Reviving WHM

[Docteur_Fluttershy]

they removed stoneskin because it was considered too powerfull being based on HP.
18% would have been about 8k shield on a 40k hp tank, cumulated with other shielding it could have been used to ignore mechanics. That was on paper though, the real problem wasnt SS itself, but SS+other shielding, and mostly on tanks (since its hp based).

18% on a dps that has 20-25k HP is like 4-5k shield, which is about 300 potency more or less. On a tank it could go up to 8k, which is about 530 potency more or less.

And that was its former state, now on a dps it put a shield that's more or less as much as a regen tick, and on tank its about as high as a fairy embrace. For a higher cost of cure II. And we have a passive just to be able to have a casting time on it as fast as cure II. "Too Powerfull".

The fun fact is, AST can use SS, can use bole, can use disable, can use collective unconscious, with SC bubble, fairy damage reduction, virus, eye for an eye, and shield, which, all together, (since the reduction are all multiplicative), reduce damage by: 30%(bole), 10%(disable), 15%(virus), 20%(magical fairy reduction), 10% (dome), 10% (eye for an eye), and 10% (collective unconscious), with the SS (lets say 4k on tank) and sch shield (lets say 16k on crit, not gonna count the highest possible, but it can go way above that with mantra and other buffs), which bring us to the total of 20k shield, and a reduction of damage of 68.7% (more or less), which mean a tank of 40k hp can take a mechanic dealing initial damage of 160 000 and still be up with 10k HP, with no tank CD.

On the other hand, whm+sch can reduce of an amount of (dome+e4e+virus+fairy shield => 10 10 15 20 => 44.92%), meaning a tank with 40k hp can take a 90 000 and still be up with 10k hp, with no tank CD.

now, the same situations without SS: AST+SCH => 156k instead of 160k, WHM+SCH => 86k instead of 90k. With old 18% SS? just add 4k to each number instead of removing them.

In a team as solo heal (with a smn):
(not counting protect, tank/mnk int/str debuffs)
AST max reducing damage : 56.6% (enhanced bole+disable+CU+e4e+virus) +4k shield (SS)+ 12k shield (crit noct)
SCH max reducing damage: 44.92%(dome, e4e, virus, fairy shield) + 4k shield (SS) +20k shield (crit adlo with some buffs)
WHM max reducing damage: 23.5% (virus and e4e)+4k shield (SS)
take virus and e4e out of the equation (since smn have virus/e4e) => Whm has 0%, Sch has 28%, Ast has 43.3%.
(you can take ast without virus/e4e if you want, and you can also take into consideration DRK reducing intel and stuff like that)

The point i'm trying to make is, WHM has 0 inherent reducing damage ability, and only SS. Nerfing SS while releasing a healer that can further add to SCh already high damage reduction kit, using "%HP" as en excuse, was nonsense, unless dps had 120k hp and tank 200k, while still having the same healing capacity.

TLR;
Dev team was afraid WHM+SCH could mitigates too much with SS, so they nerfed it so AST+SCH could mitigates twice more even without SS.