Why exactly do Galvanize and E. Diagnosis overwrite each other?

AST and WHM regens can both persist at the same time, and even non-core healer shields like Divine Benison and The Spire can exist on top of other shields, including Galvanize and E. Diagnosis. Why exactly do these two abilities overwrite each other?

This was even the case back before SGE, when AST sects were still a thing. Nocturnal Sect's Aspected Benefic overwrote Galvanize and vice versa.

Is there some kind of balance reason for this that I'm too stupid to understand? Because it just makes it feel bad whenever you queue into a PUG as a shield healer and find out that you're co-healer is also a shield healer.

sheer malice

I suspect, rather than balance reasons, it's mechanical. That functionally Adlo and E.Diag are the same thing with a different skin and so short of writing new code to differentiate the two abilities it's impossible to stack them. That would allow for legitimate accusations of laziness on the part of the dev team but they get enough of those as is.

It is a shame though that the two shield healers conflict with one another, I would like if they changed it so that when a SCH/SGE applies a shield over an existing one it checks instead against the crit shield rather than the base one, that way at least it's semi-deconflicted.

My guess is because they think it will create too much mitigation in the game or make the combination of 2 shield healers overpowered. The problem with that, is it's already possible to stack lots of shield and mit jobs together and 100% absorb attacks. For example, PLD (Divine, Reprisal, Passage), WAR (Shake), SCH (Succor, Seraph, Sacred Soil, Fey Illumination, Expedient), SGE (Kerachole, Panhaima, Holos), MCH (Tactician, Dismantle), Addle, Feint.

So maybe they were trying to avoid a situation but allowed for the situation anyway because of making the game easier over time with the above list of abilities that, I should point out, most of them weren't there in Heavensward, a time where we really struggled with mit, healing and vulns.

Double shield comps are already heavily meta for prog, having the shields stack would likely bypass a ton of otherwise tough mit checks that the devs didn't want.

That or SGE and SCH are simply just class reskins for the most part, so the icons are a placebo effect and they're the same spell.

It could be either.

The jobs are so homogenized that its likely they literally just copy/pasted SCH's ability, renamed it, and gave it a new animation with some number changes

Balance.

Double shield stacking could allow for players to cheat the "dance" since many of the mechanic's debuffs are applied the moment they damage the player and a shield that covers the whole damage nullifies the application of those debuffs.

It also increases the problem of double shield comp being far superior healing wise than shield + regen or double regen

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

I suspect, rather than balance reasons, it's mechanical. That functionally Adlo and E.Diag are the same thing with a different skin and so short of writing new code to differentiate the two abilities it's impossible to stack them. That would allow for legitimate accusations of laziness on the part of the dev team but they get enough of those as is.

It is a shame though that the two shield healers conflict with one another, I would like if they changed it so that when a SCH/SGE applies a shield over an existing one it checks instead against the crit shield rather than the base one, that way at least it's semi-deconflicted.

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Honestly, I just wish we could swap jobs within roles. If I'm queued as a SGE and my Co-healer is another SGE or SCH, I'd have no problem with swapping to WHM.

Double regen doesn't prevent anyone from getting one-shot by a big hit. Double shield can.

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

AST and WHM regens can both persist at the same time, and even non-core healer shields like Divine Benison and The Spire can exist on top of other shields, including Galvanize and E. Diagnosis. Why exactly do these two abilities overwrite each other?

This was even the case back before SGE, when AST sects were still a thing. Nocturnal Sect's Aspected Benefic overwrote Galvanize and vice versa.

Is there some kind of balance reason for this that I'm too stupid to understand? Because it just makes it feel bad whenever you queue into a PUG as a shield healer and find out that you're co-healer is also a shield healer.

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Because HoT is garbage and divine benison/nocturnal sect is a limited resource.

Having 2 shields stack is incredibly broken in some content and it will encourage a certain type of play while excluding certain classes.

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

Double shield stacking could allow for players to cheat the "dance" since many of the mechanic's debuffs are applied the moment they damage the player and a shield that covers the whole damage nullifies the application of those debuffs.

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Virtually guaranteed it's this. If you can avoid the debuffs via shields, there's all manner of mechs you can cheat.

It's a balance thing, like others have said. Shields are very powerful, hence why the majority of them are tied to long-cooldown abilities. Things like Divine Veil and Shake It Off can stack, because the merit of getting a super-powered shield is balanced by the cost of committing both resources at once and not having either available for the next 90 seconds.

