Quote Originally Posted by Deceptus View Post
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.