Please Nerf Shield Healer Pure Heals

[Kabooa]

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.

Warrior.

And if you actually want more information, it's because 18% shields stepped on Scholar's toes and Adloqium, effectively requiring Critlo to be worth the use.

18% (or approximately 20%) was equal to about a cure 2 on tanks. Outside critlo, this is nearly twice as strong as the shield component of Scholar, no risk of wasted overhealing, for the same GCD cost.

Stoneskin stacked with other shields, and if I recall, this change didn't happen until Heavensward, so that was probably a factor to make sure Astro had a place.

[Semirhage]

Warrior.

And if you actually want more information, it's because 18% shields stepped on Scholar's toes and Adloqium, effectively requiring Critlo to be worth the use.

18% (or approximately 20%) was equal to about a cure 2 on tanks. Outside critlo, this is nearly twice as strong as the shield component of Scholar, no risk of wasted overhealing, for the same GCD cost.

Stoneskin stacked with other shields, and if I recall, this change didn't happen until Heavensward, so that was probably a factor to make sure Astro had a place.

Yeah that makes sense. They've been worried about (GCD) shield stacking for a while. And yet...Indomitability was a thing, and stepping on WHM's toes wasn't a concern there. I recall spending time on the forums pre-Heavensward squinting my eyes at several of Squeenix's decisions (like, better spread out Protect's magic defense, don't wanna make WHM mandatory or anything!) and noting that they didn't have anything like that concern for Scholar's already robust kit...and then we got an expansion where Scholar was top dog in a lot of areas.

Hindsight is a helluva drug though, I'm sure spotting design oddities back then was way more difficult than laughing at their stumbling from the future.

[ItMe]

Ramuh put a nasty (Infirmity? I think [...]

Hahahah that's hilarious.
Did bringing a SCH or two let you run with only 1 tank?

[Semirhage]

That I don't remember well enough, but it wouldn't surprise me.
IIRC, Ramuh was also one of the main thrusts behind phasing out elemental resistance. Since Earth is strong against Lightning, Summoners were using Titan-Egi as a stand-in for the tank. Ramuh's attacks are all lightning spells, and they barely scratched the egi.

[Saefinn]

Warrior.

And if you actually want more information, it's because 18% shields stepped on Scholar's toes and Adloqium, effectively requiring Critlo to be worth the use.

18% (or approximately 20%) was equal to about a cure 2 on tanks. Outside critlo, this is nearly twice as strong as the shield component of Scholar, no risk of wasted overhealing, for the same GCD cost.

Stoneskin stacked with other shields, and if I recall, this change didn't happen until Heavensward, so that was probably a factor to make sure Astro had a place.

I don't think Graniteskin even really stepped on our toes too much, Stoneskin took an age to cast and was typically swiftcasted or cast at the start of the fight from what I recall. But it didn't tend to get used over other WHM heals except member in more niche situations whereas SCH's shields were its bread and butter and central to our healing kit. So I guess it could have been for when AST came out. Sure it meant WHM got a shield worth using, but hey, some circumstances need it, just like there are circumstances where SCH needs to be able to pure heal and had that tools for that...and then the devs had no qualms about SCH then stepping on WHM's toes in that respect by make it too good and pushing its shields into a secondary healing feature.

[Ultimatecalibur]

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

When you pick up orbs you get stacks of a Lightning Resist buff, at 3 stacks/orb you got max benefit which was needed to survive Ramuh's tankbuster. If you picked up a 4th orb it was replaced by a version of the buff that maintained the resistance and extended the duration, but at the cost of sharply decreasing the amount of hp potency based heals would recover. Lustrate and Benediction, being % based heals, ignored the debuff effect. This allowed the fight to be solo tanked as long as you had 2 Scholars as your healers.

That I don't remember well enough, but it wouldn't surprise me.
IIRC, Ramuh was also one of the main thrusts behind phasing out elemental resistance. Since Earth is strong against Lightning, Summoners were using Titan-Egi as a stand-in for the tank. Ramuh's attacks are all lightning spells, and they barely scratched the egi.

Titan-Egi was tanking for different reasons. Prior to one of the pre-2.4 patches, the Fairies and Egi were regularly dying to Raidwides and AoEs due to their inability to move out of them fast enough. The devs responded by giving the pets a blanket 90% magic damage resistance. This combined with Sustain (the Arcanist's % based pet heal) allowed any of the pets to survive Ramuh's magic damage tankbusters. If any pet managed to gain Ramuh's aggro they could have tanked the Extreme with little trouble. Titan-Egi was always the Tank pet so had Enmity multipliers on all of its attacks and therefrore could, if given a proper lead up, easily generate a large enough enmity lead that Ramuh would always focus on it if there wasn't a tank around.

I don't think Graniteskin even really stepped on our toes too much, Stoneskin took an age to cast and was typically swiftcasted or cast at the start of the fight from what I recall. But it didn't tend to get used over other WHM heals except member in more niche situations whereas SCH's shields were its bread and butter and central to our healing kit. So I guess it could have been for when AST came out. Sure it meant WHM got a shield worth using, but hey, some circumstances need it, just like there are circumstances where SCH needs to be able to pure heal and had that tools for that...and then the devs had no qualms about SCH then stepping on WHM's toes in that respect by make it too good and pushing its shields into a secondary healing feature.

Stoneskin was replaced in StB mostly because, like how Protect was removed in ShB, fights were being tuned under the assumption that everyone would start with the long duration (30min!) buff. Many fights would start with a raid wide purely for the purpose of removing Stoneskin.

[Maltothoris]

I remember the hotfix that came after that since they were not happy at all when they saw Titan tanking Ramuh.

Indeed I recall the one live letter back when they were talking about what they did with the whm mitigation back when they nerfed protect and stoneskin for them and tried to justify it by saying they have more free and instant heals to whm back then. Then again, I never really trusted any healer balance after 3.4.

[Grimoire-M]

Stoneskin was replaced in StB mostly because, like how Protect was removed in ShB, fights were being tuned under the assumption that everyone would start with the long duration (30min!) buff. Many fights would start with a raid wide purely for the purpose of removing Stoneskin.

As opposed to now where it’s used to blow Earthly Star.

[inhaledcorn]

Hahahah that's hilarious.
Did bringing a SCH or two let you run with only 1 tank?

It was two SCHs and a WHM. The SCHs planned Lustrate uses, the WHM was for Proshell and the emergency Benediction.

[Rilifane]

As opposed to now where it’s used to blow Earthly Star.

More like smash the crazy prepull shields you have unless you're running dbl WHM (or two healers that play 100% reactive). Absolute Zero aside they're unfortunately not strong enough to delete a party without any shields/ mitigation even at min ilvl so unless they're quickly followed by another set of aoes (like on e6s or e9s) they're not even neccessary. On some bosses you could just eat it raw and ticked back to full for the next aoe, e7s was escpecially guilty of this.