"Barrier Healers" aren't barrier healers

[ty_taurus]

I'd like to take a moment to first talk a little bit about the combat system of the game Honkai Star Rail. For anyone not familiar with HSR here is a brief explanation of some important aspects to the game's design that I will be referencing in my following argument:

Honkai Star Rail (HSR) is a turn-based RPG with an ever-increasing roster of playable characters. In combat, characters have a basic attack, a skill, a passive, and their ultimate (their limit break, essentially). These characters are categorized by their role in combat as well as their particular elemental affinity, such as Physical, Fire, and Quantum, amongst others (seven in total). All the damage dealt by a character will align with their particular element. Enemies will generally have between two and four elemental weaknesses. Attacks an enemy is weak to not only deal additional damage, but also reduce that enemy's "toughness." Above each enemy's HP bar is a toughness bar, and when that bar is completely depleted, you inflict what's referred to as "break," dealing bonus damage and inflicting a specific status condition based on the element used to inflict break on the enemy. Physical attacks inflict bleed while fire attacks inflict burn, for example.

I'd like to bring attention to two of HSR's characters. The first is Kafka, a character with the lightning elemental affinity. When break is inflicted with lightning damage, shock is inflicted upon the enemy--a DOT. When Kafka uses her ultimate, she deals damage to all enemies and can inflict an extremely powerful version of shock without breaking enemies. Her passive also causes her to perform a follow-up attack outside of her turns whenever one of her teammates performs their basic attack: Kafka will attack the same enemy and inflict this same shock debuff to them without needing to break them. When performing her skill, she attacks multiple enemies and causes all DOTs on the target to tick for a percentage of their normal damage.

The second character I'd like to talk about will be Blade. Blade is a wind character. When break is inflicted with wind damage, wind shear is inflicted, which is also a DOT. Unlike Kafka, though, Blade's gameplay does not revolve around wind shear. His skill consumes a percentage of his HP to grant him a buff that changes his basic attack from a weak single target attack to a powerful AOE attack. When performing this enhanced basic attack, he also consumes some of his HP. Anytime Blade takes damage or consumes his own HP, he gains a stacking buff called Charge, and every 5 stacks of Charge will cause him to automatically perform a special follow-up attack outside of his normal turns. His ultimate first sets his HP to 50%, then deals damage to multiple enemies based on both his attack and his missing HP.

So, why am I bringing up all this? Well, let my start by asking you a question: Both of the above characters are DPS characters, but which of the two, if any, would you describe as DOT DPS characters? Is Kafka a DOT character? Is Blade a DOT character?

If you ask me, Kafka is very much a DOT character because all of her gameplay revolves around inflicting a DOT and causing all DOTs on enemies, including ones applied by other party members, to tick outside of the afflicted enemy's turns. But I would not say that Blade is a DOT character. Why? Because even though he is capable of inflicting a DOT, that is not the focus of his gameplay--the focus of his gameplay is HP consumption.

So let's pivot over to FFXIV's "Barrier healers." I ask you, do either Scholar or Sage focus on applying and interacting with barriers in their gameplay? At first glance, that may seem to be true, but as you get more familiar with these healers, you'll quickly find that this isn't the case at all. At the highest level of play, neither Scholar nor Sage seem to be relying on barriers all that much. Let's look at some examples:

These above images showcase the action frequency of high-performing healers in savage (particularly P10S). Let's break down how much each of these players relied on different forms of healing in their clears:

SCH
- Pure Healing: 10 casts
- HP Extention: 4 casts
- Regen Healing: 8 casts
- Barrier Healing: 5 casts
In addition, maintained approximately 7 minutes and 20 seconds of Eos uptime: continuous pure healing over time.
In addition, maintained approximately 40 seconds of Seraph uptime: continuous barrier healing over time.

SGE
- Pure Healing: 15 casts
- Regen Healing: 20 casts
- Barrier Healing: 6 casts
In addition, maintained approximately 8 minutes of Kardia uptime: continuous pure healing over time.