If you could stack SCH and SGE's gcd shields, it would trivialize even the mitigation checks in ultimates, for the relatively low cost of one broil/dosis every time you do it.

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

Double shield stacking could allow for players to cheat the "dance" since many of the mechanic's debuffs are applied the moment they damage the player and a shield that covers the whole damage nullifies the application of those debuffs.

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While this is true, there are more debuff-applying mechanics that don't work this way than ones that do, and the ones that do can already be cheesed by stacking other shields or using SCH's recitation-aldo-deploy. Still, to be fair, that also costs a resource, whereas with stackable gcd shields it wouldn't.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

I suspect, rather than balance reasons, it's mechanical. That functionally Adlo and E.Diag are the same thing with a different skin and so short of writing new code to differentiate the two abilities it's impossible to stack them. That would allow for legitimate accusations of laziness on the part of the dev team but they get enough of those as is.

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Why would this be the case? we have a lot of objectively identical buffs that stack, it doesn't matter if there are 6 WHM in an Alliance Raid, all of them will be able to apply their own Aero/Dia DoT freely, or double Medica/Regen buffs, and those are completely identical, not just in functionality, unlike Adlo and E.Diag, so on, it's very clear that it's a balance choice which kinds of buffs do or don't stack.

Because you shouldn't run double Shields on Savage, you evil creative gamer!!1
Now go wall-to-wall HM ARR reworked Dungeons with our streamlined horrible Trust system.

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

Balance.

Double shield stacking could allow for players to cheat the "dance" since many of the mechanic's debuffs are applied the moment they damage the player and a shield that covers the whole damage nullifies the application of those debuffs.

It also increases the problem of double shield comp being far superior healing wise than shield + regen or double regen

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Every single debuff in Savage+ these days always applies regardless of how much damage you take, they intentionally started doing this in EW when lots of vulns were being ignored in Eden tiers due to super shielding.
If any direct mechanic even remotely dangerous in any fight's "Dance" could be ignored with shielding, you 100% bet stacking tons of party mit on it to zero it out would become mandatory since SCH can save a crit-adlo for it, but that's not the case, all debuffs that matter get applied anyway.

That being said, it is the general correct thought process. The shields don't stack because most healing in higher end content comes from preventative measures rather than reactive healing, so double shields would be stupidly OP, especially in phases like TOP P6 that are entirely mit-check based rather than healing based. Double shield healer is already insanely strong even without stacking shields because of the extra mit, preventing shield stacking is basically the one thing that merits exploring AST/WHM as the other option.

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Originally Posted by Alice_Rivers

I suspect, rather than balance reasons, it's mechanical. That functionally Adlo and E.Diag are the same thing with a different skin and so short of writing new code to differentiate the two abilities it's impossible to stack them. That would allow for legitimate accusations of laziness on the part of the dev team but they get enough of those as is.

It is a shame though that the two shield healers conflict with one another, I would like if they changed it so that when a SCH/SGE applies a shield over an existing one it checks instead against the crit shield rather than the base one, that way at least it's semi-deconflicted.

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The fact that even after all this time they still haven't made it so the bigger shield stays applied infuriates me. Nothing is more soul crushing than applying a mega-shield as SCH just for the SGE to obliterate it with a dinky baby shield, and the worst part is when I play SCH I end up paired with a SGE most of the time :(

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Originally Posted by DiaDeem

Because you shouldn't run double Shields on Savage, you evil creative gamer!!1
Now go wall-to-wall HM ARR reworked Dungeons with our streamlined horrible Trust system.

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pressing 1 or 2 buttons is now creativity, much wow, much amazement.

The funny thing is, double shielding in savage is actually a thing, however it requires some coordination.

Fun thing I learned today: Differential Diagnosis and Catalyze do stack:

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...4c8b1ac1ab.png

(Edit: Not the shields the OP was talking about, but it feels relevant, all the same. :p)

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Honestly, I just wish we could swap jobs within roles. If I'm queued as a SGE and my Co-healer is another SGE or SCH, I'd have no problem with swapping to WHM.

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You're actually weakening your team by doing this. SGE+SCH is the strongest healer combo by far- and no serious raid healer GCDs unless you have downtime or your party dies without it.