Lets all take a deep breath

[Semirhage]

I'm definitely going to take a deep breath. I need the oxygen for how hard I'm going to laugh at the reprise of one button damage spam.

[Videra]

I'm definitely going to take a deep breath. I need the oxygen for how hard I'm going to laugh at the reprise of one button damage spam.

B is Broil....

B is for Biolysis

A is for "The Dev team wants you to use aetherflow more on healing"

But there is no need to use aetherflow on healing. Such is the vicious cycle of healing right now.

[ItMe]

I know they heard the concerns from the Japanese forum at least so at the bare minimum I hope WHM gets Aero 3 back and Scholar returns to having multiple dots and Bane.

Why would they re-add these elements when they explicitly took them away because jobs having too many DoTs was causing issues?
At this point I'm amazed that SMN and BRD still have 2. As nice at it might be, I don't think it's reasonable to expect the healers will get more DoTs.

[ty_taurus]

The "wait and see" game has ended badly on so many occasions I'm surprised anyone can still defend it.

People spam "wait and see" as we go through the announcements, beta, prepatch, expansion launch, 70-80, first patch and then the realization sinks in that it wasn't going to be changed and it will be 2 full years before it can be. Content tends to be made well in advance and once development has gone too far, it's impossible for them to completely change it. It's vital to get feedback in as early as possible and make ourselves heard.

Well first of all, I'm not actually saying "wait and see." There's nothing wrong with being worried, and I am too, but there are people making paragraphs of criticism on the end product when we have virtually no information about what AST will actually look like when it's all said and done. Feedback is essential, yes, but at this point, all you can really say is "I'm worried about losing Nocturnal Sect."

It's not about 'wait and see' but rather about not complaining about kits that don't yet exist.

[Punslinger]

I mean, I think in fairness, as it stands the "pure healer" and "shield healer" mentalities don't really exist anymore in how the jobs are played, so knowing this much actually does give us something to go on. For them to put an emphasis on it is an indicator that they're not understanding how healers are played.

You've hit the nail right on the head. I had the exact same thoughts when they announced Sage as a "shield healer." And I'm shaking my head, laughing at all the people insisting we wait and see, just like two years ago, when we were assured that Square totally knew what they were doing and healers will totally be awesome in 5.0/5.1/5.2/5.3/5.4/5.5 just wait.

Square buying into the false "shields vs. regens" dichotomy stands as proof that they do not understand how people play healers in their own game. Is the dev team just not paying attention to their analytics? SCH is best known for its Aetherflow oGCD heals: Lustrate, Indom, and Excog, absolutely none of which are shields. Fey Union is not a shield. Whispering Wind is not a shield. Emergency Tactics turns a GCD shield into a larger normal heal, and is on a very short 20s cooldown. SCHs, in other words, use shields as little as possible, which makes it very puzzling why Square would consider them to be "shield healers" unless they just aren't paying attention.

In a game where every bit of damage in every encounter is scripted down to the millisecond, shields are not necessary. You use shields to protect a target from unexpected incoming damage. But all incoming damage in FF14 is scripted and therefore expected. They have some use during progression as a buffer against mistakes, but most groups quickly switch away from shields as they master the fight mechanics.

There was no mention at all of what were significant healer issues for all of ShB: the utterly braindead and homogenous DPS kits of all three healers, the stupidly powerful nature of oGCD heals making GCD healing irrelevant in most cases, the encounter design resulting in healers spending 60+% of their GCDs on DPS even in TEA, the lack of meaningful gameplay during healer downtime, the lack of meaningful party-support (since that was moved over to physical-ranged DPS jobs), and the absurdly low skill ceiling on the healer role in general.

Sage certainly looks cool. But unless and until Square shows that they understand the issues with their healer design and commit to fixing them, it's all sizzle and no steak. (Even if I think Alphinaud Al-Saachez should be yelling, "FLY, MY FANGS!")

[Deceptus]

Square buying into the false "shields vs. regens" dichotomy stands as proof that they do not understand how people play healers in their own game. Is the dev team just not paying attention to their analytics? SCH is best known for its Aetherflow oGCD heals: Lustrate, Indom, and Excog, absolutely none of which are shields. Fey Union is not a shield. Whispering Wind is not a shield. Emergency Tactics turns a GCD shield into a larger normal heal, and is on a very short 20s cooldown. SCHs, in other words, use shields as little as possible, which makes it very puzzling why Square would consider them to be "shield healers" unless they just aren't paying attention.

And shields are used as little as possible because they're just not that effective and they have been nerfed into the ground. Outside of crit situations at most gear levels a single target shield is ~10% of a tank's HP and an aoe shield is ~5-8% of a tank's HP

Also, they generally involve overhealing. If you know an AoE is coming and everyone is topped up, shielding beforehand involves half of the healing being pointless overheal.

[Laphicet]

No, I will not take a deep breath and wait and see, as such is what got us the absolute garbage that was the 5.0 healer changes and the torture of "just wait they'll patch it" we healer mains were constantly told throughout this expac. And guess what? SCH never got it's old dps kit or unique faeries back, and AST is still missing its old cards and time dilation stuff. The devs have also not addressed the shitty gameplay flow of spam 1 button for the majority of the time or the homogenization of the jobs.

The trailer also shows no more than a cure, an adlo, a ST dps, and an AOE dps... which guess what? That's the kit or equivalent most healers have and is the bare minimum, if you will. So no, I won't wait and see expecting things to magically get better, because as of what we can tell now, they won't.

[Saefinn]

And shields are used as little as possible because they're just not that effective and they have been nerfed into the ground. Outside of crit situations at most gear levels a single target shield is ~10% of a tank's HP and an aoe shield is ~5-8% of a tank's HP

Also, they generally involve overhealing. If you know an AoE is coming and everyone is topped up, shielding beforehand involves half of the healing being pointless overheal.

And I feel like this is fixable. As I say I think it shields need to be the central focus of shield healers. Nerf the pure heals, buff shields, maybe even have a shield that lasts longer (to cover cases where you put a shield up but your co-healer healer feels people to full, you can have it last long enough for people to take damage and not waste your cast). After all I see 2 advantages to shields from a game play perspective:
1) good pre-emptive approach where damage is predictable and you can mitigate it, FFXIV is a predictable game, so let your tools take advantage of this predictability, but your shields need to be better & more efficient than your pure heals because you can time your pure heals for predictable damage too.
2) They can act as a barrier/buffer to any further damage when somebody takes a hit. This if anything compensates our lack of pure heals, because that shield gives us more remove to breathe for getting their healing to 100% or for more skilled healers, to leave the health like that until such time is needed.

If they can take those points into consideration and make this the direction of their shield healers, then I think what they want is achievable.
If they can't or a unwilling. Give use rounded healers that instead play more heavily to other parts of their job identities in their flavour and in how they feel to play.

[SweetPete]

Why do shields even have a timer attached? It’s weird. Not like it’s op for shields to stay on until they are broken. They don’t cover that much HP anyway. Always gave a side eye to the 30 second timer. I hope that goes away. Regen I can understand the timer but shields make no sense why they can’t remain on until broken.

[Silver-Strider]

And shields are used as little as possible because they're just not that effective and they have been nerfed into the ground. Outside of crit situations at most gear levels a single target shield is ~10% of a tank's HP and an aoe shield is ~5-8% of a tank's HP

Also, they generally involve overhealing. If you know an AoE is coming and everyone is topped up, shielding beforehand involves half of the healing being pointless overheal.

I always wondered if there was a way to make it so that overhealing with a shield ability could just go towards the shield instead.