Heals vs Shields

I think Riot (pretty sure it was ghostcrawler) made some comments during Soraka changes or something. They were talking about how shields have more skill than heals.

"If you heal... well you just heal, and you always want to heal. If you shield you gotta actually be shielding damage so it probably takes more skills." - Rito base

However because shields last pretty long that kinda gets thrown out the window. How many times have you been shielded right away by a Janna or Karma or Lulu? Maybe that support wants to wait till the last second to shield damage every time but that's just not reliable, it's much safer to just spam your shield off CD in team fights. Not to mention if you went wind speakers and ardent you're giving your team those stats sooner. Shielding whenever means your team gets to regen or life steal while the shield holds and stuff. Also you can off instant burst by just shielding preemptively which is pretty good as well.

I'm pretty sure RIto dropped those thoughts tho.