What if: Stances were removed?

A possibly radical idea. What would the game be like if all "stances" were non-existent?

Currently, we see the following almost on a daily basis:

"Oh sorry, I forgot to turn on Defiance / Deliverance / Shield Oath / Sword Oath / Diurnal / Nocturnal / Cleric / Fists of Fire / yada yada yada...."

If these stance modes were removed and were all simultaneously "active" in the background so to speak, would that make playing the associated roles more fun?

Pros and Cons?

Tank gameplay would become incredibly dull. Just saying...

Ignoring the fact that this is incredibly overpowered and makes certain classes downright broken, this just screams laziness. Half of these stances are set and forget.

I'll ask OP this instead; how do you balance AST who can, with your idea, simultaneously give HoTs and Shielding?

Sounds boring and uninteresting.
I like the idea of changing playstyle on the fly, and if anything we need more stances with more branches of gameplay style.

Healers would be less annoying to play if their damage-dealing spells scaled off the Mind stat instead of Intelligence, allowing Cleric Stance to be removed with no dps loss.

I'd personally prefer them to simply be toggles...

As in, there's never a time as a Paladin or Warrior that I'm not in either Shield Oath/Defiance or Sword Oath/Deliverance. Just put them on the same button to be toggled on or off. On could be Shield/Defiance, and Off would then be Sword/Deliverance. Dark Knight all ready has this as both Darkside and Grit are either On or Off, with really no middle ground of neither one, nor the other. I understand it works differently with Dark Knight as in they can be Darkside-on/Grit-off, Darkside-on/Grit-on, or both off, for the times between pulls, OT-ing, etc... but then you look at Astrologian, or other Healers.

You're either in Cleric Stance, or you're not. You're either in Diurnal, or you're in Nocturnal; there's really no reason why, when both are available level-wise, you'd ever not be in one or the other.

Even with NIN, you're either using Kiss of the Wasp, or Kiss of the Viper... never neither, unless level sync takes them off and you forget to reapply it. Lazy? Maybe. Much simpler and less bothersome, definitely.

There are benefits to PLD going oathless mid-fight sometimes.

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Originally Posted by Klamor

Snip.

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Your examples make me question the OP's logic more if they really do think that this minor problem needs this much of a "radical idea".

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

Healers would be less annoying to play if their damage-dealing spells scaled off the Mind stat instead of Intelligence, allowing Cleric Stance to be removed with no dps loss.

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Well we do lose the DPS increase from Cleric Stance itself but I'll be fine if we lose it to make room for a 4.0 ability.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

There are benefits to PLD going oathless mid-fight sometimes.

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And such examples are so specific and number-crunchy that I'd rather not do the math to think about the GCD loss and just swap Oaths.

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

Tank gameplay would become incredibly dull. Just saying...

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Dull to you, maybe. I wouldn't mind it at all.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

Healers would be less annoying to play if their damage-dealing spells scaled off the Mind stat instead of Intelligence, allowing Cleric Stance to be removed with no dps loss.

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The problem there is that you'd have to either nerf damage output from Stone/Aero/etc or increase raid damage taken so that healers focus more on healing to sort of even things out. Because you're otherwise removing the trade off to Cleric Stance but not replacing it with anything else.

I'd be glad to see the end of them, they are usually clunky, overly convaluted button-bloat - (along with any skills that clash with other classes, there are too many of those as well). The toggle idea is the next best thing I suppose.

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Originally Posted by XiXiQ

I'd be glad to see the end of them, they are usually clunky, overly convaluted button-bloat - (along with any skills that clash with other classes, there are too many of those as well). The toggle idea is the next best thing I suppose.

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Half of the stances (Diurnal/Nocturnal + Fists of Earth/Wind/Fire + Kiss of the Wasp/Viper) are ones you click once and never touch again, meaning you could just move these to a hotbar/crossbar that's by itself. They're barely a button bloat problem. The only ones that actually need some thought are the MT/OT stances and Cleric Stance.

Also how is it convoluted? Convoluted means extremely complex and difficult to follow. These simple buttons are anything but complicated...

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Originally Posted by magnanimousCynic

Also how is it convoluted? Convoluted means extremely complex and difficult to follow. These simple buttons are anything but complicated...

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every pointless button makes things more convaluted, and adds to button bloat. Its not JUST these that are the issue, but they are adding to the problem.

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Originally Posted by magnanimousCynic

Half of the stances (Diurnal/Nocturnal + Fists of Earth/Wind/Fire + Kiss of the Wasp/Viper) are ones you click once and never touch again, meaning you could just move these to a hotbar/crossbar that's by itself. They're barely a button bloat problem.

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Nocturnal/Diurnal were designed around the idea of AST mimicking a WHM or SCH depending on what was needed (a result of the devs designing a two-healer metagame). Those are less stances and more like modes simply because you can't change them in combat. Sort of like choosing who your striker would be in the older King of Fighters games.

