Can we stop punishing shield healers for playing together?

[tdb]

Before EW there was WHM which was a HoT healer, SCH which was a shield healer, and AST which could choose between either. I played WHM and AST, because that allowed me to always fully utilize my kit. If I was on AST and got paired with an SCH, I'd choose diurnal to avoid shield overlap, otherwise nocturnal.

How we have SGE which is a shield healer, and AST is permanently diurnal. Any combination of SGE and SCH will be handicapped because their shields don't stack. SGE is even worse off than SCH due to addersting. I don't know how exactly it works with another shield healer, but chances are the stack is not granted if the shield from Eukrasian Diagnosis is ovewritten by another shield, because that would be exploitable to gain stacks quickly and even out of combat.

Some time ago SE removed the damage type specific debuffs from dps jobs to make more combinations viable. Could something be done about healers so any combination works?

PS. I realize that duty finder content where I'm randomly paired with another healer is easy enough that suboptimal performance won't matter. But I also have a friend who plays SCH and I'd love to be able to use SGE when playing with her without either of us feeling like we're stepping on the other's toes.

[rewd]

Before EW there was WHM which was a HoT healer, SCH which was a shield healer, and AST which could choose between either. I played WHM and AST, because that allowed me to always fully utilize my kit. If I was on AST and got paired with an SCH, I'd choose diurnal to avoid shield overlap, otherwise nocturnal.

How we have SGE which is a shield healer, and AST is permanently diurnal. Any combination of SGE and SCH will be handicapped because their shields don't stack. SGE is even worse off than SCH due to addersting. I don't know how exactly it works with another shield healer, but chances are the stack is not granted if the shield from Eukrasian Diagnosis is ovewritten by another shield, because that would be exploitable to gain stacks quickly and even out of combat.

Some time ago SE removed the damage type specific debuffs from dps jobs to make more combinations viable. Could something be done about healers so any combination works?

PS. I realize that duty finder content where I'm randomly paired with another healer is easy enough that suboptimal performance won't matter. But I also have a friend who plays SCH and I'd love to be able to use SGE when playing with her without either of us feeling like we're stepping on the other's toes.

GCD shields can't stack and that much is obvious. You barely need GCD heals in normal content and even then you have Emergency Tactics and Eukrasia to overcome the problem.

[Rilifane]

Not to mention Sage has a spammable aoe pure heal if you really need to GCD heal in addition to oGCDs and shields.
SGE/ SCH works perfectly fine.

[tdb]

Why is it "obvious" that GCD shields don't stack, when GCD HoTs from WHM and AST do? I guess SE doesn't want to add that cushion to barely-survivable tankbusters, but then the question is does the content need to be designed that way?

I hadn't noticed that the oGCD shields do stack, so that's good at least.

Edit: Also, what of the issue of gaining addersting stacks for Toxicon, especially if there's two sages in the party?

Edit 2: I don't know what kind of groups you play normal content in, but I do it through DF. Every so often I land in a group which just can't do mechanics, eats damage like a sponge and dies all the time. In those situations I'd really rather my tools didn't conflict with the other healers'.

Edit 3: I could do a whole rant about how healer design in this game is bad and why does SE give us so many GCD heal buttons which end up sitting unused most of the time. But this shield thing happens to be what irks me right now.

[Duskane]

Shield stacking is pretty strong some mechanics do not occur if you take 0 damage
you can cheese some mechanics with PLD and WAR shield plus SCH but tank shields are on a CD
imagine if healers could do it at will no one would want Ast/WHM if shielding was incredibly strong

[Rilifane]

Why is it "obvious" that GCD shields don't stack, when GCD HoTs from WHM and AST do? I guess SE doesn't want to add that cushion to barely-survivable tankbusters, but then the question is does the content need to be designed that way?

"Effect cannot be stacked with Eukrasian Prognosis or scholar's Galvanize."
"Effect cannot be stacked with certain sage barrier effects."
SGE and SCH tooltips. So unless the tooltip specifically mentions it, shields from SGE and SCH stack.

Edit: Also, what of the issue of gaining addersting stacks for Toxicon, especially if there's two sages in the party?

Shielding solely to gain Addersting stacks is a dps loss and usually ends up being a wasted GCD. If a shield is absolutely necessary anyway because there is no other way to keep a person alive, than Addersting is a nice-to-have slight damage return but that's it.
I'd like to see situations where you have two SGEs in a party but both need to GCD shield single target.

Edit 2: I don't know what kind of groups you play normal content in, but I do it through DF. Every so often I land in a group which just can't do mechanics, eats damage like a sponge and dies all the time. In those situations I'd really rather my tools didn't conflict with the other healers'.

