About Endwalkers AST changes

[Gemina]

The worst bit is, this is completely unneccessary. Its just another nail in the coffin of job identity.
We've seen most of sage's toolkit. Surprise, most of it is regens not shields. Despite being a "barrier" healer.

Right now japan has its definitions wrong. Pure healing is doing healing and nothing else. What japan calls pure healing is actually regenerative healing. Which all the healers have in bulk.

Ignoring anyone's definition of pure healer and just going from observation, what defines a pure healer is that it isn't a barrier healer. If we were to go off of an ability to use HoTs, then you are correct because as you say, all the healers have this ability. But then the same could be said for shields and barrier healers, as even WHM has an ability to shield a ST including the self, and another to mitigate raid damage.

However, I believe what truly separates barrier and pure healers is their ability to use shields and HoTs on demand respectively. Currently, WHM and Diurnal AST can sustain their HoTs via the GCD; SCH and Noct AST can due this respectively with shields via the GCD. Of course, we could get into if sustained shields and HoTs are even necessary in most content, but that would be getting into encounter design. I just think that SE wants to sway away from forced comps, and to give flexibility to the Duty Finder to allow for two barrier or pure healers that way queue time doesn't go through the roof.

[Mansion]

However, I believe what truly separates barrier and pure healers is their ability to use shields and HoTs on demand respectively. Currently, WHM and Diurnal AST can sustain their HoTs via the GCD; SCH and Noct AST can due this respectively with shields via the GCD. Of course, we could get into if sustained shields and HoTs are even necessary in most content, but that would be getting into encounter design. I just think that SE wants to sway away from forced comps, and to give flexibility to the Duty Finder to allow for two barrier or pure healers that way queue time doesn't go through the roof.

For me the problem is that current encounter design doesn't require "on demand" shields or regens, because as everything is scripted, everything is planned in advance with oGCDs (which are more powerfull, mana efficient and not a DPS loss). Even barriers are unnecessary most of the time because there is very little damage that requires more HP than players' life pools. So being able to shield/apply regen whenever falls short in my opinion.
SCH has the strongest single target regen (the fairy link) and decent regens with the fairy or upgraded sacred soil, diurnal AST and WHM can weave in a single target shield that helps mitigate tank damage in raids.
That's why the barrier/pure healer duality doesn't work for me, we need encouter design changes to make it work.