including most of the things you mention. (I think I said this in a previous comment.) I just don't do them for highly engaging gameplay. I mean, isn't this what makes it casual content?

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

I apologise if my question seemed facetious. It was a genuine question.

The reason I asked about the striking dummy is that this reduces playing a job to merely executing its DPS rotation. I submit that this is not very engaging even for DPS jobs (at least after you've learnt the rotation and developed muscle memory). At the end of day, it's just pressing buttons in a predetermined order, plus in some cases, occasionally pressing buttons in response to random events. Sure, doing Dancer's rotation may be more engaging than doing White Mage's, but the difference is small. And the difference is negligible in comparison to the difference between, say, grinding FATES and doing ultimate. It seem to me that, in terms of engaging gameplay, the difficulty of content has a much larger impact than the complexity of DPS rotation. So I find it strange to hear healers saying "Please give me a more complex DPS rotation so I can have more engaging gameplay in casual content". If it's more engaging gameplay that you want, then this will be much more effectively achieved by doing harder content.

And as it happens, I don't look down on casual content. I enjoy doing lots of casual content, including most of the things you mention. (I think I said this in a previous comment.) I just don't do them for highly engaging gameplay. I mean, isn't this what makes it casual content?

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The problem however is that there is barely anything to do when you don't do the casual content. There is only 1, maybe 2, Ultimates per expansion. That means with the current design you have 1 single piece of content every 2 years that is actually engaging.
Okay, let's be generous and include Savage as well because there may or may not be fights that aren't just spamming Broil 180 times in 9 minutes.

That is still not a lot of content compared to all the casual content in the game, which you will inevitably do even as a hardcore player because you can only run the same 4 (5) fights per raid tier so many times until those become boring as well.

The problem is that the casual content does not have, and can not have, the mechanical complexity that savage or ultimate do. And because the job complexity of healers (and increasingly tanks as well) is so low when there are no complex mechanics then you become so incredibly bored that you start to consider just unsubscribing from the game until the next raid tier.

That's just not good enough. Why would it be so unreasonable to ask for atleast somewhat engaging gameplay even in content that isn't mechanically engaging?

I just don't think "you're going to be bored out of your mind in 90% of the game's combat, deal with it" is a good answer.

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

And the difference is negligible in comparison to the difference between, say, grinding FATES and doing ultimate. It seem to me that, in terms of engaging gameplay, the difficulty of content has a much larger impact than the complexity of DPS rotation. So I find it strange to hear healers saying "Please give me a more complex DPS rotation so I can have more engaging gameplay in casual content". If it's more engaging gameplay that you want, then this will be much more effectively achieved by doing harder content.

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Using fates as a measure is disingenuous at best. Fates aren't normal casual content in the slightest. When was the last time you even did a fate anyways? Maybe for some gem grinding? Or to get the last 150k XP for the next level? It's a minority content that has players engaging in than ARR beast tribes. I mean, the bicolour gems had to be introduced just so people had a reason to do the latest fates, and that died after the first two weeks of ShB's release!

If you want to sound fair, use dungeons. Expert roulette to be more convincing, as that's where most people are after running though the leveling dungeons via the MSQ, casual or not.

And using that as a reference, frankly speaking, DNC is many times more engaging than WHM (or any healer for that matter). DNC has an actual AOE rotation (not just one button spam). DNC has procs to manage. DNC has their fan dances in addition to standard steps and technical steps. And with all that, they even have space to optimize, as they have to consider their resources between pulls and bosses. WHM has...holy and assize, plus afflatus misery every 90s? For healing, you only need asylum and tetra to cover all your needs as long as the tank's not undergeared and lazy.

In boss fights, DNC has their single target rotation, their procs, fan dance again, their two steps, as well as resource consideration for the next trash pull if the boss is getting low on HP. WHM has...dia, glare, assize, afflatus misery, and asylum and tetra. Only the blood lily to worry about when it comes to resources, otherwise you're stuck spamming glare for 30s before you even consider doing anything else.

For bosses, WHM is admittedly the worst off of the healers by far, but in trash pulls, all three healers have it pretty bad. Whereas DNC has all that going for it, and that's only half their kit. In addition, DNC is probably the single most simplest DPS job in the game, yet has that much going for it.

