Cleric Stance Discussion - Is it needed?

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Originally Posted by Delmontyb

So at PAX East this weekend, Yoshi-P talked about how he hates Cleric Stance, but he feels that people would be upset if they took it away. So I wonder... if they just made Healer Damage Calculations based off of the MND stat, would that be better?

I'm just curious after having put some thought into the question. This would allow for healing and damage without the stance dance.

So do we still want the Stance Dance? Or would something else be better?

Thanks, :)

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i say take away the stance just do healer damage and healing based off MND. like how tanks get attack and hp from vit not that hard to combine the 2 stats. also will save the healer those seconds of turning it off and on to toss another dot or hot out

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

There's something I don't understand with the developpers team purpose with cleric stance.

So we know that it was for the main quest so that healers could deal decent damages and don't talk half a hour to kill meaningless mobs. Okay.
But... Why the healing penalty on cleric stance since mind and int are already reversed. More than this... why adding some DoTs and more powerful skill (stone III, Broil, Aero III...)

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The healing penalty is there to prevent healers from doing near dps levels of damage while having near full healer levels of healing at low levels.

More powerful attacks were added in HW so that Healers didn't fall to far behind on the damage curve for solo content.

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I sometimes don't where's the truth between what they are actually doing and what they tell us.

But other than that, I wouldn't mind if they removed Cleric Stance and made healers damages based on mind.
If it could make things easier for everyone...

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This is similar to the pre-3.2 problem with Warrior damage: Why take squishy DpS when you could take a Warrior who deals similar amounts of damage. The same things would occur with healers.

How about this they give blm a cleric type stance and expect them to switch to it and heal the party if the healer dies. Cause healers die in 24 main raids and seen it happy in regular dungeons also. If people don't want stance dancing to go away.

Removing Cleric Stance would only serve make people want healers to DPS even more.

If they really dislike the idea of healers needing to DPS, they're going to have to stop giving us DPS spells that work so extremely well against mobs like Holy and Assize.

Or they could nerf healer damage so much that even if you do DPS it really doesn't matter.

Personally I wouldn't play healer if I couldn't DPS as well. Outside of raids, healers in dungeons are extremely boring. Regens are more than enough to keep the tank up. Heck, for SCH all you need is Eos. If they up the damage to the point where actively healing was needed, but as it stands now, you slap a regen on then go afk basically.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

Personally I wouldn't play healer if I couldn't DPS as well. Outside of raids, healers in dungeons are extremely boring. Regens are more than enough to keep the tank up. Heck, for SCH all you need is Eos. If they up the damage to the point where actively healing was needed, but as it stands now, you slap a regen on then go afk basically.

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That is more due to overgearing dungeons by 35 to 65 ilevels. each additional ilevel is a multiplicative increase not an additive increase. A 10% increase in ilevel is more than that in output.

As a healer i barely use Cleric stance outside of soloing. I don't use it at all inside the dungeons simply because if tanks takes critical dmg and I'm in cleric stance that tank is dead. If i dps it is when the tank is stable but i won't use cleric stance to dps. I absolutely hate it when healers use cleric stance and "attempt" to heal my tank. They can not. Even with cleric stance the dps doesn't compare to my blm.

The idea isn't to have as much dps as a true dps but adding some little help to the overall damages of the party.

I would like for them to get rid of cleric stance and scale DPS off of mind too. They can scale back the potency to 50%-75% of what a DPS of the same ilvl usually does. I actually like to DPS as a healer and CS is annoying if accidents happen and it takes up space. I would love healing even more if they did that. Maybe they should test it out for one patch and get feedback.

If they were ever to remove Cleric Stance and make healer dps spells scale off Mind, I would expect us to overall do noticeably less dps than we do now. People keep asking for CS removal/scale off Mind but they keep forgetting the other thing Yoshi said... Healers are supposed to heal primarily. Any changes made will almost certainly not incentivize healers to dps more. More likely healers would end up doing less dps overall precisely to make dpsing in groups feel less worthwhile and to have healer dps have less of an impact than it does now.

Anyone who thinks healers will keep the dps they have right now with the removal of CS is not being realistic in my opinion.

It's like the old saying goes... be careful what you wish for... you may just get it.

Of course it will lower the damages healers do, I think anyone who think it's a good idea know it.
And the idea isn't to make people dps more. The topic is talking about how cleric stance works.

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Originally Posted by Mycow8me

I don't know about all this healer dps stuff but seriously... If they intend healer DPS to continue. They are going to have to do something about the growing accuracy problem at some point. Having to meld a ton of accuracy is not a fix.

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Yoshi made the accuracy problem intentionally. It was his way of trying to get healers to heal and not dps. It wouldn't surprise me to see accuracy requirements grow so high that healers will be unable to get anywhere close to the cap even with melds and food.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

Yoshi made the accuracy problem intentionally. It was his way of trying to get healers to heal and not dps. It wouldn't surprise me to see accuracy requirements grow so high that healers will be unable to get anywhere close to the cap even with melds and food.

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He can't do that without breaking Caster/Ranged Physical accuracy requirements though. IIRC Healer accuracy cap is tied to that.

