The Pure/Barrier Split and my inane ramblings about it

[ForsakenRoe]

So I was doing a trials roulette a couple of days ago, and I was playing SCH, and the RNG machine spat out Seat of Sacrifice. Worse, the other healer was ALSO a SCH. This was a potential issue because of the very first mechanic in the fight, a sudden HP-to-1 with a 'are you 100% healed' check very quickly afterwards. Naturally I threw out quite a lot of stuff to counter this, Fey Illumination, Recitation Indom, Seraph into Consolation, etc, and with the help of the other SCH doing similar, we cleared the check and the fight, and thought nothing more of it. And so I went to bed later that day, but while trying to sleep, the thought wouldn't leave my mind: 'Why is 2 SCH able to do 'Pure healing' like that, when WHM has no answer to shielding issues? Why are there 'Pure healing' heal checks in the game, but no 'shield checks' outside of inconsequential ones like Ifrit's Vulcan Burst, or actually important ones like 'Ifrit's Vulcan Burst but in Ultimate' where you'd 100% have a shield healer anyway?'

So for the past couple of days, my mind has been slowly churning, thinking about the idea of 'What would the game be like if WHM had some shielding options too?' and rolling with that train of thought until it crashes spectacularly, mostly due to 'well that would not work because the game engine can't handle it'. Nevertheless, I post my mad ramblings here in case they give SE some ideas, or are just interesting for people to read. If everything seems 'out of order', it's like 6AM at the moment and I'm writing this as something to do while I wait for PFs to appear so I can do some prog raiding