Please Nerf Shield Healer Pure Heals

[Saefinn]

I've raised my views in a couple of threads, but figured I'd make my own.

The devs I think have made clear what their intended direction is for healing jobs. I can 100% see the potential. I've played since A Realm Reborn and remember being a SCH during that time and loving its design and one of the main things I loved was this idea of it being a shield healer, it created a different dynamic for how I interact with people's health pool. And honestly, I can get behind this, if the devs pull it off.

To see the devs make a definite statement that they intend for the "pure" and "shield" healer distinction like we had in 2.0 is hopeful. Yet my fear is that they won't achieve this goal because of existing design.

So my feedback here is. Nerf SCH's Pure Healing. And balance Sage's against it.

If you need to then buff shields to compensate. You could allow us to stack them so we're not disadvantaged in a dual-shield healer set up. You could remove the timer on the effect so none are wasted. Or apply a penalty to secondary shields if 2 stacked is too strong. Or just apply a longer timer if a permanent one presents problems.

Unless you nerf then the stated goal cannot be achieved. SCH is too good at oGCD pure heals. Shields are situational and if anything end up getting the "Emergency Tactics" treatment because Emergency Tactics provides a guaranteed heal. Galvanise relies on people to take a hit.

A "shield" healer is not a pure healer with shields as an after thought. It's a specific healing style that was achieved in 2.0. The game has evolved since then, but the direction SCH has taken was not to build on its shield mechanics, but to build on its oGCD's and healing potential. This, if anything, eroded any distinction between "pure" and "shield" healer. This means if they try to carry this distinction with current healer design without shaking anything up would make the distinction redundant as it already has been.

So SCH will need nerfs for this to work. I hope that they are nerfed come 6.0, but given even in its current state Scholar is still considered a 'shield healer' when it barely even needs them of course makes me worried the same trend will follow. Hence a thread.

Shield healers need to rely on their shields for it to work.

And for SCH I think this approach could make Seraph feel more useful. Buff her shields. The use I think she has is that she can protect the party to help prevent incoming damage and slap an AoE regen down to get their health up whilst the SCH is able to put their focus on something else (or help get HP up if there is a requirement for them to get it up quicker than a Regen will compensate). I used to use Eos a similar way to compensate my weaker heals in ARR but with Succor.

But the ways I found shield healing interacts with people's health bars (and is how I played it in 2.0):
- You preempt an attack and help mitigate and absorb the damage and you heal the difference. Mechanics are scripts, so this can be a proactive way of healing.
- Once an attack has gone off and your party members have suffered damage, you can shield from further damage until you get their health back up. This would how a Shield healer can be reactive.

It's why I think when SCH got bigger heals it become OP. Its existing tools were good enough but seems there was a perception that SCH's heals were weak.

Yet in ARR I was able to perform some crazy carries, do speed runs and all sorts of useful junk with my SCH. I never found this approach to be weak. I just have to think about it differently than I would a WHM.

[edit]
For sake of clarity. I am not saying we nerf it into the ground, I've used 2.0 SCH as a point of references where Lustrate was useful for getting health up quickly, but of course was a limited resource that wasn't frequent or strong enough to compete with SCH's shield healing aspect. So I am of the view we need an evolution of this approach/philosophy that's relevant to current content. And by comparison, although WHM and AST are pure healers, they still have shields and they're frequent enough to be useful in situations they're needed but aren't at a level where it becomes their healing style. It's more about nerfing them (and buffing shields) to a level that shifts the focus from pure healing to shield healing, rather than removing any potential of pure healing. In short, I don't think their goal is achievable without shifting the balance of their existing shield healer and using it as a point of reference for balancing the new one. Simply because as it stands SCH is only a shield healer by name and not in how it's played and in how it's balanced.

[FoxCh40s]

Man, I remember those days; that was in fact the reason I decided to go Scholar in 2.2. I got sick of White Mages Mp issues and started leveling the job and absolutely fell in love with it. Casting before the damage, rather than after took me a while to learn, but I eventually got the hang of it.

Scholar was great at single target healing efficiency, but really weak on the AoE aspect, making you plan with Whispering Dawn, Succor, and other contingencies; it felt GREAT. The real reason Scholar got knocked down a peg is because our shields and fairy heals were always crazy strong at the end of the patch cycles, causing people to cry that it was OP, then forget just how much trouble we have healing in a dungeon at minimum iLVL early on.

Ive entirely stopped playing healers, mostly because there is zero identity left in any of the best healers. Scholar has zero identity, Astro is slowly getting stripped of it; White Mage is the same because it never had anything to loose, and if they did, they just annoyingly got it back at a higher level with a crappy coat of paint.

Ive given up on them fixing healers, because I know they wont. Once Square changes something this drastically, they never go back.

[Rilifane]

I'd welcome an actual shield healer with open arms.
Right now, shields are inferior and inefficient in almost all situations because they have lower potencies than burst heals or regens. Niche scenarios aside, they barely get used.
If they really want to encourage a shield healer/ burst healer comp, they'll need to build on shields more or else it will just double pure healer with shields as an afterthought.

There are ways to prevent mechanic cheese with shields, like making the first hit of something deal regular damage and the second obliterating you through shields so nobody is tempted to stack stuff that's not supposed to be stacked.

