Shield/Pure Healer Split Feedback

I haven't seen much discussion about this and since we've had a tier and an ultimate to try it out, I'm curious what people think about the split they did for healers into pure and shield healers, whether it was a positive or negative change.

It's exactly the nonsense dichotomy we said it was going to be. For one (with the exception of no AOE shields on WHM), "pure" healers have decently available shields, and "shield" healers have decently available throughput and regens. They're not on the GCD, but who cares? Damage is so bloody infrequent compared to how many tools exist and how fast the cooldowns are that the healers are barely "split" between the two types; they're all a grey porridge of both capabilities.

Secondly, healing requirements are so low that throughput is an unnecessary "strength". This has always been the case, but it's really blatant now that healing is easier than it's ever been. Mitigation availability is what gets you through difficult encounters, and since the lion's share of that is on the shield healers, Square's vision of "one pure, one shield" is laughable in practice. The two shield healers as a pair clown all over the regen healers in tough content.

Third, it did zilch to combat the balancing problem they've misdiagnosed since late Heavensward: healers with buffs are just straight out more powerful than ones without, and popularity has nothing to do with this.

Fourth, they could have seen all this coming if they had a dedicated and competent healer designer, so here we are again. This is the role state that never ends. It just goes on and on my friends.

You don't even use shields on shield healers unless it's downtime or a clutch situation, what a joke.

The fact square couldn’t realise on their own game design just how much more powerful the shield healers would be and AST is only meta because of its scaling buffs just shows they have no idea what they are doing with healing at all

The shield healers are just so much better than the regen healers for the purpose of how this game works and it shows, SCH is as overpowered as it’s always been, SGE blows WHM out of the water for all content except DSR damage because of lily pooling and both of them are equal to AST’s healing which we all collectively derided as overpowered in ShB

So there is functionally no reason to even take a regen healer, if AST was the shield healer and SGE the regen healer then regen healers would be completely and utterly useless

I thought the split only really mattered for parties assembled via "Raid Finder"?

Anyway, I still don't understand the "pure" vs. "shield" split. It's not how I (currently) think about the healing jobs:

- WHM: On demand restoration of HP.
- AST: Delayed restoration of HP.
- SCH: Swiss Army Knife - Perhaps the best answer to every healing problem, but some assembly and planning required.
- SGE: ???

Its dumb. All it does is make AST/WHM and SGE/SCH clones of one another.

Instead of pure/shield healer it should be:

SCH: Shield/mitigation healer with fairy for when things go to the seventh hell
SGE: Healer who heals by doing damage OR healer who takes its shields to heal allies (not sure if this one could work but interesting if it could)
WHM: On demand healer/burst healer; no HoTs delayed healing, shields etc
AST: HoT/delayed time healer OR bring back Nocturnal sect and make AST a stance dance healer where it can switch between regen/shields in combat

Make the 4 healers more distinct in how they heal instead of pretty much giving all four of them the same tools. ESPECIALLY sub-50.

IMHO it once again demonstrates that SE's job design team simply don't understand how Healer's actually pan out when played at a high level.

SE's distinction between the two types is pretty simple IMO. Regen healers can regen on the GCD with no cooldowns, shield healers can shield on the GCD with no cooldowns. Easy right?

The problem is of course that healers don't want to do that. It's a horrible way to play in 99% of the situations out there with DSR being about the only outlier because of the number of mitigation checks.

So for the rest of the game outside DSR, you end up with Benison being about the best single target shield (on a regen healer) and Soil being about the best regen (On a shield healer). Why? Because even in Savage, the incoming damage isn't enough to need more, and whilst yes soil does cost an energy drain, if you can save a GCD being spent on a heal with it (Which it is easily powerful enough to do) it's a significant gain.

It was obvious from the moment that SE announced this change that it was going to be stupid, and to the surprise of no one that's familiar with how healer's have been handled post 4.0, dumb it was.

The only reason why healing is a mess is because of a diffirent issue.

If healers are more difficult, it generaly means players will be less healed up, and die more often. These deaths will be blamed on the healer (instead of the player standing in the AoE). Simply because players are realy bad at looking back in time, and looking at others (only healers do this well as thats their job). If healers get blamed all the time, it hurts their popularity even more. And this is what they want to avoid, so they actualy are too easy and effective.

As a result, healers got excessive healing, and a lot of classes got self heals to again mitigate healer mistakes. It just oversimplified the role.

But on a side note, i have noticed in plenty of cases where teams were new to a dungeon, that as healer you are getting pushed quite a lot already (and its generaly also the most fun as a healer with it). And to me that actualy shows that the kits of the classes arent actualy too bad either. Its just that most of the time you are simply not demanded to use this kit and can just resolve towards abilities that preserve most dps.

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Originally Posted by UkcsAlias

The only reason why healing is a mess is because of a diffirent issue.

If healers are more difficult, it generaly means players will be less healed up, and die more often. These deaths will be blamed on the healer (instead of the player standing in the AoE). Simply because players are realy bad at looking back in time, and looking at others (only healers do this well as thats their job). If healers get blamed all the time, it hurts their popularity even more. And this is what they want to avoid, so they actualy are too easy and effective.

As a result, healers got excessive healing, and a lot of classes got self heals to again mitigate healer mistakes. It just oversimplified the role.

