Cleric Stance Discussion - Is it needed?

I don't necessarily like it since stance dancing is both fun and provides a small challenge. Nevertheless, I think removing it would be beneficial unless they intend to increase healing requirements. With the current DPS meta only likely to become worse, this is a simple adjustment that would make it easier on healers too nervous to DPS. I would prefer they simply make healing more of a requirement. Alas, I have my doubts they will.

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Originally Posted by ErryK

Cleric Stance being removed and recalculating damage through MND would also affect healers in PvP, they would be able to deal damage again, as opposed to how now they're unable to due to Cleric Stance being unusable as is.

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This is true; however they've said before they're revamping pvp for 4.0, and they've always been up to modifying skills specifically for pvp. Swiftcast's "nukes are 50% damage when used" could easily be applied to all healer dps spells.

edit: Also, don't forget, getting rid of it frees up crossclass slots for AST/SCH and gives room for them to add a whm skill if they wanted to. (They could also use this opportunity to make esuna a crossclass skill allowing SCH to have a reliable source of it pre-40)

Reversal. Like in that dungeon with the Kiribu boss. Cure, Cura, Curaja, Curaga, Regen etc all do damage.

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Originally Posted by Faliandra

CS used to have a recast timer of 12 seconds, and they did decrease it to 5 seconds, which IMO was a very encouraging step towards healers wanting to dps
but scared to mess up....cos 12 seconds is a loooong time. Sometimes, even 5 secs can be. Maybe they could decrease it some more so you can swap anytime?

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They decreased the cooldown not to get healers to dps but to lessen the punishment caused by the post-50 split of DoM gear into Casting and Healing. A minor but significant penalty of 20 main stat for 12s at level 32 when leveling became a major penalty of 221 at i90 when when DoM gear split in Healing and Casting post-50.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

They decreased the cooldown not to get healers to dps but to lessen the punishment caused by the post-50 split of DoM gear into Casting and Healing. A minor but significant penalty of 20 main stat for 12s at level 32 when leveling became a major penalty of 221 at i90 when when DoM gear split in Healing and Casting post-50.

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i never stated that it was changed SO that healers dps more, i said it was a very encouraging step for it. Purpose or not, it sure helped ME starting to manage my stance dancing (12 secs is pretty frightening when youre still a new player)

Personal thoughts on DPS meta aside, I've never cared for it as an action either. It's pretty obvious that it was was a "fix" for SCH DoTs and the fact that WHMs used to be able to cross Thunder (a THM action). The damage modifiers always seemed like a smokescreen for that fix to give the illusion of risk vs reward, or maybe to make things more balanced while soloing (hence the original 12 second timer). It's never struck me as particularly intelligent design. I wouldn't mind seeing healer damage spells re-tooled for MND instead.

I don't play healer but to satisfy most parties (some are pretty head strong that healers are never meant to deal damage under any circumstances), I think they should keep the stance dancing but alter the risk/reward aspects of it. Remove the 5s cooldown completely but make it cost a paltry sum of MP, say 1/4 or 1/2 the MP needed for Cure 1 (or the other jobs' basic cure). Stance dancing remains for those that like it, stance dancing is much easier with negligible problems for those who need to work on it, misclicks or mistimed cleric stances won't create panic attacks, yet on the other side of the coin if you over abuse the stance dancing, you'll slowly put yourself into an MP issue.

They could introduce a single target DPS spell for healers that is based on their MND that is weaker than their stronger spells as a way to give them the opportunity to DPS without Cleric Stance. The loss in DPS would be from either not using the DoTs or them being weaker and not using your stronger DPS spells, but it would at least give them the opportunity to deal safer damage however those who feel comfortable would have the opportunity to use Cleric Stance.

I think the same mentality they are using for Enochain should go into other jobs as well, just lower the ceiling so it's safer for those who don't feel comfortable going into Cleric Stance to DPS so that they can do something when there is no healing required.

However overall I think that if you want anything relevant done on the healer focus, the Dev team has to go to the drawing board and introduce content which offer unique mechanics to the support jobs and gives them reward for reacting to them properly.

I think way more people would do damage as healer if didn't have to worry about stance dancing, some might find it boring but it be better overall for everyone. Then the actual "your bad/lazy healer cause you don't dps" would be a valid argument cause they be able to heal/dps which ever is needed without having to worry about what stance they are in.

I'd probably go back to healing IF they got rid of CS. It's clunky/messy and only gets worse for those with higher latency. considering button space is at a premium, this is one we can do without.