Quote Originally Posted by ItMe View Post
Considering how few shields the game's only shield healer has right now... and how many HoTs Sage was revealed to have, I'm honestly not entirely sure what the pure/shield healer labels are supposed to even mean.
I feel this. I would really love to hear from the devs directly what the difference is supposed to be because I don't really understand what's meant to differentiate the healers. The other example of where a role is divided into sub roles comes from the DPS role where Melee, Physical Ranged, and Magical Ranged DPS all have clearly defined different playstyles. Let's not forget that they each also have a completely different set of role actions outside of a Arm's Length and Second Wind. From what we've seen so far, both Pure and Barrier healers are looking to continue having a relatively similar playstyle outside of nuance mechanics like AST's cards and the same selection of role actions.

My best guess is that Pure Healers are meant to have high-potency GCD healing and Barrier Healers have barrier GCD healing, but if that's literally what the difference is supposed to be exclusively, then the devs are just really out of touch with how healers play. GCD healing is what we actively avoid using as much as possible and thus the least defining qualities of our gameplay. The only example of where I could see these sub roles actually mattering is in wanting at least one Barrier Healer during the early stages of Savage or Ultimate prog where having an AoE barrier on the GCD can help the party endure mechanics longer and thus learn the fight more quickly, but that's it.