Macro for "Stance Dancing"?

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Originally Posted by RogueJawa

Cure/Cure II on my tank.. but Murphy's Law kicked in and one of my DPS KO'd.

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Out of curiosity, what content are you doing that your DPS are dropping like no tomorrow? In a variety of coils and primals, there are few unavoidable raid-wide AoEs that are back-to-back that requires you to prioritize topping off DPS and your tank at the same time.

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Originally Posted by Parawill

Out of curiosity, what content are you doing that your DPS are dropping like no tomorrow? In a variety of coils and primals, there are few unavoidable raid-wide AoEs that are back-to-back that requires you to prioritize topping off DPS and your tank at the same time.

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Stone Vigil NM. Final boss. I switched to Cleric and put on an Aero and once I switched back my tank's HP was pretty low despite tossing on Stoneskin and Regen before I switched. I hit Swiftcast and Cure II, then I switched to my most critical DPS and before the cast bar completed they were down.

Ah. That fight is rather hectic when you have players taking a hit left and right from each and every mechanic. In a perfect scenario, the only time you need to tend to your DPS (and yourself) is after a Rime Wrath or a Sheet of Ice. Other than that, use Stoneskin sparingly* (unless your tank is really that squishy) against Frost Breaths as that is generally the only thing that will wreck their HP bar.

If your melee (or ranged) is getting hit by Frost Breath, your tank needs to face the boss away from the group OR the group needs to stop standing at the face of the dragon.

In the rare scenario where your tank is blowing all their cooldowns in one go... it's best to just heal rather than DPS. Even if you're a god-like, it's nearly impossible to DPS + Heal when you have a really horrible tank and/or group.

For other content it's generally gauging what your present group is doing through damage flow and fight familiarity.
-> When DPS is high and your tank is using cool downs (appropriately), chances are you'll have enough time to throw on a Regen (+ Stoneskin) to get right into Cleric Stance into DPS.
-> When DPS is low and your tank is using coool downs, you may have to conserve mana depending on the duration. Long duration -> more cures -> more mana required.
-> When everyone's performance is below average (or you're new to content), strictly stick to healing.

There are a variety of different other scenarios, but this should suffice. :0

I enjoyed whm far far more when I switched to controller
I'll put up a video of my hotbar, see if you like it, I find it pretty comfy

To be honest, stance dancing really comes into its own at lvl 50 with whm, but at your level the basics should be to regen the important targets (maybe with divine seal) before cleric stancing to dps. At lvl 50, you can play chicken with the tanks health if so inclined, regen, clerics, holy (you can get approx 6 secs of stun time on mobs when holying correctly) then choice come down to 2 things really: keep dpsing then benediction on tank when health low or cleric off heal a bit and stance dance when comfortable until things are dead.

At your level, stance dancing can be slightly less optimum since your ability to stance dance also requires everyone to be doing very specific things themselves. The tanks have to be actively mitigating damage whilst you are in clerics, and the dps really need to burn mobs. At your level, the dps dont have all thier tricks to burn mobs in the way they do at 50. Stance dancing becomes a race between your mana pool and the mobs health.

As for stance dance macros, never used them, and would imagine they are more problematic than anything.

Level your healer through dungeons and get more experience, then at lvl 50 have a look at stance dancing again when you have all the relevant tools :).

Edit: also, as a healer, dont feel like you have to be clericing in every fight. Dps should be able to handle most things themselves. Your example of stone vigil final boss is perhaps one of these places where you can cleric only if everyone else is avoiding all the avoidable damage :). Your ability to cleric in any fight is tied to wether everyone else is doing thier job correctly as well :)

Okay so a couple things/suggestions:

1. First off, looks like you're level 44ish. (which is fine) And your gear also looks okay for the most part (you'll be getting some new gear when you do your level 45 story mission)
-Starting from Stone Vigil, basically until you hit level 50 the dungeons and their mobs get far harder on tanks/healers. Seriously, this is a steep learning curve for both roles. So even an experienced level 50, uber geared healer will likely not 'stance dance' much in lets say 'Stone Vigil' with an at level/at gear level or below tank in the party.
2. Much of that 'Stance Dance' talk you hear of is actually 'once you hit level 50' and start gearing/speed running stuff. But until you have the gear/skills (Holy and Benediction for example), it's not really that necessary. (Yes, people like Holy for the 1-room clear runs...but you can opt in or out of those as those runs are in PF parties and not DF).
3. Don't Stance dance when you're actually leveling/in a new for you dungeon. If you have downtime, practice casting DD spells but don't swap into CS to do so...just take the potency hit on your DD spells so you don't trip yourself up if you have an unexpected spike in healing to do.
4. If you want to learn to stance dance:

