Do people in this game not comprehend the concept of shield healers?

[RyuDragnier]

What they need to do with the shields to make them viable is to make them oGCDs, without heals. Gobskin by BLU is a good example of a good way to do shield healing in the future. Instant cast shields for use whenever, but we'd have a cooldown. This would allow them to merely change the current heals to also give damage mitigation for the next 10-15 seconds to continue the shielding in a fashion.

Examples of some changes to encourage shielding:
Succor gives a 10% damage mitigation with the AoE heal
Adlo gives a 20% damage mitigation with heal.
Emergency Tactics gives a 20% max HP shield along with 20% damage mitigation.
Deployment Tactics giving an AoE 10% max HP shield along with 10% damage mitigation.
Lustrate becomes a (up to) 3 charge oGCD that gives a 20% max HP shield.
Fey Blessing becomes an (up to) 2 charge oGCD that gives an AoE 10% max HP shield.

[Novae]

Succor is useless 99% of time. Just cast broil.

[Greyhawk]

The very reason why I play Noct AST, and will level Sage to play. I shield tanks on busters, and toss a regen as they get hit/just before to mitigate as much as possible and start casting an AoE heal as the boss casts. I do Tower so much, I'm literally healing as the party takes damage, from learning the fights and my shields get taken off.

I see what OP describes a LOT with SCH that play, and have no idea about mitigation. I've been with maybe two SCH that actually galvanize properly. But, as any baddie plays the game, they will tell you something about how people play how they want and its not needed in the state of the game.... or some such nonsense about justifying why they are so bad at playing a class, they don't even understand it.

Healers aren't even raising anymore - they are so focused on damaging the boss, they ignore the DPS who died. I have literally run out of MP because the other healer is too busy casting Glare. It gets old, but what can you do? No one will call someone out, they are afraid to get reported, but we have to deal with the bad. Totally excusable with those still learning things, first few timers in new raids - I get that. the ones that just stand there and do nothing but DPS - well, that's been a sore spot for me for quite a while. Don't do that if you are healing - you came to heal and raise too, not just DPS. You wanna DPS so badly, roll a DPS instead.

[Imora]

Tanks don't even need anyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMgT..._channel=Cindy

Certainly makes you laugh all the more when someone insists healers should be healing and not DPSing. Dungeons are tuned so pathetically low, you literally don't need healers. Granted, this also highlights how comically powerful Nascent Flash and Clemency are.

In any case, this is why shield healing has especially been negatively impacted throughout Shadowbringers. In an effort to make everything accessible to even the worst of players, content just doesn't hit hard enough to warrant much (or sometimes any) shielding except at the Savage level. Healing as a whole this expansion has easily been in the worst state ever because of the dev team's obsession with accessibility above everything else.

Just ran Ala Mhigo with a dead healer because they stood in stuff, killed Zenos without them from about 50%. Clemency + self heals + curing waltz = hehe

[ZedxKayn]

The very reason why I play Noct AST, and will level Sage to play. I shield tanks on busters, and toss a regen as they get hit/just before to mitigate as much as possible and start casting an AoE heal as the boss casts. I do Tower so much, I'm literally healing as the party takes damage, from learning the fights and my shields get taken off.

I see what OP describes a LOT with SCH that play, and have no idea about mitigation. I've been with maybe two SCH that actually galvanize properly. But, as any baddie plays the game, they will tell you something about how people play how they want and its not needed in the state of the game.... or some such nonsense about justifying why they are so bad at playing a class, they don't even understand it.

Healers aren't even raising anymore - they are so focused on damaging the boss, they ignore the DPS who died. I have literally run out of MP because the other healer is too busy casting Glare. It gets old, but what can you do? No one will call someone out, they are afraid to get reported, but we have to deal with the bad. Totally excusable with those still learning things, first few timers in new raids - I get that. the ones that just stand there and do nothing but DPS - well, that's been a sore spot for me for quite a while. Don't do that if you are healing - you came to heal and raise too, not just DPS. You wanna DPS so badly, roll a DPS instead.

If you want your cohealer to heal tbh don't cast heals when the damage isn't even out yet. A good healer is in no rush.
On AST regardless you pretty much should never use GCD healing because the oGCD tools are more than enough

[NanaWiloh]

Pre-shielding in casual content..


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztVMib1T4T4

After video comment ever seen what cockroaches do when you turn on a light..

[NanaWiloh]

Just ran Ala Mhigo with a dead healer because they stood in stuff, killed Zenos without them from about 50%. Clemency + self heals + curing waltz = hehe

Had a ast co-healer in crystal tower who spent more time healing members of other parties then he did healing our group. Left me pretty much healing the group and the tank, he even let our tank flat out die when I got frozen on Scyllia. lol

[Leonerdo]

The current design is generally fine. The balance is just a little off in a couple places (like ultra-low-damage instances).

Most content is designed to be casual, where you only need to use half your kit effectively to survive. Shields aren't necessary in this case, of course, but neither is good damage.

In Extremes (and Alliance raids IMO), shields are just an extra safety net for anyone who is newer or just making honest mistakes. Because that shield can be the difference between dying to mistakes or not.

And sometimes you shield people, and it turns out to be a waste, but you can say it's for comfort. Which I've found is actually quite important because some people fret about HP bars way too much, and you can save them the panic attack.

In Savage and Ultimate, shields are used the same as damage reduction (e.g. Reprisal), to survive one-shots rather than unexpected mistakes. Technically they're still not necessary most of the time, if your team has perfect use of mitigation abilities. But it's incredibly useful to have a spam-able shield ability during prog. Basically just an extra 10% max HP.


I think these illustrate a good balanced design, and I wouldn't want to mess with it. Shields currently sit in a spot where they are nice to have, especially when struggling, and necessary in a few situations. And you have to carefully consider when they are actually necessary and when they can be dropped for optimization.

I don't want them to be buffed (aside from making Succor = Asp. Helios), because I don't think they should be good to spam all the time. Stronger shields -> more max HP -> damage must be higher to be dangerous at all -> shields are necessary all the time. It's more fun when they're optional and I have to think about when they are worthwhile. If you've played WHM at lvl 50 (where Medica II is the solution to every problem), you know what I'm worried about.


I'd much rather they upgrade shield healers in EW by giving Scholar and Sage one (1) more cooldown for a strong shield. But with no heal attached, and with a shorter duration. Something better for blocking upcoming damage when timed correctly, but isn't spam-able. ... I just realized that's literally Shake It Off. Give me Shake It Off, I guess.

[Rongway]

Unless every TB will one shot the tank even with tank mitigation and every raidwide AOE will one shot non-tanks without shield then I can't see how they make contents that require more proactive shielding than they currently are.

Whether or not they can do this in the future will depend on which contents force matching 1 regen healer with 1 shield healer. Any content that allows matching two regen healers obviously cannot compel preshielding on tank busters and raid busters.

Currently, only Savage raids in Raid Finder force all three DD types in matching. Savage raids in Duty Finder and Extreme trials don't care about the DD types and will put four of the same DD together if that's who's available in the queue. It's quite likely they will go the same route with healers, forcing regen + shield in Savage Raid Finder but matching any available healer pair in Duty Finder. In that case, nothing would change from what we have now. Savage would have hard hitting tank busters and raid busters, and story mode won't care whether you precast shields, postcast shields, or don't shield at all.

[MagiusNecros]

Only damage shields that are effective is either TBN, Manaward or a really good high end Scholar. Most of the time outside of TBN damage shields in this game aren't really good. Which is disappointing to me.