Breaking a Dichotomy - Give Everyone Shields

Complete kits for everyone. AST is suffering from an identity crisis because of this, Noct especially.

But how?
1) Limiting access to shields by making them cooldown-only (like tanks)
2) Or giving everyone access to GCD shields (people keep clamouring for Stoneskin/Protect so you’ll love this).

‘But wouldn’t stackable GCD shields be OP?’
Then make it so only the largest shield applies per hit, so you can’t shield stack.

‘But what about healer identities?’
SCH has the pet/oGCD identity, and hasn’t been about shields since Heavensward launched.
WHM has GCD healing as well as powerful skills as it’s healing identity. Basically unchanged if it just gets a shield spell which is powerful.
AST doesn’t have a solid healing identity in itself yet, but with the whole ‘foresight/predicting’ guff it could be a delayed healer (like Earthly Star) or a focus on mitigating incoming damage.

I feel a core standard healing kit including a shield that is common to all healers, with the main differences being the bonus healing kit and the damage kit (either direct or supporting) would have gone down better than what you guys got.

Instead you got massive & pretty diverse healing kits in a game that doesn't call for that much healing, and spend half the duty pressing the healer standardized 2 button damage dealing kit.

I think yes to a certain extent. Of course, bring back Stoneskin/Stoneskin II and Proshell for WHM and keep whatever shields they currently have. And make whatever adjustments Nocturnal Sect needs on AST.

But with this in mind I am in favour of balance then being directed at how effective different healers are at any given part of the role and what tools they have to try and compensate any weakness. To my mind, balance can be achieved by different means. I don't like the idea of a form of balance where jobs are almost equal in efficiency in every part of their role, to me this is why the jobs feel homogenised, despite technically not being homogenised. But I think they're still need to be able to handle each part of their role.

But if say, one job was weak in one area but strong in another but at least still able to cope in the area they're weak in and may have to work harder or smarter as a result, that feels more engaging and adds a little to the variety. Because then the parts that are weak means you put more use into the tools you have available. I know I harp on a lot about 2.0 balance, but I think it had a good example of this where Scholar were great for preventing damage but had to work harder to top off HP. But in a sense, both SCH and WHM had the tools they needed to fulfill their role, particularly in a 4 man group setting where you only have 1 healer. And WHM felt like they didn't have a protective buffer as much as SCH had, so in someway they had to be more ready to top off health, but could get people's health up quicker, especially in AoE situations, where for SCH that took more work.

I think this approach means in what the job is supposed to be good at, it feels powerful in this regard, but more challenging in the part they're not, which can be pretty engaging IMO.

A lot of users have gone over how changes to the pets have removed a lot of that portion of Scholar identity, White Mage having big heals isn't an identity, and Astrologian being almost completely stripped of it's identity. I imagine thinking like this is what lead the devs to creating the one GCD, one DoT, and AoE damage system for healers.

Every healer has a shield in their kit, and I don't think anyone is actually hurting for GCD shield power.

Honestly, I still find it considerably harder to recover lost health on scholar than on white mage (as well as considerably easier to prevent the health loss in the first place).

So I'm not sure I would agree that shield homogenization has gone so far that we might as well take it all the way. The fact that scholar now has access to some (non-spammable) direct heals doesn't mean it's not "about shields" anymore, because it still has more access to shields and less access to direct heals than other healers.

(It's worth noting, though, that I'm commenting from a dungeon perspective here, and things may be different in raids.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wawachume

Honestly, I still find it considerably harder to recover lost health on scholar than on white mage (as well as considerably easier to prevent the health loss in the first place).

---

Healing HP as SCH has never been easier. Now that Soil has a beefy 600p regen attached, and recitation Excog/Indom exist.
Preventing HP loss generally means continuously spending excessive mana on Adlo/Succor, which could be spent instead killing the packs via Art of War while Fey Union and the occasional Lustrate keeps the tank topped up.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wawachume

(It's worth noting, though, that I'm commenting from a dungeon perspective here, and things may be different in raids.)

---

Dungeons aren't where the game's challenge lies. There's no enrage time limit, no hard punishing mechanics. Nothing 'typical' about incoming damage because it varies drastically with the tank's gear and competence thanks to iLevel requirements, and nothing that forces them to use cooldowns or die. They'll blame the healer while they should have been using their cooldowns. Nothing which forces the players to do more than the very bare minimum (keeping aggro/keeping everyone alive/dealing damage).
I feel I may have gotten off-topic.

