How would you feel if shields had no upfront healing?

In compensation, the shields are much beefier, Like, a 1000/750 potency heal-sized shield for single-target and AoE, respectively, along with having a .5s cast time. If the shield breaks, the target receives a 450/300 potency heal respectively. If the duration of the shield runs out, they instead receive a 300/200 potency heal instead.

The idea would be to make it so that shield healers should more rely on preventing the damage, rather than reacting to damage. The quick cast time allows for reactionary shielding, so that you can get the shield up before the buster/raidwide goes off. The Excog-like effect is to allow for healing if damage is not fully prevented from the attack, or to patch people up if damage was not blocked to begin with. A breaking shield healing more is to patch up those that took damage beyond the shield, while the duration running out heals less since the healing may not have been necessary.

I imagine such a change would require a change to Emergency Tactics for Scholar, along with a similar ability for Sage. Likely make it so that, for 10 seconds, all shields instead provide their broken shield potency heal, to allow parties running Sage and Scholar to handle heal-to-full mechanics.

I would really appreciate a change like this.
On one hand, it feels nice that I can use a shield (with an up front heal) to either heal or shield as needed.
On the other hand... it almost always feels like a waste of half of the abilities effect since you don't offen need a shield AND a heal. Having some abilities with both is fine, but man the way things are really gas me scratching my head.

This seems to be the ideal function of a Shield CD. The Basic shield should probably not have this property, though other cooldowns interacting with shields would aid here, such as Emergency Tactics turning all current shields into health at reduced value - good for getting value out of a misplaced shield about to expire.

I do really like the idea of shields without heals. It's one of the reasons why I think WHM is the current best shield healer instead of the normally vaunted SCH.

That said, the other part is the instant cast. .5s is nice and all, but you might as well make it instant if you're going below 1s. It'll also add quite a lot of versatility to a spell that doesn't actually heal.

In addition, adding a shield broken triggered heal is a bad idea. The point of the shield is to prevent the damage, and if you add a shield buff on top of that, then most of the time that nice sized heal will almost all go to overhealing. Completely seperating heals from shields is a better idea I think.

For that matter, there's not really any need to increase the power of the shield as long as the MP cost is brought down a bit. Though making it an oGCD for SCH would be especially nice. Maybe Lustrate could shield instead of heal?

1000/750 is a bit much, but yes adjustments aside pure shields and a few shields that trigger additional heals after the shield breaks would be great. Shield healers should be about predicting and preparing for damage and rewarding you for it, not Pure Healing 99% of the time and occasionally preventing a raidwide from killing the party in Savage.

It would require minor chances to how debuffs like vuln and damage down apply when taking 0 damage, but that should be doable.

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Originally Posted by Dearche

In addition, adding a shield broken triggered heal is a bad idea. The point of the shield is to prevent the damage, and if you add a shield buff on top of that, then most of the time that nice sized heal will almost all go to overhealing. Completely seperating heals from shields is a better idea I think.

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It depends on how hard the damage hits. Chances are a raidwide pure shield isn't going to completely nullify hard hitting mechanics. Having the heal after the shield breaks makes a lot more sense that the current system of the heal applying before, which often wastes it when pre-shielding.

The increased eHP provided (i.e., the actual shield portion) has been the reason for pretty much shields' every nerf, limitation, or lowered relative throughput.

We'd then be doubling down on their reasons to be nerfed... while likely reducing their actual available throughput. That doesn't sound great.

For my part, I just want to see more than the absolute most basic design for shields. Have the shield absorb a portion of damage based on the %HP you'd otherwise be reduced to, for instance, so that it's less countered by auto-attacks. Have it outright increase (Magic) Defense, but have that bonus deteriorate over effective damage absorbed. Whatever. Just more than solely the most basic concept possible. I'd happily accept my shield value on targets decaying over time if I could have some smarter or otherwise more deliberate/manipulable shields.

While we're at it, I'd love to see some alternate modes of application. Maybe have up to X value apply instantly and up to 50% or 100% more apply over a channel, up to a GCD long. Maybe apply a shield (per the above Defense-additive-version) via oGCD but be able to recharge it via a dynamic cast (e.g., Broil when cast on enemies, Infuse when cast on allies).

