Please Nerf Shield Healer Pure Heals

[Morzy]

SCH is a little OP, I agree, and I would like to see the job more specalized.. Back in 2.x you pretty much had to be really good at SCH to solo heal, but now it's far more balanced in terms of reactive healing vs shielding.

One of the difficult things about SCH was knowing the fight so that you could time the shields correctly. Simply healing AFTER the fact with the shields could have been fatal.

[Semirhage]

Honestly, I don't see anything wrong with high performance on a high skill ceiling class being rewarded with more dps. That is to say, as long as the variation isn't too significant.

I do, but that's largely down to how FFXIV works. DPS is the most important metric in basically any encounter. It just is. The combat system revolves around it. Encounter design does almost nothing to discourage it. What does this mean? Right out of the gate, the class with the highest damage output is automatically way, way up on the meta pick ladder. Other factors can add to job desirability, but higher damage output is the game's golden snitch (as it were).

Now, you might think, why do I see that as a problem as it relates to complexity = more damage? Because in the healer role, this is the utility jobs trying to have their cake and eat it too. Caster DPS have a reasonably stable pecking order because they take the -opposite- stance. BLM has basically no unique utility, and therefore does the most damage. Reverse is true for RDM. If the "more complicated" healers got rewarded with more damage, congratulations you have Stormblood. SCH and AST have all the utility and better damage. White Mage has...uh...Cure 3?

If WHM isn't allowed utility, it's gotta get *something*. Damage is one of the easier answers.

[Naoki34]

...

Please, stop crying because your job isn't the only one that can shield.

Anyone can mitigate, but SCH has a lot of mitigation possible.

[Dogempire]

I do, but that's largely down to how FFXIV works. DPS is the most important metric in basically any encounter. It just is. The combat system revolves around it. Encounter design does almost nothing to discourage it. What does this mean? Right out of the gate, the class with the highest damage output is automatically way, way up on the meta pick ladder. Other factors can add to job desirability, but higher damage output is the game's golden snitch (as it were).

Now, you might think, why do I see that as a problem as it relates to complexity = more damage? Because in the healer role, this is the utility jobs trying to have their cake and eat it too. Caster DPS have a reasonably stable pecking order because they take the -opposite- stance. BLM has basically no unique utility, and therefore does the most damage. Reverse is true for RDM. If the "more complicated" healers got rewarded with more damage, congratulations you have Stormblood. SCH and AST have all the utility and better damage. White Mage has...uh...Cure 3?

If WHM isn't allowed utility, it's gotta get *something*. Damage is one of the easier answers.

Honestly, healers are an entirely different beast and I agree with what you say regarding WHM needing its own niche so it stays desirable.

The kind of balance I'm referring to pertains more to balance among tanks and caster dps and how their numbers are very close within their own role, with both the caster role and the tank roles having a variation of about 500 rdps from top end to bottom end, with the top jobs (Gunbreaker, Paladin, Black Mage) requiring significantly more encounter knowledge to optimize.

That being said, White Mage being the less defensive but higher damage healer would probably be the ideal niche for the job considering that gunbreaker is a more squishy job than Warrior and Dark Knight, but has a higher damage potential if played right, giving it a spot in speedkills and more optimized groups

[Saefinn]

Please, stop crying because your job isn't the only one that can shield.

Anyone can mitigate, but SCH has a lot of mitigation possible.

Who's crying? And the issue I am raising has absolutely nothing to do with what other jobs can do. I am contented with other jobs having shields, so please, don't put words into my mouth.

The devs have made a distinction between "shield" and "pure" healer and are emphasizing it for when 6.0 comes out, so my concern is that with current balance what'll happen is that it remains more efficient for SCH to use oGCD's over their shield heals.

They made this distinction back in ARR and the design reflected that and it worked but since ARR they've made the balance shift from shield healing to pure healing (and I think an unintentional shift), because SCH has enough efficiency in its oGCD "pure" heals to make shield healing redundant or not very efficient for a lot of content. Just like how for AST they mast Diurnal so efficient that Nocturnal became a niche use.

Sure SCH has a lot of mitigation potential, but if it's more efficient to pop an oGCD instead then their emphasis of "shield" and "pure" healers is moot for most content, like it is at the moment.

However, Yoshi P has since come out in an interview saying that there's going to be a higher healing requirement moving forward for higher difficulty content (but this was after I created this thread, hence not addressed in this thread). This would potentially resolve this for higher difficulty content...but sounds like medium and low difficulty might still be left in limbo here.

[Ultimatecalibur]

They made this distinction back in ARR and the design reflected that and it worked but since ARR they've made the balance shift from shield healing to pure healing (and I think an unintentional shift), because SCH has enough efficiency in its oGCD "pure" heals to make shield healing redundant or not very efficient for a lot of content. Just like how for AST they mast Diurnal so efficient that Nocturnal became a niche use.

Sure SCH has a lot of mitigation potential, but if it's more efficient to pop an oGCD instead then their emphasis of "shield" and "pure" healers is moot for most content, like it is at the moment.

During most of ARR, Lustrate healed 20% of the targets maxhp rather than fixed potency. This caused Adloquium (600 potency 1260+ potency on a crit) to be the primary non-tank SCH heal for most content until Lustrate was buffed to be 600 potency after percentage based heals broke Ramuh EX's balance in 2.4.

It is interesting seeing the long term effects of such a change in hindsight.

[Semirhage]

During most of ARR, Lustrate healed 20% of the targets maxhp rather than fixed potency. This caused Adloquium (600 potency 1260+ potency on a crit) to be the primary non-tank SCH heal for most content until Lustrate was buffed to be 600 potency after percentage based heals broke Ramuh EX's balance in 2.4.

It is interesting seeing the long term effects of such a change in hindsight.

Yeah, I always thought 20% was more unique than a flat potency. Then again, this was the same team that nerfed Graniteskin and claimed an 18% shield from Stoneskin would "become too powerful as HP values increased". When I read that my brain went "....huh? How does that work? Don't ALL abilities become proportionally more powerful as gear increases, so being a percentage doesn't really matter as long as you aren't talking about niche cases like an NPC with a billion health?"

And now we have TBN, so it looks like they figured that out. Eventually. Not soon enough to revisit their prior stance on healer percentage-based abilities.

[ItMe]

after percentage based heals broke Ramuh EX's balance in 2.4.

What... what happened?
I wasn't around for 2.4. Can you tell me more about this?

[Grimoire-M]

To me if SE wants GCD shields to be viable then they have to be the most singularly efficient actions at what they do. Which is mitigate singular hits of burst damage. If you can addle/reprisal/Temperance/Samba and bypass most checks and rely on them for successive hits then what we want Adlo and Succor to do is replace at least two of those for precisely one attack when it’s necessary. That means they should be worth at least 350 potency, as that’s roughly 20% of a non-tank’s HP without a crit. To accomplish this I’d propose simply merging their current healing potency into their shield potency while removing Catalyze from Adloquium entirely (or reworking Department Tactics to utilize that). Seraph and Consolation don’t need to be more efficient.

[Semirhage]

What... what happened?
I wasn't around for 2.4. Can you tell me more about this?

Ramuh put a nasty (Infirmity? I think that's the one?) debuff on the tank as a way to punish and/or force a tank swap. This debuff basically wrecked incoming healing down to something like 5% of its incoming value, so you couldn't viably heal the tank until this debuff fell off. Except Lustrate, because it was coded as a flat "increase target's HP by 20% of their maximum" effect, which bypassed the debuff entirely.