Start in the nooblet level dungeons where you currently over-gear them by a landslide. (also, these dungeons are foregiving and a +CS heal will still be fairly effective)
Basically your rotation is this low level (sub 30)
+CS
Aero tanks target>Stone Tanks Target
-CS
Cure Tank
+CS Stone tanks Target x2
-CS
Cure Tank
+CS
Aero next mob>Stone x2-4 (depending on tank health)
-CS
Cure Tank
+CS
Aero>Stone til mob is dead

go to next pile/repeat.

Again though, first practice this WITHOUT stance dancing...then as you get the timing down, add in the CS. Also, initally don't let tank drop below 60% health...later you can let them get down to 30-40% (depending on how you heal/how white knuckle you like to ride things etc)...but 60% is where you should aim to heal when learning the stance dance thing to give yourself breathing room.

Anyway, once you get it down in the nooblet dungeons, pick higher and higher level dungeons to practice in until you feel comfy doing the 'stance dance' at level (when you have a non-squishy/at level tank w/ you). Basically the only thing that changes is once you get Regen, toss it on the tank once he gets hate then +CS Aero (pattern above). Also, you're the healer...a very reactive role, so don't be tied to a 'rotation' be ready to drop a Cure II bomb...or to Repose that pesky add etc. But if you work your way up a couple levels of dungeons at a time to practice, you should be okay.


This btw, is the 'non Holy' low level DPS as WHM pattern.

At 50, it gets more 'interesting' But honestly, wait until your 50 and then if you need assistance on how to do this, ask again as atm, you don't even have these skills on your bar.

5. A BIG part of the 'stance dance' thing is knowing when NOT to do it/when you can't handle it yet. Your friends are right...you're only real job in the party is to HEAL. That's all you technically need to do to be effective at your role. Yes, dpsing helps 'speed' things along, but really that's only true if you can do so without any wipes. A wipe or two though and your dps is totally negated. So it goes back to practice, and knowledge. Trial and error.

6. Macroing CS will likely cause you more headaches than it's worth. You're better off (imo) to manually enter it.

WHM will never stance dance in FcOB until like maybe i155ish when its farmable the damage is to consistent and the cleve needs to be timed. Even a coiling WHM won't stance dance if 1:their isn't a bard in the party 2:they aren't knowledgeable in the fight. I SCH and stance dancing is a thing I see more fighting of us because a high end Eos does heals as a regular i110 WHM SCH cure/physick would do so it helps.

SCH does majority of the stance dancing
WHM heals, in 4 man raids then yeah alot of people expect you to spam holy to speed up the process

Also, slightly off topic:

The pressure to Speed Run/Stance Dance as WHM in endgame dungeons:

The devs don't like it. I could dig and find the post where they basically said 'we are finding parties are placing too much pressure on healers to dd and we find this trend unfortunate and are looking into remedies' (the 'remedy' was they modestly nerfed Holy...and then made it so most level 50 dungeons now have 'gates' of some sort)

The main reason the devs likely don't like the stance dancing pressure placed on healers (esp WHM) isn't that they think it's 'game breaking' or 'OP' or anything, but rather it places more than 25% of the party burden onto the Healer. And I say this as a well-geared WHM main that basically ends up doing at least one PUG/DF speed run of some random dungeon a day. (IE I'm more than capable, and not really whining, just pointing out observations/what has been said in the past on the matter).

As a WHM, you are basically (esp in the newest dungeons) riding every CD/skill you have and praying that it all works out. And while many groups expect you to flawlessly DD/Heal ...very few groups will see the error as being their fault if there's a wipe (like if i have used PoM/Regen/medica II/ Swiftcast/ Cure II spam/Holy Spam (if able sometimes...people pull so much you can't even begin to breathe let alone Holy spam)/Benediction/Shroud and I run out of MP/can't keep up with the incoming damage...i am NOT the fail...tank either pulled to much/took too much to the face/didn't use CD's (yes many of them who do insane pulls...don't even give the healer so much as a Rampart for breathing room)/the DPS from the dedicated DD's was too low. Sometimes...all of these mistakes happen in the same pull....but even in a clean pull w/ skilled and geared players, as WHM, you WILL be blowing CD's and timing things will need to be exact. You need to rely on the Stuns from your Holy's to proc enough heals back from regen/medica ii...you need to know which pulls best are served with an Eye4 Eye...when to Shroud for MP (because even if you have an army of bards with you...it is rare, rare indeed for them to ballad you even between pulls)...when you can(and should) count on Bene to heal so you can keep spamming holy...and when you need to swap out for some quick healing action. And if you miss it...even by a second=wipe. Seriously. It's that tight.

