Differentiate pure heals and shields?

[Lyth]

There are a lot of mechanics in game that force you to heal players to full in order to prevent a player death. This includes both fight specific mechanics (Doom, White Hole, Fallen Archangel, etc.) as well as Living Dead. If your 'Shield Healers' are unable to address these mechanics, should they be in the game to begin with?

[GrimGale]

Shield Dissipation: Turns already applied shields into health.

Vampiric Ward: Shields heal targets based on damage done by healer.

Feedback Ward: Shields that haven't faded away gain health based on damage done by healer up to a percentage of their original value.

Magnifying shields: Specific healing skills no longer heal target, rather they add more health and duration to the applied shield on the target.

Bouncing shields: Ward bounces off party members back to full potency after it is consumed.

[Shurrikhan]

The only way shield degradation would be okay is if the amount the shied lowers goes into healing, making it both a shield and a regen effect.

But then it's just halfing the very concept we want to differentiate, no?

Personally, I'd rather see shields reworked entirely to instead apply added (Magic) Defense that degrades over mitigation thus done, such that they have a total eHP increase across multiple strikes more similar to regen without being able to completely cheese mechanics (as they'd be able to if they absorbed all damage until drained and had that kind of overall strength). Both should be a sort of soft "they're covered; now we don't have to worry about them" with shields being the more preemptive but also the more quickly capped (shield effects shared and therefore merely replacing, rather than stacking, with each other) and/or expensive. At present, though, shields are so all-or-nothing that they're really only a single-blow maximum eHP increase that therefore has to be balanced so far down not to break mechanics that they're badly inefficient in not just mana, but potency per GCD.

@GrimGale

That's the direction I'd like to see healer designs go in as well: any and all ways of increasing eHP or better maintaining it when and on whom it's needed, not necessarily aimed at a pure healing / shield healing distinction, but just... diverse and interesting jobs.

[Allegor]

Maybe a bit off topic but I always focus target boss when in sch/noct. I think most shield healers do. The diff is we learn and memorize all the boss attacks so when we see the casting bar moving, it's time to shield up before the big attack. Whether it's single shield to tank or aoe shield to group, it all the same. Pure healers is more relax. I just heal when I see your hp less than 50%.

Something I love about noct (RIP come 6.0) that I can't really do with SCH is shielding a non-tank player targeted by an ability - on a SCH, between casting adlo, the shield delay, and maybe latency, chances are the ability already went off and the shield is wasted, whereas with noct I can just instantly drop an aspected benefic on them.

[Wawachume]

Maybe a bit off topic but I always focus target boss when in sch/noct. I think most shield healers do. The diff is we learn and memorize all the boss attacks so when we see the casting bar moving, it's time to shield up before the big attack. Whether it's single shield to tank or aoe shield to group, it all the same. Pure healers is more relax. I just heal when I see your hp less than 50%.

For me, the stress is the opposite way. I have a really slow reaction time and a tendency to freeze at stressful moments. On WHM I watch for someone's health to go down, spend two seconds processing the fact that it's gone down, spend two more seconds panicking and not knowing which button to press, and by then they're at like 10% and I'm doing a mixture of frantic spamming, hitting benediction, and watching somebody die. On SCH I just put shields on anyone I expect to take damage in the near future.

Something I love about noct (RIP come 6.0) that I can't really do with SCH is shielding a non-tank player targeted by an ability - on a SCH, between casting adlo, the shield delay, and maybe latency, chances are the ability already went off and the shield is wasted, whereas with noct I can just instantly drop an aspected benefic on them.

I like that too. Actually—and this is sad given how much I like the theme of AST—I think it's the only thing, mechanically speaking, that I like about nocturnal better than SCH.

[Raikai]

kinda just chit-chat, right now there is not enough distinction betweene shield and pure healers, but come 6.0 hopefully we are given justice ,honest opinions, how would you guys decide to make pure heals and shield work differently from each other, and yet keep their effectiveness, or have a different advantages in use?

I think some nice ways would be to leave pure heals and regens as they are, but make shields act differently -- like making shields a whole lot more effective (like , big enough to be a second health bar), but actually giving them a bigger cooldown, or forcing them to be channeled instead of casted -- preventing damage to the target, at the cost of the caster's MP.

any ideas?

Question: Isn't the differentiation being Regen x Shield, instead of Pure heals x shields?

That was the impression I got... "basic" heals would be for everyone, but part of the healers focusing on regen effects to supplement that and the other on shields.

[GrimGale]

Question: Isn't the differentiation being Regen x Shield, instead of Pure heals x shields?

That was the impression I got... "basic" heals would be for everyone, but part of the healers focusing on regen effects to supplement that and the other on shields.

I think Yoshi P calls "Regen" healers just Pure Healers.

[Seraphor]

2. Shield Specific Mitigation - Shields have their own armor value, so damage dealt to shields may be higher/lower than the damage that would be dealt to straight up health. This would make shields stronger on low armor classes. e.g., if you have a 1,000 shield on a BLM and a PLD, an attack that deals 500 damage to the shield would deal that damage to both of them, personal armor would be ignored. This would make shield healers either incredibly powerful before gearing up in a tier, or nearly useless after gearing up though.

This is just complicating things for no real reason.

Lets say you have someone with 2000 HP, and you stick a 1000 HP shield on them... but the shield has twice the 'defence' of the player. It's essentially just a 2000 HP shield. So why not just make it a 2000 HP shield instead of a "double defence" 1000 HP shield? At least then that player and the other healers know what that shield can take.

[Seraphor]

I think Yoshi P calls "Regen" healers just Pure Healers.

Basically because healers either restore HP lost, or protect HP via shields.
'Pure' heals and regens both restore HP, so they're both the hallmarks of 'pure healers'.
However shield healers need to have some pure heals to be able to deal with damage when 'protecting HP' via shields fails.

[ty_taurus]

These are all neat ideas, but this one... it sounds so obvious! Why doesn't SCH already have something like this? Would be super cool to see, and super funny if they added it to an AoE shield. Maybe if it pops for a short buff people will QQ and come in for heals more lol.

This is how Dark Knight's Blackest Night works and it feels great to use (one of the few things that still feels great with Dark Knight). You spend a resource that you would otherwise spend on a DPS action, but if the shield breaks, you get to use one of those DPS actions for free. It basically turns into a shield and the damage rather than just the shield or the damage if you use it at the right time. It's beautiful during big pulls.