Adding Stances

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

It wouldn't matter though. For one, this game doesn't require enough healing to warrant a "pure healing" stance. And even if it did, you would be expected to learn how to heal in your "Raid-Focus" variant because it provides a party buff.

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Hmm, I think there is a fair point here and I think this is maybe the hardest part to get around. The game's design doesn't really give much room for alternative playstyles, at least if you're looking to play effectively.

Ultimately yes, it'd be the more complicated version of gameplay that's end up being the marker of a good player, particularly at the end game. So it'd not necessarily solve the goal I set out to do. As much as it'd be nice to achieve.

But with all that in mind, I think if there still remains a concern that healers are less approachable to the inexperience or those lacking confidence, I think the approach still works, just it wouldn't be taken seriously when it comes to proper endgame content.

So instead of making the job simple, ease the journey to learning it. I'd have argued that levelling it would suffice, because you are eased into your abilities and the difficulty & complexity of dungeons is progressive, but with people using jump potions and jumping into content, they don't get that (though I argue that people who jump potion should get familiar with the first before they attempt anything high level).

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Originally Posted by Wawachume

I also just kind of hate stance-dancing.

That said, I'm not totally opposed to them bringing it back just for white mage, as long as they didn't also do something that made me hate scholar, while leaving astrologian the way it is now. As long as I have one I like.

I'm just saying, cleric stance was never a mechanic I personally enjoyed.

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I'd say fair enough. It was technically a WHM ability. But I know not everybody liked Cleric Stance, I liked that there was a risk & reward to using it.

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Originally Posted by Rivinhal

I considered a similar idea, but personally I'm hoping they push for more class uniqueness and allowing another job to swap freely between healing/shielding sorta works against that.

Perhaps they could bind certain Fae abilities to Eos, and others to Selene and decrease pet cast time. If they did this, it could create a gameplay style where you have to swap between the fairies on the fly to cast certain fae abilities. That could be interesting.
I recognize this isn't really a stance, but a real stance could be implemented (as you suggested) that isn't tied to the pets.

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This is kinda how I wanted to see faerie use evolve. Eos had abilities that aided your healing a lot, but Selene was a lot more utility focused. I'm all for better faerie use. They have since watered it down, because we only get Eos's abilities. I used to micromanage the heck out of my faeries back in 2.0.

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Originally Posted by Rivinhal

That's kind of a terrible reason though. New players aren't allergic to complexity... I'm a new player myself, but didn't some of the changes in 5.0 partially result from people complaining that healing was too easy?
Personally, I feel that the more mechanics that differentiate the jobs and make them unique, the better. The healing jobs all feel awfully similar atm. Maybe they really diverge at higher levels, but even at level 50 they all feel like the same class with minor differences.

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They are, especially with how toxic old cleric was. Old cleric exchanged your mind stat for intelligence. Healer DPS scaled on intelligence for some ungodly reason. So you would do 0 healing basically while you did damage. Fat fingering that or going into it at the wrong time would often mean a wipe. It wasn't a fun mechanic unless you were super optimized.

I'm all for either: Cleric stance returning in it's old fashion (healing cut in half, damage increased by maybe a quarter) or each healer getting their own stances. Because both stances, and unique systems, accessible early on are really lacking. Just to clarify, for Stances would be turning your entire playstyle on it's head: Offering lucrative buffs, but also massive downsides making you think twice if it's really safe to do this. They could also either alter skills, or straight up make some skills only available when you're in the "high risk" stance. Best thing is not every healer would need to have something like this, I'm wanting this on SCH because that's the one I so enjoyed taking larger and larger risks with knowing I could keep the party safe while doing this.

I'd stop short of having all healers scale damage of INT, only just SCH. If not only to further to differentiate them, Scholar could solidify in it's Arcanist roots which carries the drawback of having damage scale of int, so you need swap the stats around depending on what you'd want to do in one or more stances. This could further be expanded upon with Fairies both offering different pet skills, but also affect or entirely change what skills you had available. The complete opposite of having Eos and Selene being color swaps and the skills themselves is on your own hotbar. Wish I could come up with something for WHM and AST, but experience there is limited to stories told by friends and forum-goers.

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Originally Posted by Wawachume

I also have issues with a shields-vs-heals division within a job, because I think it's really hard to balance across different content. Either the shield stance is too powerful in raids, or the heals stance is too powerful in dungeons. The second way is basically how astrologian is now, where there's just no reason to use nocturnal stance in a dungeon.


I wouldn't like it. Any kind of mode-switching just isn't my favorite mechanic. :(

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I think Noct stance needs to be addressed either way. The MP issues with it are apparent.
Also I like the division of "Pure healer" / "Shield healer" / "Buffer/Jack-of-all-trades healer". Giving SCH the ability to heal normally would kinda ruin that.

As for the fairy idea, I don't feel like I'm explaining it very well. I don't really envision it as a "mode-switching" mechanic, but I'm having trouble coming up with a good comparison. So I understand your skepticism.

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Originally Posted by FusionSamurai

They are, especially with how toxic old cleric was. Old cleric exchanged your mind stat for intelligence. Healer DPS scaled on intelligence for some ungodly reason. So you would do 0 healing basically while you did damage. Fat fingering that or going into it at the wrong time would often mean a wipe. It wasn't a fun mechanic unless you were super optimized.

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Again though, that seems like a poor reason for removing it. I mean there are a lot of abilities that when misused could result in a wipe. That doesn't mean they should be removed lol. Misplays are misplays.

I do sympathize with the fun aspect though, and that's why I think they should have reworked it to make it more intuitive and more fun (or potentially less "all or nothing"). But just removing it seems like a disservice.

cleric stance removal was for the best
so many times you got a 200hp heal at lvl 60 because they forgot to turn off cleric stance

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Originally Posted by Duskane

cleric stance removal was for the best
so many times you got a 200hp heal at lvl 60 because they forgot to turn off cleric stance

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Despite the massive dumbing down of the healer role as a whole, there are still Cure bots everywhere regardless of the level. Making a class simpler doesn't turn bad players into good players, it just downplays their mistakes and make them believe they are doing the right thing because they can clear all the story content.

Saying that the removal of CS is good because some people misused it is like saying "some tanks don't use their defensive cooldowns so we should remove them all and give them an additional 15% passive mitigation instead"
or "some black mages only use blizzard spells so we should remove the ice/fire stances".

Bad players should step up, instead of forcing classes to step down to their level.

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Originally Posted by Lodi

Bad players should step up, instead of forcing classes to step down to their level.

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they will appeal to the masses
and cleric stance was a awkward tool, healer damage being based on Mind is a good thing

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Originally Posted by Duskane

they will appeal to the masses
and cleric stance was a awkward tool, healer damage being based on Mind is a good thing

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Doesn't have to work the same way (swap int and mind). It could simply work with percentages of damage and healing outputs.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

Doesn't have to work the same way (swap int and mind). It could simply work with percentages of damage and healing outputs.

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im not against stances in the slightest i even wish there was even a job that worked around stance dancing
but "old cleric stance" was not good design
and i also think this is not really what healers need to make there Job a bit more engaging

If stance dancing returned to whm, I would drop whm real quick. We don’t need complexity, it’s fine where it’s at.

I feel like the majority of players on this site don’t want casuals playing this game. Let’s make the classes harder to play! Let’s add a rotation! Let’s add stance dancing! Let’s add some stupid bs where suddenly casual players can no longer play. But mah engagement to the game! I’m already engaged just trying to keep people alive. Maybe all you people who think the game is a snooze fest should go play a way harder game instead of making it unfriendly to noobs and casuals. SE made these changes for a reason, why go backwards?