New healer: Sage. Barrier healer.

[Kabooa]

For shields to become viable

It needs to be less efficient to heal up than it is to shield up.

Shields are valuable because it's health you don't have to heal, but if the shield stops less than a standard heal brings back, that's when we're in the realm of "shields are pointless" unless something will outright kill you.

With the exclusion of stacking shields from most sources, shields can afford to be stronger and cheaper than an equivalent heal, but the source of the shielding (Aka the healer) then needs less ability to heal what actually comes through, or rather, less ability to deal raid wides. There obviously can be some amount of overlap, but given how damage is tuned in the current patch for most content, the Barrier class shouldn't ever need to cast a point of HP restoration in casual content, and that should be a sticking point for them when they actually have to heal it up - That it's more difficult to do so, so mitigate it instead.

[Rilifane]

It needs to be less efficient to heal up than it is to shield up.

Shields are valuable because it's health you don't have to heal, but if the shield stops less than a standard heal brings back, that's when we're in the realm of "shields are pointless" unless something will outright kill you.

With the exclusion of stacking shields from most sources, shields can afford to be stronger and cheaper than an equivalent heal, but the source of the shielding (Aka the healer) then needs less ability to heal what actually comes through, or rather, less ability to deal raid wides. There obviously can be some amount of overlap, but given how damage is tuned in the current patch for most content, the Barrier class shouldn't ever need to cast a point of HP restoration in casual content, and that should be a sticking point for them when they actually have to heal it up - That it's more difficult to do so, so mitigate it instead.

I'd be down for a healer that really, truly relies on shields to the point they're screwed if they have to resort to burst healing. But I think many people would have a hard time with that because they think low HP bar = danger even if there's a huge yellow bar slapped over it.
The concept of eHP seems too difficult for some to grasp that SE would design a healer that's more efficient at preventing damage than healing it afterwards. It would make for nice comps though. Shields would give regens more time to tick even with the next raidwide coming up while regens have high potencies in total. But I can already see the barrier healers topping people with regens on up instead of shielding the next damage, so not only are the regens wasted but their more efficient tools don't get used. Because low HP bars make too many people nervous, no matter how big the shield they have is.

[Gemina]

It needs to be less efficient to heal up than it is to shield up.

Shields are valuable because it's health you don't have to heal, but if the shield stops less than a standard heal brings back, that's when we're in the realm of "shields are pointless" unless something will outright kill you.

Even then they are pointless because there is another condition that you did not mention, which is the current HP of the player about the be killed. If a restorative GCD will prevent their death because they don't have enough HP to survive an unavoidable, then it is better to use that instead of a shield. Right now, the only time a shield is viable is to prevent one shots at near or max HP.

If really trying to optimize, then shields can also be used to prevent over healing in those kind of situations. However, I should also mention that ST cure bombs is something SCH is lacking. They don't have an answer for things Essential Dignity and Benediction, which is a big reason why a SCH will use shields to prevent damage, not death. It just depends on their own situation, and the competence level of their co healer. It becomes a matter of the SCH keeping everyone above a threshold that prevents their panic, and has nothing to do with optimization. I can also pretty much guarantee that Sage also will not have an answer for Essential Dignity and Benediction in the form of a giant ST cure bomb as well. Those kind of skills will undoubtedly be reserved for the pure healers.

Shields are valuable because they add HP to whatever HP the player(s) currently have, even if at max. They lose value because that is health that isn't needed to survive. This is what has to change if the devs want to invest on a barrier/pure healer set up.

[Rilifane]

Even then they are pointless because there is another condition that you did not mention, which is the current HP of the player about the be killed. If a restorative GCD will prevent their death because they don't have enough HP to survive an unavoidable, then it is better to use that instead of a shield. Right now, the only time a shield is viable is to prevent one shots at near or max HP.
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No, they would not be.
The current HP of a player literally does not matter as long as their actual HP + shield value exceed the amount the next damage would hit for. That's eHP.
If you bring them above the required threshhold by shielding them, they will survive just as much as if you head healed them above threshhold.
You could, theoretically, let a player sit at 1 HP for a whole encounter. As long as you slap enough shields on them that they don't break from damage, they will not die.

So if a barrier healer is designed in a way that the shields have higher potencies than their burst heal, you're better off shielding the next incoming damage than healing it at less efficiency. As long as everybody survives, it does not matter how you achieve it. Wether by shielding them or healing them.