Anyway. Giving shields and regens to all of the healers opens up the design space for unique identities which aren't based on whether or not they bring tools which could be vital to clearing an encounter. As I've said previously, AST is facing the most hardships from this because they don't have a massively solid healing identity outside of having 2 sects which you can't switch between once the fight starts.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YusiKha

Healing HP as SCH has never been easier.

---

I agree, but that's not what I mean. Healing as scholar has never been easier. But the same is true of every healing job. Healing in general is just easier in Shadowbringers.

But what I'm saying is that regardless of that, I still find it easier to restore health on WHM and AST than on SCH, and easier to prevent health loss on SCH than on WHM and AST.

That said...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YusiKha

Preventing HP loss generally means continuously spending excessive mana on Adlo/Succor, which could be spent instead killing the packs via Art of War while Fey Union and the occasional Lustrate keeps the tank topped up.

---

...it's possible that my perception there isn't entirely due to the shields. Spells like fey union and sacred soil may technically be direct heals (well, partly, for soil), but they contribute to the feeling of scholar as a preventive healer because you tend to use them proactively.

Anyway, thinking about the shields themselves, I actually don't think giving a spammable one to WHM and AST would affect SCH's shield-healer niche. Because they'd have it, but they wouldn't use it except for certain mechanics, since it would have a higher MP cost per HP than their direct heals. The reason SCH uses shields as much as it does isn't because they're there, but because it lacks any equivalent to cure 2, benefic 2, medica, or helios.

So as long as SCH didn't get, like, physick 2 or spammable etactics, it would still be the shield healer. (Of course, in that case you'd have to ask why WHM/AST get SCH spells while the reverse isn't true, but I think that could be handled by giving them just the shield, without the direct heal component of adlo.)

But on the other hand, I'm not sure there'd be much point. If WHM and AST are only going to use their shields occasionally, then there's little benefit to them being spammable.

But the other proposal, putting all shields on a cooldown, I don't really like, because then you'd probably have to give SCH something like cure 2 and medica, and then it becomes just like white mage.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YusiKha

Dungeons aren't where the game's challenge lies.

---

That may be (though I would argue that dungeons may still be challenging for the people who mostly do dungeons, even if they aren't for raiders). But you still have to take dungeons into account when designing the game.

If anything, I'd say having a good class design is more important in dungeons, since you don't have as many mechanics to keep you interested.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YusiKha

Anyway. Giving shields and regens to all of the healers opens up the design space for unique identities which aren't based on whether or not they bring tools which could be vital to clearing an encounter. As I've said previously, AST is facing the most hardships from this because they don't have a massively solid healing identity outside of having 2 sects which you can't switch between once the fight starts.

---

I actually don't have a problem with this. I agree that it's a bad idea to differentiate healers by the presence or absence of vital tools, and I agree that astrologian's identity is a little lackluster at this point.

That said, I think we need to come up with the new system first. MMORPG developers these days always seem to be deleting stuff from games because it opens up the design space for something better, but often the new thing doesn't seem to show up.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YusiKha

Complete kits for everyone. AST is suffering from an identity crisis because of this, Noct especially.

But how?
1) Limiting access to shields by making them cooldown-only (like tanks)
2) Or giving everyone access to GCD shields (people keep clamouring for Stoneskin/Protect so you’ll love this).

‘But wouldn’t stackable GCD shields be OP?’
Then make it so only the largest shield applies per hit, so you can’t shield stack.

‘But what about healer identities?’
SCH has the pet/oGCD identity, and hasn’t been about shields since Heavensward launched.
WHM has GCD healing as well as powerful skills as it’s healing identity. Basically unchanged if it just gets a shield spell which is powerful.
AST doesn’t have a solid healing identity in itself yet, but with the whole ‘foresight/predicting’ guff it could be a delayed healer (like Earthly Star) or a focus on mitigating incoming damage.

---

I would just like to add in the fact that AST's identity isn't broken down to being in Diurnal and Noct but actually as a buffer class with the cards (Old Cards at least) along side being able to increase buff durations with Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition but now that those are gone and CO being a Heal now AST's identity is complete stripped. Job Lore states that AST is the emissary of Space, Time and Fate and Time Dilation, Old CO and Old Arcanum Cards (All 6 of them with their old effects) supports this claim.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kuwago

I would just like to add in the fact that AST's identity isn't broken down to being in Diurnal and Noct but actually as a buffer class with the cards (Old Cards at least) along side being able to increase buff durations with Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition but now that those are gone and CO being a Heal now AST's identity is complete stripped. Job Lore states that AST is the emissary of Space, Time and Fate and Time Dilation, Old CO and Old Arcanum Cards (All 6 of them with their old effects) supports this claim.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YusiKha

AST doesn’t have a solid healing identity in itself yet, ...