There is no reason to not have a dedicated shield healer that has higher potencies and more efficiency when working with shields and uses burst heals and regens as either a last resort or support.
There is literally no difference between having 70% HP and 40% HP + a 30% shield.
With a design that makes them slow/ inefficient at healing people up after damage, shields would no longer be a "prevent one shots at low ilvl" thing but rather something that has value as form of healing the healer is good at.

And it would make for more interesting teamwork between burst healer and shield healer. A dedicated shield healer gives pure healers time to let strong regens tick or wait until something else comes off cd. A pure healer allows a shield healer to work efficiently with what they're good at instead of having to do both jobs while being inefficient at one of them.

[Teno]

They said they would make the split between shields and pure heals, yet mentioned that it would not divide healers in 2 different new roles. Them mentioning this might imply that healers (especially SCH and AST I presume) will receive significant changes, but not to the point of creating 2 sub roles.

[Semirhage]

Totally agree with the original post about giving this sort of treatment to Scholar if they want to double down on the shielding.

The real reason Scholar got knocked down a peg is because our shields and fairy heals were always crazy strong at the end of the patch cycles, causing people to cry that it was OP, then forget just how much trouble we have healing in a dungeon at minimum iLVL early on.

Hooooweeeeever.... I can never pass up an opportunity to contradict the perception that Scholar "wasn't OP".


Scholar was crackers bananas busted bonkers overpowered. Or if you want to take the opposite view, White Mage and Astro were MUCH weaker jobs than Scholar in early Heavensward. That damage gap doesn't lie. You can chalk it up to awful oversights in WHM and AST design, but a gap that wide makes squabbles over the specific patch-to-patch meta in this expansion look petty.

[ItMe]

So my feedback here is. Nerf SCH's Pure Healing. And balance Sage's against it.

As someone who runs DRK and uses Living Dead... please don't.

[SweetPete]

Yeah I can definitely see them reworking scholar to remove the regen from them and nerf their pure healing to compensate for more powerful shields. Why call it a shield healer if we’re going to mostly use pure heals and regens? Makes absolutely no sense. Scholar will get a huge rework to be on par with sage when it comes to shielding. I’m sure of it.

[Calysto]

Hi there.

i'm a casual healer (as in i don't really go for high end content), and my job of choice there is sch.

i'm not really sure what to make of this distinction of barrier/pure heal.

Sure you can lower the healing potency of the subclass, but that pose some gameplay issues.

Proactive healing is a thing, but barriers aren't infinite(and if they were, what would be the point ?)
Sometime the cast time of a "raidbuster" is not enough(if there's one) and if you got a bit of lag, often pointless. I can't count all the times i try to apply a barrier only to have it register on my party AFTER the damage.

So what do you do then ?
Keep the barrier up full time ? the loss is absurd and nobody want that, i think.
Know all the fights to predict incoming damage ? that's an incredible skill gap needed there (if i consider memory a skill, i know mine is pretty low)

And what about mechanics that down your party (like cid from orbone or doggos from bosja, math robots) : your whole party is down to 1 hp and you have 3 cast max fo fill them back.
As a "pure heal", no problem, even if the second healer is down. In the same position, the devs can't doom your party if you've only got a single barrier healer.
that means a barrier have to be anle to tpe the party in 3 gcd ; tank included.

What about unpredictable damage ? badly placed aoe, mine, players not knowing mechanics, etc...

At that point, it's probably enough potency for most content.

[Payadopa]

That's a fair assessment to make. I'd argue that everything outside 8 mans is easy anyway and that I think it's okay if some jobs are harder to play than others. We have that with DPS classes too and it's fine.

[Saefinn]

As someone who runs DRK and uses Living Dead... please don't.

Lustrate. It's what I used to do in HW. As I am using 2.0 SCH as a point of reference, Lustrate I wouldn't expect to be nerfed into the ground.

They said they would make the split between shields and pure heals, yet mentioned that it would not divide healers in 2 different new roles. Them mentioning this might imply that healers (especially SCH and AST I presume) will receive significant changes, but not to the point of creating 2 sub roles.

I don't know if it will mean significant changes, which is my worry just because it seems like they already consider WHM as a pure healer and SCH as a shield healer and AST in the middle but of course how they're played contradicts that. I hope it does mean significant changes to achieve the distinction, but of course i have my concerns and feel certain changes are need to make it possible.

-snip-

I'm semi-casual. I think the best point of reference for this distinction is 2.0 because is the last they did this successfully IMO. And we had to take all those scenarios into consideration too. So I am proposing an evolution of this, if they do an evolution of it, then they can achieve their goal IMO.

I think part of the problem is the perception that a shield has to be preemptive. The example I gave of how you might do a reactive heal, was that a shield can also be used to protect people as you're getting their health back up. I also referred to how Seraph could help me more help with that if her shields get a bit of buffing too. This was how I used to handle it, just using Succor or Adloquium and then use other healing tools to get the HP backup, but now out pet can help more with that.

A "shield" focus doesn't mean you cut out all potent heals just like a "pure" healer doesn't mean it can have useful shields (as there's situations where shields are needed/useful). As my example to quote above, Lustrate.

Taking the flip side. Although WHM is a "pure" healer, it still has shields from Divine Benison. Diurnal AST is a "pure" healer, but has Neutral Sect and Celestial Intersection. But I think at the current balance on SCH for "pure" and "shield" healing is off and is not fit for that distinction, it should be shield focused where the pure is secondary. And vice versa for a pure healer. So there can be some crossover. They'd need to nerf the pure side and buff the shield side enough to swap the focus.