The trouble with such high-potency shields is that they would enable parties to cheese mechanics. Think of the "merry-go-round doggos" in e10s. A lot of parties just stack shields and mitigation so they can ignore the mechanics and maintain uptime. With higher potency shields, this sort of thing would become more common. (I think this may be the reason why they don't allow Noct AST shields and SCH shields to stack.)

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

The trouble with such high-potency shields is that they would enable parties to cheese mechanics. Think of the "merry-go-round doggos" in e10s. A lot of parties just stack shields and mitigation so they can ignore the mechanics and maintain uptime. With higher potency shields, this sort of thing would become more common. (I think this may be the reason why they don't allow Noct AST shields and SCH shields to stack.)

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Funny thing is though is they make di ast shield all stack with all noct ast shields so its still broken if not even more broken because your getting regens as well from both ast via netrual sect at this point. Also the only shields that dont agree with noct ast and sch is noct field and galvaine, a noct field wont cancel a catalyse if a sch get one via a crit adlo and noct opposition will not cancel galavine ,so it seem in a tiny way a noct+sch can be possible now and heck sounds to me of a nice challenge.

As much as I like the idea, it would make shield either OP or just plain useless. To flat out stop damage cool now any debuff the devs make will be denied and their efforts to bring spice to raiding or dungeons will be wasted. Also there are mechs that drop your health to 1 and having a shield that only heals when you break it will not be the best option for your party making the window. God forbid we talk about LD coming into play, also if this was to pass you cant really have a solid heal ability or then there wouldnt be a point in even having the other healers other then ast for dmg increase. Just my opinion that shield are better then heals but heals is your final verdict in whether your alive or not. though giving this to blackest night or brutal wouldnt be a bad idea.

I dont like the idea as stated vatom it will make shields feel even more pointless, I like shields healing not only for party situation but for solo stuff like if am doing a B or A hunt , slinging shields for extra hp on my self makes me dps a good min or 2 as opposed to the slow tick and duration of regens, also again it helps to save poor equip team mates or even one self in situations, like incase my tank topple over and the dps is then target am able to swift cast and up that tank dps may be dead by then but i just spam shields on myself while tank gets up and pulls mobs off me. Even though I know i can bene them or something else yet once i throw the shield on i can focus on a bit more dps.

Shielding to me provides more up time rather than then stopping to throw some a regen after damage occur but that is just me. I feel I worry less on healing and people being alive when I do shields over regen, regens dont give me that feel of comfort when I feel as if they just dont tick fast enough and that mere 15 seconds aint cutting it, the game lies about spell speed increasing hots and dots ticks but I really dont see a dif when I tried like a 2k+ spell speed before, all I notice for sure was my shorter gcds , anyways I just hard core do crit and det(i dont do dh which i never know why healers do dh over det) det increase heal +dps , dh only does dps and thats not even that high. Think the chart I found was 1.4 to heals and dps of det and dh is just 1.8 increase to dps only.

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

The trouble with such high-potency shields is that they would enable parties to cheese mechanics. Think of the "merry-go-round doggos" in e10s. A lot of parties just stack shields and mitigation so they can ignore the mechanics and maintain uptime. With higher potency shields, this sort of thing would become more common. (I think this may be the reason why they don't allow Noct AST shields and SCH shields to stack.)

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This week I was working on a complete healer rework design doc, and one of the conclusions I came to during it was that we needed to rethink shields because of stuff like this.

My personal answer was that most of the good shields would only cover missing HP, and shield healers would be based around HOT healing rather than immediate healing. The shields don't add to the HP, but cover what's gone until the HOT does its work, either together in one spell or as separate abilities.

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Originally Posted by IceBlueNinja

the game lies about spell speed increasing hots and dots ticks but I really dont see a dif when I tried like a 2k+ spell speed before, all I notice for sure was my shorter gcds , anyways I just hard core do crit and det(i dont do dh which i never know why healers do dh over det) det increase heal +dps , dh only does dps and thats not even that high. Think the chart I found was 1.4 to heals and dps of det and dh is just 1.8 increase to dps only.

