Lets all take a deep breath

[Semirhage]

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.

The major caution here that I'm sure has prevented them from making shields ultra powerful in the past: what do you do in the event that you have two non-shield focused healers in content that will outright kill you if you don't have shields? Just die? If that's the case, then they also need to design content that requires burst healing that the shielders aren't capable of.

[MintnHoney]

what do you do in the event that you have two non-shield focused healers in content that will outright kill you if you don't have shields? Just die?

Remember, Yoshi-P covered this in the Live Letter: it all comes down to player skill. So it'll be our fault, as healers, for not being the right job, or for planning things out incorrectly if The Pure Healers still have shields at their disposal going forward.

[Saefinn]

The major caution here that I'm sure has prevented them from making shields ultra powerful in the past: what do you do in the event that you have two non-shield focused healers in content that will outright kill you if you don't have shields? Just die? If that's the case, then they also need to design content that requires burst healing that the shielders aren't capable of.

I mean it sounds like they're updating PF or DF or something like that so that it's Shield Healer and Pure Healer set up, but will see how many scenarios that's used for.

That sound be one way to address that.

The other is that I'm not saying taking away what shieldijg AST and WHM can do (beyond noct sect). For AST and WHM their shield use is infrequent and maybe used situationally too.

For SCH and by extension SAG, I think it'd be okay for something infrequent, limited and situational for better pure heals rather than something that can be your main focus. As it's stands, shielding is secondary and situational for all healers. Back in 2.0 I felt Lustrate filled this need.

If we want that shield healer focus shields need to be primary.

[Ayer2015]

I have a feeling we will be seeing big healer changes again this xpac. I just hope this comes with a more robust dps component. I spend more time spamming glare than I do healing.

[Satarn]

Calling it now: you'll still be perfectly fine with any healer comp because nothing will hit hard enough to require shields(especially with whatever new busted mitigation skills we get in EW) and the "barrier healers" will still have enough regular healing to get by because "what about dungeons or when your co-healer dies, hm???" - however the DF and (community enforced)PF split into 2 healer "roles" will make the waiting times for healers even more shit than they are now. Please look forward to it~

[Fullmoon64]

I'm being optimistic and hoping that while they will be nerfing the stance for AST, it will remain otherwise more or less the same, and briNG BACK THE HEAVENSWARD CARD SYSTEM. Plz? Thanks!

- Ozan

[Saefinn]

Calling it now: you'll still be perfectly fine with any healer comp because nothing will hit hard enough to require shields(especially with whatever new busted mitigation skills we get in EW) and the "barrier healers" will still have enough regular healing to get by because "what about dungeons or when your co-healer dies, hm???" - however the DF and (community enforced)PF split into 2 healer "roles" will make the waiting times for healers even more shit than they are now. Please look forward to it~

The "what about dungeons or when your co-healer dies, hm???" is a mentality I don't like when people think about shield healers, because I guess there's this misconception that it makes them weaker or are a niche, which is closer to how the concept is played at the moment, but isn't the case when there is a shield focus because it changes how you interact with a person's health pool and this was a concept I really liked. I had a similar conversation with a WHM with such concerns and pointed out it wasn't an issue in ARR and really it just needs to evolve the concept to current content. Given for current content they still consider SCH a shield healer of course is concerning of course because current design means its not. It's a pure healer with shields.

But I think back to my proudest carries in A Realm Reborn on SCH without a cohealer to help me because they were dead or knocked off. I also think back when SCH had much more of a barrier focus where it was plenty capable. In dungeons I'd do speed runs competently as a SCH, my record for Wanderers' Palace when it was on content was 10 minutes (I think the set record was 8 at the time), I'd manage to pull off the full pull version of Brayflox Hard So I'd argue it did just fine and I don't think of myself of a hardcore healer, competent yes, but I'm probably a low parse. I feel the reason SCH was OP in Heavensward was because they patched something up about SCH that didn't need patching, possibly due to this perception that shield healing is weaker or at least doesn't account for these scenarios.

SCH had the tools it needed, I just wish they evolved the shield focus as it grew instead of patching its weaker heals. And if they did that, I feel they'd be in a better position now to achieve their balance goal for Endwalker. I never felt disadvantaged as a SCH because I didn't use the same mentality I used when playing WHM, but SCH now, I use a much closer mentality to WHM...not helped by the fact that Lilies are basically reverse Aetherflow mechanics too.

[Satarn]

The "what about dungeons or when your co-healer dies, hm???" is a mentality I don't like when people think about shield healers, because I guess there's this misconception that it makes them weaker or are a niche, which is closer to how the concept is played at the moment, but isn't the case when there is a shield focus because it changes how you interact with a person's health pool and this was a concept I really liked.

Oh totally, but go back to what Yoshi P has said back before SHB about reworking the healers for 5.0 and how they "had to" give SCH more direct heals(again), because they'd supposedly "struggled", while SB SCH was already an ogcd healing powerhouse that barely used shields at all. I'm not myself saying that shields can't be good for solo healing(when done properly of course) - just that SE is apparently convinced of that.

Really the biggest misconception is whatever the devs themselves believe about how healing works in this game.

[Saefinn]

Oh totally, but go back to what Yoshi P has said back before SHB about reworking the healers for 5.0 and how they "had to" give SCH more direct heals(again), because they'd supposedly "struggled", while SB SCH was already an ogcd healing powerhouse that barely used shields at all. I'm not myself saying that shields can't be good for solo healing(when done properly of course) - just that SE is apparently convinced of that.

Really the biggest misconception is whatever the devs themselves believe about how healing works in this game.

Sadly this is what worries me.

Like I want to be hopeful that the distinction they've made means they try to go back to this old approach that worked and included my main draw to SCH.

Yet this distinction is nothing new...it just hasn't existed in design for years, just Devs think it does.

[Casti_EL]

I'm optimistically hoping they will do something good with making AST a pure-healer.

Personally I'd like to see a rework of the cards to provide healer-like abilities rather than a dps increase (maybe a heal boost, damage decrease, auto-res, mp refresh, shield, etc) or perhaps some cards we can apply to the enemy (damage increase, enfeeble, etc?) at the very least go back to HW cards - the current situation just isn't as much fun as it used to be.

I really hope the dev team do something about healing overall in the next exp and make it more fun again.