Differentiate pure heals and shields?

[P0W3RK1D]

kinda just chit-chat, right now there is not enough distinction betweene shield and pure healers, but come 6.0 hopefully we are given justice ,honest opinions, how would you guys decide to make pure heals and shield work differently from each other, and yet keep their effectiveness, or have a different advantages in use?

I think some nice ways would be to leave pure heals and regens as they are, but make shields act differently -- like making shields a whole lot more effective (like , big enough to be a second health bar), but actually giving them a bigger cooldown, or forcing them to be channeled instead of casted -- preventing damage to the target, at the cost of the caster's MP.

any ideas?

[inhaledcorn]

Channel attacks are very unpopular in this game. Anything that forces GCD clipping feels awful to use, and, for the most part, you can trick the server tick into keeping the defensive part of the channel for the only part of the attack that you need. Just look at how people use Collective Unconscious. If they want to make shields more effective, then the half-and-half heal + shield needs to be converted to just raw shields, probably also being HP% based. Also, there needs to be more oGCD shield skills and more ways to weave it. And, if we want shields to be really effective, then we need less dark attacks that ignore them.

[ksuyen]

Maybe a bit off topic but I always focus target boss when in sch/noct. I think most shield healers do. The diff is we learn and memorize all the boss attacks so when we see the casting bar moving, it's time to shield up before the big attack. Whether it's single shield to tank or aoe shield to group, it all the same. Pure healers is more relax. I just heal when I see your hp less than 50%.

[Allegor]

Maybe a bit off topic but I always focus target boss when in sch/noct. I think most shield healers do. The diff is we learn and memorize all the boss attacks so when we see the casting bar moving, it's time to shield up before the big attack. Whether it's single shield to tank or aoe shield to group, it all the same. Pure healers is more relax. I just heal when I see your hp less than 50%.

Something I love about noct (RIP come 6.0) that I can't really do with SCH is shielding a non-tank player targeted by an ability - on a SCH, between casting adlo, the shield delay, and maybe latency, chances are the ability already went off and the shield is wasted, whereas with noct I can just instantly drop an aspected benefic on them.

[Wawachume]

Maybe a bit off topic but I always focus target boss when in sch/noct. I think most shield healers do. The diff is we learn and memorize all the boss attacks so when we see the casting bar moving, it's time to shield up before the big attack. Whether it's single shield to tank or aoe shield to group, it all the same. Pure healers is more relax. I just heal when I see your hp less than 50%.

For me, the stress is the opposite way. I have a really slow reaction time and a tendency to freeze at stressful moments. On WHM I watch for someone's health to go down, spend two seconds processing the fact that it's gone down, spend two more seconds panicking and not knowing which button to press, and by then they're at like 10% and I'm doing a mixture of frantic spamming, hitting benediction, and watching somebody die. On SCH I just put shields on anyone I expect to take damage in the near future.

Something I love about noct (RIP come 6.0) that I can't really do with SCH is shielding a non-tank player targeted by an ability - on a SCH, between casting adlo, the shield delay, and maybe latency, chances are the ability already went off and the shield is wasted, whereas with noct I can just instantly drop an aspected benefic on them.

I like that too. Actually—and this is sad given how much I like the theme of AST—I think it's the only thing, mechanically speaking, that I like about nocturnal better than SCH.

[IceBlueNinja]

Something I love about noct (RIP come 6.0) that I can't really do with SCH is shielding a non-tank player targeted by an ability - on a SCH, between casting adlo, the shield delay, and maybe latency, chances are the ability already went off and the shield is wasted, whereas with noct I can just instantly drop an aspected benefic on them.

