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

[Catnipx]

Not true. The scholar doesn't have clutch heals. The shields are supposed to keep the amount of incoming damage manageable so the scholar can keep the party up without difficulty.

Sorry but you are wrong. The person you quoted is 100% correct, shield healing is useless unless the damage kills you

[Fland]

if the shield didnt prevent a death, it is a wasted shield. and most content just doesnt have enough damage on their aoes/tbs to do just that

The shield absorbs damage. Whether it absorbs death-resulting damage or not doesn't matter. If it successfully absorbs the damage then it does its job and is not wasted.

It's also nice to see if the shield does not break and you see the number zero flies off the screen.

[Absurdity]

The shield absorbs damage. Whether it absorbs death-resulting damage or not doesn't matter. If it successfully absorbs the damage then it does its job and is not wasted.

It's also nice to see if the shield does not break and you see the number zero flies off the screen.

Sure it "does it's job" but with shields you basically always have to ask yourself "is it worth the GCD that you spend on it?" and in most cases it is not.


It is only worth the GCD cost that could've otherwise been spent on more useful abilities, yes that includes damage, if 1. it prevents death or 2. prevents enough damage from a mechanic that you do not have to spend additional resources to get the group back up.


In most encounters it is not number 1 and since they nerfed deployment tactics it is rarely ever number 2 either.


This is why Seraph's aoe shield is pretty much the only good shield that SCH currently has, because it costs you nothing but a weave slot, even Adlo lost most of it's value in ShB since tanks have so many mitigation tools available.

[Hysterior]

Most importantly, why do you even need a shield healer in most content? :/

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Not true. The scholar doesn't have clutch heals. The shields are supposed to keep the amount of incoming damage manageable so the scholar can keep the party up without difficulty.

It’s far better to prevent emergencies than trying to recover from one & all healers including SCH can do this just fine, with or without shields.

If you come across situations where you actually need to do ‘clutch healing’ then there’s more than just not having ‘tools’ to deal with said predicament. Reducing amount of damage taken isn’t just shield healers’ (or any healer in that respect) responsibility, it’s the whole group’s.

[technole]

LOL, Scholar has among the best clutch heals in the game. Sacred Soil is OP.

White Mage die before a huge raid hit? No problem. Recit+Indom right now. Then you have Emergency tactics if you need another clutch 'medica' situation.

It always feels powerful putting up Recit+Succor and Seraph shields up during the Diamond Dust phase in E12S before the icicles fall. As in savage, there are areas where shields or a good amount of mitigation is needed to survive.

In non-savage content, there are a few areas where a shield can be useful. WoL LB, if you depend only on tank LB, it's possible you'll lose some people who barely met the ilvl of the fight. Even then putting a soil down they should survive at the minimum.

[dezzmont]

The shield absorbs damage. Whether it absorbs death-resulting damage or not doesn't matter. If it successfully absorbs the damage then it does its job and is not wasted.

It's also nice to see if the shield does not break and you see the number zero flies off the screen.

Someone else broke this down, but to break down the core concept, the reason shield heals that aren't doing all three of A: Recovering HP with the heal, meaning the target was damaged, B: Blocking future damage with the shield, and C: Doing BOTH in a manner where if the shield was not applied you would have needed to use another heal/someone would have died is because of something called opportunity cost.

Any time you are doing something, you COULD be doing something else. Like, for example, you COULD be casting Ruin 2 every attack. Ruin 2 'does its job' by your logic, it does damage at a potency of 200. If you evaluate it in a vacuum and ignore everything else you could be doing, that means it seems like Ruin 2 is good to cast, because your gaining 200 potency! Huzzah!

However, we all know this is a bad idea because you are losing out on the 290 potency of Broil III, so you only use ruin 2 in fairly specific circumstances where its upsides offset the opportunity cost of not just doing Broil 3, like if you need to dodge an AOE or something and can't get off another cast.

So that is straight forward and even entry level healers probably can understand why ruin 2 isn't a straight upgrade to ruin 1/broil. With heals, its a bit more obfuscated: it looks like its a toss up between Physic (which heals 400) and Adlo (Which heals 300, but gives a 375 potency shield). Its what we call a 'non-linear' comparison at first blush, neither of these things can be said to be directly better than each other and these are your single target GCD heals...

But, surprise, GCD heals don't do anything unless they prevent death. So the actual output of BOTH these heals is 0 unless they prevent death (or are likely too, but then we are getting into expected value calculations and payout matrixes and this is already pretty pie in the sky stuff), which means your actually casting a spell that is worse than ruin 2, which we already know is bad, unless you stop a death with these casts (Which is like... not infinite positive potency but its pretty close because the time you spend rezzing, the time the target spends dead, and the time they are weakened is a LOT of potency loss). So then the question comes down to 'are these tools good at stopping death?' and the answer is 'lol nope, not at all' because GCDs exist, and the opportunity cost of using a GCD heal vs an oGCD heal is extreme because using an oGCD heal lets you cast another broil 3, which we know is worth 290 potency. So any time you cast Adlo or Succor or whatever instead of an amped Excog or Whispering Dawn, your giving up 290 potency.

[technole]

The only time you'd want to use a GCD heal is when you don't have an oGCD resource to use. Over time you can get really good and think of things like should I have an energy drain for a mechanic? Can I eat the fairy for ED gain here for the additional stacks if Whispering Dawn is on cool down? Is Recitation up that I could use it? With Seraph, your Succor use can be more minimal. There are mechanics where things hit in succession and this fairy will handle that.

If you're going use GCD heal, it's likely going to be Succor. Sometimes Recitation+Succor for that extra oomph in savage/ultimates. That was also why they buffed the MP cost in the recent patch, people have complained for awhile the expensive cost. Even endgame players appreciate it because it helps low PIE builds. Helps when spaghetti happens, other healers die, kind of things.

I feel this question in-general is just misplaced, it's like those weird people who say they only see White Mages use Glare, but as we all know most if it's AoE healing is optimally done with Asylum and Rapture as priority. Then Medica 2, and finally Cure III. At level 80, one should not be using Medica regularly unless they need an emergency top-up, no rapture charges, soils in-place, etc.

[dezzmont]

Also note all of this optimization talk is contextual and as long as your clearing content at a reasonably zippy pace its fine to use a GCD heal if that is just where you are at, as long as you don't refuse to DPS most people don't care.

People are pushing back against the OP not because the idea of using GCDs is so offensive it makes you terrible, like lol whatever at the idea of losing a 290 potency broil 3 every 15 seconds in casual content it doesn't REALLY matter, its more the attitude of... borderline offense they are taking at the idea that shield healers try to AVOID GCDs like its 'wrong.' It isn't 'wrong' until someone dies or the co-healer is forced to GCD and they are lower on the GCD priority than you.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

There's such scorn for pre-emptive healing, whether shields or HoTs, people tend to scorn it as 'overhealing' so I can see a little bit where people would avoid it.

Also I do think a lot of ppl don't understand Scholar or how Nocturnal Sect works. I feel your pain.