Quote Originally Posted by ty_taurus View Post
Its not really about looking at the bright side though.

Here’s the thing, we know only 3 things:
- WHM/AST will focus on regens while SCH/SAG will focus on shields.
- AST doesn’t have Nocturnal Sect.
- Sage seemingly has a Cure, Gravity, Glare, and Adloquium equivalent.

That’s really not a lot of information to go on. It was different than when we saw the list of actions for healers in shadowbringers, and saw what was literally removed.

We’re mainly getting mad about theory with very little to go off of.
I mean, I think in fairness, as it stands the "pure healer" and "shield healer" mentalities don't really exist anymore in how the jobs are played, so knowing this much actually does give us something to go on. For them to put an emphasis on it is an indicator that they're not understanding how healers are played.

This distinction hasn't been relevant since 2.0/3.0. This is because "shield" healing has been relegated to "it's a buffer, my real heals are oGCD's", you don't depend on your shields that much. And the other problem is, they've held out on their mentality in design for a while now, they held WHM back on the basis it's "the pure healer" and didn't give it some of the love in needed like "pure healer" still meant something.

So unless they address this problem, which they've yet to give an indication that they will, then their goals would fall flat. I am hoping that they do address this problem. But nothing yet to me suggests that they would, because they've avoided it thus far. But addressing this problem I think is what's needed to make their direction work. Because the "shield healer" and "pure healer" isn't a change in direction. Because they still consider SCH a shield healer and WHM are pure healer. And AST is both.

The fact this mentality remains despite the existing problems. Removing Nocturnal in favour of a new shield job doesn't address this problem. The silver lining I do see is that with AST trying to be both did mess with a dichotomy that used to work. How they've presented it seems to suggest they want to make that dichotomy work again. But it is a two-part issue, because it wasn't /just/ AST that messed with this dichotomy. SCH changes messed with it too.

Either they can address the issue by:
- Doing the Shield/Pure healer dichotomy. This will work if they make shield healers shield dependent. Their pure healing needs to be weak enough so shields get factored by players.
- Healers are designed to be well-rounded. Meaning they're roughly as equally good as each other in all situations and there's no need for healer synergy. Uniqueness is then established in how their kits are played and how they feel to play. EG: WHM needs to feel powerful, SCH needs to feel tactical, AST needs to feel technical.

At the moment I think we're in a limbo of the two. Healer changes over the years has made them too efficient for the pure/shield healer approach to work, but devs still want to keep the pure/shield healer mentality.