Pure/Barrier Split is a failure

[Supersnow845]

The simple problem is that the shields have too much pure healing and the regens do not have the mitigation to compensate and the game rewards mitigation over healing

The only time healing is more useful is white hole mechanics and after kefka square seems scared of using white hole mechanics (to be fair since they can be influenced by crit healing they aren’t exactly my favourite)

Square needs to find a way to fix the fact that pure shield healing (as in functionally have no pure healing like noct AST) is god awful in dungeons and overpowered in raids, up until now the way they fixed this was to make shield healers regen healers by proxy (pnuema, critdom anyone) so you wouldn’t run into the “trying to dungeon heal with noct AST problem”

The shield healers need to be nerfed (as much as I hate it as a shield healer main), there is no reason why SCH/SGE should be the best/second best comp (depending on how well you can scale AST’s buffs) while WHM/AST is in the toilet, either they both need to be in the toilet or they both need to be roughly equally viable

[ToodlesElNoodles]

A controversial take, but i think SGE’s GCD shield should be removed.

My main reason is that the SGE’s design makes it into a mitigative regen healer. It shrinks damage (layered shields and flat mitigations) and then outregens it (or refunds the shield as a heal).

The Refund Shield -> Healing is a uniquely SGE thing.

Instead, I think their Eukrasia Diagnosis/Prognosis should work similar to SAM’s 3rd Eye. Gives a damage reduction (say 2-3%) and if it mitigates damage, a regen is then placed.

You can even Pepsis the unused buff and also let it trigger the regen.

Less issue with SCH and SGE shield contention, but not overly broken if they stack their mitigation together. And keeps SGE unique to their style.

Or just let every healer be able to do Pure/Shield healing at this point.

[Sylvain]

I mean, if SCH+SGE works just fine (altough it does require a bit more mapping than your regular SCH/SGE + AST/WHM) and AST+WHM doesn't, because AST+WHM don't have enough mitigation and SCH+SGE have enough raw healing, then imo the simplest solution would be to increase the direct healing requirement of every tier of savage so that SCH/SGE cannot do it. (Unless they can afford to spend **several** gcd heal on prognosis and emergency+adlo.

And to promote AST+WHM (assuming they want everycomp to be viable) they'd need to reduce RB which can OS your party as up to 1 per 2mins, so that AST+WHM can use Neutral+Wings on those uber RB.

Another thing could also to heavily increase damage on tanks as to make Regen gcd more competitive (and thus reduce SGE+SCH strength). A good example was P7S, the double autoattack + TB were extremely taxing for double barrier healers.

If anything increasing the overall healing requirement wouldn't hurt, it is way too low at mostly every level. Beside P8S-part2 with the ice/fire mechanic and the insane DoT on 2 players, nothing felt extremely challenging in term of "raw healing requried". The only challenge was to have enough mitigation to not be oblitarated by half the RB.

[Troxbark]

I mean, if SCH+SGE works just fine (altough it does require a bit more mapping than your regular SCH/SGE + AST/WHM) and AST+WHM doesn't, because AST+WHM don't have enough mitigation and SCH+SGE have enough raw healing, then imo the simplest solution would be to increase the direct healing requirement of every tier of savage so that SCH/SGE cannot do it. (Unless they can afford to spend **several** gcd heal on prognosis and emergency+adlo.

And to promote AST+WHM (assuming they want everycomp to be viable) they'd need to reduce RB which can OS your party as up to 1 per 2mins, so that AST+WHM can use Neutral+Wings on those uber RB.

Another thing could also to heavily increase damage on tanks as to make Regen gcd more competitive (and thus reduce SGE+SCH strength). A good example was P7S, the double autoattack + TB were extremely taxing for double barrier healers.

If anything increasing the overall healing requirement wouldn't hurt, it is way too low at mostly every level. Beside P8S-part2 with the ice/fire mechanic and the insane DoT on 2 players, nothing felt extremely challenging in term of "raw healing requried". The only challenge was to have enough mitigation to not be oblitarated by half the RB.

It'll make sages cranky but just dial down their raw healing to be more on par with sch. SCH/SGE works because sages raw healing can burst as much as whm without having to sacrifice anything to do it.

[Supersnow845]

It'll make sages cranky but just dial down their raw healing to be more on par with sch. SCH/SGE works because sages raw healing can burst as much as whm without having to sacrifice anything to do it.

Dial down both shield’s raw healing, in the modern era indom, critdom, pnuema, blessing, expiration heal on panhaima, they all need a nerf on, there is too much raw healing

[Troxbark]

Dial down both shield’s raw healing, in the modern era indom, critdom, pnuema, blessing, expiration heal on panhaima, they all need a nerf on, there is too much raw healing

I agree with this even tho I think the bigger problem right now is sage.