But on a side note, i have noticed in plenty of cases where teams were new to a dungeon, that as healer you are getting pushed quite a lot already (and its generaly also the most fun as a healer with it). And to me that actualy shows that the kits of the classes arent actualy too bad either. Its just that most of the time you are simply not demanded to use this kit and can just resolve towards abilities that preserve most dps.

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I mean “kinda use most of your kit in the small time everything is falling apart” isn’t really justification for it existing 90% of the time, like what is the justification for abilities like neutral to exist

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Originally Posted by UkcsAlias

If healers are more difficult, it generaly means players will be less healed up, and die more often.

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If healers were more engaging, perhaps people would be more inclined to actually pay attention to their screen? I can’t stomach running casual end game stuff without something to read or watch on the second screen because it’s just that boring.

It ended up the exact nonsense that was predicted. Mitigation is king and bosses don't need that much healing, making the extra raw heal power of a "Pure" healer mostly irrelevant. So in reality the divide looks like this.

Healer with nothing else.
Healer with mitigation and shields.

Easy choice.
AST and WHM hang in there mainly because 99% of content is just irrelevant and any healer works fine. AST also brings mitigation and CU/Neutral are extremely good, not to mention Macro and Star are just OP to the point of carrying mechanics. But it's not good because you need a Pure Healer. It's good because it's OP and has enough barrier for endgame.
WHM is just WHM. They should just make it a limited job at this point for Normal mode content.

As predicted too, SGE/SCH is a ridiculously good comp in the hands of a decent team. It would easily be top if AST wasn't OP.

The only thing the shield/barrier split has done is discouraged AST/WHM comps in the harder content. That's literally it.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

It ended up the exact nonsense that was predicted. Mitigation is king and bosses don't need that much healing, making the extra raw heal power of a "Pure" healer mostly irrelevant. So in reality the divide looks like this.

Healer with nothing else.
Healer with mitigation and shields.

Easy choice.
AST and WHM hang in there mainly because 99% of content is just irrelevant and any healer works fine. AST also brings mitigation and CU/Neutral are extremely good, not to mention Macro and Star are just OP to the point of carrying mechanics. But it's not good because you need a Pure Healer. It's good because it's OP and has enough barrier for endgame.
WHM is just WHM. They should just make it a limited job at this point for Normal mode content.

As predicted too, SGE/SCH is a ridiculously good comp in the hands of a decent team. It would easily be top if AST wasn't OP.

The only thing the shield/barrier split has done is discouraged AST/WHM comps in the harder content. That's literally it.

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You could pretty much extend that last line to all it does is discourage WHM comps in general because the shield healers are just so much better and AST holds on by virtue of its raw power. WHM just has absolutely no niche, and in true FF14 style it continues to be the most played healer despite bringing absolutely nothing to the table

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Originally Posted by UkcsAlias

The only reason why healing is a mess is because of a diffirent issue.

If healers are more difficult, it generaly means players will be less healed up, and die more often. These deaths will be blamed on the healer (instead of the player standing in the AoE). Simply because players are realy bad at looking back in time, and looking at others (only healers do this well as thats their job). If healers get blamed all the time, it hurts their popularity even more. And this is what they want to avoid, so they actualy are too easy and effective.

As a result, healers got excessive healing, and a lot of classes got self heals to again mitigate healer mistakes. It just oversimplified the role.

But on a side note, i have noticed in plenty of cases where teams were new to a dungeon, that as healer you are getting pushed quite a lot already (and its generaly also the most fun as a healer with it). And to me that actualy shows that the kits of the classes arent actualy too bad either. Its just that most of the time you are simply not demanded to use this kit and can just resolve towards abilities that preserve most dps.

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The issue is that "when people are new to a dungeon" wears off quite quickly. Yes, you will get people that will run a dungeon for the first time for an extended period. However- once people learn the mechanics and/or outgear that dungeon, what you're describing. That's very poor design.

In addition, regarding your comment on increasing healing difficulty and other players blaming healers? Healing jobs have been simplified. The issue of people blaming healers for something hasn't gone away and likely never will. Sometimes it is justified - as healers make mistakes, or of course- maybe just not be a good team player just like any other person in any job- but sometimes people are just picking the most obvious target. All of this, after, as you say, trying to respond to either a healer shortage problems or a perceived issue that some healers were not healing. Too bad SE being a small indie company cannot afford a healer designer.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

The issue is that "when people are new to a dungeon" wears off quite quickly. Yes, you will get people that will run a dungeon for the first time for an extended period. However- once people learn the mechanics and/or outgear that dungeon, what you're describing. That's very poor design.

In addition, regarding your comment on increasing healing difficulty and other players blaming healers? Healing jobs have been simplified. The issue of people blaming healers for something hasn't gone away and likely never will. Sometimes it is justified - as healers make mistakes, or of course- maybe just not be a good team player just like any other person in any job- but sometimes people are just picking the most obvious target. All of this, after, as you say, trying to respond to either a healer shortage problems or a perceived issue that some healers were not healing. Too bad SE being a small indie company cannot afford a healer designer.

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Pls understand as a small indie developer we can only afford 4 job designer devs, BLM gets two all too itself, PLD and the melee DPS share 1, everyone else gets the last one even though he is a RPR main and the unpaid intern gets the healers

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Pls understand as a small indie developer we can only afford 4 job designer devs, BLM gets two all too itself, PLD and the melee DPS share 1, everyone else gets the last one even though he is a RPR main and the unpaid intern gets the healers

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BLM gets not just two designers, but one of those is the director himself, meaning all things must be done to ensure that jobs success and his satisfaction. It is no coincidence that BLM got changes the moment it fell behind in PVP and remains the most well designed job in the game.