instant shields are beautiful with ast, even aspected helios too via light speed is instant. co 60 cd only + helios/aspected benefic always there is why to me noct sect ast is more powerful than sch similar to how we our regens are claim better than whm. With sch you gotta pray to get a cata with alqo to be able to use DT and after using DT it has a long 1min+ cd which makes additional catas useless while its on cd, while co 60 seconds + helios is more spammish. Though alqo has a 300 pot its shield its only 125% unless cata where as ast already gets the raw 250% which makes it slighty beat alqo dispite the slightly higher potency if alqo dont crit, but if it does it wins aspect benefic cause the higher potency but then CI 200% +netrual aspected benefic 250% is technically 450% lol .Dirunal shields best nocts single shields while nocts best dirunal party wise since co+helio is 250% in noct where as you cant do it in dirunal. Hopefully sage has a kit similar to noct ast then I wont care that noct is gone lol. Regens maybe mathematically better but shields allow you to be saved from something that may hurt you badly or even 1 hit you or even in some old dungeons block a debuff that comes after an attack or even knock back effect if you take 0 damage. for me as a heavy noct user I usually pre shield knowing when aoes will happen and if neutro is up I use it to have both shield and the regen. Shield healing for me is less stressful vs regen healing too. Regens and shields are a team thing, noct ast/sch should be pre casting when aoe is about to come and whm/dirunal ast should then regen the remaining damage , so in that instant both is equal with only regens abit better mathematically when it ticks which makes sense since its to repair as much damage as possible more than a shield. when I think of it really ast is busted cause we are to technically not be a better regen/shielder than whm/sch since we are like the rdm type healer of the group. SE I guess didnt care, but its only fair since they damaged our stormblood cards to this boring lame shadow bringers mess boring cards else maybe if they left it alone they probably wouldnt have op the regens and shields of ast. Side note IMO sage should have been a another regen class and ast should have lost dirunal and kept noct because since ast was regarded as a time mage and time mage has a barrier effect call reflect in most final fantasies it simply would have make sense we kept noct and lost dirunal. make sure to make lovely memories of noct now .

[Deceptus]

Channel attacks are very unpopular in this game. Anything that forces GCD clipping feels awful to use, and, for the most part, you can trick the server tick into keeping the defensive part of the channel for the only part of the attack that you need. Just look at how people use Collective Unconscious. If they want to make shields more effective, then the half-and-half heal + shield needs to be converted to just raw shields, probably also being HP% based. Also, there needs to be more oGCD shield skills and more ways to weave it. And, if we want shields to be really effective, then we need less dark attacks that ignore them.

Yeah, with latency and the bad code the way it is, channels would be a nightmare.

[NobleWinter]

Shields have a delay before they activate so waiting for a cast bar to start to apply shields has left me with useless shields far too many times. I normally end up using more reactive healing on my first time in an encounter and then once I learn it Im shielding far in advance. I know Scholar has a lot to set up with Sacred Soil, Seraph and Consolation, Deployed Critlo, and Fey Illumination. It's a mess trying to use all those well reactively. If anything I hope they change shields to have a permanent or just longer duration. If they cost so much to use I should get more than 30 seconds out of them and then I wouldn't worry about wasting them.

[LeonKeyh]

Not sure it necessarily needs to be differentiated more than it already is. Shields have extra value because you can make it so that people can take more than their maximum amount of HP in damage, but the downside is that you need to be proactive with them (it's not much of a downside given the length of time that shields stay on party members). But, there are a few ways that I've seen other games differentiate shields from pure healing (all of which would be a balancing nightmare):

1. Implement shield degradation - Shields tick down as they sit on people, losing efficacy the further from the point between putting the shield on someone and them getting hit. With this setup, SCH's Emergency Tactics could maybe consume the shield to go a full heal to that point instead. Shields would decrease about the same rate as regen heals, so shield + regen would be fairly strong (unless they're already at max health)

2. Shield Specific Mitigation - Shields have their own armor value, so damage dealt to shields may be higher/lower than the damage that would be dealt to straight up health. This would make shields stronger on low armor classes. e.g., if you have a 1,000 shield on a BLM and a PLD, an attack that deals 500 damage to the shield would deal that damage to both of them, personal armor would be ignored. This would make shield healers either incredibly powerful before gearing up in a tier, or nearly useless after gearing up though.

3. More effects for broken shields (a la TBN) - Have different shields which, when broken, give different effects to the person the shield was put on (or the caster who put the shield on them). Shield that, when broken does a small AE heal to everyone around the person, one that gives the person a X% mitigation boost for X seconds, restores X MP to the caster, gives the caster a buff that allows them to use another ability, etc.

4. Lower duration on shields (plus maybe "bonuses" for shields 'running out') - Have shields be 8-12s long or something, if the buff runs out while some shield is left then there's a bonus (e.g. shield's duration runs out it does a normal heal on the target, gives the caster MP back, basically the stuff above), also, make them stronger to specifically deal with burst damage. Then you have regen being strong for sustained damage and shields available for burst damage (as long as you can preemptively shield).

None of these things really fit with the game though, and as I said, would be a nightmare to balance. I feel like it's better that we look at the balance as Regen vs Shield, not "Pure Heal" vs Shield.

EDIT: Was reminded of another way of differentiating:

5. Absorption Rates - Shields have a percentage absorption rate. For example, a 50% shield would result in half of the damage dealt to shields and half to health.