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Originally Posted by Grimr

Even with cleric stance the dps doesn't compare to my blm.

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That why I call a healer (mainly whm) a second class blm when they dpsing.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

Yoshi made the accuracy problem intentionally. It was his way of trying to get healers to heal and not dps. It wouldn't surprise me to see accuracy requirements grow so high that healers will be unable to get anywhere close to the cap even with melds and food.

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I thought Stormblood was removing accuracy entirely?

Yes we know we won't be able to do as much damage as a DPS. We don't want to be DPS. I want to heal and help my party. I hate the risk involved with CS. Right now without CS our DPS is so small that you have to use it to make a difference. They should remove CS, increase our attack power so we are doing half as much damage as we do in CS, and then give us more support attacks. They could add debuffs to our DoTs. Aero 1 decrease slashing resistance, Aero 2 decreases magic resistance, Aero 3 decreases piercing. This would directing increase the party's DPS. We would have lower direct damage output than we do now but we would be contributing more to the group so it would balance out.

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Originally Posted by RukiaFae

We don't want to be DPS.

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I agree but some of these other threads think healers should be since "they have the ability to do so" there even post of people saying a healer can out dps a regular dps, which in that case the healer is not adding to the overall dps they are just replacing what is lacking and/or not there to begin with.

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Originally Posted by Kuroneko_Jutah

He can't do that without breaking Caster/Ranged Physical accuracy requirements though. IIRC Healer accuracy cap is tied to that.

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Casters still have accuracy on their gear, healers had it removed several patches ago and it will not be added.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

Casters still have accuracy on their gear, healers had it removed several patches ago and it will not be added.

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I remember that particular change, if memory serves they pulled that one right out of the gate in 3.0. But I'm still convinced he can't boost the accuracy caps too high or casters/ranged will complain about being unfairly punished for Yoshi hating healer DPS.

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Originally Posted by RukiaFae

They could add debuffs to our DoTs. Aero 1 decrease slashing resistance, Aero 2 decreases magic resistance, Aero 3 decreases piercing. This would directing increase the party's DPS. We would have lower direct damage output than we do now but we would be contributing more to the group so it would balance out.

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I like this idea. Hell, give that option to just WHM alone and we kill two birds with one stone: AST can use cards to boost raid damage, SCH can be the hybrid healer/dps with shields, and WHM can be raw healing output and give out debuffs. EDIT: I was originally going to advocate not allowing a WHM debuff to stack with one applied by DPS but then realized that would more or less equate to WHM still being less valuable in content. Make em stack for all I care.

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Originally Posted by Kuroneko_Jutah

I remember that particular change, if memory serves they pulled that one right out of the gate in 3.0. But I'm still convinced he can't boost the accuracy caps too high or casters/ranged will complain about being unfairly punished for Yoshi hating healer DPS.

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Again... isn't Stormblood removing accuracy as a stat entirely?

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Originally Posted by Nicodemus_Mercy

Again... isn't Stormblood removing accuracy as a stat entirely?

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While it is anticipated, I do not believe they have officially come out and said it's gone. Even if they do remove it, they can still play around with how spells work to prevent healer dps from working on certain targets if they want. Everything is speculation till we read the official final expansion notes when there posted.

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Originally Posted by Nicodemus_Mercy

Again... isn't Stormblood removing accuracy as a stat entirely?

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They said they were looking into making changes to some undesirable stats like Parry and Accuracy. I don't think it was mentioned they were removing Accuracy outright at this juncture.

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Originally Posted by Nicodemus_Mercy

Again... isn't Stormblood removing accuracy as a stat entirely?

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If that's the case, I haven't seen any official statement/interview/Q&A stating as such. Don't take that to mean it isn't true, though, I just haven't seen anything about it.

I do agree that CS should be tossed aside in favor of a less clunky way to heal/dps. With the cries for healers to work harder and dps more (not that I really agree with that), it would be better to see a more smooth way to handle things. I think you'd see a lot more people running a healer with the stance dancing gone.

Just make damage based off mind, BUT lower the potency of damage spells, like 3/4 of what they are now? A whm shouldn't be pulling out blm levels of death anyway, a healer's primary duty is healing.

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Originally Posted by Nicodemus_Mercy

Again... isn't Stormblood removing accuracy as a stat entirely?

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No one knows for sure. He just said they may.

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Originally Posted by Kiriezaiku

Just make damage based off mind, BUT lower the potency of damage spells, like 3/4 of what they are now? A whm shouldn't be pulling out blm levels of death anyway, a healer's primary duty is healing.

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You need to be careful when you're messing with that though, the entire point of Cleric Stance as it exists is to allow healers a means to kill mobs when doing content solo (MSQ, etc.) If you nix Cleric's and reduce attack potency we could still see things taking an unfairly long amount of time to kill in the overworld for healers. So if they're going to go that route, they'd better do a few rounds of testing for viability in the overworld.

Making WHM my first 60 in 3.0 was painful. I'd rather not repeat the experience or make it worse.

