Should Cleric Stance be disabled in party instances?

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Originally Posted by Connor

I feel like the devs should be more transparent with healer dps requirements though. Until the words 'healers must dps' come straight from the horse's mouth the debate will never end.

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I'm confused. We know they don't take healer DPS into account for end-game fights, and the newbie thing that I cannot recall the name of says (paraphrased) "If there is no healing to be done, don't be afraid to toss out a few attacks."

What more do you want?

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Originally Posted by Ilenya

I'm confused. We know they don't take healer DPS into account for end-game fights, and the newbie thing that I cannot recall the name of says (paraphrased) "If there is no healing to be done, don't be afraid to toss out a few attacks."

What more do you want?

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Besides, at this point in the game we are fooling ourselves if we think it really matters what the devs "intended" regarding healer DPS. When you code it into the game, the players do what they will with it. The devs have had years to observe the ramifications of their design choices, and not a single response has been to scale back healer DPS abilities and their effectiveness except when it was an overall game balance issue, as it was when Holy received the same successive target nerf as Flare. If anything they went on to provide more DPS options and upgrades for 51-60.

Anyway, I don't think the devs are well known for telling players how they must play the game. There is unlikely to be any further Word of God declaring either that all healers who utterly refuse to DPS effectively (read: using CS) in group content are terrible or that they should be vindicated in their choice to do less.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

I would like to hear more about this. Is it translated somewhere?

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not that I'm aware off. It would be nice for SE to bring these guides over to the west in some form
(also the previous issue had a guide for tanking. With 3 pages alone on how tank swapping works for example)

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

The solution to the "should healers DPS or not?" Argument is absolutely NOT removing the option to reliably DPS entirely

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Actually that's EXACTLY what needs to happen. In no other MMO is healing such an afterthought that the community meta imposed dps standards on healers because they hate the role so much. It's the first step in demanding a more engaging style of healing. There's no reason for a dilemma between being forced to be bored, stand around with infinite healing resources, or bleed off into another role because mine isn't engaging in design. Cutting down on the ability to dps is the first step into forcing a more engaging healing role in future content design and addressing this glaring schism. This is the only MMO out there with such a lack of care going into healing. It's essentially 'go play another MMO if you enjoy skilled healing' and it really has no reason to be like that.

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Originally Posted by Toystore

Actually that's EXACTLY what needs to happen. In no other MMO is healing such an afterthought that the community meta imposed dps standards on healers because they hate the role so much. It's the first step in demanding a more engaging style of healing. There's no reason for a dilemma between being forced to be bored, stand around with infinite healing resources, or bleed off into another role because mine isn't engaging in design. Cutting down on the ability to dps is the first step into forcing a more engaging healing role in future content design and addressing this glaring schism. This is the only MMO out there with such a lack of care going into healing. It's essentially 'go play another MMO if you enjoy skilled healing' and it really has no reason to be like that.

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Even if they would want to make the healer jobs more about healing, the answer would still not be removing the ability to do more than that. I would welcome more healing-intensive fights and more abilities focused on various buffs, for example. But that doesn't mean they should remove the current abilities and replace them with something else. On the contrary, keeping the DPS function in addition to that would offer the exceptional healer players even more room to shine, and I would find that highly motivating, even if I personally wouldn't be able to focus as much on the DPS part. Being able to DPS is also important because of outleveling and overgearing content: it guarantees there's always something to do even when you know the fight by heart and overgear it by 20 item levels.

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Originally Posted by Toystore

Actually that's EXACTLY what needs to happen. In no other MMO is healing such an afterthought that the community meta imposed dps standards on healers because they hate the role so much. It's the first step in demanding a more engaging style of healing. There's no reason for a dilemma between being forced to be bored, stand around with infinite healing resources, or bleed off into another role because mine isn't engaging in design. Cutting down on the ability to dps is the first step into forcing a more engaging healing role in future content design and addressing this glaring schism. This is the only MMO out there with such a lack of care going into healing. It's essentially 'go play another MMO if you enjoy skilled healing' and it really has no reason to be like that.

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Not sure how to begin to address this.

For the moment, let's keep it simple: what other MMO would you suggest offers a significantly better model of "skilled" healing? Healing models that differ in any great way from the one used in FFXIV tend to be one of the following two:

1. Healing through combat, where a large chunk of your healing power comes as a byproduct of damage-dealing. Sometimes characters that heal this way have limited or weak direct healing options and MUST inflict damage in order to heal effectively. This type of healing can reward high player skill, but certain players on these forums seem more interested in eliminating damage-dealing from healer kits, not further rewarding others for using DPS tools.

2. Multiple single-target and AoE high-burst healing options on low cooldowns that allow players to effectively play whack-a-mole with their party's health bars while incoming damage is fast, extreme, and less predictable. Somehow I don't think that players who object to any expectation to deal damage as a healer in a moderately paced game like FFXIV would embrace a twitch-healing model.

Eeeh the only game in which I have found healing itself to be stressful was Ragnarok Online. Mind you, healing was stressful not because it required a high skill cap, but because tank HP used to drop ridiculously low in hilariously short times, so you literally had to be a healbot and spamming Heal on whoever was taking damage. Basically, in RO your entire life revolved around the party window and it was a constant whack-a-mole game with HP bars, with the added bonus of keeping track of party buffs 100% of the time.

While it was definitely fun, I do not want this for FFXIV. I love how healing works in FFXIV. I like that the game has telegraphed or predictable bursts for high damage with downtimes so that you can provide more than just healing and support. Healers have the most depth in these game because of how many things you can provide to the party and it kind of baffles me that people hate it so much. Do you really want to be so simple minded?

The only thing I can think would be to make it easier to cancel, and to make heals auto-cancel it. Not being able to cancel it while it's on cooldown is kind of a stupid restriction, and it can be easy to forget it's on.

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Originally Posted by Jpec07

The only thing I can think would be to make it easier to cancel, and to make heals auto-cancel it. Not being able to cancel it while it's on cooldown is kind of a stupid restriction, and it can be easy to forget it's on.

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I'll just quote something I said earlier in this thread in regards to this.

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

I have to disagree with your opinion on Cleric Stance. As with everything in this game, the skill it requires is not particular dexterity, it's just awareness and knowledge of the fight. The limitation it imposes on healing and the 5-second CD make it a way to punish poor decision making. It also punishes unfortunate situations in which other party members stand in the bad or a tank dies, and unable to foresee this, you entered CS and whoever needs healing is then fucked for the next 5 seconds. Quite honestly the risk-reward mecanic of that 5 sec CD is one of the only things that make healer DPS interesting, considering our DPS "rotation" is spamming the same attack over and over and DoT upkeep.

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Cleric Stance is quite honestly one of the few difficulties of proper healing. Making it any easier could perhaps help the less skillful part of the community, but it's nowhere near being necessary.

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

Cleric Stance is quite honestly one of the few difficulties of proper healing. Making it any easier could perhaps help the less skillful part of the community, but it's nowhere near being necessary.

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I agree completely. Manual skill has virtually nothing to do with proper use of Cleric Stance, and most people who report it as "buggy" are experiencing unusually severe connection problems or are chronically double-tapping the controls.

Even if CS were made even easier to use (or perhaps eliminated by 4.0 when they look for skills to cut to reduce button bloat), the Never DPS contingent still won't be satisfied until they're given a healer job whose optimal play style is 100% healing and buffing. And then they will complain of the tedium of balancing multiple short-duration buff timers and whatever other awful mechanic SE would have to introduce to make such a play style competitive.