I think it's just as flawed a balancing mentality as designating tank jobs as meant to be main tanks or off-tanks, and they eventually realized that was dumb themselves so I hope they realize it's dumb for healers too, sooner rather than later. They need to make any combination of healers compatible with each other, double barrier healers continues to not make a whole lot of sense, 7 years later. Instead of AST and SCH it's now SGE and SCH, and SGE is sort of like a reverse of AST in that it can be either/or, depending on if they use Eukrasia or not. I think all the healers should work like that, in a way. I was always bummed that AST couldn't change sects mid-battle as needed. SCH could have more consistently available Emergency Tactics as a sort of reverse Eukrasia. I think a Shadowbringers-style tank rework is warranted, but the problem is healers are so boringly homogenized already that I'd hate for them to make that even more pronounced, so if they could find a way to do that while also reintroducing challenge and depth/distinct gameplay again that'd be great

I think they need to drop pure/barrier dichotomy.

It’s stifling.

I honestly want SGE to be reworked and fulfill what it’s supposed to be as THE DPS healer. And take away its GCD shield.

It’s horrible design that SCH has the better shields, but the SGE’s weaker shields get priority or even downright block SCH shields. Pepsis and Adder’s Sting need to be tossed into a garbage can, set on fire, and thrown off a cliff.

And I’m mostly saying that as a selfish player who’s getting tired of explaining how shields work to lvl 90 SGE players who have 0 other healers leveled and spam Eukrasia Prognosis continuously every 5 sec.

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Originally Posted by ToodlesElNoodles

I think they need to drop pure/barrier dichotomy.

It’s stifling.

I honestly want SGE to be reworked and fulfill what it’s supposed to be as THE DPS healer. And take away its GCD shield.

It’s horrible design that SCH has the better shields, but the SGE’s weaker shields get priority or even downright block SCH shields. Pepsis and Adder’s Sting need to be tossed into a garbage can, set on fire, and thrown off a cliff.

And I’m mostly saying that as a selfish player who’s getting tired of explaining how shields work to lvl 90 SGE players who have 0 other healers leveled and spam Eukrasia Prognosis continuously every 5 sec.

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Agreed, also it's ridiculous how they 'solved' the Nocturnal AST/SCH barrier problem by giving the problem to Sage.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

I thought the split only really mattered for parties assembled via "Raid Finder"?

Anyway, I still don't understand the "pure" vs. "shield" split. It's not how I (currently) think about the healing jobs:

- WHM: On demand restoration of HP.
- AST: Delayed restoration of HP.
- SCH: Swiss Army Knife - Perhaps the best answer to every healing problem, but some assembly and planning required.
- SGE: ???

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Sage should have been the dps oriented healer as promised.

It's...an _interesting IDEA_. When properly executed and in a game that actually leans int/allows it.

Yes, those are caveats that mean, yes, it didn't work for FFXIV.

Having dichotomies like "main tank/off tank" work in games with more complex (e.g. less scripted) battle systems and more varied gameplay styles. For example, consider WoW circa Wrath of the Lich King. At that time, there was a dual tank healer (Holy Paladin) that had only a few single target healing spells (and no AOE to speak of), but they were hyper efficient and very powerful, meaning in a large (25 person) raid with 4-6 healers, bringing one was a no-brainer. Restoration Druid worked as a heal over time focused healer whose main job was to keep several HoTs on the tanks to smooth their recovery and "roll HoTs" across the raid group to ensure stable health values (no one getting and staying too low, recovery to max health over prolonged time periods of no damage). Restoration Shaman maintained buffs and assisted with party mana restoration (so did Druid in a pinch with Enervation, I think it was, and Paladins could help with Judgement of Wisdom on the boss that would proc MP gain for raid members striking the boss), and was good at AOE healing party members with the affectionately named "banana beam" (Chain Heal) among others. And Priest had two healing specs, Holy which was kind of the jack of all trades of healers, and Discipline, which for the first time was actually somewhat useful (it was mainly just used for leveling in Vanilla and BC) as a shield tank to smooth damage and a passable tank healer if you couldn't find a Paladin despite them being everywhere. It fully came into its role through Cataclysm and into Mists of Pandaria, the following expansions.

Now, I say this not to praise WoW or condemn FFXIV, but more to point out that a game that ALLOWS AND EMBRACES NICHES can work if the game plays into that AND the encounters support it.

FFXIV does neither.

The longer GCD filled with oGCDs completely alters the dynamic, and the scripted fight damage and low tank auto-attack damage collectively mean you don't need things like tank healers or party healers. All healers in FFXIV, even the powerful barrier healers, have effective and potent HoTs. They aren't spamable, but they don't need to be as there's no case in FFXIV where a Resto Druid-like "rolling" of a single target instant cast HoT (Rejuvination, which was basically Regen) is ever needed or useful to a party. While WHM _could_ do that...they could just cast a Rapture, Assize, or Medica 2 and call it a day in most cases.

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There's too much overlap (all barrier healers have regens, AST has barriers, WHM is the only odd one out), the fight design doesn't really allow that flexibility (barriers can't be MANDATORY or WHM can't heal an encounter, Cure 3 can't be mandatory or SGE can't heal an encounter, etc), and with fight damage that can be easily covered with oGCD healing in most cases anyway, regardless of if there's a barrier or HoT attached or not.

