Quote Originally Posted by Gemina View Post
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.