Shields are valuable because they add HP to whatever HP the player(s) currently have, even if at max. They lose value because that is health that isn't needed to survive. This is what has to change if the devs want to invest on a barrier/pure healer set up.

The reason why shields lose value is because they have less potency than regens/ burst heals on ever single healer. Which makes healing the damage afetrwards more efficient as long as you survived it somehow.
Were it reversed and shields had more potency than burst heal, then it would be more efficient to shield people regardless of wether they would survive without that shield or not because it's less damage you have to heal back up before the next aoe. It really only comes down to potencies once you know people are going to survive the next hit.

[Gemina]

No, they would not be.
The current HP of a player literally does not matter as long as their actual HP + shield value exceed the amount the next damage would hit for. That's eHP.
If you bring them above the required threshhold by shielding them, they will survive just as much as if you head healed them above threshhold.
You could, theoretically, let a player sit at 1 HP for a whole encounter. As long as you slap enough shields on them that they don't break from damage, they will not die.

So if a barrier healer is designed in a way that the shields have higher potencies than their burst heal, you're better off shielding the next incoming damage than healing it at less efficiency. As long as everybody survives, it does not matter how you achieve it. Wether by shielding them or healing them.

You quite literally just said the exact same thing I did, and just worded it differently. All that matters is the player has enough HP to survive an unavoidable. What I pointed out is that because shields do not carry the same return value as a standard heal, they are not what you should be using to bring a player above that threshold [i]unless you are trying to prevent an overheal. With this in mind, they become the inferior choice in nearly every situation, even in prog. Scripted damage just doesn't happen this way.

In order to talk about the viability of current shielding, we can't use optimization, or optimal scenarios, or optimal SCHs. There are some situations in high-end content where shields are the optimal choice, but they are few and far between. We instead have to talk about scenarios where ogcds and regens are not going to sustain the party, and these are not found in optimal scenarios. They are found when things go to the crapper. It's not like these situations are staggered either. They can happen anytime you join you a PUG, or allow randoms to fill the gaps in your static.

The reason why shields lose value is because they have less potency than regens/ burst heals on ever single healer. Which makes healing the damage afetrwards more efficient as long as you survived it somehow.

Shields are not designed in a way to restore lost damage. The intent behind them is to absorb incoming damage. They do restore some, but that is why their potency is less than burst heals and regens. They can't lose a value that was never assigned to them in the first place.

[Rilifane]

You quite literally just said the exact same thing I did, and just worded it differently. All that matters is the player has enough HP to survive an unavoidable. What I pointed out is that because shields do not carry the same return value as a standard heal, they are not what you should be using to bring a player above that threshold [i]unless you are trying to prevent an overheal. With this in mind, they become the inferior choice in nearly every situation, even in prog. Scripted damage just doesn't happen this way.

No, I didn't.
You didn't read the post you were referring to properly. It was explicitely stated that "It needs to be less efficient to heal up than it is to shield up." and then shields would in fact be the go-to choice instead of burst heal.
You tried to argue that the matter of player HP would still make them pointless which is simply not true. Should shields be ahead of burst heal in terms of potency, they would win. Plain and simple. That was the whole point we were argueing.

Shields are not designed in a way to restore lost damage. The intent behind them is to absorb incoming damage. They do restore some, but that is why their potency is less than burst heals and regens. They can't lose a value that was never assigned to them in the first place.

Shields, regens and burst heal all serve the same purpose: to bring the effective health of a player above the threshold to survive damage. Wether you do that by restoring or preventing damage does not matter at all. Both bring the effective health of a player up.
Wether burst heal, regens or shields have the higher potency is arbitrary and completely up to the devs. Shields could just as easily have more potency than burst heals; there is no reason for them not to as long as fights are designed in a way that doesn't allow for major cheese. It's not the law of the universe to give shields the lowest potencies of all.
You had several healers throughout various games that worked primarily with shields as their main source of healing and although in some it took a few patches to balance them properly, it isn't something inherently balance-breaking.
A healer having shield potencies on par with another healer's burst potencies but lower burst potencies, that's a completely viable design because shields would no longer be the nice extra they bring but rather their baseline healing.

[Gemina]

No, I didn't.
You didn't read the post you were referring to properly. It was explicitely stated that "It needs to be less efficient to heal up than it is to shield up." and then shields would in fact be the go-to choice instead of burst heal.
You tried to argue that the matter of player HP would still make them pointless which is simply not true. Should shields be ahead of burst heal in terms of potency, they would win. Plain and simple. That was the whole point we were argueing.