Every healer but WHM is an effective barrier healer. That includes AST. Every healer is an effective HoT healer. Every healer is an effective AOE healer. Every healer is an effective single target healer (in the few cases that's called for). Every healer has effective throughput/on-demand healing. Every healer has effective MP regen for their mainly used healing tools.

So you don't need an efficient single target Holy Paladin or a Hot Rolling Druid, an AOE specialized Shaman or a damage smoothing Discipline Priest, and a generalist Holy Priest doesn't come into play because ALL of our healers are basically generalist Holy Priests. It helps when the raid size is 25 as you're EXPECTED to have roughly one of each healer in your 4-6 person strong healing team.

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So it's a nice idea. I see what they were going for.

But the healer design (everyone has all the tools anyway), encounter design (scripted fights with rigid damage in predictable patters that can all be handled with oGCDs), and rigid class design (because every Job in FFXIV does every thing, there's no niche expression to speak of, and where there is, like SCH having extremely powerful shields, they aren't used in encounters because the other healers would then be unable to clear content)

As such, the idea failed.

FFXIV's combat system is just too rigid right now for specializations to work.

[Ironically, the main-tank/off-tank thing CAN work because raid groups CAN optimize to have one tank that just eats damage and the other that deals more and this be moderately effective. While gearing allows that to shift to just using 2x off-tanks for the greater damage leveraging their support skills to keep each other alive, at least during prog that dynamic actually IS useful, whereas the Pure/Barrier split never really is because the Barrier healers can match the Pure healers in throughput when using CDs, and the times you have those heal checks are both infrequent and scripted, meaning it's easy to have those CDs ready. This is why SCH/SGE actually is effective despite both having, on paper, less throughput. Because they have it when they NEED it, and that's all that matters. And as others have said, AST is only useful because of the party buffs and that it has a lot of mitigation for a Pure healer as well. WHM is only there because it's still easy and that matters to a lot of people, but it does less party damage contribution and has weaker mitigation meaning it's harder in prog AND farm. Somehow. <_< ]

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Originally Posted by Renathras

FFXIV's combat system is just too rigid right now for specializations to work.

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If you want proof positive of this, look no further than Tanks.

Last expansion the Devs said their "vision" was for there to be two Main Tanks, and two Off Tanks (more support oriented). Look how quickly that dissolved into meaningless tripe.

From the Mr. Happy Interview 3 years ago:

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Mr.Happy) Mostly because we really expected it to be both a tank and a healer for the expansion.

Yoshi-P) Simply we only had two ranged physical DPS so we wanted to add another. We have 4 tanks and 4 melee dps, 3 casters and 3 healers, and yet there were only 2 ranged dps. We wanted to balance the number of jobs across the board.

We also really wanted to add another tank to balance the tanks more. With 4 tanks, we can better balance the tank role, with two main tanks and two off-tanks.

When players decide which role or job to play. Even a small difference in abilities and attribute make a big difference. People like to take Paladin as an off-tank thanks to abilities like Cover, so the Warrior and Dark Knight are fighting for the main-tank spot most commonly.

So hypothetically speaking, if we rebalance things and put Warrior as MT, then the Paladin and Dark Knight would be fighting for off-tank. No matter what we really needed to balance this with two and two. Its much more fair this way, so its two jobs between main tank and two between off-tank. This is very tentative so please convey this is no indication at all of our final plans.

When looking at this history of healing jobs. Making strong balance between three jobs it has been tough. With three its been tough, so with a 4th the balance might get even worse. Instead of doing this, we want to prioritize balancing them better this expansion so we didn’t want to add a new healer at 4.0 or 5.0. We really think we need to restructure the way healers are handled. We can’t keep this strict division between pure healer and barrier healer. Something needs to change here so we can maintain good balance. Thats the main reason we didn’t have a healer. First priority was to add a 3rd ranged, then a 4th tank while we balance the healers better.

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They gave up on the MT / OT system and doubled down on the Barrier / Regen healer systems. . .

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

Sage should have been the dps oriented healer as promised.

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SGE was never going to be the DPS healer because square refuses to leave the “I spam diagnosis and nothing else” people behind

These people would get eaten alive on disc priest which is why “DPS healer” basically became “I can force eos to target only the tank”

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

They gave up on the MT / OT system and doubled down on the Barrier / Regen healer systems. . .

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I feel like we need that Palpatine "Ironic..." meme here.

I had forgotten Yoshi P basically said NOT to do what they ended up doing in EW. XD

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I feel like we need that Palpatine "Ironic..." meme here.

I had forgotten Yoshi P basically said NOT to do what they ended up doing in EW. XD

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When people point out that Yoshi has no idea what his people under him are doing, stuff like that is a prime example. And it's not like it's rare, it has happened more than once.

I can't speak for Savage or Ultimate, and was actually hoping that shields would have some kind of relevance in that content, but it would seem there are very niche situations where they are actually useful, and even fewer where a regen is not preferred.

The really disappointing aspect about shields is that the shield skills that I find the most useful are on WHM and AST. The friggin pure healers. It's because they have oGCD shields that can give a little bit of breathing room before needing a full heal.

The healers are homogenized. There is no pure healer/shield healer split. If they want to truly do that, they'd have to take regens away from the shield healers, and shields away from the pure healers. Probably not the best idea to do that at this point.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

I can't speak for Savage or Ultimate, and was actually hoping that shields would have some kind of relevance in that content, but it would seem there are very niche situations where they are actually useful, and even fewer where a regen is not preferred.