As we can see, while both Scholar and Sage have access to barriers, barrier application is not the primary focus of either healer. Instead, both Scholar and Sage display a much larger focus on sustained healing over time thanks to Eos and Kardia. Scholar's access to Summon Seraph does give them small phases of barrier-focused application, but once again, this is not their primary method of healing. Moreover, why is that barrier healers have no way of engaging with barrier healing through their gauge mechanics? Gauge mechanics are supposed to represent a specific job's core identity. See Red Mage's black and white mana management, Dragoon's life of the dragon enabling Stardiver, Black Mage's astral fire and umbral ice cycles, Bard's songs, Dancer's dance steps... the list goes on. Meanwhile, Scholar's gauge and Sage's gauge have nothing to do with barriers for the barrier healers and everything to do with pure healing, regen healing, and mitigation.

What I'm ultimately getting at is calling Scholar and Sage "barrier healers" makes as much sense as calling Blade a DOT DPS. Having niche barriers does not make that the heart of either healer's healing playstyle.

[Supersnow845]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again if square wants the barrier/regen split to work then they need to force it in all 2 healer content and nerf the shields pure healing into the ground with contingencies for dungeons

SCH for example shouldn’t have access to blessing, it doesn’t need whispering dawn, indom shouldn’t be able to crit and should have a longer CD consolation should be entirely a shield and eos embrace should cast a sustained light mitigation rather than a heal, in exchange SCH should get access to 2-3 more mitigations so it can apply 1-3 mitigations on functionally every mechanic while the regen healer then proceeds to heal back up after the raidwide

So functionally the shield healer mitigates 40% of your health bar worth of damage and the regen healer heals up 50% of your HP that still got chunked so to speak

Without a nerf on shield healers (and I say this as a shield healer main) both healer balance and class fantasy fall by the wayside

[Colt47]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again if square wants the barrier/regen split to work then they need to force it in all 2 healer content and nerf the shields pure healing into the ground with contingencies for dungeons

SCH for example shouldn’t have access to blessing, it doesn’t need whispering dawn, indom shouldn’t be able to crit and should have a longer CD consolation should be entirely a shield and eos embrace should cast a sustained light mitigation rather than a heal, in exchange SCH should get access to 2-3 more mitigations so it can apply 1-3 mitigations on functionally every mechanic while the regen healer then proceeds to heal back up after the raidwide

So functionally the shield healer mitigates 40% of your health bar worth of damage and the regen healer heals up 50% of your HP that still got chunked so to speak

Without a nerf on shield healers (and I say this as a shield healer main) both healer balance and class fantasy fall by the wayside

At gear parity in leveling dungeons all the healers have to be able to use pure heals. if they really wanted to go into this whole shielding business they'd need an entirely separate role for it, the party size would increase to 5, and content would have to be readjusted just to handle the fact the party only has one real healer anymore in the pure healers.

In DnD a shield is really just a pool of temporary HP that drops after a time and is available on classes that are not even technically healers, and in truth I've never used any of them because the only point to having a shield is that you're predicting an attack is going to hit you for more than your maximum HP. How would we know that is going to happen? At what point would it be superior to just using damage reduction?

Temp HP does give another lever to mess with when balancing out a defense kit on a job, but its basically meant to be a worse damage reduction and should be used that way. The main use it has from healers in FFXIV from my observation, is to allow healing over time to recover the real HP while the fake HP is widdled away. All the points where we got to use shields with mits and full HP are are from over compensating attacks that shouldn't exist.

That also goes into the design decision where we are now supposed to use damage reduction and temp HP in response to an advertised attack, rather than rotating the damage reduction and temp HP to help keep the tank up through all forms of content. This whole change led to a massive amount of technical debt that is taking them years to fix, and even if they fix it, will likely make all new content feel stale very quickly. If it isn't possible to randomize when big hits happen and all big attacks must be advertised within the 2 minute window, then all fights are going to start looking the same. They can change the aesthetics, but they have no flex for timing. And with greatly simplified jobs that is going to make the game get boring rather quickly.

