Lets all take a deep breath

[Deceptus]

Square buying into the false "shields vs. regens" dichotomy stands as proof that they do not understand how people play healers in their own game. Is the dev team just not paying attention to their analytics? SCH is best known for its Aetherflow oGCD heals: Lustrate, Indom, and Excog, absolutely none of which are shields. Fey Union is not a shield. Whispering Wind is not a shield. Emergency Tactics turns a GCD shield into a larger normal heal, and is on a very short 20s cooldown. SCHs, in other words, use shields as little as possible, which makes it very puzzling why Square would consider them to be "shield healers" unless they just aren't paying attention.

And shields are used as little as possible because they're just not that effective and they have been nerfed into the ground. Outside of crit situations at most gear levels a single target shield is ~10% of a tank's HP and an aoe shield is ~5-8% of a tank's HP

Also, they generally involve overhealing. If you know an AoE is coming and everyone is topped up, shielding beforehand involves half of the healing being pointless overheal.

[Saefinn]

And shields are used as little as possible because they're just not that effective and they have been nerfed into the ground. Outside of crit situations at most gear levels a single target shield is ~10% of a tank's HP and an aoe shield is ~5-8% of a tank's HP

Also, they generally involve overhealing. If you know an AoE is coming and everyone is topped up, shielding beforehand involves half of the healing being pointless overheal.

And I feel like this is fixable. As I say I think it shields need to be the central focus of shield healers. Nerf the pure heals, buff shields, maybe even have a shield that lasts longer (to cover cases where you put a shield up but your co-healer healer feels people to full, you can have it last long enough for people to take damage and not waste your cast). After all I see 2 advantages to shields from a game play perspective:
1) good pre-emptive approach where damage is predictable and you can mitigate it, FFXIV is a predictable game, so let your tools take advantage of this predictability, but your shields need to be better & more efficient than your pure heals because you can time your pure heals for predictable damage too.
2) They can act as a barrier/buffer to any further damage when somebody takes a hit. This if anything compensates our lack of pure heals, because that shield gives us more remove to breathe for getting their healing to 100% or for more skilled healers, to leave the health like that until such time is needed.

If they can take those points into consideration and make this the direction of their shield healers, then I think what they want is achievable.
If they can't or a unwilling. Give use rounded healers that instead play more heavily to other parts of their job identities in their flavour and in how they feel to play.

[Semirhage]

And I feel like this is fixable. As I say I think it shields need to be the central focus of shield healers. Nerf the pure heals, buff shields, maybe even have a shield that lasts longer (to cover cases where you put a shield up but your co-healer healer feels people to full, you can have it last long enough for people to take damage and not waste your cast). After all I see 2 advantages to shields from a game play perspective:
1) good pre-emptive approach where damage is predictable and you can mitigate it, FFXIV is a predictable game, so let your tools take advantage of this predictability, but your shields need to be better & more efficient than your pure heals because you can time your pure heals for predictable damage too.
2) They can act as a barrier/buffer to any further damage when somebody takes a hit. This if anything compensates our lack of pure heals, because that shield gives us more remove to breathe for getting their healing to 100% or for more skilled healers, to leave the health like that until such time is needed.

If they can take those points into consideration and make this the direction of their shield healers, then I think what they want is achievable.
If they can't or a unwilling. Give use rounded healers that instead play more heavily to other parts of their job identities in their flavour and in how they feel to play.

The major caution here that I'm sure has prevented them from making shields ultra powerful in the past: what do you do in the event that you have two non-shield focused healers in content that will outright kill you if you don't have shields? Just die? If that's the case, then they also need to design content that requires burst healing that the shielders aren't capable of.

[MintnHoney]

what do you do in the event that you have two non-shield focused healers in content that will outright kill you if you don't have shields? Just die?

Remember, Yoshi-P covered this in the Live Letter: it all comes down to player skill. So it'll be our fault, as healers, for not being the right job, or for planning things out incorrectly if The Pure Healers still have shields at their disposal going forward.