I DF pretty much everything. I've done Trial roulette every day since early access and -surprise- landed in the EW trials everytime with most if not everyone except me being first timers. So I get the same chaos everyone gets in DF and dbl SGE or SCH/ SGE was perfectly fine. There was no issue at all.
You see your co heal always shielding? Don't shield, easy as that. You have enough other tools in addition to Prognosis on SGE and ET on SCH.

Edit 3: I could do a whole rant about how healer design in this game is bad and why does SE give us so many GCD heal buttons which end up sitting unused most of the time. But this shield thing happens to be what irks me right now.

Every healer only has exactly 4 GCD heal buttons: weak ST heal, strong ST heal, weak aoe heal, strong aoe heal; except with SCH with only "strong" aoe heal.
WHM Lilies are an odd case as they are more comparable to how other healers' oGCDs function. We have an overabundance of insanely strong oGCDs but GCD heals are comprably few, weak, and generally to be avoided if other tools are available.

GCD shields not stacking is by far the least of my problem with current healer design.
Healers have a lot of problems but that's definitely not a pressing concern.

[tdb]

Shielding solely to gain Addersting stacks is a dps loss and usually ends up being a wasted GCD. If a shield is absolutely necessary anyway because there is no other way to keep a person alive, than Addersting is a nice-to-have slight damage return but that's it.
I'd like to see situations where you have two SGEs in a party but both need to GCD shield single target.

Every healer only has exactly 4 GCD heal buttons: weak ST heal, strong ST heal, weak aoe heal, strong aoe heal; except with SCH with only "strong" aoe heal.
WHM Lilies are an odd case as they are more comparable to how other healers' oGCDs function. We have an overabundance of insanely strong oGCDs but GCD heals are comprably few, weak, and generally to be avoided if other tools are available.

Right, so let's put it more generally: why is the encounter design in this game such that half (possible hyperbole) of the buttons given to healers are considered "to be avoided if anything else is available"? Is this supposed to be a puzzle minigame to find the actually useful buttons or something? Before FFXIV I played SW:TOR, and in that game every class had two different dps skill trees, with the third being dps, healer or tank. IIRC the skill tree gave four abilities, with the majority being shared between all specs. Dps specs also got damage boosts from the tree. The game's encounter design was also based more on sustained heals and less on huge single hits which need to be countered with super-strong heals. It worked much better IMO, with healers actually having meaningful rotations and generally feeling useful all the time.

[Rilifane]

FFXIV has a completely different approach to combat than SW:TOR, WoW, SOLO and similiar games and they doubled down on this over time. And that is a huge problem with current healer design: it doesn't reflect encounter design AT ALL.
Damage is predictable, with large gaps between two hits and generally fairly low - yet healers are designed in a way that would be fitting for a game with constant damage, random spikes, heavy heal checks and so on. The absolute majority of my hotbar is filled with so many heals I never or rarely have to use because there is just not enough damage incoming.
It has been like this for years, the vocal community wanted to see it changed for years yet in EW we got more of the same and are still left with an overabundance of heals while encounter damage is laughably low compared to what we can do.
Our toolkit would work beautifully in games with high and sustained damage but only a handfull of savage or ultimate bosses ever test it in that way and if so, it's the or one of the last mechanics that gets skipped. And in DF you never see anything like it and are left with too many and too powerful heals that are for the most part disconnected from one another.

[Makeda]

Edit 2: I don't know what kind of groups you play normal content in, but I do it through DF. Every so often I land in a group which just can't do mechanics, eats damage like a sponge and dies all the time. In those situations I'd really rather my tools didn't conflict with the other healers'.

Edit 3: I could do a whole rant about how healer design in this game is bad and why does SE give us so many GCD heal buttons which end up sitting unused most of the time. But this shield thing happens to be what irks me right now.

I find that most of the time when I land in a group like this it has a lot to do with the other healer... stacking shields with them becomes less of an issue when they're casting heals when they need a shield and shields when they need a heals, can't find their rez spell, spam LB2 when it's at 99.999% rather than wait for LB3, don't accept the rez I toss them, don't rez me if I goof up, and either ignore the tank or ONLY heal the tank.


I do agree with your 'EDIT 3'. We have a toolkit designed for amazing healing variety, but a game system that expects us to mostly DPS.