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I agree with your overall position (especially the last paragraph), but I wanted to correct something here:

It's not so much the SHIELDS that are useful (though they can be in Extremes and Savages, especially extremes where someone can mess up but you can clutch save them and still beat enrage reliably; I can't speak to Ultimates because I haven't done those), it's the MITIGATION that's useful. Things like Sacred Soil are far more useful than things like Succor. Special mention goes to Deployment Tactics Crit-Adlos with Seraph Consolation, but that's the exception that proves the rule. Crit Spreadlo is a meme/notable BECAUSE of how powerful it is.

But the real benefit is the mitigation. Which is also why WHM is in the dust. AST has party buffs and some mitigation. SGE has no buffs but lots of mitigation. SCH has a buff AND lots of mitigation. So it's no surprise why AST/SCH and/or SGE/SCH are the go-to "meta" picks right now, with AST/SGE having honorable mention.

WHM has Temperance and no other form of actual mitigation (Benison is nice, but you only have 2 of them at a time, with Aquaveil floating around, leaving 5 party members with no protection), and it has no party buff to make up for lacking out on the mitigation front.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I agree with your overall position (especially the last paragraph), but I wanted to correct something here:

It's not so much the SHIELDS that are useful (though they can be in Extremes and Savages, especially extremes where someone can mess up but you can clutch save them and still beat enrage reliably; I can't speak to Ultimates because I haven't done those), it's the MITIGATION that's useful. Things like Sacred Soil are far more useful than things like Succor. Special mention goes to Deployment Tactics Crit-Adlos with Seraph Consolation, but that's the exception that proves the rule. Crit Spreadlo is a meme/notable BECAUSE of how powerful it is.

But the real benefit is the mitigation. Which is also why WHM is in the dust. AST has party buffs and some mitigation. SGE has no buffs but lots of mitigation. SCH has a buff AND lots of mitigation. So it's no surprise why AST/SCH and/or SGE/SCH are the go-to "meta" picks right now, with AST/SGE having honorable mention.

WHM has Temperance and no other form of actual mitigation (Benison is nice, but you only have 2 of them at a time, with Aquaveil floating around, leaving 5 party members with no protection), and it has no party buff to make up for lacking out on the mitigation front.

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Recently I had to unleash some praying mantis kung-fu when I mentioned that WHM isn't in a bad place among the other healers despite their lack of mitigation ability. It's almost like players want this job to be in a bad place, and in perpetual misery. Mitigation has been the chief go-to argument in this regard.

Mitigation comes in two forms, and two methods of application from my observation. The first are barriers that are actually capable of extending the max HP of the target. These have their own HP and 'break' once this amount is depleted. Examples would be SCH Adlo, or AST Celestial Intersect. The second is straight damage reduction. This kind of mitigation remains active so long as the duration timer is not at zero. Examples would be SCH Sacred Soil, or WHM Temperance. Application comes via the GCD or oGCDs, which is also important when it comes to evaluating their effectiveness. While barrier type mitigation can be applied by both methods, straight damage reduction only come via oGCD.

When it comes to mitigation, in order for it to be effective utility, it needs to somehow translate to faster death to the opposition. It isn't death prevention. I strongly dislike this fact, but it is a fact nonetheless. If the ability is an oGCD, then there is no discussion to be had when it comes to their effectiveness, and there is nothing to compare the ability to. It is free mitigation every XX seconds, so there is no point to not use these skills. The true battle takes place with GCD mitigation, and whether to use them vs a straight heal via GCD (assuming you are exhausted of oGCD heals), or if you should be using it for damage.

In the case of a GCD shield vs a GCD heal, they both essentially do the same thing, and they provide HP to the target to prevent them from getting KO'd from an incoming attack. All that matters in this scenario is that the target has enough HP to survive the upcoming attack, making the shield completely irrelevant. We have to start to look at MP economy in order to make comparisons at this point.

In the case of GCD shield vs damage, the latter wins every time so long as the GCD being used for damage does not translate to a player dying because you did not heal them. In this case, it reverts back to GCD shield vs GCD heal.

What all this means is GCD mitigation serves no purpose in FFXIV, and the cases where it would actually beat out a GCD heal that does the same thing, or straight damage are so few and far between that it warrants being looked at by the dev team. Especially if they truly want to have a barrier/pure healer dichotomy. Right now, this line is so blurred it may as well not even be there. The good news about that is it leaves WHM in a much better place than some players will give it credit for.

Healing in FFXIV = (Enough HP to survive attack + 1)

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Originally Posted by Gemina

When it comes to mitigation, in order for it to be effective utility, it needs to somehow translate to faster death to the opposition. It isn't death prevention. I strongly dislike this fact, but it is a fact nonetheless. If the ability is an oGCD, then there is no discussion to be had when it comes to their effectiveness, and there is nothing to compare the ability to. It is free mitigation every XX seconds, so there is no point to not use these skills. The true battle takes place with GCD mitigation, and whether to use them vs a straight heal via GCD (assuming you are exhausted of oGCD heals), or if you should be using it for damage.

In the case of a GCD shield vs a GCD heal, they both essentially do the same thing, and they provide HP to the target to prevent them from getting KO'd from an incoming attack. All that matters in this scenario is that the target has enough HP to survive the upcoming attack, making the shield completely irrelevant. We have to start to look at MP economy in order to make comparisons at this point.