[Silver-Strider]

And shields are used as little as possible because they're just not that effective and they have been nerfed into the ground. Outside of crit situations at most gear levels a single target shield is ~10% of a tank's HP and an aoe shield is ~5-8% of a tank's HP

Also, they generally involve overhealing. If you know an AoE is coming and everyone is topped up, shielding beforehand involves half of the healing being pointless overheal.

I always wondered if there was a way to make it so that overhealing with a shield ability could just go towards the shield instead.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

And shields are used as little as possible because they're just not that effective and they have been nerfed into the ground. Outside of crit situations at most gear levels a single target shield is ~10% of a tank's HP and an aoe shield is ~5-8% of a tank's HP

Also, they generally involve overhealing. If you know an AoE is coming and everyone is topped up, shielding beforehand involves half of the healing being pointless overheal.

Watch them give all the shield heals the Blue Mage's Gobskin treatment. Gobskin doesn't heal HP it just puts a barrier up. Scholar's Emergency Tactics would likely gain multiple charges to compensate for that change. And, presumably, Sage would get an "Emergency Tactics" clone. Sage/Scholar duo would be deterred because their direct healing gcds would be gated behind Emergency Tactics and it's presumed clone.

Which makes me wonder if they're going to be able to even achieve any semblance of balance with the healers even with their plans of splitting WHM and AST into "pure healer" and Sage and Scholar into "barrier". Since I assume Sage/Scholar won't work well together if shields are still unable to stack but regens can meaning WHM/AST can possibly still work together and potentially be the go to healer combination. We can assume, because they probably won't spend the money to rework preexisting content, they won't be changing up anything as each possible healer combination needs to be able to clear content.

Which also brings into question if duty finder, for 8+ party member content, will require one pure healer and one barrier healer or remain as it is now. And if it remains as it is now then each possible healer combination needs to be able to clear content and that would mean Sage/Scholar needs to be able to function together. And brings us back full circle on whether or not healer balance will be achieved.

[FoxCh40s]

Watch them give all the shield heals the Blue Mage's Gobskin treatment. Gobskin doesn't heal HP it just puts a barrier up. Scholar's Emergency Tactics would likely gain multiple charges to compensate for that change. And, presumably, Sage would get an "Emergency Tactics" clone. Sage/Scholar duo would be deterred because their direct healing gcds would be gated behind Emergency Tactics and it's presumed clone.

Which makes me wonder if they're going to be able to even achieve any semblance of balance with the healers even with their plans of splitting WHM and AST into "pure healer" and Sage and Scholar into "barrier". Since I assume Sage/Scholar won't work well together if shields are still unable to stack but regens can meaning WHM/AST can possibly still work together and potentially be the go to healer combination. We can assume, because they probably won't spend the money to rework preexisting content, they won't be changing up anything as each possible healer combination needs to be able to clear content.

Which also brings into question if duty finder, for 8+ party member content, will require one pure healer and one barrier healer or remain as it is now. And if it remains as it is now then each possible healer combination needs to be able to clear content and that would mean Sage/Scholar needs to be able to function together. And brings us back full circle on whether or not healer balance will be achieved.

You hit the nail on the head, this is likely exactly what they'll do, or some form of it. They have zero understanding of how all their plans work in the wild because they never test it; they ask for feedback and then ignore the ever loving s**t out of it.

We all know 6.0 is going to effectively permanently kill the role for veteran healers. I think I'm just having trouble mentally preparing myself for when they make it even worse.

They need to hire more people for the battle team, period. I don't care about this "difficult to train them" crap anymore; it has been shown that 3 people are just not enough, nor should it have ever been enough.

[MintnHoney]

they ask for feedback and then ignore the ever loving s**t out of it.

More to the point, feedback seems to be ignored if it comes from a certain part of the community.