How come the simplest DPS has so much more to do in casual content than ANY healer in the game?

As things stand, healers can get away with hitting follow and macroing spells in casual content. No DPS can get away with that in the slightest.

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Originally Posted by Dearche

No DPS can get away with that in the slightest.

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You and I both know this isn't true.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

The problem however is that there is barely anything to do when you don't do the casual content. There is only 1, maybe 2, Ultimates per expansion. That means with the current design you have 1 single piece of content every 2 years that is actually engaging.
Okay, let's be generous and include Savage as well because there may or may not be fights that aren't just spamming Broil 180 times in 9 minutes.

That is still not a lot of content compared to all the casual content in the game, which you will inevitably do even as a hardcore player because you can only run the same 4 (5) fights per raid tier so many times until those become boring as well.

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Yes, it would be nice if the game had more challenging content. But my impression is that many of the people complaining about healers being boring are not even doing Savage, let alone Ultimate.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

That's just not good enough. Why would it be so unreasonable to ask for atleast somewhat engaging gameplay even in content that isn't mechanically engaging?

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I'm just sceptical that you can make gameplay very engaging without mechanical complexity. Take away mechanics and you're just pushing buttons in a sequence. Making the sequence more complicated may increase the level of engagement, but only slightly in comparison with adding more difficulty.

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Originally Posted by Dearche

If you want to sound fair, use dungeons. Expert roulette to be more convincing, as that's where most people are after running though the leveling dungeons via the MSQ, casual or not.

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Okay, so compare these:

1. Playing WHM in an Expert dungeon
2. Playing DNC in an Expert dungeon
3. Playing WHM in an Ultimate

I'd say that the difference in level of engagement between 1 and 2 is much less than that between 1 and 3.

Suppose you're a healer doing Expert Roulette daily and feeling bored, looking enviously at the DPS jobs with their vast array of DPS buttons. I think you'd be better advised to put your energy into encouraging SE to make dungeons harder, rather than advocating for a few more healer DPS buttons, because the former will have a more significant impact on your level of engagement. Also, you might consider trying the harder content that the game currently offers, if you haven't done so already.

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

Okay, so compare these:

1. Playing WHM in an Expert dungeon
2. Playing DNC in an Expert dungeon
3. Playing WHM in an Ultimate

I'd say that the difference in level of engagement between 1 and 2 is much less than that between 1 and 3.

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The comparison is no fairer than the last, though. Nor did it suddenly grow a point. How does content making a larger difference than one's job in how much one is engaged make the mechanics of the job no longer, in effect, a factor? It can be less (and, depending on the job, I wouldn't necessarily even agree with that) without being insignificant.

I just don't quite get what you're trying to defend here. Sure, go into more engaging content when one wants to be engaged, but... why should that preclude any desire for having more to do, insofar as I want to do, on a given job even in less demanding content?

Even if said content doesn't demand I engage with all those aspects of job design, nor add as much atop it, it's still engagement, and obviously meaningful to many a player.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The comparison is no fairer than the last, though. Nor did it suddenly grow a point. How does content making a larger difference than one's job in how much one is engaged make the mechanics of the job no longer, in effect, a factor? It can be less (and, depending on the job, I wouldn't necessarily even agree with that) without being insignificant.

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Why is the comparison unfair? The point is that the contribution that a job's DPS rotation makes to a player's level of engagement is minor in comparison with that made by difficulty of content. I'm only speaking from personal experience here. Perhaps others have had different experiences. But if someone told me that they found playing DNC in a dungeon even remotely as engaging as playing WHM in an ultimate, I would be very surprised.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I just don't quite get what you're trying to defend here. Sure, go into more engaging content when one wants to be engaged, but... why should that preclude any desire for having more to do, insofar as I want to do, on a given job even in less demanding content?

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Well, doesn't that sound a bit self-contradictory? "I want to have more to do, but I don't want to do the content that requires me to do more."

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

Yes, it would be nice if the game had more challenging content. But my impression is that many of the people complaining about healers being boring are not even doing Savage, let alone Ultimate.