---

A healing identity, not overall identity. Y'know - like SCH's fairy and aetherflow for oGCD/concurrent healing, or WHM's Afflatus GCDs and the raw potency on skills like Tetra and Asylum.

I'd say AST's identity is (was?) meant to be the flexible healer - the one that puts shields when there's no SCH and has the stronger raw heals when there's no WHM. That said, overall it really just feels like WHM 2.0 if not for the card gimmicks, and since people seem to dislike stances at all I don't think expanding/improving on Diurnal/Nocturnal sects would be well received, if anything, I've red a few times people want them removed altogether.

I'd really rather not. Heck, I'd sooner prefer that Stone charged Stoneskin so that I had to weave in damage at some point to get Stoneskin out in time to save a tank from a tankbuster, even in -- or, ideally in -- a truly healing-intensive fight, than simply have yet another on-demand shield option. I'd prefer shields to be an expensive but powerful utility, ideally each afforded in some different way.

I'd much rather see AST diversified to not simply go between SCH-flavored WHM+Cards and WHM-topping WHM-base + Cards.

It's not as though WHM didn't have shields before and while Stoneskin 1+2 wouldn't really work as % based shields when Tanks are bordering on the 150k health department, I fail to see why SE couldn't have just adjusted their values into flat numbers instead of just removing them outright

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YusiKha

Dungeons aren't where the game's challenge lies. There's no enrage time limit, no hard punishing mechanics. Nothing 'typical' about incoming damage because it varies drastically with the tank's gear and competence thanks to iLevel requirements, and nothing that forces them to use cooldowns or die. They'll blame the healer while they should have been using their cooldowns. Nothing which forces the players to do more than the very bare minimum (keeping aggro/keeping everyone alive/dealing damage).
I feel I may have gotten off-topic.

---

That's the thing, Extreme and Savage seems where the Healers are currently balanced around, but are still expecting us to run dungeons, all 73 of them and only three of them let us use the whole arsenal. If considering all the Duties, 202 duties are available in the Duty roulettes, (plus 300 floors of Deep Dungeons). 8 of those in roulettes gives you the whole skillset. Unless you do it unsynced but then you won't get the tomestones you need for gear so you can get into Extreme and Savage where the SE apparently hid all the fun. Not only is the conventionalized healer job barely engaging here bare the occasional Mist Dragon and Griffin, but even with a light party of +71 levels we still get Sastasha or Tam-Tara.

If SE expects us to toil and trugde through Copperbell for the umpenteenth time devoid of any challenge so we can get our entrance ticket to Savage and Extreme (that we might not be wanting in the first place) I find the least they could do is make the low-level stuff fun. Fully carthatic and challenge replaced just by blasting the entire packs of poor spriggans and hectatoncheirs with a colorful rainbow of varied dots, Miasma II and Shadowflare while Eos flies around smacking mobs with my Codex, but I can't. I'm stuck pressing 1 for Ruin until my finger bleeds because I the role I signed up for isn't needed unless the tank takes off all their gear.

For the shared skills this is what Cross-Class skills and secondary and tertiary classes did back in 2.0. It's not as straightforward as Role skills, but it was a sight near better because it actually enticed me to level other classes and get conjurer to level 34 for Stoneskin. Sure I might not plan on playing White Mage, but at least that gave me a bit perspective on how that class works, and by extension how it might feel to play White Mage which is invaluable if I get paired with one. With how quick leveling goes these days, I'm still scratching my head why they didn't embrace classes instead of the trying to ignore them out of existence they are doing now.

Because as I saw it, the Class was the base the Job's identity could spring from. They could all share some roots with Arcanist, Conjurer and make Time Mage for Astrologian, if only to make a second healing Class. All of the sharing some skills with each other and you could see how much you could put to use from entirely different ideas of how healing could work. The identity I think would help is sharing parts of all the jobs base, then go in completely and imaginative directions of how healing can work. Last time that happend seem to be HW, where each one blossomed in it's own direction, maybe AST was swaying a bit side to side from the stories, but then slowly and suddenly the divergence ended and they homingly converged into each other.

Every job already does have shields.

AST has them in Noct Sect, they even have a shield in regen sect in the form of Celectial Intersection (which is stronger than a SCH shield)

SCH has them in Adlo and Seraph Shield

WHM has divine benison

WHM DB:
000 heal
500 shield

AST CI in Diurnal:
200 heal
400 shield

AST Asp. Bene in Noct:
200 heal
500 shield

SCH Adlo:
300 heal
375 shield

In term of shield strength (normal potency/not critical), WHM and Noct AST is equal and higher than SCH Adlo.
If SCH Adlo crit, it become the strongest shield.