Much as I dislike current WoW... and much as it was the 'extreme off-meta bad choice' in current WoW... the "fistweaver monk" is probably the class design we need here.
- It has a very engaging DPS rotation with a moderate selection of varied different skills to use and which you use depends on situation. These thing trigger your heals - and you refresh your 'apply healing when I DPS' mechanic every so often. Because the game system expects you mostly DPS... the class was designed to have it's gameplay focuses mostly on a melee DPSing rotations, that then proc into healing. As "weak" as fistweaver is, it was shockingly FUN to play because it perfectly matched what the game wanted from it's modern healers: mostly DPSing with some healing (and it was actually overtuned for it, it's healing throughput was the top in the game, it's weakness comes from having no good "utility" (buffs/debuffs) which is extremely important in WoW's meta), and that it's DPS numbers on a complex rotation were about half those of the Paladin.

WoW's current Holy Paladin works similarly... except your attacks don't heal, they reset your oGCD healing cooldowns which are otherwise very long. So you go through an engaging melee DPS rotation to proc your ability to heal.

WoW's versions of this for ranged healing however... have the same problem we have. Not enough variety in the DPS rotation. Even their Disc Priest which heals by DPSing... does so on a tiny number of spells that feel the same but just have different names. The other healers have no DPS rotation even though they are expected to DPS, it's always an interruption to their healing rotations.

I am NOT saying to copy WoW here... but...

FFXIV is a game system that wants us to DPS most of the time, so it needs to emulate what WoW did with the current designs of fistweaver and holy paladin - and do so with ranged options (something WoW has yet to manage). I could wish for a melee healer, but I already know I will never get it again outside of WoW (it's too bad I can't stand every other aspect of that game...)

We need rotations of between 3-8 or so very different DPS abilities, that then somehow trigger, cast, or other enable an ability to oGCD heal. And as such, we could actually lose the ability to even have GCD heals.
- That, or we need the game engine to be redesigned so that we're expected to mostly heal rather than mostly DPS.

Right now we have a role design that is designed for the wrong game...

[AnotherPerson]

It has been like this for years, the vocal community wanted to see it changed for years yet in EW we got more of the same and are still left with an overabundance of heals while encounter damage is laughably low compared to what we can do.
Our toolkit would work beautifully in games with high and sustained damage but only a handful of savage or ultimate bosses ever test it in that way and if so, it's the or one of the last mechanics that gets skipped. And in DF you never see anything like it and are left with too many and too powerful heals that are for the most part disconnected from one another.

I want to point out that - Healers toolkit aren't designed for constant damage and heavy heal checks, rather they can be on an optimized level. It's designed for medium damage spikes (and vulnerability debuff being a hard limiter), but nothing over that unless the run is completely optimized (which then assumes you won't get vulnerability debuff and that enables more flexibility for killing you). The average player would run out of MP easily from GCD spam if damage becomes high enough that push comes to shove. The whole paradigm fails the moment you have to consider if anyone dies once or twice, especially for healers - because of death penalty or raise MP cost penalty. It's one of those healing toolkit designs that expect your team to die or take damage from mistakes a bit in regular content - which happens a lot more often for stuff when they're fresh or recent, but not for stuff that we're practiced over hundreds to thousands of times... we've practiced them enough to not suffer from death debuffs and mistakes from game mechanics that we never reach the point where things are THAT tough compared to when they were spankingly brand new experiences.

The problem is more largely mitigated now then before, with the reduction in stats no longer making it as easy to cheese older fights if you didn't know the mechanics and risk wiping, but the huge divide between optimized high end runs and non-optimized casual runs is the difference in difficulty, not so much of an individual role but moreso a personal responsibility on mechanical precision - which has always been the forefront of FFXIV's focus. That's the devs take to making content more accessible to older players by allowing more mechanical errors I assume, except more mechanical errors means less unavoidable damage and less unavoidable damage means less healing when players get better.

Imo, the paradigm is ok for casual content, because it's designed for casual content. It's just the high-end raids that are the main issue. Add a couple frequent heavy tankbusters with maybe medium damage auto attacks that require at least a mitigation to be up at all times ... all the while keeping the current mechanical gameplay challenge, and that would be a huge improvement to tank healing/mitigation (especially with how much more tankier they get, starting at at lv 82). Then, you got a decent raid boss for tanks to experience, for healers to actively GCD heal instead of just always spamming 11111, and for DPS to continue DPSing ... but the gulf of challenge between the two would also prove to be a very stark contrast whenever you do the other. Of course, the difference between high-end and casual content also doesn't require casual content to must have 1 pure healer and 1 barrier healer, so that's a non-issue for 2 SGEs working together in casual content.

Edit:
I just realized if that does come to pass, SGE Dosis is no longer goanna go BRRRRR though if autos becomes heavy hitting though. Maybe SCH is looking more amazing? We'll have to see.