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I've always found the opposite. Most of the players who complain about healer engagement have learned the class and played it through harder content, while the players who've never stepped foot in endgame are perfectly happy clipping, spamming Medica II and fishing for Freecure procs.

I'll admit, I actually enjoy playing AST at endgame in some ways. The level of planning and mapping right down to timing heals within a set GCD so your oGCD comes back up at exactly the right time later is definitely engaging. What bores and frustrates me is that it hardly matters. Often my co-healer just overheals it and getting a few noodle 250 potency Malefics rarely has any impact on the run. Even in e12s, unless the dps is barely scraping enrage, carefully planning heals for max output just doesn't have much impact compared to adding in 10 safety AspHelios over the fight and throwing out oGCD's as they come. I don't really need to play my class well. It doesn't serve enough purpose.
WHM is even worse in this regard. If I clip Dia to move, throw out a few extra Medica II, clip my oGCD's and spam away on Glare otherwise, I'd probably still log purple and it'd be a smooth clear. Barely any reward if I played perfectly. I dislike that design.

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

I'd say that the difference in level of engagement between 1 and 2 is much less than that between 1 and 3.

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The difference in level of engagement still exists though.

Healers spend up to 60% of their total actions, including oGCD's, just pressing 1 button. No dps does that. Furthermore for the healer this results in half the dps of the actual dps and their healing is barely needed. Sure Experts suck and should be made harder, but if I had to choose between a 1 button spamming wet noodle or a lawnmower that melts mobs with a nice range of dps buttons, it's not a hard choice. It's a larger difference in engagement than you think.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

The difference in level of engagement still exists though.

Healers spend up to 60% of their total actions, including oGCD's, just pressing 1 button. No dps does that. Furthermore for the healer this results in half the dps of the actual dps and their healing is barely needed. Sure Experts suck and should be made harder, but if I had to choose between a 1 button spamming wet noodle or a lawnmower that melts mobs with a nice range of dps buttons, it's not a hard choice. It's a larger difference in engagement than you think.

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And his argument, which I agree with, is this difference stops existing the better you get at the individual jobs.

You keep bringing up the '60%' and I'll tell you again it's not the variety of buttons that matter, it's whether or not you're making choices about them. If you're not making choices, it doesn't matter if you're hitting one button 60% of the time, or twelve.

Further, healers might not have the DPS of actual DPS, but their individual GCDs are among the most beefy. Playing safe and losing those is no less a loss than doing it as, say, melee, and losing GCDs and not trying to greed before the point blank hits you. Also, a healer that can do nothing but spam their DPS spells clocks in just under 60%, not 50%. I don't know why you're trying to distort that.

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

Why is the comparison unfair? The point is that the contribution that a job's DPS rotation makes to a player's level of engagement is minor in comparison with that made by difficulty of content. I'm only speaking from personal experience here. Perhaps others have had different experiences. But if someone told me that they found playing DNC in a dungeon even remotely as engaging as playing WHM in an ultimate, I would be very surprised.

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If they changed Red Mage's mana building phase to Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt Jolt in Endwalker, I would likely drop it like a bad habit. Even if the potency were equivalent, or I were taking it into TEA.

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it's not the variety of buttons that matter, it's whether or not you're making choices about them.

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I agree! At the same time, perhaps it's my lack of imagination, I struggle to think of the amount of choice available in a rotation that involves, 30 second DOT refresh aside, a single button that you press over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Healers don't need more buttons just for the sake of having more buttons to press. They need more buttons because there's nowhere to go from pressing one. Button.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

And his argument, which I agree with, is this difference stops existing the better you get at the individual jobs.

You keep bringing up the '60%' and I'll tell you again it's not the variety of buttons that matter, it's whether or not you're making choices about them. If you're not making choices, it doesn't matter if you're hitting one button 60% of the time, or twelve.

Further, healers might not have the DPS of actual DPS, but their individual GCDs are among the most beefy. Playing safe and losing those is no less a loss than doing it as, say, melee, and losing GCDs and not trying to greed before the point blank hits you. Also, a healer that can do nothing but spam their DPS spells clocks in just under 60%, not 50%. I don't know why you're trying to distort that.

