Healer Queues are going to be different?

[AnotherPerson]

I bet they define pure(regen) and Barrier Healer if:

- You have a ST GCD Regen/Aoe GCD Regen
- You have a ST GCD Shield/Aoe GCD Shield

And... that's all.
Yeah. That the main biggest difference. These 2 GCD spammable heals.

Which is of course extremly ridiculous.

The problem of distinguishing between GCD 'pure healer' and GCD 'shield healer' is if all toolkits is inherently designed to be using the GCD for healing. This distinction really only applies to WHM - their healing gauge skills (Afflatus Solace / Afflatus Rapture) is on the GCD and they have a fairly diverse number of GCD heals (Cure II/Cure III/Medica II) that all gets powered up with their oGCD abilities (Confession / Asylum trait / Temperance).

AST has some concessions following this line of thought with GCD healing since their GCD heals can also be supercharged using 3 oGCD skills [Synastry / Horoscope / Neutral Sect]. However their main focus of healing is still done via oGCD heals. I'm not sure if the card system adjustment and skillset will change in Endwalker to fit the pure healer vs. shield healer duality though since cards are becoming a self buff instead.

However, shield healers don't follow the pattern of supercharging their GCD healing. Their healing output is done mainly through oGCD healing skills. It's better to say Shield healers are just more heavily focused oGCD healers with GCD shields + more frequent mitigation abilities at their disposal.

While SCH has Dissipation + Fey Illumination for skills that support GCD healing, they have 2 skills that uses GCD Healing - Succor + Adloquium (3 I guess if you count Physick... lol). The bulk of your kit doesn't work with GCD heals since healing magic potency only works on spells (GCD) instead of abilities (oGCD). At least in Scholar's case, they also have Consolation x2 + Sacred Soil + new AoE mitigation.

Sage seems to follow SCH's trend too, where a bulk of the healing is in oGCD healing skills, but they go about this differently. Support skills revolve around healing using DPS - such as "Cardia" healing a target and yourself every time you attack and "Soteria" supercharging Cardia's effect for a brief duration. However the good thing about Sage is having oGCD skills like "Haima" and "Panhaima" - which are support oGCD skills that work off your DPS. Both skills apply a weak shield to the party member (Panhaima is AoE shield), and grants 5 stacks of a status effect. The stack gets consumed to heal HP every time the sage uses DPS skills, so temporarily becomes like a temporary secondary Cardia target.

I do remember seeing Physis II giving a 10% healing potency buff, which should support GCD heals + GCD Eucrasia shields.... but that's about it for GCD usage. Truth be told, I'm not even sure if the 10% magic potency buff even works on Cardia's healing, but it seems to me that Pure healers have stronger GCD heals and shield healers are just oGCD healers with more frequent mitigation tools than their counterparts.

[Rongway]

DF doesn't really matter but PF does.
Pretty sure most parties on PF will ask one of each and I am pretty confident the "Pure" healer will be the slot on demand.

So? Launch Extremes will be easy enough to do with any combination of healers, and Savages won't be added until a month after EW launch, so PF doesn't really matter either. If you want to play sage, play sage.

[MellowMink]

I thought that the further restrictions applied to Raid Finder but not Duty Finder.