Breaking a Dichotomy - Give Everyone Shields

[YusiKha]

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

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

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

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

[Jandor]

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

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

[Saefinn]

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

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

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

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

[Cyrocco]

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

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

[Wawachume]

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

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

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

[YusiKha]

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

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

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

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

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

[Wawachume]

Healing HP as SCH has never been easier.

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

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

That said...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Kuwago]

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

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

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

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

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

[YusiKha]

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

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

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

[Allegor]

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