Add Shell, and don't make it stackable with protect.

[Tint]

nearly all raidbusters are magic based. the game is designed around that: mages have less life but higher magic defense, while melees have more life and lesser magic defense. if you change the raidbuster to physical then all the mages (and healers) will die while melees don't get much problems, wich is hard to justify.
so Shell > Protect.

[Phafi]

I mean, they could just serve out the 2.4 maiming set solution and bump up the lacking defense to be on par.

[loreleidiangelo]

And then half the raid dies at the end of V3S library phase because half the party takes huge physical damage and half takes huge magical.

Admittedly, unless people are surviving by a margin of 15% HP, Protect won't be the reason they're dying to that particular mechanic. It would absolutely make a difference on things like Meteor on O4S though, meaning the magical option in the OP's scenario would be the only "real" choice - negating all that talk about "thinking about what you want to shield against". FFS I'm not even sure any of the raid bosses in Savage EXCEPT the third boss do any sort of physical damage anyway outside of auto-attacks. And in dungeons you'd only ever take the physical version to help shield the tank from mob autos during mass pulls so the healer can DPS more. I'm as much a fan of "illusion of choice" in most scenarios as anyone, but in this case I'm just not seeing what two different types of buffs would "add" here except more cross-role swapping annoyance depending on what content you're doing.

I'd rather they do something based off of the OP's second obseravation re: the uselessness of Protect, though - just get rid of Protect altogether and lower all mob damage to compensate. Free up a role action for healers who lost a lot of "mandatory" things with this stupid new system. Why are people so desperate to cling to the irreverence of fire n' forget party buffs?

[Theodric]

I think it's fine the way it is. Adding iconic spells for the sake of adding iconic spells does little to tackle button bloat moving forward.

[Lemuria]

Don't forget at the launch of XIV only White Mage had Protect with Proshell, any other healer had to make due with only a physical defensive boost instead.

How soon we all forget. At the launch of XIV, there were two separate spells. Protect and Shell. It was only when it was remade into A Realm Reborn that we lost Shell and it became a trait added onto Protect. What's more, Protect and Shell had a far more dramatic increase in defense in their original forms, reducing damage by a very noticeable margin.

Mind you, these were also the days where Conjurer also had all of the elemental spells too. Banish was in the game too, but as a Thaumaturge spell.

[Waliel]

I'd still like to see Reflect at some point, IMO it's much more iconic than both Protect and Shell and I'm surprised they haven't done anything with it yet.

Can I cast Foul on myself for double damage?

[Sandpark]

It would be really cool if there were more than one type of protect. It would allow parties to think carefully on which type of attack they want to be shielded against, rather than just casting the same protect every time. Personally I feel like it's kinda useless, unless they expand on it more. It feels like SE could just lower all enemies attacks, by the percentage of protect, and it wouldn't even matter if it were there. Give us some diffident types of protective magic.

Hell no, please don't lower enemy attacks. Tanks can already pull half a dungeon, and people already cry about wanting every healer to DPS due to players being topped off on health.

Remember protect is a role action now, meaning whatever is changed here has every healer having to change their actions on the hotbar everytime a different encounter calls for it.

The elemental system was dumbed down in this game versus it's sister to prevent button bloat and combat one job being preferred over the other in certain contents. Right now the meta in the game is dodging being more important than mitigating.

Essentially different kinds of protects is the same thing as barspells from XI. A specific spell you cast to mitigate a specific mechanic. With the removal of elemental resistances/attributes point system, it seems SE doesn't want to go down that road.

Barstonra
BarPoisonra
Barsleepra
Barwatera
Barparalyzra
Baraera
Barfira
Barblindra
Barblizzara
Barsilencera
Barthundra
Barvira
Barpetra
Baramnesra

Having specific counters is nice in my books, but with the highly scripted mechanics and themes, doing so basically has specific spells being default depending on the circumstance.

Barfire- Use against Ifrit
Barice- Use against Shiva
Barthundra- Use against Ramuh

Or you could cast barpetra/bargaol and prevent a party member from being gaoled in Titan fight.

It would work the same if the elemental system was changed.

Ifrit weak to ice? Cast Ice Spells
Shiva weak to fire? Cast Fire
Titan weak to wind? Cast Aero

• It would break up the monotony of this rotation works for all content regardless of what that enemy is.
• It would perhaps trivialize the need to even dodge mechanics.
• It would add more buttons to manage more frequently.
• Introducing this at this point would require an entire revamp of every job's skills and rotation which probably ain't happening.

I posted an idea for bringing the skillchain system back which was the best party based cooperation mechanic for any mmo in my book. But I don't see none of this happening anytime soon. The theme is keep it simple, too much complexity and they get rant threads, too much complexity and they get job division(one job preferred over another,which still happens in raids even without all those things they were trying to avoid).

[Alistaire]

Add shell when most people are making very valid points about why we should get rid of protect? smh

[TankHunter678]

Add in shell as a short term instant cast party wide 30% magic defense with say... 120-180 sec cooldown. This way we can sill have the passive protection of protect as a long lasting buff, while shell can come in as a healer action for bumping up the defense of everyone prior to a nasty raidbuster. This also means that both protect and shell has a use as a role action without overlapping or forcing a case of you always choose one over the other for a given piece of content.

Oh, and also return Esuna/Leeches/Exalted Detriment as being inherent to the healer classes. So I can stop seeing cases of going into O4 and seeing people die to doom because the healers did not think it was necessary to bring esuna.

[bass9020]

Don't forget at the launch of XIV only White Mage had Protect with Proshell, any other healer had to make due with only a physical defensive boost instead.

At the time it was ok though since we only had 2 healers. AND Scholar did have a magic defense boost in the form of Eos with the Scholar ability Fey Covenant. But of course it makes people have to think and thinking is bad!!! Then with Astrologian added in things got more complicated (don't know why but as usual things got simpler), so instead of coming up with a way for Astrologian to protect against magic they just gave all 3 healers Proshell. So creative! So unique!