Cleric Stance Discussion - Is it needed?

Why not just add INT to healing gear?
Or even make it to where healers can't miss while in Cleric Stance so they don't have to waste every slot on Accuracy.

Late as I am to this thread...

I think you got the wrong takeaway. Yoshi isn't ticked that healers need to cleric stance to DPS, he's ticked that healers are DPSing instead of keeping people alive. If they did take it away, it would be more like PvP, not 'healer damage now scales from MND'.

Realistically, if they changed it, it would probably be restricted to solo (otherwise how would healers complete solo duties?), but since they're not touching it, it's a bit of a moot point...

The takeaway I got from Yoshi's statement isn't that he hates the fact that healers in this game have the capability to DPS. He only said he hates Cleric Stance. That could mean a number of things, especially coming out of the mouth of a developer.

MOST LIKELY, from a developer standpoint, his statement really means that he hates how Cleric Stance WORKS. The way it currently is, it's a button you either press to DPS or to heal instead. There's no real creativity behind it. Yoshi and the rest of the team probably feels that they designed themselves into a corner with this, because changing it at ALL will piss off a sizable portion of the community one way or another. Get rid of Cleric Stance and severely nerf the ability for healers to DPS, many raid healers would likely quit the game out of sheer boredom. Scholar suddenly becomes a dead class in raids, tossed aside for WHM/Noct AST combo. Get rid of Cleric Stance and simply allow healers to DPS and heal at once, suddenly pacifist healers cry foul over no longer having an excuse to not use the offensive half of their toolkit.

They could try to change it to be a bit more elaborate, but compared to the simple activation that Cleric Stance is now, the only thing that adjusting it would achieve is essentially making something more complicated only for the sake of becoming more complicated.

Can we stop asking for healer jobs to be simplified please

Most of the time I go into CS because there's literally nothing else to do and I need SOMETHING to do in order to not fall asleep, CS just makes it more interesting

Also... balance issues (the kind that can't be fixed by ast carding), because you'd have jobs able to push out significant DPS AND heal, so something would have to counter that... either lower the potency of damage spells, by a lot, or make it so he incoming damage is more significant to allow for less DPS-windows for the healers

Simply taking away CS and making the damage spells scale off MND would make healers completely overpowered in PVP. Stormblood is said to do a complete overhaul of PVP, let's see how it goes. But if things will stay close to as they are now, I'd say do the CS removal & MND -thing, but nerf the heal potencies by 30% or so and show the nerf bat to damage spells too. That would solve the "I want more heal intensive dungeons" problem too.

you can give healer short-time (like 5-7 sec) buffs enchancing dps of other party members. various buffs affecting various stats, like ASTR cards, but with shorter duration and lesser CD time.
Make healer to do support instead direct damage.

The biggest issue with Cleric at the moment, in my opinion, is the scaling got wacky when they raised the level cap.

You used to still be able to toss out the odd heal while in Cleric if absolutely necessary and it would be enough, however with the increase in level cap and the wider gap between MND and INT, heals while under Cleric do significantly less in terms of the target's HP percentage than they used to. A heal under cleric does practically nothing and you are at the mercy of the CD if someone takes some unexpected damage and needs an emergency top up.

I can't count the number of times in EXP dungeons where the tank would be full HP, tanking a bunch of trash, so I turn Cleric on to toss out a nuke and they suddenly drop to sub-50% because they don't dodge an AoE or eat a bunch of crits.. This is when the 5sec CD can be rather dangerous.

Currently the only healer that has an emergency heal under cleric is WHM (with Bene). I really wished they didn't change Lustrate to a potency based heal rather than the 20% target's max HP, in addition to this I feel like Dignity should have worked based on % Max HP as well.. Mostly because you had Lustrate as an emergency heal if you couldn't toggle Cleric in time.

The safety net of having an emergency heal under cleric was more encouraging for healers to nuke, mix that with the higher efficiency of Cleric stance heals - it was far less stressful to DPS..

In terms of the cooldown.. I would prefer it if it remained 12secs (old CD) to turn it on, but remove the cooldown entirely to turn it off. Also detach the need to wait to finish your cast before toggling it off. Let us get rid of it mid-cast if we need to as toggling it off in its current state can be rather jarring.

As far as the removal of it is concerned, I don't think that's necessary. However I am indifferent. On one hand I think it would make DPSing on healer rather dull and boring - on the other hand I think it would encourage more healers to DPS which I am a huge advocate of.. So if that's the price to pay for more healers to toss out some nukes then I am fine with it.