Also, Diurnal CI is strong but not as atrong as WHM DB (they have same 30 sec CD).

Somehow feel like we need more diversity at this point. Not less. We need more niche healing and encounters that benefit different healer pairs instead of going down the homogenization rabbit hole which is a bit of a fallacy in it's own right.

I was hoping this topic was about offhand shields.

Doesn't every job beside the casters and dragoon have some form of shielding?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eloah

Doesn't every job beside the casters and dragoon have some form of shielding?

---

MCH/BRD don't as well, nor do SAM/MNK

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eloah

Doesn't every job beside the casters and dragoon have some form of shielding?

---

SMN got a shield through Titan now, and BLM has Manaward, even BLU has a shield, leaving RDM as the only caster without one.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deceptus

MCH/BRD don't as well, nor do SAM/MNK

---

MCH and BRD have Tactician and Troubadour and SAM and MNK have Third Eye and Fists of Earth.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Allegor

SMN got a shield through Titan now, and BLM has Manaward, even BLU has a shield, leaving RDM as the only caster without one.

---

Ah yes, I forgot about those. I was thinking of the role skill they all lost, and Ifrit's shield.

They are probably just gonna get rid of Ast stances
And just have 2 regen healer and 2 Shield healer next expansion

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Duskane

They are probably just gonna get rid of Ast stances
And just have 2 regen healer and 2 Shield healer next expansion

---

They've said they don't like the regen/shield division, though, so probably not.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eloah

MCH and BRD have Tactician and Troubadour and SAM and MNK have Third Eye and Fists of Earth.

---

Those aren't shields, they're damage reductions.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deceptus

Those aren't shields, they're damage reductions.

---

I never said shields, I said shielding. All shields are forms of shielding, but not all shielding skills are in the form of shields.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eloah

I never said shields, I said shielding. All shields are forms of shielding, but not all shielding skills are in the form of shields.

---

True, but in that case "non-shield shielding" (or, percentile mitigation, as its more commonly known) will almost always be inherently weaker than "shield shielding" (%HP mitigation), since it would take more than your maximum eHP for 10% of incoming damage mitigation to exceed 10% of your HP. In the majority of cases a %HP shield can full absorb an attack against which %mitigation would have no visible effect.

A Monk, for instance, would have to be one-shot three times over for Fists of Earth (for which he must sacrifice nearly 20% dps for up to 3 GCDs, given the multiplicative gains of the last 10 of 40% damage and 5 of 20% attack speed) to mitigate as much total damage as a Manaward, assuming equal Monk and BLM HP. (So, in reality, Manaward is merely some 2.5x as strong, can actually make a visible difference to damage that wouldn't have one-shot you anyways, and costs no DPS). The disparity between the two is tremendous. (Heck, what kind of SMN is going to swap off the more powerful Ifrit and use up a 200-potency attack instead on percentile mitigation the difference from which is just going to be overhealed by AoE healing anyways?)

And yet, I'm pretty well okay with that. If you're adding 10% mitigation here and there, you are simply adding fluff. Until FoE is given a real reason to exist besides that mere 10%, it's bloat. I'd rather see it fixed than removed, but, it's bloat. Let BLM have its massive "stand in one AoE for free card" via Manaward. But don't kid yourselves that shielding is going to be of any other use in raids. Unless stacked, Divine Veil and Shake it Off aren't going to save a healer GCD. And unless you're horribly Vitality-undergeared compared to the rest of your party, Third Eye is virtually never going to save you from death. It's only there as a convoluted way to pick up 30 free potency via Seigan over Shinten.

tl;dr: Not everyone needs shields. We could safely spend far fewer abilities on shielding and perceive no difference to the game seeing as only the strongest shields can even create meaningful breakpoints for survival or healer reaction. If you want them, you should probably first buff them significantly.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by YusiKha

A healing identity, not overall identity. Y'know - like SCH's fairy and aetherflow for oGCD/concurrent healing, or WHM's Afflatus GCDs and the raw potency on skills like Tetra and Asylum.

---

At this Iteration, it seems like Aspected Benefic and Helios alongside CO and CI is the "healing identity" with this expansion, but I want to say (Based on how the job flow is to me) it seems to be going towards 'predictive' healing with Earthly Star and Horoscope where you need to know the fight and plan ahead of time and plan it at the right time so that the heals coincide right after the party takes damage.