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I thought Spell Speed increases the potency of HOTs and DOTs, not speed them up?

I don't like this idea.

I've already seen enough shield healers that basically think the other healer should do all the, well, real healing, because their job is to prevent damage, etc. Essentially a kindred spirit to the type that puts all the healing load on their cohealer in favor of looking good on DPS.

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Originally Posted by Dearche

My personal answer was that most of the good shields would only cover missing HP, and shield healers would be based around HOT healing rather than immediate healing. The shields don't add to the HP, but cover what's gone until the HOT does its work, either together in one spell or as separate abilities.

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Interesting idea. But then wouldn't shields be useless on players who are at full HP? For example, it's quite common now to shield the party pre-pull, but that would become pointless under your proposal.

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

Interesting idea. But then wouldn't shields be useless on players who are at full HP? For example, it's quite common now to shield the party pre-pull, but that would become pointless under your proposal.

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That's like saying that normal healing is useless on someone that's at full HP.

Frankly speaking, it's the padded HP that's the issue in the first place. While yes, you could still have normal shields in addition to the covering shields, it's not necessary.

The point was for shield healers to continue existing and also feel different in play from pure healers. Changing up conventions isn't a problem in the slightest. We used to fish for a Crit-lo and deploy them to the party to ignore the first 30s of mechanics, but SE killed that hard. What's the difference with removing a pitiful 150 potency shield from the start of a raid aside from having an even smaller effect than what SE had already done?

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Originally Posted by Dearche

That's like saying that normal healing is useless on someone that's at full HP.

Frankly speaking, it's the padded HP that's the issue in the first place. While yes, you could still have normal shields in addition to the covering shields, it's not necessary.

The point was for shield healers to continue existing and also feel different in play from pure healers. Changing up conventions isn't a problem in the slightest. We used to fish for a Crit-lo and deploy them to the party to ignore the first 30s of mechanics, but SE killed that hard. What's the difference with removing a pitiful 150 potency shield from the start of a raid aside from having an even smaller effect than what SE had already done?

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Yes, fair enough. But one of the current advantages of shields over "pure healing" is that shields can be effectively used on players even at full HP. By using shields you can raise the player's "effective HP" above their maximum HP. If you take that away, then shields may have little point. Ultimately, effective HP is all that matters. If shield-healing and pure-healing were to affect effective HP in essentially the same way, then it's not clear that there would even be any real difference anymore.

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

Yes, fair enough. But one of the current advantages of shields over "pure healing" is that shields can be effectively used on players even at full HP. By using shields you can raise the player's "effective HP" above their maximum HP. If you take that away, then shields may have little point. Ultimately, effective HP is all that matters. If shield-healing and pure-healing were to affect effective HP in essentially the same way, then it's not clear that there would even be any real difference anymore.

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I'll admit that's true.

The issue is that it's really difficult to account for healers in FF. Tuning for tanks and DPS is easy, but healers have the additional problem of gearing to take into consideration (at least it effects healers far more than the other roles), so making pre-shielding mandatory is difficult. Not to mention that the existing shields for our shield healers kinda suck. The AOE ones especially.

I think the only reasonable way to handle it is if the effective output ends up the same, but how each healer reaches that output being different.

Like, if SCH's own oGCD heals are instead all shields that cover missing HP, then the fairy actions are all powerful 15-30s regens, compared to WHM that simply throws out Cure2 or Cure3 to instantly refill people's HP at the cost of a GCD, the effect will be the same, but the feel would be vastly different, and thus there'll be differing reasons to play both.

Though I do think things should be far more complicated than that, but for a basic way to recover HP, I think this is a fine way to start things off.

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

The trouble with such high-potency shields is that they would enable parties to cheese mechanics. Think of the "merry-go-round doggos" in e10s.

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Surely this isn't so deeply embedded in the code that they can't simply make mechanics apply debuffs even if no damage is taken. Some mechanics even work this way already and will apply Vuln if fully shielded.

If it is impossible, at the very least I can't see why shields can't apply the heal component after the shield breaks or expires. It makes no point for pre-shielding when the heal component is wasted and you're spending a full GCD on 200 potency. Succor and Noct Asp Helios are terrible abilities in their current form and only ever used for being really safe, or the occasional artificial necessity the devs added to Savage raidwides to try and give Shields some purpose.