Incorrect. I stated that the only time a shield is viable over another healing GCD is in a situation where the GCD either won't cover it, or avoiding an over heal. There just aren't many situations where that is the case. You can say that it ultimately doesn't matter how getting a player to a sustainable status is accomplished, and I would agree. But if peeps want to throw optimization all over the place, then it does matter which heal you use. I would stop talking about shields in hypotheticals, because as of right now, shields are not ahead of burst heals or regens in terms of potency. There is no argument to be had here.

[Kabooa]

Shields are valuable because they add HP to whatever HP the player(s) currently have, even if at max. They lose value because that is health that isn't needed to survive. This is what has to change if the devs want to invest on a barrier/pure healer set up.

Unlike the average forum goer, I'm willing to paint out scenarios and give exact numbers to illustrate what I mean. I was busy grinding out a relic earlier but I'm taking a break from that, so lets talk about this more.

Let us say a player has 1,000 HP. An incoming attack will deal 400 damage.

A Regen/Burst Healer deals with this by healing 400 HP. The manner in which they do this differs among various games, but the one thing in common is that it is more desirable to have higher HP than lower HP. Even in heavy optimized settings, this is true. It is a better state to be in than lower in health, unless mechanics exist that incentivize having lower health.

There are none in FF14. All comparisons for what the GCD should be used for are done in the service of binary dead-or-not and the cost of DPS.

For the sake of the argument, we will say the Regen/Burst healers handle this in two GCDs. A 300 HoT applied over 15 seconds and a 100 burst heal.

A Barrier/Shield healer handles this by shielding X amount and healing the rest. Currently, the problem with the "Barrier" healer is that the barriers suck and their burst healing is far better. Why shield for 50 damage when your free OGCD party wide heal will heal for 350 damage?

What should happen is the shield healer handles this pre-emptively with one gcd for 300 absorption, and then handles the rest with a 100 heal. Failing to pre-empt means instead of taking 2 gcds to handle the damage, they take 4.

The two of them work exceedingly well together - Because the Shield Healer reduces the amount taken, and the Regen healer places a low but long lasting regen to heal up what gets though. They work in tandem.

Simple, right? Even if we go to the extreme and use FF14 optimization as the standard, this means that the player only needs 401 HP, and each healer would only need to contribute a single GCD together, rather than the shield healer falling flat for missing the shield, or the Regen healer not having the time to let Regens prop someone up.

This is in essence the design scheme of a triage system. One healer type excels in one situation but not another, and it is less efficient - The two work together and cover the weaknesses of the other.

The problem with shields now is that they are too weak on the shield classes, and by contrast the healing on them is also superior, so other than the extreme niche of beyond-maximum-hp death, they are indeed pointless, but we'd be singing a different tune if Indomitable was only 100 and Succor was a pure 300 shield.

The decision to design the content that stresses the battle system around one healer of each type is a controversial one. It is the hard 180 of the stance they have taken so far. It's the stance they have avoided backing away from the MT/OT designation, with removing heavily impactful job synergy between all the jobs and roles, and the distribution of valuable class original skills (RE: Homogenization).

But we've already been down this road at the start of Shadowbringers. It's up to them to design the content and follow through on the vague statements made that we'll hold them to.

[Ultimatecalibur]

A Barrier/Shield healer handles this by shielding X amount and healing the rest. Currently, the problem with the "Barrier" healer is that the barriers suck and their burst healing is far better. Why shield for 50 damage when your free OGCD party wide heal will heal for 350 damage?

The Scholar's shields are actually not that bad. Adloquium is 675 (300 heal + 375 shield) total potency or 1470+ (420+ heal + 1,050 shield) total on a Crit, Succor is 360 (180 heal 180 shield) total per target or 504+ (252+ heal + 252+ shield) total per target on a Crit and Excognition (a pseudo-barrier) is 800 potency or 1120+ potency on a Crit.

The problem the Scholar has as a Barrier/Shield healer (and both WHM and AST also suffer from even as Pure/Regen Healers) is more that most of the healing can be handled by ogcds and fairy heals. A Fight needs to deal on average 3k potency worth of damage to every member of the party every minute to exceed the "free" healing from Sacred Soil, Indomitability, Whispering Dawn, Fey Blessing and Embrace and a Single target needs to take 6k to exceed the free healing from Excognition, Lustrate, Whispering Dawn, Fey Blessing and Embrace. 8 players fights need to deal nearly 3 times that to account for 2 healers ogcds as well as tank self-heals.