When and when not to Cleric Stance

I started healing fairly seriously as a second job, normally a tank, since I unlocked scholar and love it so far.

I've found in at least the very early content I just live in cleric stance while healing and don't even think about. The 1st moment I turn it off is Haukke manor's final boss as a safety cushion till she's 30% and then flip it back on to finish burning her down. Brayflox I have it on during all trash and off during bosses till they're down to 20-30% and help speed up the final burn down. Haven't healed anything higher yet.

Is this sort of use of cleric stance normal for that level of content, and what is the community advice on when/how to use it?

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Is this sort of use of cleric stance normal for that level of content, and what is the community advice on when/how to use it?

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As a SCH? Pretty par for the course. Most of the low-level dungeons can be completely healed by Eos alone. Even now, doing Neverreap/Fractal Continuum with friends and static members, I don't find myself leaving CS very often except for the occasional Lustrate/Adloquium on larger pulls.

It really depends on your situation and your tanks ability to utilize cooldowns properly, I'd say. Typically, I start every pull with Adloquium on the tank and start in CS pre-pull, put Bio II/Miasma/Bio/Miasma II up, Bane, and drop Shadowflare. From there, you can usually gauge if you'll need to drop out or can continue to safely DPS.

Practice makes perfect with stance dancing. Once you've mastered it, along with micro-managing Eos/Selene, you can be a real asset to any team and contribute almost as much as another DPS would. Just remember, don't get over confident and over extend yourself. Better safe than sorry; otherwise, all the time you save the group by stance dancing will be wasted with a run-back. ;)

The when is: everytime you feel "safe". Can be if tanks have enough cooldowns up, no party wide aoe, you have enough mp to burn, etc.
The more you know a fight, the best u will identify the moments to dps.

use it when nobody's close to dying/raid content when you're the other healer (Sch)

What everyone else said when you feel like the the party is safe. With AST I like to dot up like two mobs then, then turn it off and throw some heals, then on for some dots. Some bosses without the proper gear can be taxing for AST on mana (or maybe that was just pre-buff idk). Just need to learn to gauge tank and dps and if there is some troubled ones (tank new or dps like to stand in stuff). Over all practice and experience will help. With a stable group you will mainly be learning when you can dps in fights and less worrying about bad play making you heal a bit more.

Cleric stance's penalty's and bonuses aren't as strict early on(because you have int and mnd on your gear) so be as aggressive as you can to get a feel for it, because a screw up probably won't kill anyone.

Make sure the buttons somewhere comfortable, because ease of turning it off is really important.

Try and time a stoneskin to hit the tank at the end of the fight and then adlo as he's running to the next pull, because he probably won't(And shouldn't) sit still for both. You want all the buffer you can so you have time to bane your dots.

Rouse, when you get it, is another way to buy time for that bane.

Swiftcasted shadowflare helps marginally, because of the slow. You can swiftcast ss too between pulls if you put it up too early and it broke. If it's not a boss, don't worry about saving swiftcast, it's a short cd.

E4E too, can be better on trash than a boss.

You probably won't be having trouble getting banes off in the 30s, but you probably know as a tank main how much more aggressive they can be with pulls later. Ruin spam if you can is nice and all, but your main concern is getting off that bane.

From what I have figured out, stance dancing is a delicate art. The big thing to think about first is what kind of healer ARE you? If you are whm, you can pay attention, if the tank is taking damage to the point you can hit clerics, throw out a holy or some aero action, then fantastic. What I'd do is wait a bit without healing, observe how the tank damage flows, when you need to heal and get a feel for it (don't let the tank die obviously) before I decide. Always keep regen up on the tank and just make sure to pay attention.
With scholar it's easier, throw a shield out when you know damage will be low, hop stances smack away at the enemies, shield drops, hop back, reshield, restance, unleash hell.
AST, it matters first what stance you are in, and how comfortable you are with understanding your own healing competence over the other healer, or just how good your tank is. If you are in nocturnal, it's much the same as a scholar, pop shield, unleash hell with light speed, hop back out and reshield. In Diurnal, you treat it like a whm, know how far your tank can handle not being healed outside of a token regen or two before you go.

Since cleric stance is on 6 seconds cooldown, it has pretty much never happened to me that somebody died because i was in cleric stance, there happened things that somebody "almost" died though.
In DF it depends on the tank a lot, and using cooldowns. Warriors also usually need way more healing, and undergeared warriors get cut like papers.
Normally i switch back when the tank's health drops to ~40%, then heal/shield up and go into cleric stance again.

If somebody dies when I'm in CS it's usually because I did that thing where you turn it off then back on by accident. Holy stuns everything a couple of times so you can usually get away with no healing for a while if it's just the Tank taking hits as a WHM then take CS off and use tetra then CS on and DPS more. I'll open normally with swiftcast holy then aero III,assize,holy again couple times then reapply aero III as needed in between. Most groups I'll be fine some require more attention to healing just need to pay attention to what is happening.

SCH can pretty much DPS most of the time especially combined with another Healer like a WHM but their Fairy does a great job on it's own of keeping people up. WHM and AST need to read the fight to see when chances arise to DPS in larger fights like "Okay between this and this happening nobody should need a heal unless they derp into something so I can help with adds or DPS the boss"

As others said, you do it when you anticipate not needing to heal life-threatening damage for several seconds. Setting this up through application of shields, HoTs, and/or stuns can help extend your DPS uptime.

Once you get the hang of it, your mental flowchart wil kick in, and you'll find yourself automatically toggling on CS whenever you know you can get away with it. As SCH, CS is like a default stance to which I revert whenever direct heals are unnecessary. Always Be Casting unless your MP situation has become desperate (i.e. virtually never unless you had to spam rez for some reason).

Even on AST I follow the same protocol except that I spend more GCDs actively healing. Essential Dignity gives me an ace in the hole when it's up so that I can push extra DPS and still get caught up on tank healing quickly and without excessive MP consumption.

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Originally Posted by Cassandaria

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Everything right but light speed never use light speed for dps.

The most annoying thing ever as a SCH is the short 2s window of waiting for bio's icon to appear before hitting bane. It feels like an eternity. Because usually after Bane is when I swap off CS. But i'm like ADD with trying to tag a hoard with full dots before healing because it is significant damage.

It depends on your job as others have said. As WHM I typically will pop Regen on the tank at the start of a pull, especially on a speed run and then flip to CS, and depending on the mob size, do a presence of mind to speed things up then spam Holy. Love seeing those mobs blow down because of me. If it's a large pull, or I see the tank taking lots of damage to the point I need to hit a Cure/Cure II before I can even enter CS, then I sometimes will do a Medica II to add a secondary Regen, and then same thing spam Holy. If it's a really large pull or tank taking big damage, I'll use Divine Seal first to boost that potency, then pop Regen and flip into CS. For bosses I frequently will hit CS to keep my DoTs up like Aero III, Aero II. As others have mentioned, the 6 second cooldown isn't really an issue since you can get out of it fairly quickly. Worst case there's Benediction which restores 100% of HP instantly even if you have CS on. As you mentioned though, low level dungeons are easy to heal so it's not a big issue. You'll notice higher up though the difference, as every so often you'll think why is this guy so hard to heal, only to realize you forgot CS on.