Lets all take a deep breath

[Deceptus]

-Square Enix announces change that makes healers concerned-
-Healers complain-
"Please wait and see you're overreacting"
-Turns out healers were right-
"Maybe they'll fix it"

Repeat cycle.
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Pretty much. This cycle has repeated for at least 2 expansions now

1) It's just the pre-patch notes, you can't judge anything off of them!
2) Wait until you're max level, you can't judge anything by leveling!
3) Wait until you're geared, you can't judge anything with your current gear!
4) Wait, you still don't like the way the job has played for the past 6 months / year? Wait until the next expansion, they'll adjust it then.

Charlie Brown, meet football. The goalposts are on a never ending treadmill of running away from you.

But what I could see happening is, they take away shield healing aspects from AST and still make SCH and SAG good "pure" healers. If SCH and SAG are good enough pure healers, then you could find AST and WHM get left behind, which has happened to WHM before, where WHM's identity as a 'pure' healer was erased by the fact SCH can pure heal well enough. Or they just all end up well rounded and this distinction of "shield" and "pure" healer is completely redundant and they've not achieved what they set out to do.
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This is also easy to forsee unless FFXIV Devs drastically re-do their battle mechanics. Something they have thus far refused to do.

What's going to happen is the exact same thing that has happened the past 2 expansions or so. Barriers will be needed on the hardest content to survive mechanics due to being undergeared, and once prog is over, regens will be king again and barriers will be subpar.

Meanwhile in low / mid tier content, barriers will be effectively useless again.