In the case of GCD shield vs damage, the latter wins every time so long as the GCD being used for damage does not translate to a player dying because you did not heal them. In this case, it reverts back to GCD shield vs GCD heal.

What all this means is GCD mitigation serves no purpose in FFXIV, and the cases where it would actually beat out a GCD heal that does the same thing, or straight damage are so few and far between that it warrants being looked at by the dev team. Especially if they truly want to have a barrier/pure healer dichotomy. Right now, this line is so blurred it may as well not even be there. The good news about that is it leaves WHM in a much better place than some players will give it credit for.

Healing in FFXIV = (Enough HP to survive attack + 1)

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I mean even if you ignore GCD shields in two minutes SGE has 5 instances of 10% group wide mitigation (of which you can stack 2 of these 5), SCH has 5 10% and 1 5% of which 2 of the 10% and the 5% can all be stacked, AST has 2 10% and WHM has 1 10%

So even coming from the perspective of “only free mitigation is useful” (and this is ignoring things like how spreadlo is free under dissipation because the energy drain refunds the cost of 1 broil) then WHM is still left far behind the shield healers and behind AST’s much more functional and flexible 2 times (to say nothing of AST’s shields), in comparison WHM offers nothing of benefit

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

I mean even if you ignore GCD shields in two minutes SGE has 5 instances of 10% group wide mitigation (of which you can stack 2 of these 5), SCH has 5 10% and 1 5% of which 2 of the 10% and the 5% can all be stacked, AST has 2 10% and WHM has 1 10%

So even coming from the perspective of “only free mitigation is useful” (and this is ignoring things like how spreadlo is free under dissipation because the energy drain refunds the cost of 1 broil) then WHM is still left far behind the shield healers and behind AST’s much more functional and flexible 2 times (to say nothing of AST’s shields), in comparison WHM offers nothing of benefit

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Spreadlo still costs the initial GCD. It is never free. You will now have to compare spreadlo to damage if optimizing your own kit, or vs WHM you would have to compare it simply to each healer's ability to keep the party alive, and that boils down to making sure the party has enough HP to survive an incoming attack. When you look at things through this lens, you then can see where WHM at worst is dead even with the other healers due to their ability to quickly restore health to the party.

Stacked mitigation also means nothing. Even 100% mitigation means next to nothing if the incoming attack doesn't wipe out the HP bars. If GCD mitigation, and mitigation in general was as useful as you're making it out to be, then yes, WHM would be left behind the other healers. This isn't the case though. In addition because WHM is straight forward with an entirely passive job gauge, along with its raw healing power; it is very easy for a new player to pick this job and be just as effective as a seasoned SCH, SGE, or AST. I know you strongly dislike WHM. The game doesn't though, as much as you would like to believe that.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Spreadlo still costs the initial GCD. It is never free. You will now have to compare spreadlo to damage if optimizing your own kit, or vs WHM you would have to compare it simply to each healer's ability to keep the party alive, and that boils down to making sure the party has enough HP to survive an incoming attack. When you look at things through this lens, you then can see where WHM at worst is dead even with the other healers due to their ability to quickly restore health to the party.

Stacked mitigation also means nothing. Even 100% mitigation means next to nothing if the incoming attack doesn't wipe out the HP bars. If GCD mitigation, and mitigation in general was as useful as you're making it out to be, then yes, WHM would be left behind the other healers. This isn't the case though. In addition because WHM is straight forward with an entirely passive job gauge, along with its raw healing power; it is very easy for a new player to pick this job and be just as effective as a seasoned SCH, SGE, or AST. I know you strongly dislike WHM. The game doesn't though, as much as you would like to believe that.

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Honest question, do you play any savage or ultimate, literally every single raidwide will one shot you without at least one mitigation, third and fourth floor generally need at least 2, ultimate can need up to 4, and this is just the raidwides, mechanics need mitigation as well, P4S for example has around 30 instances of one shot damage in a 14 minute fight, temperance ain’t coveting that mitigation is king over strong healing, getting one shot by a mechanic makes your healing throughput completely useless and that’s where WHM struggles.

Free mitigation is just so much more useful than anything WHM can offer because again getting one shot by a mechanic invalidates all other healing

And on the subject of spreadlo like I said under dissipation it’s free because you get three aetherflow that refund you the damage lost by one broil

It's a bit of a classic case of WHM being made for a game that doesn't exist.... Yet again =(

WHM has really solid oGCD mitigation tools to aid tanks. Benison and Aquaveil are really solid at that.

Of course, this is at a point where tank healing at the end game is about as relevant as it is in Sastasha :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Honest question, do you play any savage or ultimate, literally every single raidwide will one shot you without at least one mitigation, third and fourth floor generally need at least 2, ultimate can need up to 4, and this is just the raidwides, mechanics need mitigation as well, P4S for example has around 30 instances of one shot damage in a 14 minute fight, temperance ain’t coveting that mitigation is king over strong healing, getting one shot by a mechanic makes your healing throughput completely useless and that’s where WHM struggles.

Free mitigation is just so much more useful than anything WHM can offer because again getting one shot by a mechanic invalidates all other healing

And on the subject of spreadlo like I said under dissipation it’s free because you get three aetherflow that refund you the damage lost by one broil

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In order for this argument to be valid, a composition consisting of at least one WHM would have to be incapable of clearing the content. Whether or not I have participated in savage or ultimate has no bearing on the matter whatsoever. That is not what is being called into question here. The relevant matter is WHM's effectiveness in all content in FFXIV. You can talk about all the raid wides until your blue in the face, and the fact will remain that if a composition consisting of at least one WHM can take care of it, then their need for mitigation is zero.

