Do people in this game not comprehend the concept of shield healers?

[Nethereal]

I would argue shields and hots are also about comfort for some healers.
Shields make people extra protected.

Trying to keep up shields on the tank is beyond crazy, on the party? Okay you're scared.

Keeping 100% uptime on regen? Especially if you're a whm, meh it's pretty cost effective.

Only damage shields that are effective is either TBN, Manaward or a really good high end Scholar. Most of the time outside of TBN damage shields in this game aren't really good. Which is disappointing to me.

Damage shields are amazing, that's why you can't stack the same ones, it's the skills that they're connected to that are usually garbage and the way they function.

[LaughingBanana]

Don't get me started on overhealing healers because that's a frustrating can of worms I'd rather not open.

Does it really matter so long as the healer do a good job of keeping everyone alive?

[usernameuwu]

The issue is the devs obsession for accessibility, balance and casualism. Means that ultimately everything is incredibly forgiving. Which in turn is the biggest issue healers have.

Incoming damage is so firgiving that Shields are rarely necessary.not just shields but gcds in general. (Cant tell you the last time my scholar used psychic) Hell most of the time it's so forgiving tanks don't even "need" cooldowns.

The other problem with Shields. For scholar at least is there all gcd. Which means if you don't 100% know the script of a fight they're useless, as 95% of the time if you started casting Shields the instant you saw a bosses cast bar its already to late to shield the damage.

Besides the point of the topic...
I got a SCH in mt gulg who was just a pure physick bot. i mean i have no idea how somebody could be that bad . he just didn't know how to play it? So i suggested using recitation<adlo, and using adlo over physick. he just spammed adlo nonstop till he ran out of mp. Completely forgot about excog and lustrate on that particular pull. Honestly there is no point in helping some players lol

[LaughingBanana]

Aaaand there's the swipe at healers.

As if every other role was played perfectly.

I get the distinct feeling that many in this forum just could not function without the necessity of always lamenting the incompetence of FFXIV community compared to their own.

[Caurcas]

I get the distinct feeling that many in this forum just could not function without the necessity of always lamenting the incompetence of FFXIV community compared to their own.

I mean what do you expect when the normal content is so faceroll?

[Hanayumi]

An issue shields, at least sch, is that their best shield heals are hard cast gcd, which is basically a no no with endgame sch if they want to even compete with the other healers. So yeah... we'll need to wait and see what big changes they have for sch and the rest of the healer.

[ZedxKayn]

Does it really matter so long as the healer do a good job of keeping everyone alive?

If they're overhealing too much, it's not a good job

[Komarimono]

Overhealing means less MP for what's important. Pew Pew! Since let's be honest, we can spam our efficiency heal as SCH with Physick and never drop low. Now, if you're spamming Aldo, I do worry though. But with the poorly scaling fairy skills, even with the horrible delays they have. Overhealing is the only way to drop in MP a lot.

[dezzmont]

People already explained why good AND bad SCHs don't pre-shield: If your bad you don't know what to pre-shield FOR. If your good, you understand your GCDs are like... kinda legit bad and your not playing a SCH for GCD healing, you are doing it to have some raid utility and have access to quite a large array of oGCD tools that can solve a lot of problems on the spot. This is part of why SCH sits pretty firmly in the 'middle' of healing priority for both GCD and oGCD, the only reason WHM is below us in heal priority once you get to GCDs is because the WHM is doing more damage and so it falls on us to sacrifice a broil to get a heal out, but in reality their GCDs are far FAR more impactful in an emergency.

I don't play Astro, but from they want to be regen stance anyway just because its so much more efficient, and even in shield stance they too tend to not want to pre-heal just because GCD shields aren't very good in XIV's design where every healing ability needs to be justified in preventing a death to be 'worth it.'

In other MMOs, like WoW, incoming damage is more random in both intensity and target, and healers have fewer resources with mana being a much bigger constraint on their ability to heal, which results in shield vs regen vs burst vs mitigation vs AOE being an interesting quality in a healer: A holy priest can get a LOT of healing out VERY fast but can struggle with longevity, while a Resto druid can heal a ridiculous amount of damage for their MP but can struggle to burst. Shield healers make a lot of sense in that design because the shield is conserving an important resource, and resource management under pressure is a huge part of healing.

In XIV there is still resource management, but its much less about extending the amount of healing output you can provide in scenarios where suddenly heavy damage is incoming or an unusual target eats a hit, and far more about conserving healing resources that don't take time to use and efficiently spending or saving job resources (Like aetherflow) as much as you can in order to do damage, because content is neither random enough nor demanding enough on healing resources to justify 'wasting time' healing damage that you know for a fact won't ever matter. This leads to the weird reality where WHM has the best shield (because its on an oGCD) and SCHs have arguably the best regen (because, again, oGCD, though the WHM's GCD regen is a far better tool than the SCH's GCD shield in most cases because, unlike shields, regens have a much broader timeline of use where they save you a heal).

Until or unless XIV healers are under a resource crunch (mana, OGCDs, whatever) where you will need healing often enough that shielding after an initial hit with regen already on will prevent you from needing to do another GCD heal down the line, or you need to shield to prevent death, you are not going to see people pre-shielding. That is a super specific scenario and almost certainly won't happen even outside of casual content where you either legitimately barely need to heal or you got a co-healer just slapping medica 2 the second anyone in the party takes damage.

[LaughingBanana]

If they're overhealing too much, it's not a good job

I meant in the end if everybody is alive and no one dies throughout the whole fight, then it's really not a big deal because as a Healer, that what counts the most.