Differentiate pure heals and shields?

[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.