WHM has free mitigation BTW. Both AoE and single target. So again I ask what is your point?

Spreadlo just shows your inability to accept fact. It is NEVER free. It will ALWAYS cost you one GCD, a GCD that can and VERY likely should be used towards damage. As a SCH main, even I hate to admit that spreadlo is near worthless. A truly antiquated, relic of a skill that has somehow survived since ARR. Really cool animation and sound effect though. I will give it that.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

In order for this argument to be valid, a composition consisting of at least one WHM would have to be incapable of clearing the content. Whether or not I have participated in savage or ultimate has no bearing on the matter whatsoever. That is not what is being called into question here. The relevant matter is WHM's effectiveness in all content in FFXIV. You can talk about all the raid wides until your blue in the face, and the fact will remain that if a composition consisting of at least one WHM can take care of it, then their need for mitigation is zero.

WHM has free mitigation BTW. Both AoE and single target. So again I ask what is your point?

Spreadlo just shows your inability to accept fact. It is NEVER free. It will ALWAYS cost you one GCD, a GCD that can and VERY likely should be used towards damage. As a SCH main, even I hate to admit that spreadlo is near worthless. A truly antiquated, relic of a skill that has somehow survived since ARR. Really cool animation and sound effect though. I will give it that.

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WHM can clear the content, you know why, because the other healer is carrying the mitigation, saying the class is fine because it’s being carried by the other healer is not a valid statement, double WHM cannot clear week 1 because it doesn’t have enough mitigation, this shows it lacking in mitigation, okay you might say AST is also lacking in mitigation, but AST brings something to the table to cover for that weakness, WHM does not

And seriously if you are a SCH and don’t see a value in spreadlo then I have no idea what game you are playing because it certainly isn’t FFXIV where spreadlo is in contention for the single most overpowered ability in the game across any of the 19 classes

Gemina is right: Adlo is never free outside prepull/ transitions.
Even if you use Dissipation, the stacks could have been used on ED and as such, you're still paying opportunity costs for it. Because Dissipation doesn't only become available after a Spreadlo, it's always an option to use for additional 300 potency or additional AF heals if you'd have to dip into GCD heals otherwise - not just after a Spreadlo.

I disagree though that Spreadlo is near worthless or a relic of the past.
It's the strongest shield in the game that rarely gets used. The reason for this isn't that it's weak, the reason is that it becomes easier with time to get by without it (gear, experience, better coordination) but Spreadlo itself is very strong and if a boss has transitions like p2s or p3s that give you time to quickly prepare one, it's a lot of free shielding that has the unique advantage of being able to get buffed by single target heal buffs and healing magic increases like Dissipation and Fey Illumination.

• Protraction: 594 potency
• Protraction, Krasis: 712 potency
• Protraction, Krasis, Dissipation: 855 potency

If you have a BRD you can even cross the 1k threshhold without wasting any raidwide heal increases specifically for it like Asylum, Mantra or FE. These are all single target heal buffs that would otherwise get ignored/ go to waste.
And it is something you can prepare up to 30s in advance, making it much stronger during transitions compared to direct heals and even regens.

It's also still strong for cheesing mechanics like tank lb3 strat for Curtain Call. I recommend looking it up on YT if you have never seen it, it's hilarious to watch.
Just the properly buffed Spreadlo takes care of 850-1000 (or more if you push it) potency worth of damage taken which easily soaks several of the explosions going off with 80% mitigation from tank lb3 alone. Can other healer comps do this as well? Yes. But having a SCH in your team makes it a lot safer and less prone to errors from slightly mistimed mitigation or explosions.
Or the heal buff you get after FoF. Spreadlo is still a dps loss but the buffed shield alone can take care of both aoes and several tank autos, giving both healers time to recover resources after FoF to have big cooldowns for Life's Agonies up again if they didn't bring an Macrocosmos cheese AST.

None of that matters once you get a bit of gear though so yes, Spreadlo quickly loses value. It's unfortunately the lowest skill on the priority list outside transitions and the first to get ditched; I wish it wasn't because I like the unique advantage it has but you're not going to Spreadlo if a Recit + Indom does the trick.
Followed by SS which was the strongest heal that got ditched first before EW because of its AF cost.

And that WHM can clear content is also a poor metric to measure the worth of the class and one SE unfortunately seems to use to repeatedly tell us directly and indirectly that WHM is fine.
In reality it simply brings nothing special to the table that is an actual gain and other healers can't do equally well or better.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

As a SCH main, even I hate to admit that spreadlo is near worthless. A truly antiquated, relic of a skill that has somehow survived since ARR. Really cool animation and sound effect though. I will give it that.

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Not to be rude but whatever you're on, I'd like some.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

And seriously if you are a SCH and don’t see a value in spreadlo then I have no idea what game you are playing because it certainly isn’t FFXIV where spreadlo is in contention for the single most overpowered ability in the game across any of the 19 classes

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I wouldn't call it worthless, but it's not the most overpowered ability when it's suboptimal to use in all content bar ultimate. In fact the only real time you can use it in current savage is the couple of GCDs you get for free before the adds phase on P3S. Gemina is correct in that it's not free, and outside of ultimate it's a waste when abilities like Expedient and Consolation mitigate any raidwide efficiently.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Recently I had to unleash some praying mantis kung-fu when I mentioned that WHM isn't in a bad place among the other healers despite their lack of mitigation ability. It's almost like players want this job to be in a bad place, and in perpetual misery. Mitigation has been the chief go-to argument in this regard.