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Originally Posted by Kuroneko_Jutah

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Thanks. I think they can do so much more with the healers beside slapping band-aids on them.

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Originally Posted by RukiaFae

No one knows for sure. He just said they may.

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Ok. I wasn't sure if it was a done deal but I do recall mention to the effect of the accuracy being removed. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

My only hiccup in regards to cleric stance is how easy it is to accidentally double tap it and then boom a tank usually dies cause sods law :c

Make it based off of MND. That's what they do in Record Keeper already.

The 'risk' of doing damage is already using a global cooldown for using a damage spell instead of a heal.

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Originally Posted by NaesakiAshwell

My only hiccup in regards to cleric stance is how easy it is to accidentally double tap it and then boom a tank usually dies cause sods law :c

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I swear the number of times my twitchy trigger finger has done this... T^T

I think it would be interesting to keep cleric stance, but remove the INT and MND swap. So cleric's stance would become just the 10% damage increase and 20% healing reduction. And make healer dps work off of mnd.

This would lower the barrier for entry into healer dps as you could dps without cleric's and all you'd be missing out on is 10% damage. And then when you're comfortable with a fight you can start stance dancing to get that extra damage with the risk that you're now healing 20% less, but 20% less isn't quite such a huge deal as the current lowered MND AND 20% less. So even if you mess up and get stuck in cleric's your heals won't be near useless.

The only issue I see is, as usual, scholar being tied to arcanist. I don't know if it's possible for them to separate the DoTs into being INT on SMN/ARN while being MND on SCH.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

The only issue I see is, as usual, scholar being tied to arcanist. I don't know if it's possible for them to separate the DoTs into being INT on SMN/ARN while being MND on SCH.

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That's easy, scale off of whichever is higher, but heals only scale off MND.

My thoughts are that I also dislike Cleric Stance. I'd prefer if damage scaled off MND and Healers damage was notably tuned down. It seems odd to suggest that the dev team wants healers to focus healing in group content, but then provide powerful AoE spells to healers, as most outdoor content (leveling, beast tribes etc.) involves single target DPS.

I'd much rather have a healer that focused on buff-combos. This would be similar to Astrologians buff-focused play, but instead of buffs determined by RNG, they're determined by combos. Cast this spell after benefic, and it gives a bonus arrow-type effect. etc. The idea isn't fully fleshed out, so I can't go into full details, but I think focusing on comboing your spells to provide maximum buffs to your team and maximum heals would be a lot better than stance dancing to DPS. In the end it could provide the same amount of Raid DPS, but would be more support-focused. Further to this, casting buffs on your allies could combo your heals to be more potent, thus causing a beneficial relationship between healing and buffing that encourages the player to do both.

Personally, I would prefer if the amount of healing required in standard content was higher.... to the point where CC is actually needed again and healers would rarely have the opportunity to dps unless over geared.
That said, I highly doubt this will ever happen.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

Personally, I would prefer if the amount of healing required in standard content was higher.... to the point where CC is actually needed again and healers would rarely have the opportunity to dps unless over geared.
That said, I highly doubt this will ever happen.

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Raid-caliber dungeon runs? Yeah, highly doubt that will or should ever happen.

But mythic dungeons are so much fun in WoW.....
This game needs systems like that. Its not like they are strenuous on the dev team either given all the assets are the same.

Long as they're not the only option yeah. But they've claimed before it's too much work, so...

everything is apparently too much work it seems for our devs

Cleric stance should go imo. Use mind as the healers dps stat as well. Cleric stance is just tedious imo. I'd rather they change healing so that just trying to dps is a risk and tweak from there.

I've been healing in mmos since 1999 (Or even longer if you count anatomy in UO!) and I honestly can't think of another mmo that is so deathly afraid of healer DPS as this. That coupled with what I suspect is a lack of coordination and communication amongst the various content teams handling things. PvP being such a miasma of additional changes and abilities is a prime example of this.

My co healer is going to hate me for this, but personally I think EQ and WoW had healers (on healer specs of course) pegged at about the right level relative to to their DPS brethren, I was linking videos guides here in the early days of 3.0 on how to do 1000+ sustained dps as a SCH in the dungeons which was very competitive with highly competent DPS players which is too much. On the flip side healer single target dps is more in the right sort of territory.

IMO SE need to be a little more shameless and look afield at other mmos that have done a good job of not only enabling healers to do more than just heal, but in some cases actively embracing it. WoW is obviously the biggest yardstick, but for all it's faults I'd say Warhammer Online is a good one to look at with several of the healing classes actively having to get involved in combat rather than merely staring at health bars and working out windows for cleric stance. AST was both a mistake and a missed opportunity imo.

Oh and yes, cleric stance should go, healer DPS abilities should be based off MND and IMO damage should be tuned somewhat downwards in the case of aoe potential. Yes it's a very fair argument to say that it removes some of the skill element from healing, but it'll open up and streamline the job for the masses. Lets be honest now, those that are doing the best numbers with cleric stance as it is will likely still be doing the best numbers with it gone. Removing it would go a long way towards narrowing the gulf in between. Isn't that one of the main aims of 4.0?