If Shield healer is going to be an identity they have to do something with them. Otherwise it's like having "Interrupt dps" and "Pure dps" as an identity despite the fact you barely ever need it. It's just silly.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Surely this isn't so deeply embedded in the code that they can't simply make mechanics apply debuffs even if no damage is taken. Some mechanics even work this way already and will apply Vuln if fully shielded.

If it is impossible, at the very least I can't see why shields can't apply the heal component after the shield breaks or expires. It makes no point for pre-shielding when the heal component is wasted and you're spending a full GCD on 200 potency. Succor and Noct Asp Helios are terrible abilities in their current form and only ever used for being really safe, or the occasional artificial necessity the devs added to Savage raidwides to try and give Shields some purpose.

If Shield healer is going to be an identity they have to do something with them. Otherwise it's like having "Interrupt dps" and "Pure dps" as an identity despite the fact you barely ever need it. It's just silly.

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Another way of solving this is immediate back to back AoEs. Take something like Absolute Zero from Shiva. If it had an afterburn effect that did less damage overall but remained spicy, the combined damage would be enough to break through the shield but not kill anyone. Thereby fixing the problem with applying debuffs.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Another way of solving this is immediate back to back AoEs. Take something like Absolute Zero from Shiva. If it had an afterburn effect that did less damage overall but remained spicy, the combined damage would be enough to break through the shield but not kill anyone. Thereby fixing the problem with applying debuffs.

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Or we know that bosses can deal unmitigatable % damage.
Have the boss deal 1% of your HP if it's a problem.

I actually wouldn't mind something like this, but not for SCH or SGE. I think this should only apply for WHM's Divine Benison and it's potential upgraded skill on the benchmark trailer. How the spell would work in my eyes is that once the shield will break, it will heal you for a certain amount of potency. That way, the spell will stand out compared to the other three healers in the game and it would fit SE's image about WHM being a "Pure"/"Regen" healer.

With four months to go before the next expansion releases, I don't believe you'd be able to see this kind of change until 2023. Keep dreaming on though - it might nudge some of the devs with ideas for the 7.0 release.

"Instant" shields only ability would be nice.
Cheezing fights is another point ; there are lots of ways SE can prevent that : like said removing the "no add effect" is one.
Another REALLY easy one ; just make theses 80+ (or whenever) with content planned for it.

And for my 2 gils : how about "auto-convert" shields ? heal a player for 1000 hp ; if he's missing 200 hp ; heal those and apply the 800 left as shield. (low hp for ease of explanation)
If "processing perf" is an issue, could be tier-ed i guess (apply 3 shield with excog property at 100% HP)
And for balance, just make them less powerful than pure heal (but still good please).

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Or we know that bosses can deal unmitigatable % damage.
Have the boss deal 1% of your HP if it's a problem.

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Could also change it so Shields only absorb a percentage of the damage. For example, if instead of an aoe shield fully absorbing 200 potency worth, it could absorb half or 75% of incoming damage up to 400 potency worth.

Plenty of things they could do to prevent debuff cheese.

Could just be consistent about it, as well. For example, Light Resistance Down is applied regardless if you take 0 or 50'000 points of damage from the Light Sprite on Shiva Savage. The technology is clearly there - Squeenix are just very inconsistent about enforcing it.

SE already has the ability to ignore shields if it wants to in content, they just don't use it that much. Just look at the skeleton explosions during the Undead Dragon fight in Labyrinth, those ignore shields completely and do set damage.

Simply make more raidwides set damage that ignore shields, making it so only pure mitigation (Sacred Soil, tank cooldowns other than TBN, etc) can deal with the problem. Then make SCH's shields instant cast (this will require changing a few Abilities we have or adding new ones at early levels), with Adlo and Succor becoming straight % mitigation (with a bit higher healing to compensate). This can simultaneously make shielding easier to pull off while still keeping us having to use our GCD heals to mitigate incoming damage, fitting our titles as a shield healer, since we're still shielding from damage, regardless if it's with an actual barrier or % mitigation.

