If tank damage is now based on VIT, why do healers still have Cleric Stance?

If SE didn't intend for Cleric Stance to be used in instances then they have horrible playtesters - all they'd need to do was enter Sastasha as CNJ. We also had speedruns of WP that maximized healer DPS even when PLD's enmity generation was complete garbage (ty Cover). Small adjustments were made to healer DPS, but nothing that outright stopped you from doing it, and those adjustments were mainly AOE related such as the infamous Holy nerf(s). If SE did want to stop it, they had 2 years to do so. If it wasn't intended for 2.0 they were definitely okay with keeping it in.

They have released a job (AST) with stances not battle changable so they would have made adjustments to cleric stance if they didn't want players using it while in combat. And don't throw the obvious "but it was an established playstyle and they can't change it" because they saw bard as unacceptable and changed fixed its playstyle in the expansion.

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Originally Posted by Ranzan

It always strikes me as odd the conjurer spells are INT base but the class and job are MND base. It's like they are using black magic skills to do damage.

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int = magic attack power
mind = magic heal power

If it hurt, it need int. Very simple to remember

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Originally Posted by UBERHAXED

They have released a job (AST) with stances not battle changable so they would have made adjustments to cleric stance if they didn't want players using it while in combat. And don't throw the obvious "but it was an established playstyle and they can't change it" because they saw bard as unacceptable and changed fixed its playstyle in the expansion.

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Deliberately disable Cleric Stance while in an instance? There will be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Followed by some sheepish looks and a determination to figure things out.

Eventually, there will be a new paradigm. And a number of forum threads complaining "SE broke healers" ...

They already disabled CS in PVP for balance. I think they would have done it already for PVE if they thought it was a problem.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

Ummmm.. the entire 1-60 questing experience is one huge set of DPS tests. Without DPS spells, you could not level. Period. Of course they gave CNJ/WHM damage spells for this solo content.

That clever players found a use for this stance in dungeon instances was not intentional, but it is what it is. I have no opinion in the quarrel about its use.

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There are no high DPS checks in story content. If SE didn't intend healers to do good DPS, they would have stopped at Stone and just let them slowly kill anything while healing themselves. The fact that healer got super strong aoe spells like Holy, Aero III, Assize, Gravity, Bane etc., along with more DPS skills after 50 and Cleric Stance being usable in combat clearly shows that healers were intended to be able to contribute significant DPS in both solo and group content. SE might not absolutely require healer DPS to clear content, but healers were definitely intended to be able to contribute a lot in dungeons if you'd just look at the skills.

you're talking about a skill vs a stat.... pretty invalid argument when you consider tanks lose a good % of their attack power if they are in tank stance vs an offense stance.

This change to vit is because tanks are supposed to be tanks, not under performing dps. The way people were choosing to play them due to dps checks was not inline with what devs wanted hence this change.

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Originally Posted by Launched

There are no high DPS checks in story content. If SE didn't intend healers to do good DPS, they would have stopped at Stone and just let them slowly kill anything while healing themselves. The fact that healer got super strong aoe spells like Holy, Aero III, Assize, Gravity, Bane etc., along with more DPS skills after 50 and Cleric Stance being usable in combat clearly shows that healers were intended to be able to contribute significant DPS in both solo and group content. SE might not absolutely require healer DPS to clear content, but healers were definitely intended to be able to contribute a lot in dungeons if you'd just look at the skills.

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Methinks you have not tried killing mobs above level 30 just using stone 1 and heals. You are likely to run out of mp before the thing dies. And that's just trash mobs in the open. The instances are much harder (i.e. intended for DPS classes to no breeze through pressing one button). Also might be worth nothing that Bane is not a healer skill, it happened to be there not to waste a job slot for summoner (but they did so anyway with tri-bind (then called tri-disaster), sigh...). There are instances in the story where you need to use AoE any way, so scholar being out of luck would be bad.

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Originally Posted by UBERHAXED

Methinks you have not tried killing mobs above level 30 just using stone 1 and heals. You are likely to run out of mp before the thing dies. And that's just trash mobs in the open. The instances are much harder (i.e. intended for DPS classes to no breeze through pressing one button). Also might be worth nothing that Bane is not a healer skill, it happened to be there not to waste a job slot for summoner (but they did so anyway with tri-bind (then called tri-disaster), sigh...). There are instances in the story where you need to use AoE any way, so scholar being out of luck would be bad.

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WHM has 8 dps skills, SCH 10. Why do they need so many DPS skills if they were never intended to do DPS in duties? Surely half of that would have been enough and then they could of given us more spells that would have helped in duties? The place where 99% of this game takes place?

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Originally Posted by SpookyGhost

If SE did want to stop it, they had 2 years to do so. If it wasn't intended for 2.0 they were definitely okay with keeping it in.

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I don't think anyone would argue that. They're fine with the way healers DPS now and aren't changing anything (whereas they are apparently not fine with the way tanks forgo Fending accessories and are making changes). That's ultimately what was meant by it being an "unintended, emergent" thing. They seem to have naively assumed that the playerbase wouldn't DPS much in content on healer—this is likely in part due to the fact that they seem to playtest material on jobs the testers do not normally play (they talked about this in a preview or interview regarding the dungeons added in 3.1), which is a rather way narrow way to do it, of course. They should ideally test both with career players for various roles and those who are uncomfortable.

I suspect they will always prefer for content to be tuned toward the lower end of the spectrum for tanks and healers, though, as that has the effect of lowering the barrier for entry for those classes in terms of player responsibility. Tanks and healers both generally have more to pay attention to than DPS do (though it does vary in some content), and I suspect that's part of the reason tank and healer shortages are not as bad as they are in other similar games such as WoW—which isn't to say there aren't shortages, of course, just that they could be worse.

With the way both roles are set up now, there's a fairly low-skill floor that needs to be met for most content (current Savage notwithstanding), but rather high skill ceilings that involve pushing DPS to the utmost, especially when both roles are pushing DPS in the same party. They're probably okay with that in general (and they assume world-first class players will be pushing as hard as they can to do that, too).