Unfortunately I don't have any hopes for DT to address this issue and I'd bet that this gap between shield/regen is only going to grow.

[Aravell]

It seems like a lot of these problems could be partially solved by making a few simple changes:

- Adloquium/Eukrasian Diagnosis and Succor/Eukrasian Prognosis now no longer heal, only applies a shield.
- Indomitability can no longer crit.
- Pneuma is no longer affected by Zoe.

That would dial down the pure healing power of the designated shield healers, but it doesn't really matter because the fight design is still "mitigation is king".

[Supersnow845]

Making indom one of the skills you could force crit with recitation was a bad idea, I honestly think pnuema shouldn’t even exist but one out of it and ixochole at a minimum needs to go, and if ixochole is the one to go then pnuema needs to be exempted from Zoe

The ridiculously potent heal on panhaima also needs to go, half the time I end up using it as a 10% mitigation + 600 potency heal rather than using it for its pulsing effect

[ForsakenRoe]

Thinking on this some more, I realize that what I listed as the 'Nocturnal Sect effect' for these skills is effectively what Exaltation already does: mitigation up front, then a heal upon expiration of the effect. And unlike Aquaveil, Exaltation is a pretty cool button IMO, very thematic. So a suite of AOE mitigation effects which, upon expiration/detonation, cause a burst of healing to heal back some of the damage that was taken, seems pretty fitting alongside the ST Exaltation to me

It seems like a lot of these problems could be partially solved by making a few simple changes:

- Adloquium/Eukrasian Diagnosis and Succor/Eukrasian Prognosis now no longer heal, only applies a shield.
- Indomitability can no longer crit.
- Pneuma is no longer affected by Zoe.

That would dial down the pure healing power of the designated shield healers, but it doesn't really matter because the fight design is still "mitigation is king".

Before all of these, they need to revert the 'your Sacred Soil/Kerachole now regens the whole party for 500p over it's duration' trait. But yes, Mit will always come out on top over pure throughput. Why? Because the more damage hits the party, the more that 10% mitigation from Kerachole/Soil is going to mitigate. Take a Barbariccia style fight, where the damage comes in quick small blasts. If you increase the damage put into the party from 100k over a 15 second interval, to 150k, then that doesn't 'make Mit less effective' per se, as you go from mitigating 10k of that damage with your Kera, to 15k damage. As the damage goes up, the importance of Mit actually INcreases, not decreases. The only way to make pure healing 'more attractive' that has worked thus far, as far as I can see, is literal gimmicks, like the P3S Life's Agonies thing, HP-to-1 mechanics that give small amounts of time to heal up from, etc. And any time these have come up, there's been ways to get around them. LB3, ZoePneuma, RecitIndom, it's obscene how much pure healing the 'barrier' healers can do when they really need to. So rather than double down on the plan that has thus far not worked, and by design is exceptionally unlikely to work, I'd rather they take a different approach. Shield healers can be a thing, I don't mind that, but I don't think they should be a subcategory like they currently are, so much as a 'job playstyle', akin to how we don't have a 'delayed healing' category yet AST has several skills like that.

idk about the 'Adlo/Succor don't heal, only shield' thing, as if you have a double SCH party in something like Seat of Sacrifice, you're dead to the first doom without spammable Succor healing. It's not those two that are the issue, given that we try to avoid their use as much as we can, it's everything else that is the problem. Taking SGE as an example, it has 130x5 from Physis (plus 10% bonus healing effect that you can snapshot with), 100x5 from Kerachole, 600 from Pneuma (900 with Zoe), 300 from Holos, 100 X B from Panhaima if it expires where B is the number of shield layers remaining, 400 from Ixochole

The equivalent for WHM would be something like, 'oh you have Afflatus Bastion which gives you an AOE shield for 250p, Splendour which is a 60s CD that gives a barrier for 400p, Purgation which gives everyone a barrier for 25% of their max HP and also 10% mit, and Medica 2 now also applies a 200p shield layer each time it ticks because we said so'. Admittedly I asked for the first one, but we can see that this would clearly infringe upon the whole 'Barrier healer' side of the split, so I don't really get why the Barrier side gets to infringe on the Pure side so hard, beyond 'it has to, otherwise it cannot complete specific mechanics (SOS)', but then the question is 'why does the Pure side not have tools to complete specific mechanics (literally any mit check in the game)

MCH has more AOE mit than WHM (Dismantle, Tactician)
DNC has more AOE mit than WHM (Improvized Finish, Shield Samba)
BRD has the same amount of AOE mit as WHM, but it can access it more often (Troubadour, 90s to Temp's 120s)