I can handle Cleric Stance fine, but would much prefer if this was removed as I feel it'll make Healer DPS a lot more entertaining and applicable.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

Personally I wish they'd remove the timer for it completely. I've lost a tank or two thinking I've turned it off and I hadn't.

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lol same here or accidentally clicking on it and waiting 5 secs, whilst watching tank drop down to 10% thinking....

http://i.imgur.com/nEgFXGS.gif

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Originally Posted by Delmontyb

OP

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yes

It would be 1 less "must have skill" healers will need and make it easier for healers to dps. I find cleric stance counter intuitive, and easy for new players mess up using. And mistimed cleric stances will cause wipes, which is will cause more time in dungeons.

I'm of the opinion that jobs shouldn't be hard to play/master (for obvious reasons such as the multiple healers must dps or they suck threads) and the content itself should be the challenge.

from what my g/f stated, healer dps in ff11 was mnd based.


Also i think this will open up healers to dps more as the non dps healers I talked to, don't like cleric because of causing wipes due to misclick. if anything........

rework cleric to simply add more damage to spells, not flip int/mnd and reduce healing.

I'll go for anything that reduces how cut throat this community can be in game/ on forums.

It is more than just about switching cleric stance
for me, it took me sometime to understand my party ability and equipment level since I do DF 99.9% of time
and it took me even longer to figure out how my party perform in 24ppl raid
CD on cleric stance is one of the key issue I don't feel comfort about it, since a 8 man party have more variable and higher chance of sudden HP drop
furthermore, keeping myself and everyone alive as a first priority, I have the healing skill in first few slot of my hotbar, and dmg skill in the other end, so I usually use a separate hotbar for dmg/cure skill, this swapping is making me less interest in doing DPS as healer (Since my support skill and AST card have higher priority when I arrange my hotbar)

if cleric stance change into something like Kuribu in Lost City of Amdapor HM, which turn my cure spell into dmg spell, and have a lower CD then I would say it is much more encouraging to do DPS than what cleric stance offer

Personally I think Yoshi's team has been hugely uninventive with healing as a whole, cleric stance is just the most immediately obvious example to anyone.

Imo a more significant case where SE have dug themselves into a corner would be the 2hour or boss transition phases they've kept going back to repeatedly. Everytime it ends up with apply bubbles, maybe sprinkle some mitigation ontop of that and afk for a moment. It allows for some flashy effects, but it doesn't help the gameplay along. It'd be a lot more interesting to have this big transitions come as multiple hits more in line with T13's flatten+flare breaths or the phase 1 preys in A12s. You can bubble through them or you can heal them with well timed brute force, either way is far more engaging than a single big hit and it opens up more many more options for groups to get past it.

Here's hoping SE have learnt their lesson and spent a little more time and effort on the healing side of things this expansion. :o

Healer without it just heal and not dps at all . Without switch with int its a waste of mp . BUT if we use healer skill on ennemy affect them as dmg its interessant . But that mean some skills are useless :/

I don't like Cleric Stance (it has a clunky delay and toggling it off can often accidentally result in toggling it back on), and I don't like the constant expectation of healers dpsing. I just want SE to design encounters that require healers to heal for at least 80% of the time.

Cleric stance is needed until DF isn't filled to overflowing with apathetic and terrible DDs.

You can take cleric stance away and make dungeons require heavy healing if you want. I just hope you like healers running out of MP constantly because of MP attrition due to a combination of bad DPS and heavy healing, and dungeon runs that take 2x longer.

I love Cleric Stance while soloing content.

I don't like it as a mechanic for healers to contribute to groups. Personally, I think they should stop giving DPS jobs "support" tools and instead make healers also support roles. Healing is not a full time job, there is a lot of idle time if that is all you do. Instead, give healers tools that allow you to boost the party/raid damage. Be it Raid buffs or enemy resistance debuffs.

Here 3 quick examples that could be given to each job:
SCH: A soil patch that increases damage taken by anyone in the patch
WHM: Stone III adds a vulnerability debuff on the target, target now takes increased damage.
AST: Not too familiar with them, but give them a card or roll or something that can buff raid damage, duration is refreshed every time the target is healed by any of the Astro's own heals.

All these 3 could either stack or not, they all could provide same numerical net effect, but all would be unique (no homogenization!)

I really don't like the idea of making Damage work off MND for healers, I already don't like that tanks use Vit for damage, it's weird. What is the point of stats if every class will use it so drastically differently? If tanks need more damage, give their gear Str stat as needed, don't just change the meaning of stats, the same goes for healers.

