A warning from a place that once had "shield healers"

[Jeeqbit]

This isn't currently an issue, because although some healers are referred to as "shield healers", you do not have to play them as that in hardly any content and it's not considered optimal to do it either. If you use shields you spend a GCD on something other than damage, when there is usually a heal alternative that is off the GCD and doesn't interrupt your damage.

On astrologian, shields are seen as less overall healing than regens. You could even say that it's the reverse problem in this game and it's more effective to just throw a regen onto someone than a shield because both of them expire. You could even say that off GCD healing has overtaken healing and shielding altogether in a lot of content.

So right now it's not a problem but there are similar problems with other types of healing, but shield healing might be something in the next expansion. In the next expansion, fights will be designed to consider that one of the healers is a shield healer.

[Kes13a]

They scaled it terribly.
Completely unusable before 50 and then it was god after 50. Very strange. And that's where WoW's balance issue comes into play.

I firmly believe WoW devs couldnt achieve balance with a scale and equal weights.

but thats another game. lol I much more prefer healing here

[Omedon]

In the next expansion, fights will be designed to consider that one of the healers is a shield healer.

This is essentially what I'm getting at when I say it's being leaned into and codified!

[WhiteArchmage]

But the devs already said that for the majority of content (which I'm assuming means Normal modes and 24-mans) you won't need 1 of each. The only thing it'll likely affect is World First Savage and Ultimate, and even then it'd require damage that would kill the party outright without shields, or debuffs that only trigger if you take HP damage, which sufficiently strong shields prevent.

The XIV team has always leaned on every party composition being viable, and I trust them to balance things out so every party composition keeps being viable.

[VirusOnline]

This is essentially what I'm getting at when I say it's being leaned into and codified!

That's not a catch-all.
Casual content does not have the same considerations as savage/ultimate content.
How I like to think about it is that it is the class that decides what the advantages are, not the fight that decides how to abuse or disadvantage our class. The latter is WoW logic.

[Omedon]

That's not a catch-all.
Casual content does not have the same considerations as savage/ultimate content.

And this is of course true and why I hope no trickle down feedback effects come to impact people outside that late endgame!

[Omedon]

The XIV team has always leaned on every party composition being viable

Coming from WoW, this sounds like unicorn talk, and I've been in that WoW sphere for so long that of course I defaulted to an assumption of "well they can just design around an optimal composition because any group can form that comp because job system."

That they don't do that breaks my WoW-trained brain, and I'm not complaining!

[Anirab]

WoW used to have "shield healers" coexisting with "regen healers."

I've played WoW from release on and did progress raiding. I was raiding as a discipline priest, main tank healer. Before i would've finished one shield cast, the tank would've been in the dirt. If the tank has 8000 HP and the Boss hits for 4k for normal hits and like 7500 for big hits, there was never time for a shield and regen usually came from a druid.
I was pushing my big heal button until the boss was dead. Literally. If i'd miss 1 big heal, tank would've been dead. Casting a shield was waste of GCD and Mana.

So when was shield healing even an option in WoW? In normal dungeons maybe but they weren't challenging anyhow for me as a healer, i always went in with minimum level.

And btw there might be a misunderstanding, in FFXIV you don't stand in the corner and cast heal or regen or shields - you keep the group alive while doing as much damage as you can as heal DPS is calculated into the encounters. You get in late levels a huge set of tools to heal without actually spending much GCDs for healing, especially as WHM. If possible GCDs are used for damage and healing is done with oGCDs.

[wereotter]

I am waiting to see what they do with Ast though, since I think they are pulling shields from them. technically not a HUGE deal, but be interesting to see if they do anything with diurnal

If I'm being honest, I wouldn't expect them to do anything at all with it. More likely you'll see both sects go the way of sword oath / darkside / deliverance. If anything you'll see something like noctural sect being a rename of celestial intersection, and it will just put up a small shield similar to divine benision.

[Lunalepsy]

Alright, so , full disclosure, I am SO not a healer main or an endgame player in any MMO, but part of my distance from the healing game is because of the damage done to my definition of fun in specifically WoW (Where I have over a decade of experience as a more casual player) by those overthinking the endgame and those effects trickling down through feedback-motivated game design.

WoW used to have "shield healers" coexisting with "regen healers." The discipline priest of old involved shielding people pre-emptively from damage, with interim time largely spent throwing damage at the enemy that would translate into lower end raid wide "smart healing" that would go where it was needed. Various designs of the class would lean into one aspect of that equation or the other, until you get to where the spec is today: a class whose shields are flimsy and intended just to be an applicator of the temporary buff that would serve as a designated funnel for that "damage into healing" that used to be "smart" but now only goes where directed. The result is a high skill floor class that new players pick up to enjoy the concept and end up failing at often, wiping groups because they chose the "hard to play healer" that's apparently a god in the hands of "skilled players."

Anyway, that's not what I posted to focus on, my point in that paragraph about discipline is to say that "the shield healer had to die" for one big reason: Regen "restore hitpoint healers" in later game content felt encroached upon and got bored because "everyone in the raid is shielded so why do you need me?"

The path to ruin here is "bored healers," and the design intent to appease them.

I post this as a cautionary tale: FFXIV is seemingly about to codify the idea of "shield healers" and "regen healers." They are going to be in the same raids. If you don't want your classes twisted beyond recognition, if you like the flavor of your healing jobs as they will be defined in this new paradigm, give all the feedback you want, but beware the following lines of gripe:

-As a healer: "I'm bored, make my life more exciting!"

-As a regen healer: "The shield healers are taking my job away!"

Understand something, please, better than WoW's community ever could: It is everyone's job to make everyone else's job easier, and no more is that true than when it comes to your healer. A bored healer is a tank's greatest compliment, and I say this as a "career tank" who guns for that badge of honor of "I'm bored" from PUG healers.

If you want excitement, in my opinion, play a DPS. If you want to heal, literally everyone's better performance should lower your stress level. Healers looking to break that paradigm are bad for the game, because that's how you get modern discipline priests.

But most importantly to this thread's main thrust: For the love of all that is decent, if you like most of the healing paradigm we end up with, please, please, don't go down the "shield healers make me obsolete" rabbit hole. That is the path to stressed out healers, longer queues and overall healing shortages.

Let the healers "have the game." We need them. Let their life be easy. That goes for non-healers and healers alike. Think, before you give feedback, where it is to lead, because I can tell you where some of this feedback leads: To a place where healers and non healers are miserable, but the thrill seekers that should be playing DPS are happy!

Just my two cents. I for one live with trusts from the moment I hit 71 on a job, so this won't affect me much except for one time for each trial or maybe one time per raid, but just as a PSA, as someone who's looking forward to trying sage, please don't break this.

That's all I got. Thank you for reading!

WHM=Burst/DoT healer.