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This part right here is correct, but WHM and SCH are very poorly designed for this right now anyway, so what are you even defending? I know that there are a couple players who have suggested 1-2-3 spell combos and you don't like that, but that specific example is not what everyone has been pitching for, and many of the suggestions players have brought up are about adding more DPS and utility GCD actions that are trying to create this aspect of decision making a core aspect of healer design rather than a consequence of challenging content.

AST is the main exception which is why you see virtually every AST threat talking about the card system and not about its DPS actions. No one's really asking for more AST DPS.

It’s kind of hilarious healer mains always have to argue with people who don’t even main a healer about making the job more engaging. I myself hope that SCH can get DOT back and WHM get water and aero skills added. The only reason why healers are in this mess is because WHM was the weakest of three healers and all SE needed to do was revamp WHM and continue AST and SCH down the paths they were headed. Even on Twitter I have to keep arguing with people who justify healers being this way by saying it’s ‘optional’ for healers to be fun. The colorful words I have to stop myself from saying to these people is getting harder to do lol.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

This part right here is correct, but WHM and SCH are very poorly designed for this right now anyway, so what are you even defending? I know that there are a couple players who have suggested 1-2-3 spell combos and you don't like that, but that specific example is not what everyone has been pitching for, and many of the suggestions players have brought up are about adding more DPS and utility GCD actions that are trying to create this aspect of decision making a core aspect of healer design rather than a consequence of challenging content.

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Not everyone has the same requests. Most of the time, it's just looking at the end goal, and the proposed steps to reach it, and offering my opinion on why it will fall short, or plain just not result, in the change wanted. There are only a few job designs in this game that don't get tiring to do the non-Savage content with, so rather than retread those, I will instead insist that newer avenues be chased instead.

As far as 'defending' anything goes, I don't see "And that's why the current healers are good" in my blurb there.

Correcting someone (The numbers) and countering a claim with my own (Button Count =/= Fun) isn't defending anything.

The worst (opinion, mine) scenario that can come from feedback like that is getting the second DoT back and it being hailed as some grand display of generosity. No thanks.

I do have blurbs defending certain aspects of the current healers, but this isn't one of them.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

This part right here is correct, but WHM and SCH are very poorly designed for this right now anyway, so what are you even defending?

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What part of a critique of an ill-warranted claim is a defense of the status quo?

Nothing in arguing that a variety in decision-making is more important than a variety in button-presses says that WHM and SCH aren't presently poorly designed.

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

Why is the comparison unfair? The point is that the contribution that a job's DPS rotation makes to a player's level of engagement is minor in comparison with that made by difficulty of content. I'm only speaking from personal experience here. Perhaps others have had different experiences. But if someone told me that they found playing DNC in a dungeon even remotely as engaging as playing WHM in an ultimate, I would be very surprised.



Well, doesn't that sound a bit self-contradictory? "I want to have more to do, but I don't want to do the content that requires me to do more."

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That's quite a strawman. Go ahead and read what you've just quoted. Actually read it this time: "why should [increased fight-specific demands] preclude any desire for having more to do [i.e., actually possible], insofar as I want to do, on a given job even in less demanding content?"

You've been implying that Factor A (engagement through fight design) precludes value in Factor B (engagement through job kit). But they do not preclude each other. They are not mutually exclusive. They are, in fact, mildly synergetic.

The job toolkit gives the ceiling of what all you can do. The fight's demands gives the ceiling of what all must be done, and thus makes the prior elements pertinent even to those who would not otherwise care about optimization. The first is the primary bottleneck. The second is mere situation.

Even incredibly casual content can still allow for pertinent use of one's full kit. Heck, it often allows for greater decision-making through those kits, in that the one particular use (the one designed for in that fight, specifically) doesn't so overwhelm the other possibilities, and optimal action therefore is therefore more conditional and adaptive.

Yes, a dungeon run, for instance, doesn't require that one optimize their kit perfectly. But one can still extract that level of engagement from the content if they so wish, but completing it as quickly as possible. The problem is when there's so little in one's kit that a run done in an apathetic stupor has nearly the complexity of one done when challenging oneself.

The more we trim off job toolkits "in favor of" (since we cannot well prove that fight complexity has remotely increased between, say, Gordias and Edenmete, let alone the sum of complexity) the fights themselves, the more we lower the engagement ceiling across all content, merely to increase the engagement floor (i.e., the barrier to entry, which at best makes certain uses of a kit, or often only WASD, feel more relevant and/or intended) for a very small portion of content.