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Originally Posted by Delmontyb

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

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My thoughts are..it isn't broke so theres no reason to fix it. Any other options I feel would result in either time spent to re-overhaul healers, which I feel will accomplish nothing because at the end of it all nothing is going to change nothing. The healers that focus solely on dps in groups will still do as such, they just have one less key to hit. The other is changes to the game world more or so in regards to leveling and MSQ and quest in general progression. Common quest monsters and general open world fodder in 3.0 took painfully longer then it felt like it needed to on a dps role trying to max damage. I don't want to imagine the time to do basic questing would involve without Cleric Stance to help. Taking it away could mean less healers in general due to the extra time it takes needed to progress vs the time it takes a dps class to progress. Changes to the game world to allow healers to level effectively without Stance could lead to month after month of complaints from dps players on how easy the open world is since they can traunce everything by default.

I say leave it as it is.

I don't like cleric stance at all really. I rather have a challenge with healing, sure leave the damage spells..and let them do decent damage w/o the cleric stance, but really..healer should be focused on healing. I'd actually go back to playing healer if they changed it up...

Why not implement a support class with damage, healing and buffs?^^

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Originally Posted by Iromi

I don't like cleric stance at all really. I rather have a challenge with healing, sure leave the damage spells..and let them do decent damage w/o the cleric stance, but really..healer should be focused on healing. I'd actually go back to playing healer if they changed it up...

Why not implement a support class with damage, healing and buffs?^^

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4 man groups. Even in a 5 man group situation you still only have three roles. The only games that have support level roles are those with 6 man groups.

I'm not opposed to support roles. They really change up dynamics, especially when you have several classes that can fill that role in different ways. But they really do require larger group sizes as their buffs need to make the group do more damage than simply getting another DPS.

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Originally Posted by Blazinhart

...People Will complain...

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I think/wonder if this could be applied to everything in life... :S

Cleric Stance is solely a comfort issue imo. Turn it on at the wrong time and could possibly lose your tank in that 5 second window. Making it more comfortable to use would hopefully encourage Healers to DPS if they can.

I feel like Cleric Stance would be fine on GCD or the current CD only activated when turned off.

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Originally Posted by RosaLunaCelestia

Healer without it just heal and not dps at all . Without switch with int its a waste of mp . BUT if we use healer skill on ennemy affect them as dmg its interessant . But that mean some skills are useless :/

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Nobody's suggesting to remove it and leave healer dps based on INT.

The suggestion is to remove it and make healers function in healing and dps as if they had the right stance on.

And at the end of it all, nobody can argue that it's "needed" because the system can be reworked to make healer dps spells MND-based with a trait on all healers to give a 10% boost in potencies to make up for that part of cleric stance.

(Also keep in mind the whole reason for this conversation is button bloat with whatever new buttons that are coming taken into consideration as well.)

I believe Yoshi P's comment was directed more to the fact that cleric stance makes healers feel obligated to dps in FF14 and that wasn't part of the design intent. Cleric stance serves to allow healers to solo content but its not originally intended to be used for group content. This was a design oversight on their part. I think they don't want dpsing to be easy or safe for healers. Honestly if they are going to go with the existing meta I would prefer it that way. Healer dps rotations are extremely dull and part of the actual engaging part of the gameplay is with timing stance dancing.

If they want healers to focus only on healing they could make it so you can only turn on clerics stance while out of combat.

I think it's a bit limiting, in that if you make it so all healers have it you limit the sort of mechanics or perhaps obnoxiously complicate them. You could build other forms of DD into healers but if you first have to hit the wall of cleric no matter the mechanic, you either limit or overly complicate the mechanic. So moving it into one healer only, then giving other healers their own sort of damage styles could be more interesting, as at the moment they're very likely to have very similar styles.

Less homogeneous so more difficult to balance but I think it'd be better to move it to one job and then give other jobs their own methods of dealing with damage opportunities.

For example what if you wanted to bind damage dealing and healing into a joint mechanic, job doesn't get any DoTs but instead pecks away at all times, like a node they drop near enemies and gain potency bonus to healing via the damage made round the node (with a cap ofc) or can mana drop into the node instead of heal for more damage (maybe build a battery of potency bonus for another ability). Of course you can throw in cleric stance but then you /have/ to design around it as it is incredibly strong, leading to a high chance of making the damage style similar (/watering it down).

I mean you could almost always balance around cleric stance with any idea, but again it would require molding the mechanic idea around a fixed core idea that healers can rotate their mind and intelligence and must give up one for the other in this specific way. Not trying to change people's jobs but for example scholar could gain aethertraits from healing and then use those to empower/enable damage abilities, while certain damage abilities could empower/enable healing - when healing is unneeded they can pour it into their fairy gaining a mana over time return while still earning damage traits.