Mitigation comes in two forms, and two methods of application from my observation. The first are barriers that are actually capable of extending the max HP of the target. These have their own HP and 'break' once this amount is depleted. Examples would be SCH Adlo, or AST Celestial Intersect. The second is straight damage reduction. This kind of mitigation remains active so long as the duration timer is not at zero. Examples would be SCH Sacred Soil, or WHM Temperance. Application comes via the GCD or oGCDs, which is also important when it comes to evaluating their effectiveness. While barrier type mitigation can be applied by both methods, straight damage reduction only come via oGCD.

When it comes to mitigation, in order for it to be effective utility, it needs to somehow translate to faster death to the opposition. It isn't death prevention. I strongly dislike this fact, but it is a fact nonetheless. If the ability is an oGCD, then there is no discussion to be had when it comes to their effectiveness, and there is nothing to compare the ability to. It is free mitigation every XX seconds, so there is no point to not use these skills. The true battle takes place with GCD mitigation, and whether to use them vs a straight heal via GCD (assuming you are exhausted of oGCD heals), or if you should be using it for damage.

In the case of a GCD shield vs a GCD heal, they both essentially do the same thing, and they provide HP to the target to prevent them from getting KO'd from an incoming attack. All that matters in this scenario is that the target has enough HP to survive the upcoming attack, making the shield completely irrelevant. We have to start to look at MP economy in order to make comparisons at this point.

In the case of GCD shield vs damage, the latter wins every time so long as the GCD being used for damage does not translate to a player dying because you did not heal them. In this case, it reverts back to GCD shield vs GCD heal.

What all this means is GCD mitigation serves no purpose in FFXIV, and the cases where it would actually beat out a GCD heal that does the same thing, or straight damage are so few and far between that it warrants being looked at by the dev team. Especially if they truly want to have a barrier/pure healer dichotomy. Right now, this line is so blurred it may as well not even be there. The good news about that is it leaves WHM in a much better place than some players will give it credit for.

Healing in FFXIV = (Enough HP to survive attack + 1)

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Had a discussion on reddit with someone who basically took that line of argument. Claimed that I "didn't know how to play a shield healer properly". To which I replied:

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AoE shield is less than 10% of your hp bar at most gear levels, even less than that for a tank. If that is the difference between life and death in your group, they need to learn what reprisal / feint-addle / troubadour / sacred soil (etc) are.

If you're a SCH and you need an aoe shield, you're going to deploy a Critlo or at a base level, an Adlo or just not shield and fey blessing / Indom the damage.

But please, tell me how I don't know how to shield /s

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I get the impression that Yoshi sees the healers like this:

WHM/SGE: Entry-level Pure/Shield healers
AST/SCH: More challenging Pure/Shield healers

I don't like this as a design philosophy, but it just feels like they are pushing it, and obviously the healer community wants more nuance to all these jobs regardless of player skill. They are going to leave WHM bare-bones, SGE = watered down SCH, AST is our convoluted WHM with a bit more potential for speed kills, and SCH = the actual shield healer. But the effective gameplay style remains the same 2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 (or just 3-3-3-3-3-3 in AoE situations).

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Originally Posted by Gemina

In order for this argument to be valid, a composition consisting of at least one WHM would have to be incapable of clearing the content. Whether or not I have participated in savage or ultimate has no bearing on the matter whatsoever. That is not what is being called into question here. The relevant matter is WHM's effectiveness in all content in FFXIV. You can talk about all the raid wides until your blue in the face, and the fact will remain that if a composition consisting of at least one WHM can take care of it, then their need for mitigation is zero.

WHM has free mitigation BTW. Both AoE and single target. So again I ask what is your point?

Spreadlo just shows your inability to accept fact. It is NEVER free. It will ALWAYS cost you one GCD, a GCD that can and VERY likely should be used towards damage. As a SCH main, even I hate to admit that spreadlo is near worthless. A truly antiquated, relic of a skill that has somehow survived since ARR. Really cool animation and sound effect though. I will give it that.

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The point is a spreadlo with a decent number of situations can save you around 1 or 2 gcd heals in multi hit situations when used in combination with % mitigation (1-2 gcd for both healer) . For example dsr p7 gigaflare or akh morn tower. The gain outweighs a decent number of times the cost.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

In order for this argument to be valid, a composition consisting of at least one WHM would have to be incapable of clearing the content. Whether or not I have participated in savage or ultimate has no bearing on the matter whatsoever. That is not what is being called into question here. The relevant matter is WHM's effectiveness in all content in FFXIV. You can talk about all the raid wides until your blue in the face, and the fact will remain that if a composition consisting of at least one WHM can take care of it, then their need for mitigation is zero.

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"WHM has zero unique capabilities, worse free healing, and its personal damage is never enough to make up for this, and it ends up falling into last place as far as high end desirability on a constant basis because of this" != "WHM is incapable of clearing content".

I swear it's like Scholar mains *want* their job to be worst in role or something, because they constantly dismiss actual balancing problems with WHM in favor of complaining that the strongest shield in the game "feeeels weak" because it costs a GCD, despite nearly every single raid tier's data showing SCH consistently as one of the most powerful healers in the game. Scholar isn't weak, it's just boring. WHM is boring AND weak.