There still is mechs that do 99999999 damage to people so even if they try change shields to any of these ideas I agree with you all on. That alone will make change a waste imo

Similarly, there is/are (a) damage type(s) which cannot be mitigated by physical or magical shielding or mitigation, variously called "true", "pure" or "darkness", etc. damage.

(Yes, shielding against physical damage only or magical damage only used to be a thing; see T4.)

I feel like people sometime forget about how insanely powerful was spread critlo and why he doesn't exist anymore.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

I feel like people sometime forget about how insanely powerful was spread critlo and why he doesn't exist anymore.

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Oh I remember our lord and savior, and how he saved the party from much damage in the EX fights.

This wouldn't resolve everything, but I do think something like this would be a step in the right direction:

Adloquium now is exclusively a barrier and only provides Galvanize, even when landing a crit. Succor is the same, but provides Catalyze instead (again also if landing a crit).

Emergency Tactics converts the entire barrier into a heal for 15 seconds as a buff, but you can reactivate Emergency Tactics prematurely to end the effect.

That wouldn't resolve the issue though that you still wouldn't need the barrier in almost every scenario. Instead, I think there needs to be an additional benefit to applying barriers--perhaps that when Galvanize breaks, it generates Aetherflow for the SCH similarly to how Blackest Night works. Perhaps Catalyze provides 5 Fey Gauge per barrier broken. These would be the main ways to generate these resources (outside of the Aetherflow action). Personally, I'd also like to reevaluate the main purpose for each of these resources. I myself would like to see Aetherflow Repurposed for damage while OGCD healing becomes the emphasis for the Fey Gauge. Perhaps Indomitability stays an Aetherflow action, but because you'd have greater DPS options on Aetherflow, it becomes suboptimal, but an effective clutch button. Experienced SCHs will stay away most of the time, but avoids the issue of the job becoming too punishing for casual players. Otherwise, you need to rely on options like Fey Blessing for consistent OGCD healing.

I think some people may be underestimating the utility of shields even in their current incarnation. Shields can be useful (if not strictly necessary) even in situations where they do not prevent otherwise fatal damage. Shields allow you to "pre-heal" damage. With ordinary "pure" healing, you cannot heal damage until after it occurs. If you cast a pure heal on someone who is already at full HP, this achieves nothing. But shields let you heal damage before it occurs. Shield-healing can raise a player's effective HP above their maximum HP, but pure-healing cannot.

Pre-healing is useful in various scenarios. Perhaps the most obvious is pre-pull and during periods of downtime. At these times, you can apply shields for free, easing the burden of healing damage that will occur later when healing isn't free. Another scenario is when there are two successive heavy-hitting raidwides with little time to heal up in between. Again, you can ease the burden of healing between the raidwides by pre-healing some of the damage from the first. A final scenario is when raidwide damage occurs during mechanics that force the party to be widely spread out, making it difficult to heal everyone after the damage occurs. Shields enable you to heal some of this damage before it happens, while the party is still grouped together.

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Originally Posted by BungleBear

I think some people may be underestimating the utility of shields even in their current incarnation. Shields can be useful (if not strictly necessary) even in situations where they do not prevent otherwise fatal damage. Shields allow you to "pre-heal" damage. With ordinary "pure" healing, you cannot heal damage until after it occurs. If you cast a pure heal on someone who is already at full HP, this achieves nothing. But shields let you heal damage before it occurs. Shield-healing can raise a player's effective HP above their maximum HP, but pure-healing cannot.

Pre-healing is useful in various scenarios. Perhaps the most obvious is pre-pull and during periods of downtime. At these times, you can apply shields for free, easing the burden of healing damage that will occur later when healing isn't free. Another scenario is when there are two successive heavy-hitting raidwides with little time to heal up in between. Again, you can ease the burden of healing between the raidwides by pre-healing some of the damage from the first. A final scenario is when raidwide damage occurs during mechanics that force the party to be widely spread out, making it difficult to heal everyone after the damage occurs. Shields enable you to heal some of this damage before it happens, while the party is still grouped together.