I imagine SE could design a healer style that people used to focus on healing would be better at, but still not burden the party who expects/wants them to deal damage - not saying making a style that is inherently better for people not liking cleric but a /different/ style could help a lot who like the idea of healing but troubles with cleric specifically. Everyone having to specifically stance dance a specific stance (even tanks get a bit more stance variety even) and that be the be all end all style of mechanic development really limits that.

So I hope that maybe it doesn't go away, but that it isn't a healer generic ability in SB (of course clean up the aftermath of what that means so other healers have their own methods of damaging in a similar "end result way", the journey could/should be different but the end results being similar).

I enjoy the concept of CS, and understand why it is a necessary tool on the Healer kit.

That said, I'd enjoy it more if the cool down window was reversed and those 5 seconds were for when you turn it OFF. I suppose I can see the risk vs reward strategy the devs were probably going for, but....ya know. Is what it is. I do hope Stormblood offers some new ground regarding CS.

It's AIDS, just get rid of it

Base healer dps off of Mind

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Originally Posted by PocketVolcano

Base healer dps off of Mind

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I don't think many Healers who don't want to DPS realise how much worse their predicament would become if this change were to happen, because now they have absolutely no excuse for not contributing DPS, thus making the Healer DPS Meta pretty much guaranteed across the board.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

If they want healers to focus only on healing they could make it so you can only turn on clerics stance while out of combat.

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If they want healers to focus only on healing they should make the content warrent a healer only healing...

I feel like removing cleric stance would be a bad idea. Yes, if they remove it and scale healer DPS off of mind, it becomes easier...but the risk of cleric stance and knowing when to use it is part of the fun for me. I get to challenge myself and see how much damage I can output while still keeping everyone up. This would be made pretty trivial if there was no stance dancing involved.

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Originally Posted by VeliusVire

I don't think many Healers who don't want to DPS realise how much worse their predicament would become if this change were to happen, because now they have absolutely no excuse for not contributing DPS, thus making the Healer DPS Meta pretty much guaranteed across the board.

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I think most just aren't comfy with being in a stance that slashes their healing ability and can't jump quick enough when something unpredictable happens. Getting rid of that ball and chain would probably make people feel better about throwing that Stone 2 or Gravity. :)

Yes. Without it healing would be more brain dead than 2.0 black mage.

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Originally Posted by Elleia

I feel like removing cleric stance would be a bad idea. Yes, if they remove it and scale healer DPS off of mind, it becomes easier...but the risk of cleric stance and knowing when to use it is part of the fun for me. I get to challenge myself and see how much damage I can output while still keeping everyone up. This would be made pretty trivial if there was no stance dancing involved.

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WildStar was able to easily pull this off with Spellslinger and Medic. Medic being the pure melee healer that stay in melee range and its aoe and cone attacks would heal allies and damage enemies. It also put out little robots that stays near each party member and pulsates small heals to them, a HoT. Spellslinger was a ranged healer with long, thin attacks (in either | or \|/ form) that you would build up to unleash powerfull spells, and it also healed those within its path. Both healers also had regular, normal heals for targets.

It's just all about being creative, and jumping to and fro between a stance that just seems like extra baggage doesn't seem very creative than where to properly place your aoe and stand your character so you can utilize the best of your heals and your damage spells. Don't forget, you're doing all this while also dodging very quick aoes that do stupid huge amounts of damage

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Originally Posted by PocketVolcano

WildStar was able to easily pull this off with Spellslinger and Medic. Medic being the pure melee healer that stay in melee range and its aoe and cone attacks would heal allies and damage enemies. It also put out little robots that stays near each party member and pulsates small heals to them, a HoT. Spellslinger was a ranged healer with long, thin attacks (in either | or \|/ form) that you would build up to unleash powerfull spells, and it also healed those within its path. Both healers also had regular, normal heals for targets.

It's just all about being creative, and jumping to and fro between a stance that just seems like extra baggage doesn't seem very creative than where to properly place your aoe and stand your character so you can utilize the best of your heals and your damage spells.

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Can't say I'm very familiar with WildStar, but isn't the combat more action focused, with dodging and things like that? It sounds interesting but I'm not sure how well it would translate to a game like this one with GCDs. And while it does seem creative, and maybe they can use a similar concept for a new healer down the line, I doubt they'll revamp the three current healers so heavily for Stormblood. If they decide to remove cleric stance, that'll probably be all they do - scale healer DPS off of mind and call it a day. We likely won't get an interesting new system for healer dps like you outlined in your post.

