How would you feel if shields had no upfront healing?

[Dearche]

I do really like the idea of shields without heals. It's one of the reasons why I think WHM is the current best shield healer instead of the normally vaunted SCH.

That said, the other part is the instant cast. .5s is nice and all, but you might as well make it instant if you're going below 1s. It'll also add quite a lot of versatility to a spell that doesn't actually heal.

In addition, adding a shield broken triggered heal is a bad idea. The point of the shield is to prevent the damage, and if you add a shield buff on top of that, then most of the time that nice sized heal will almost all go to overhealing. Completely seperating heals from shields is a better idea I think.

For that matter, there's not really any need to increase the power of the shield as long as the MP cost is brought down a bit. Though making it an oGCD for SCH would be especially nice. Maybe Lustrate could shield instead of heal?

[Liam_Harper]

1000/750 is a bit much, but yes adjustments aside pure shields and a few shields that trigger additional heals after the shield breaks would be great. Shield healers should be about predicting and preparing for damage and rewarding you for it, not Pure Healing 99% of the time and occasionally preventing a raidwide from killing the party in Savage.

It would require minor chances to how debuffs like vuln and damage down apply when taking 0 damage, but that should be doable.

In addition, adding a shield broken triggered heal is a bad idea. The point of the shield is to prevent the damage, and if you add a shield buff on top of that, then most of the time that nice sized heal will almost all go to overhealing. Completely seperating heals from shields is a better idea I think.

It depends on how hard the damage hits. Chances are a raidwide pure shield isn't going to completely nullify hard hitting mechanics. Having the heal after the shield breaks makes a lot more sense that the current system of the heal applying before, which often wastes it when pre-shielding.