Lets all take a deep breath

[Ayesafaile]

They tried to go the well-rounded healer route in Shadowbringers and it's resulted in some crazy power creep (not to mention loss/blurring of job identity). Healers that can do everything are simply too strong.

Nocturnal Sect was a poorly designed concept to begin with - more of a band-aid than anything. The insistence on making it a viable SCH alternative has resulted in numerous terrible design choices over the past 4 years, and despite them finally addressing the elephant in the room I remain pessimistic that they understand how to properly rectify the situation. SCH in particular has lost so much of its soul and (former) core gameplay that a serious amount of work would be necessary to repair it, and I don't think we'll see it happen. It would be nice for AST to have its extension effects return, too.

[Payadopa]

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.

We have seen more than enough of a pattern. This wait and see approach isn't helping. And this is a forum for feedback. As long as it doesn't devolve into name-calling anything goes.

[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.

[NobleWinter]

I know they heard the concerns from the Japanese forum at least so at the bare minimum I hope WHM gets Aero 3 back and Scholar returns to having multiple dots and Bane. All I can hope for is reverting some of the nonsense at this point. Imagine Selene existing again. I really hope they get healing right this time. They had years to reflect on what went wrong so this new expansion is the time to show they arent completely ignorant of the way decent healers heal.

[Saefinn]

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.

Pretty much my biggest worry here. I'm semi-casual, so low & mid tier with the occasional high tier and I know it'll hit me hard. Especially seeing how dull and easy its already made SCH to play already has.

The thing is. I don't think shield healers /need/ to have bigger heals. Because to me the idea of being a shield healer is that it's a proactive approach to healing and doesn't by any stretch make you weaker or disadvantaged but just changes how you interact with people's health pool. This is how I played SCH in A Realm Reborn. Somebody takes damage, a "pure" healer mentality is "I'll get that up ASAP".

Whereas to me the value of a shield healer can mean you approach this in one of two ways, either you predict they were going to take damage and shield them from it OR they take the damage and you shield them from taking further damage until you can get their health back up. T

his means if you don't manage to predict incoming damage you still have the means of getting their health up without people dropping dead. And I don't think this overcomplicates things either. I feel the biggest setback we used to have with this design was that SCH shields didn't stack, making double SCH less effective than any other set up. The bonus is, I think /some/ crossover works, I mean Lustrate has always been a good tool to get somebody's health up quick, but is a limited resource. WHM has Divine Benison and AST has Celestial Intersection and Neutral Sect. The important thing being, these are useful cross over skills, especially for situations you need them, but aren't frequent enough to step on the toes of another's niche.

Me, I love the shield healer concept and is the main thing that made me fall in love with SCH. So I want to believe that this is what we're going to get. The old dichotomy back and balanced so that SCH's only gotta compete with SAG for balance and not the other two healers. But reality says, "err, maybe not". So I hope the devs prove us wrong.

[Ceasaria]

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

Well, we will have a locked spot for a Pure healer and a locked spot for a Barrier healer, at least in high level content, so no, we couldn't have two Pure healers playing together nor two Barrier healers playing together.
Or I didn't understand what they said.

[Saefinn]

Well, we will have a locked spot for a Pure healer and a locked spot for a Barrier healer, at least in high level content, so no, we couldn't have two Pure healers playing together nor two Barrier healers playing together.

Did they say "locked"? For some reason the impression I got was that it was an option in PF. But this was early hours of the morning for me when I got that part of it, so entirely possible I got that wrong.

If it is locked for higher content, then yeah that is a lot better because then it means less competition for balance.

[Deceptus]

Well, we will have a locked spot for a Pure healer and a locked spot for a Barrier healer, at least in high level content, so no, we couldn't have two Pure healers playing together nor two Barrier healers playing together.
Or I didn't understand what they said.

In DF content. In pre-made content you will probably be allowed to have the jobs you want.

[AnotherPerson]

From what I understood:
The idea of a pure healer I would believe is a 'pure HP recovery' healer - focusing on raw HP (cure II / Benediction / Essential Dignity) or regens (Medica II / Diurnal Aspected Helios).
The idea of a barrier healer I would believe is a 'preventative & mitigative' healer - focusing on reducing as much incoming damage ahead of time or shielding a certain amount of damage.

Now in every situation, because a pure healer doesn't have as many tools (?) to lower incoming damage, the normal thought process is to cover this missing HP while a barrier healer is to prevent the next incoming damage from being too great that it will kill the remaining HP of said players. The idea is sound, but the difference lies in the execution of the player's ability.

The difference is whether the healer is experienced enough to know whether incoming damage needs to be healed immediately before the next attack hits, they don't take into account of their co- healer's ability to cover the next damage. In both situations, the heal would be excessive because it dips into your MP reserves. This can happen for both pure healers and barrier healers. Pure healers healing all missing HP. Barrier healer tries to cover the damage consistently because they don't have as many restorative HP tools so they prevent the HP from dropping low in the first place.

Honestly, it would end up being a player skill level issue at this point. The alternative would then be - can you trust your healer to cover the damage and share your healing toolkits?

Now alternatively, if SE changes the encounter design - they could put it where there can be multiple consecutive hits which will require barrier shielding - and immediately after require healing to stay at a healthy range. However, having too many of this is also lethal when the run isn't going well in the first place - say both healers died once - so the total healing power of both them is diminished. Having this be a frequent damage could pretty much wipe the run - but I'm honestly down for that if that's what it takes.

Then again, I'd like to believe the stat squish/ stat compression with the separation of pure healers / barrier healers would also change this as the healer kits get reworked, but I have no clue whether that is possible.

[Liam_Harper]

The "wait and see" game has ended badly on so many occasions I'm surprised anyone can still defend it.

People spam "wait and see" as we go through the announcements, beta, prepatch, expansion launch, 70-80, first patch and then the realization sinks in that it wasn't going to be changed and it will be 2 full years before it can be. Content tends to be made well in advance and once development has gone too far, it's impossible for them to completely change it. It's vital to get feedback in as early as possible and make ourselves heard.