so apparently Sage dealing a raid wide Aoe to his group is working as intended

[EaMett]

yes. on my example you quoted (the phoinix one) where it happened the first time to me. After i applied my barrier and it got overwritten by the sage (start of fight), I immediately asked him to please not overwrite my barriers with E.D. he never replied in chat and kept overwriting my barriers, i asked him again but he continued overwriting every single time and never wrote a word in chat.

on the flipside, iirc it was last week, i had the exact opposite experience with a sage (4th circle, iirc). as I wrote "friendly reminder that E.D. overwrites scholar's galvanize shields" in the party chat on fight start, he replied with "ok wont use gcd shields, ty"

although I had mixed results and SCH/SGE is a strong combo, i still never join a PF where a SGE is already present and when i open one myself, I always exclude SGE and only search WHM/AST.

Another thing to remember as SGE is if you're going to E.Diagnosis during downtime for extra Addersting stacks. Don't apply them to the SCH or the MT/OT. As those are generally the most likely players to get deployed shields from. Just shield yourself, and dps.

[-BlueGreen-]

I just had a random thought I with respect to SGE and SCH healing together. SCH can effectively turn off most of their shields via emergency tactics since that replaces the shield portion of their heals into additional healing. SGE on the other hand has Pepsis which largely serves the same purpose of turning shields into healing, but with the requirement that the shield must be applied first.

I wonder if this is the reason for SGE shields overriding SCH shields. Of course, there's also the matter of Addersting. It really seems like in a SGE + SCH pairing, a SCH could troll a SGE and shut down part of their toolkit if SCH shields could override SGE shields.

Of course, it's a fair point to argue that the current situation effectively makes deployment tactics useless, too.

I get why shields don't just simply stack as the total amount of shields you could get from a SGE + SCH combination or even a SCH + SCH combination would be pretty crazy and possibly allow for cheezing some mechanics not possible with other healer combinations.

I wonder if they could change shields buffs to apply cooperatively. Maybe something like this might work.

SCH casts Adloquium and it crits for 1000, Galvanize and Catalyze both apply for 1800 each.
5 seconds later, SGE casts E. Diagnosis for a normal 650, shield applied for 1170.

The recipient shows all 3 shield buffs, but a total shielding of 3600. Why? Galvenize and E. Diagnosis are from the same group of shield types, and the strongest cast so far is 1800. Catalyze is in its own group and is also 1800. The game still keeps track of what E. Diagnosis was applied for, but it doesn't show immediately.

Now let's say that was a waste of a shield and for 25 seconds the target takes no damage. At this time both Galvenize and Catalyze would drop of. What happens to the shield? It drops to 1170 since E. Diagnosis has 5 seconds left.

What happens if the target does take some damage? To simplify things, let's ignore Catalyze since it has a different priority and focus on the interaction between the other two. Let's say of the original 1800 shield the target takes a hit reducing that by 1000 so that 800 remains.

Now again, time on Galvanize runs out and it drops off. What happens to the shield amount? Nothing. It remains 800 since that's less than the 1170 E. Diagnosis originally applied.

Effectively, it changes the rules for these buffs and shields to work like this:

• If you apply shield to an unshielded target, the target gets the normal amount of shielding and the corresponding buff.
• If you apply a shield to an already shielded target (but not shielded by you), the buff applies. The shield amount changes to what your shield would apply if it is larger, but if it is smaller, the shield doesn't immediately change though the game tracks the value.
• If you apply a new shield to a target already shielded by you using the same buff and the new shield is weaker than the current value of your buff, then nothing happens. If it is stronger, then it applies exactly the same as the first two points above by ignoring the existing shield you previously cast.
• If the target takes damage that reduces the currently active shield below that of other shield buffs, all shield buffs part of the same priority group are reduced to the same amount (without reducing the real damage). So if you have 2 shields of 1000 and 800 and take 500 damage, both shields are now at 500.
• If the currently active shield falls off due to time or because of some other non-damage mechanic (e.g., Pepsis), the target's shield changes to the next highest-value shield and that buff then takes over shielding the target. For example, if you have 2 shields of 1000 and 800 and the 1000 shield is removed without damage, you would then have a shield of 800.

This would allow both sets of shields, even from two players from the same job to apply at the same time while not allowing for more (or less) shielding than what we can already get today. The big difference is that both shield healers could then play as normal without worrying so much about stepping on each other's toes. It'd be a nice QoL thing, sure, but hardly necessary. A SCH deploying such a strong team shield is cool, but sadly won't be required for any fight ever since that would give SCH a mandatory slot on teams for such content and I'm pretty sure almost no one wants that.

That said, outside resolving of the OP's specific concern, I doubt the devs would put much effort into implementing something like the above unless it turned out to be rather trivial to do. After all, if you're in a situation where that many heals are applied in such a short time span, you're either bored (boss is spending 30 seconds on a phase change kamehameha) or you're trying to go for record HPS no matter how bad your overheal % ends up being.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

They do this to discourage 2 shield healers meta. Because shield healers are completely stronger than pure healers in a controlled raid environment and if they let them reign freely they'd have a really nasty situation on their hands.

[Liam_Harper]

I'm fairly sure they just overlooked it and don't want to fix it.

It's not a case of class balance. We're not talking about stacking shields and it works 100% fine if the SCH shields and the Sage doesn't unless asked to. Anyone who cares about meta, in content where GCD healing matters, will communicate with their co-healer. It doesn't discourage decent players from bringing 2 shield healers at all.

It just discourages inexperienced players from bringing 2 shield healers. Except in Duty Finder they literally don't have a choice. The system will happily pair a SGE and a SCH together for Normal raids and trials.

It's an oversight. A small shield shouldn't overwrite a large one. It should simply do nothing.

[Packetdancer]

Another thing to remember as SGE is if you're going to E.Diagnosis during downtime for extra Addersting stacks. Don't apply them to the SCH or the MT/OT. As those are generally the most likely players to get deployed shields from. Just shield yourself, and dps.

If I am in a raid roulette or whatever as SGE and find myself paired with a SCH, I tend to find a tiny bit of communication helps.

Like, "Hey, SCH, do you mind if I pre-pull shield these three folks, so that I get a full set of Addersting off of the first raid-wide?" or "When the boss is untargetable before adds, I'm going to shield myself and the two ranged to refill Addersting if needed, just so you know; I'll leave the tanks for you to shield and deploy from if needed." Generally the SCH is like "Sure!"

And then I do what I said, and otherwise I focus on direct healing and mitigation or regen; though SGE is a "barrier" healer, we have a stupid amount of options other than just simple shields.