And therein lies SE's problem with the 'Stance Dance' 'Healer DD' pressure.

No other role is THAT pressured doing mundane dungeon runs

DD's just do their thing, to the best of their ability. Sure, they should try to stay out of the AoE's and keep proper rotations/use CD's etc... but even a DD that plays top-tier in an EX roulette typically never has an 'OMG down to the second moment' on trash pulls.

Tanks...basically the same. Sure, a well-played tank will use his CD's etc effectively and will be working hard to hold hate against screaming DPS, but 1. As tank they can control the size of the pull/flow of battle and 2. They aren't being expected to do anything outside of hold hate/mitigate damage. They naturally do some dps while accomplishing their hate goal. A good tank also can avoid getting punched by everything in sight w/o spinning mobs onto the DD's (a really good tank can tightly stack them for AoE funzies). But again, tanks that don't do everything as well as they should can easily have (and expect) their shortcomings picked up by the healer.


So basically, what is happening (and what SE doesn't like) is the playerbase is more or less forcing Healers (esp WHM's) to play at higher standards/expectations for content that shouldn't otherwise require such standards. SE fully expects most dungeons to take 30-40 mins...of people playing as intended. (balanced play/ normal pulls/at or slightly above item level). This is even more so for content that is expected to be PUG;d with random strangers/party roles. And if SE designed dungeons so that everyone was working as hard as the healer in them....well, it'd be called coil. :P (kinda but not really joking)


And again, for the most part, I don't mind the whole 'speed run'/stance dance thing...I'm actually pretty good at it...but I don't always like that random parties basically 'use' me for faster clears/times....most of the time without even asking/stating they are doing a speed run first. They see 'WHM w/ decent gear' and they go balls to the wall...even if it's PLD/WHM with solid gear -gimpy drg gear and ninja...gonnna pull all the things anyway....because healer can do it for us.

The thing about DPS expectation is that it's something shared by the entire party. No encounter in the game is won by achieving max HPS or by tanking or mitigating X amount of damage.

While I can understand the logic behind not wanting to place disproportionate pressure on one role, I find healer DPS to be fairly simple: it's what you do instead of sitting on your thumb when heals are not immediately necessary.

When you're good at it, you can set up your own opportunities, but the basic idea is pretty straightforward.

When I WHM in endgame dungeons, if there's a big pull and my party is all healed up and I think I can get away with 3 seconds of not healing, I run in, hit Cleric Stance > Holy > let cast almost finish > Swiftcast > wait 1 second > Holy > Cleric Stance (That random wait after Swiftcast is, if I am lagging in the slightest (which I often am), I'll cast swiftcast and then start holy before the swiftcast buff actually applies causing me to slow-cast holy while still having swiftcast up - it's very annoying). The nice thing about using Holy to DPS is that it stuns everything you hit just long enough that it interrupts their current attack, and then again when the second one hits, and you're able to cast again by the time they can hit again. Your party only takes the hits that were done during your first holy cast. The DPS from double-holy is not insignificant, and if your party hasn't done too much stunning already, it doesn't really hamper your healing.

But yeah, if you aren't overgearing the dungeon, you shouldn't worry about DPSing with aero/aero2/stone2 too much.


Oh, and do NOT macro anything related to stance-dancing. Non-macroed skills will "queue" up if used <0.5 seconds before your GCD ends and go off immediately when they can. Macros don't do this. So, if you hit a macro with 0.5 seconds remaining on your GCD, you won't do anything, and it can really mess you up since stance-dancing requires you to use multiple skills in a short time (Cleric Stance has to be used when your GCD is cooled down, but it does not consume your GCD (it has it's own CD, but even that only activates when you turn it on, not when you turn it off (don't double-tap Cleric Stance, or you'll turn it off then right back on again!)))