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You are correct and I agree but uh after saying it a few times myself I let it be. I believe people know shields are good but most claim contents dont force em to be a most over regens. Though like you I really love shield heal over pure and shields sadly but true allows you to some what cheese mechs which tbh I like, if also just feels more engaging than regen healing and less stress. I hated regens for two reason. They dont tick enough and 15 secs is ugh. It also can be nice for mechs like twinning boss 2 where people have a nasty habit to clomp up on the spot you pick causing over stack and can usually be major or instant death damage if no shield. Another one is amarout those nasty dark sprites who do heal down debuff. pop a shield and if 0 damage no debuff lol. Last even some bosses knock backs can get block by shields like E3 levi

If we follow SE’s track record, shields have only served two functional purposes, debuff prevention, and one shot prevention. Of those, debuff prevention is infrequently utilized and rarely necessary, while the other is common but able to be supplanted by party mitigation. To me Shields need more potency just to keep up with HP creep and serve as functional replacements for two of those mitigation cool downs at any given point. I would only apply this change to GCD shields too, as I feel the stacking nature of our current cooldown-based shields requires them to be weaker (or given the Galvanize treatment) for game health in the long run. The potency ballpark I would put it in though is 600 for Adlo equivalents and 400 for Succor equivalents. Half that if it’s a cooldown. I would likely nerf Divine Benison a smidge, but given WHM’s sheer lack of options I think it’s actually balanced on their kit, though I do wish it would share a collective cooldown with Tetra to add some tension to its use.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

I feel like people sometime forget about how insanely powerful was spread critlo and why he doesn't exist anymore.

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Was it though? Sure, it could completely mitigate the need to heal the next mechanic...or you could entirely waste 6 GCDs and get absolutely nothing.
Even right now, in ShB, with the ridiculous amounts of crit rating we have, you can still end up spamming Adlo 6 or 8 times and not get a single crit out of it.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

To me Shields need more potency just to keep up with HP creep

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Wouldn't the easier solution be to just stop giving such a large increase in Vitality per ilvl, and thus reduce HP creep?

Or would that make Savage too accessible when its enrage timers are fairly lenient, as there'd be less of a gear impact?

I think it would be cool to have an emergency shield almost like a benediction on reaaaally long cd. That would be fun to use in clutch moments hehe

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Originally Posted by Aelin_Ashryver

I think it would be cool to have an emergency shield almost like a benediction on reaaaally long cd. That would be fun to use in clutch moments hehe

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If Benediction and invulns have taught us anything, it's that such wouldn't be saved for clutch moments as an "emergency" shield...

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Wouldn't the easier solution be to just stop giving such a large increase in Vitality per ilvl, and thus reduce HP creep?

Or would that make Savage too accessible when its enrage timers are fairly lenient, as there'd be less of a gear impact?

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They are lowering all gear stats from lv 50 onwards so the ilvl difference will not be so huge per expansion - this includes your HP bars.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Wouldn't the easier solution be to just stop giving such a large increase in Vitality per ilvl, and thus reduce HP creep?

Or would that make Savage too accessible when its enrage timers are fairly lenient, as there'd be less of a gear impact?

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I suspect retuning the HP on gear would make Stormblood and Shadowbringers Savage and Ultimates less accessible at minimum item level in the long run. Not ARR/HW where it wasn’t balanced around what we have now to begin with. Given the stat squish I’d agree this is more timely, but I think we’d both agree that shields require some amount of precision that makes tuning their potency directly the easier vector to act upon in general.

In contrast, I would expect that tweaking Piety to add healing potency would have that effect on healers as a whole. Simply because those optimizing for damage output wouldn’t make full use of the stat beyond minimum item level or world first situations, while it would enable casual or pug healers to raise the overall floor and ceiling of healing in all content they participate in if they choose to use a piety heavy set. It’s effect on older content compared to now in a manner akin to the effect Direct Hit had on replacing Accuracy. Though I would agree that likely matters less than Direct Hit on the whole. I also don’t think the developers would tune such a change to influence their savage fights that much. In Ultimates it might effect what they do going forward.

Wouldn't it be cool if Emergency Tactics turned all current Shields into a heal, even Divine Bension, Celestial Intersection? That would give SCH some synergy outside of just casting shields and letting it fall off.