Difficulty of content is completely determined by the gear score someone is wearing, how much they obfuscate mechanics, and how many people have to participate in the mechanic, with all mechanics and attacks timed to a 2 minute window. That is the game we are playing, and likely the game we are going to be stuck with.

Also, I feel that all the changes made are to make healing less random and stressful because traditionally, healing even as a firehose healer in other MMOs is kind of a stressful babysitting job.

[Gemina]

At gear parity in leveling dungeons all the healers have to be able to use pure heals. if they really wanted to go into this whole shielding business they'd need an entirely separate role for it, the party size would increase to 5, and content would have to be readjusted just to handle the fact the party only has one real healer anymore in the pure healers.

In DnD a shield is really just a pool of temporary HP that drops after a time and is available on classes that are not even technically healers, and in truth I've never used any of them because the only point to having a shield is that you're predicting an attack is going to hit you for more than your maximum HP. How would we know that is going to happen? At what point would it be superior to just using damage reduction?

Temp HP does give another lever to mess with when balancing out a defense kit on a job, but its basically meant to be a worse damage reduction and should be used that way. The main use it has from healers in FFXIV from my observation, is to allow healing over time to recover the real HP while the fake HP is widdled away. All the points where we got to use shields with mits and full HP are are from over compensating attacks that shouldn't exist.

Bingo! You hit the nail dead center. Good luck convincing the playerbase that abilities like Adlo, Eukrasian Diagnosis, and the beloved TBN aren't actually mitigation tools. I've tried, and becoming the recipient of comments like "You don't know s**t about this game." is typically the eventuality.

At the end of the day, shields are just HP. The only time they are truly a shield is when they extend the maximum HP of the player. Otherwise it is no different than a heal. I cannot speak for savage or ultimate, but in all content through EX trials there is nothing unavoidable that requires a max Hp extension to survive it. This basically makes the idea of shields and by extension 'shield healing' completely redundant.

True mitigation reduces incoming damage, and healers do have access to such tools, and none of them grant an additional yellow bar of HP. They do, however, give those "shields" more life since they are taking less damage. If the dev team wants to have two sub classes of healer, they would indeed make certain healers specialized in damage mitigation, and the other healers specialized in damage recovery. Then they would have a true barrier/pure healers. What they have now is utter BS, and I hope I'm not the only not eating it.

[PyurBlue]

The differences between healers are more flavor than full on categories, but I still think they are distinct enough for the term barrier healer to have some meaning.

In terms of practical gameplay, shields do something that heals cannot, which is block status effects that require HP damage to be inflicted. This includes vuln stacks. This mechanic could make the distinction between healer types slightly more pronounced, but in practice it's not very noticeable in game. Casual content doesn't deal enough damage to make people care most of the time and higher difficulties will usually break shields.

In the very few instances where the shielding mechanic does apply, I like to use it, but getting other players onboard is difficult. I can completely negate some Expert dungeon mechanics with sage and I've tried announcing my intentions to do so in chat, but players still try to evade the AoEs even while I stand in them and suffer no ill effects because I can put a barrier too large to break.

At the end of the day, shields are just HP. The only time they are truly a shield is when they extend the maximum HP of the player. Otherwise it is no different than a heal. I cannot speak for savage or ultimate, but in all content through EX trials there is nothing unavoidable that requires a max Hp extension to survive it. This basically makes the idea of shields and by extension 'shield healing' completely redundant.

I'm in agreement with most of your post, but I think the ability of shields to negate status effects is an interesting difference. It exists now, but it seems like an unintentional fluke rather than something the developers really intended. I wonder if it could be expanded into something that is more noticeable in gameplay?

[Colt47]

The differences between healers are more flavor than full on categories, but I still think they are distinct enough for the term barrier healer to have some meaning.

In terms of practical gameplay, shields do something that heals cannot, which is block status effects that require HP damage to be inflicted. This includes vuln stacks. This mechanic could make the distinction between healer types slightly more pronounced, but in practice it's not very noticeable in game. Casual content doesn't deal enough damage to make people care most of the time and higher difficulties will usually break shields.