That's not great design. And pointing at Ultimate when players feel unengaged in the content forms they prefer isn't remotely relevant.

This isn't a case of "If it's hot, then move to the shade." It's a case of everywhere but one or two parts, tiny and not terribly accessible, having been deforested. If players have to go into Savage or Ultimate to feel like they're getting sufficient engagement out of their kits, that is already a problem.

Content can demand more from any kit's usage, but outside of the occasional janky Duty Action it cannot itself give more to use.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

What part of a critique of an ill-warranted claim is a defense of the status quo?

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In fairness, it can be seen as a rather hardheaded block / gate to hold up. I'm pretty uncompromising in some regards.

That said this has gone on too far a tangent, though the topic for the thread can be utilized to show the kind of actions I would want healers to get.

Let's take a Spell option and call it "Disruption". Disruption causes barriers you have placed on a target to overload - After 6 seconds, the barrier dissipates and explodes for potency based on the Shield's initial potency.

In the case where shields are empowered while direct healing is decreased, a hefty shield can be utilized offensively. We can add a conditional or two, such as the explosion potency is based on application of Disruption, and it explodes on expiration from time or absorption. Apply a 300 shield, then Disruption, you have heavily reduced the lifespan of the shield working, but at the end of its duration, it goes boom for 300. Where as you might instead prefer to let the shield ride and pursue other options.

Expanding on this, if we use Broil as the basis of the GCD cost, then two GCDs (580) is the target to beat. At a baseline, this spell would probably have a short cooldown and a minor baseline gain in offense to be worth using, but certainly something you'd instead want to abuse as the more ideal circumstances come up instead.

Shields that do not restore HP would need another indicator, or perhaps they show their value with a Blue number instead - Restoring no health, but granting easy access to see the shield's value, or rather, when it gains a critical effect.

This in turn means you're likely to have Disruption available (After all - it's a minor potency gain at baseline) during uptime, have an additional thing to set up around when the boss moves away (Setting up a strong shield to absorb initial damage and then go boom), and you can capitalize on random or forced BIG SHULD. Giving an example of how I'd change some abilities and what sort of interactions they should have... (Also consider it a small contribution to your other thread - Did you know that reducing BLM beneath 15 buttons is really hard?)

Overload: A mechanic in which a Shield's duration is greatly reduced, but deals damage upon expiration to nearby enemies.

Adloqium: 300 potency shield.
Emergency Tactics: All applied shields dissipate and heal for their current amounts.
Deployment Tactics: The next Spell gains a Radius of 10y at reduced potency.
Disruption: Overloads the target's shield.

'Tactics' we can give a charge system to, and this is primarily how the Scholar recovers from damage, where as their first response is preventing it in the first place. Adding charges to Tactics allows the Scholar to create more complex combinations without being a preset 'combo'. It also serves as their own variant of Metamagic (Such as Surecast, Swiftcast), and an addition to the 'Tactics' category grants them increasingly varied options, but that would obviously require a fair amount of care when adding new ones.

And if we really want to get stupid, we could have the Scholar manipulate -any- barriers on a person, not just their own.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

And if we really want to get stupid, we could have the Scholar manipulate -any- barriers on a person, not just their own.

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That sounds more fun than "stupid", so long as the concept's resultant applications aren't riddled with (overpowered or underpowered) oversights. Count me in.

Shields are almost never required. If they did a change where no direct heals were attached it basically wouldn't change anything.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

Shields are almost never required. If they did a change where no direct heals were attached it basically wouldn't change anything.

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It would require them to pump up the damage everybody takes to where they need to be topped off or shielded to survive. But because they're afraid of upsetting the casual players (who they made a lot of the changes in ShB for), that's very unlikely. Which is a shame because I miss the heartpounding action that was HW healing. Remember the dangerous heavy pulls in Neverreap that required the full party to be good in order to avoid wipes? I miss those days so much, everything hit like a truck, tanks had to constantly rotate CDs, and DPSing as a healer was something you couldn't do that often and was basically your reward for good healing.