Breaking a Dichotomy - Give Everyone Shields

[Eloah]

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

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

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

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

[Deceptus]

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

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

[Eloah]

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

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

[Shurrikhan]

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

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

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

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

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