In the very few instances where the shielding mechanic does apply, I like to use it, but getting other players onboard is difficult. I can completely negate some Expert dungeon mechanics with sage and I've tried announcing my intentions to do so in chat, but players still try to evade the AoEs even while I stand in them and suffer no ill effects because I can put a barrier too large to break.



I'm in agreement with most of your post, but I think the ability of shields to negate status effects is an interesting difference. It exists now, but it seems like an unintentional fluke rather than something the developers really intended. I wonder if it could be expanded into something that is more noticeable in gameplay?

It starts becoming a guessing game if shields negating status effects is an intended behavior or if the game is simply coded to only apply a negative status if the player loses HP in response to the attack. The behavior is shared between invulnerability of the paladin as well as the grace period after resurrection.

[Gemina]

The differences between healers are more flavor than full on categories, but I still think they are distinct enough for the term barrier healer to have some meaning.

In terms of practical gameplay, shields do something that heals cannot, which is block status effects that require HP damage to be inflicted. This includes vuln stacks. This mechanic could make the distinction between healer types slightly more pronounced, but in practice it's not very noticeable in game. Casual content doesn't deal enough damage to make people care most of the time and higher difficulties will usually break shields.

In the very few instances where the shielding mechanic does apply, I like to use it, but getting other players onboard is difficult. I can completely negate some Expert dungeon mechanics with sage and I've tried announcing my intentions to do so in chat, but players still try to evade the AoEs even while I stand in them and suffer no ill effects because I can put a barrier too large to break.



I'm in agreement with most of your post, but I think the ability of shields to negate status effects is an interesting difference. It exists now, but it seems like an unintentional fluke rather than something the developers really intended. I wonder if it could be expanded into something that is more noticeable in gameplay?

I remember when I started playing the game back in late 2014, burning down the nails in The Bowel of Embers HM was a true mechanic that was facilitated with SCH succor to avoid the KB from Ifrit's eruptions. I specifically remember some close calls where if the SCH was not casting them, we likely would have not gotten them down in time. It made the EX version where there are more than double the amount of nails than in HM quite a daunting task. Without HP shields to absorb those blasts, we're talking interruptions to seven players and arms length/surecast wasn't a thing back then either. That is a ton of damage tied into those GCDs that also reduces the damage Ifrit receives even without the nails. Eruption also doesn't have a cast bar. Good times.

All gone now. As you said, there are still some isolated situations where shields can negate certain status effects, and even fewer where those situations can't be ignored completely. I know you want to believe there is a distinction between barrier and shield healers, and there is, but it's tied into their GCD abilities, which is negated by their oGCD skills. This game in terms of job and encounter design is so much different now than 10 years ago.

[Deceptus]

At gear parity in leveling dungeons all the healers have to be able to use pure heals.

The fairy / kardia mixed with the shield is supposed to make up for the lack of pure healing. That's supposed to be the point

[Jeeqbit]

do either Scholar or Sage focus on applying and interacting with barriers in their gameplay?

Literally depends on the player. A lot of healers will teach people that to play Scholar, they should apply Adlo lots and use excog all the time. I see this regularly in duties where Scholars pointlessly spam Adlo on me and use Excog when I'm a Warrior and don't need any of these things.

When I play Scholar, I virtually never use Adlo. I play it as a Pure Healer. I reactively heal people when they actually take damage instead of constantly shielding them "in case" they stand in a red circle. There are few dungeons that make me use Adlo and one of them is occasionally the last pull of Amaurot. Any support that has done that pull knows what I mean! Depends on the tank though, sometimes I can get away without it, depends how squishy they are.

I use Excog as a reactive heal on bosses, because if it ends up not being needed then I get to use Energy Drain instead.

I see similar teachings with Sage. People will teach you to spam barriers on people. I don't play it like that, I just play it like Scholar as a pure healer. But it's more justified to play it with barriers due to the Addersting system.

Ultimately, they are barrier healers because the majority of casual players use them that way, despite that many raider healers don't.

[CVXIV]

I spam barriers as Sage if only to do more DPS when it breaks. Other than that I use the regular heals unless I want to shield from an incoming raid wide or tankbuster.