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Originally Posted by Elleia

Can't say I'm very familiar with WildStar, but isn't the combat more action focused, with dodging and things like that? It sounds interesting but I'm not sure how well it would translate to a game like this one with GCDs. And while it does seem creative, and maybe they can use a similar concept for a new healer down the line, I doubt they'll revamp the three current healers so heavily for Stormblood. If they decide to remove cleric stance, that'll probably be all they do - scale healer DPS off of mind and call it a day. We likely won't get an interesting new system for healer dps like you outlined in your post.

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As i recall from the time i played from the rework of the game it it's more combat/dogde oriented, yes, but FFXIV already has that feeling (we are smashing buttons fast on a rotation of our abilities and runing avoiding AoE), the only thing we dont have about that it's a dash button of some sort... Maybe a couple of abilities that some classes have to move fast from point A to B and thats it if i am not mistaken.

Edit:
As for the post itself and the Cleric Stance, if they do that they would have to balance the damage so the healers dont beat pure dps classes in terms of dps. Sch has it's dots (and those are pretty powerful by themselves), the other two Holy and Gravity (along another strong single target spells or more Aoe if we talk about Whm). I have not healed in a long time, but i recall using the last to help clearing trash mobs with good numbers and i know i am not pretty well geared with the class. Stance dancing is fun and involves a certain risk on doing it as i see it, removing it would improve the healers and encourage them to use theyr damage kit even more. But, as i said, they would have to balance it or i can see the forums on fire again about theyr potential on healing/damage in comparasion with another classes. (And i am pointing at those who have lower dps for their support kit)

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Originally Posted by PocketVolcano

I think most just aren't comfy with being in a stance that slashes their healing ability and can't jump quick enough when something unpredictable happens. Getting rid of that ball and chain would probably make people feel better about throwing that Stone 2 or Gravity. :)

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Pretty much this.

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Originally Posted by Zhamkyong

As i recall from the time i played from the rework of the game it it's more combat/dogde oriented, yes, but FFXIV already has that feeling (we are smashing buttons fast on a rotation of our abilities and runing avoiding AoE), the only thing we dont have about that it's a dash button of some sort... Maybe a couple of abilities that some classes have to move fast from point A to B and thats it if i am not mistaken.

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Yes it is! :) The GCDs are also very similar in speed in WildStar as in FFXIV. Didn't Yoshi say they were putting in a dodge-roll or something? Or was it just suggested? Either way it's a fully implemented mechanic in Wildstar and it works well alongside the high intensity fights and healing demands!

I think the dev team can do more with healer dps and getting some inspo from high action games and how they do it could be a stepping point.

From what I understand, if they removed cleric and allowed full dps any time, it would wreck the pvp balance they have by not allowing cleric dps. Granted, they could fix that by putting an 80% dps down debuff on healers but that is one of their reasons. If they were to remove cleric, it would be in 5.0 as they would have to rework a lot of content around it. The other issue about removing cleric is that the demands for people to dps all the time would skyrocket.

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Originally Posted by Delmontyb

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

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I'm for cleric stance no more. If stance dance was something planned, just add some cast time to dps skills instead.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

...The other issue about removing cleric is that the demands for people to dps all the time would skyrocket.

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It will not, if healers gets adeguately debuffed about damage output. The demand of dps from healer is high because healer can put out good numbers, and this is something unexpected by that role.

Here is a crazy cool idea:

Ditch Cleric Stance, give all healers a passive trait that increases their damage the closer the party members are to full health. If everyone is at 100%, full damage bonus. If anyone is dead, no bonus. This would make sure that a healer's first job is always to keep the party healthy, and if everyone is super healthy, then they are encouraged to deal damage. You also get to blame the DPS for stepping on the AoEs and mechanics for the healer's low damage output.

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Originally Posted by Ogulbuk

Ditch Cleric Stance, give all healers a passive trait that increases their damage the closer the party members are to full health. If everyone is at 100%, full damage bonus. If anyone is dead, no bonus. This would make sure that a healer's first job is always to keep the party healthy, and if everyone is super healthy, then they are encouraged to deal damage. You also get to blame the DPS for stepping on the AoEs and mechanics for the healer's low damage output.

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That destroys the concept of letting HoTs like Medica II and Whispering Dawn carry the healing load though when no one is going to die from the next AOE mechanic. I could argue about how those spells are a huge part of the problem, but that's an entirely different discussion. Suffice it to say, it's not uncommon for skilled healers to know when they can let the party get topped off from regens and DPS in the meantime, even if people are hovering at around 50% health for part of it.