Adamantoise Stance, Gale Stance and Vajra Stance (AKA Fists of Earth/Wind/Fire) are button bloat, just not the type that notably hinders gameplay. Instead, it's button bloat that hinders and somewhat limits design, since Fists of Fire is pretty much the go-to stance while the other two have tiny niches that don't really provide a notable benefit (unlike something like Tempered Will that allows me to cheese knockback effects). Simply put, it's 3 wasted skill slots that could have been used for something that added to PGL/MNK's gameplay. I still don't know why they kept those from 1.0.

Wasp and Viper are more examples of wasted slots, since the idea was that Jugulate would have different uses depending on which stance you're in. Which is sort of silly seeing that ROG/NIN would have been fine with one skill that stuns and one skill that's a silence and have both share a cooldown.

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The only ones that actually need some thought are the MT/OT stances and Cleric Stance.

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Getting into tank stances, the problem is that tanks are not using stances as per design, mostly because of other factors in the battle system. So instead of being a straightforward "if you want to live/hold aggro, hit your tank stance and stay in it" situation, you have people encouraging others to constantly swap despite that going against how stances are supposed to work. As mentioned by another poster, that makes gameplay needlessly convoluted and adds one extra button that's not really necessary.

Cleric Stance falls into that category as well, since that was designed as a way to get around letting spells like Stone and Aero scale with MND (in part because a healer doing full damage while also healing at full potential is overpowered). Between that, the fact its cooldown is long enough for things to go south if badly timed, plus the devs not taking healer damage into account during ARR's first tier tells me Cleric Stance was meant to be used for soloing, FATEs and leves. Sure, Hall of the Novice is telling people otherwise, but that came more than a year after ARR's launch, way after the chips had already fallen and the devs shrugged their shoulders on the matter.

The stances are strong as they are for any class because of the fact they can't be used with any other one's. If there was such a merge, expect nerfs to balance things out.


(Otherwise the tank stance damage penalty would ruin sword oath and same story for cleric stance ruining heals in general)

Pros: <Only if replaced with something that creates more a higher skill-cap based on more active capitalization of one's offenses and defenses.>

Cons: Loss of much of the flexibility and enjoyment of tanking as we know it.

EDIT: If we're just talking button-bloat, the obvious path is simply to allow stacked mutually exclusive skills within a single hotbar slot (e.g. Defiance/Deliverance, Shield Oath/Sword Oath, Inner Beast / Fell Cleave, Whirling Thrust / Fang & Claw). That won't remove the fact that a Paladin or Warrior, for instance, are each wasting an entire ability (Sword Oath / Deliverance) on what a Dark Knight accomplishes by simply turning Grit off, or that the Paladin spends more mana in total and twice the GCDs in order to do so, but it will at least reduce their button-bloat to that of a Dark Knight. Additionally, the Paladin can still separate the two binds if he wants to drop Shield Oath just before a Goring Blade, and only then activate Sword Oath (rushing the DoT at cost of 1 embonused auto-attack... not usually worthwhile).

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Originally Posted by magnanimousCynic

Ignoring the fact that this is incredibly overpowered and makes certain classes downright broken, this just screams laziness. Half of these stances are set and forget.

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The Set and forget ones could easily be scrapped. they don't really add anything to the gameplay of a job.

monk for example turn on fists of fire and forget about it entirely. there's never a need to switch to wind or earth so they could easily remove all of the fists stances and just give monk a flat damage increase and it wouldn't change the job at all.

ninja would be much the same put on a kiss and forget about it for the rest of the day. only time you ever need to swap is you actually need to stun or silence something which hasn't really happened ever since like t1 t2 and maybe requelling mist in weeping city..... so losing those stances wouldn't really break ninjas at all either. all it'd do is lose access to either a stun or a silence but as none of them are ever actually needed cos content is lol easy. its no big loss.

other stances though like ast sects and defiance deliverance change how jobs work and play a much bigger part in that job removing them would break joibs... paladins oaths also but to a lesser degree. the oath you're in doesn't really change the way you play your job you're basically just swapping damage reduction for more auto attack. nothing you do really changes from one stance to the other,

if you're going to keep the stances though they need to be a lot more involved than just set and forget. cos that really adds nothing to the jobs.

I post s my thoughts on this in the tank thread and I'll post it here to. Short version, I agree with getting rid of tank stances for pld and drk, make stance dancing the warrior thing and give the other two tanks something different to focus on.

Without grit drk would have access to blood weapon at all times and from there make it about maximizing dark arts use for optimal offensive and defensive power.

I don't know what the new mechanic could be for pld but what it has now isn't working.

Also that comment that it would make the tanks lose identity is absurd. Getting rid of oaths wouldn't do anything to pld's playstyle at all, the class would play exactly the same. If you got rid of grit and thereby freed up drk access to blood weapon it would be a quality of life increase.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

Also that comment that it would make the tanks lose identity is absurd. Getting rid of oaths wouldn't do anything to pld's playstyle at all, the class would play exactly the same. If you got rid of grit and thereby freed up drk access to blood weapon it would be a quality of life increase.

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It wouldn't get rid of any one tank's identity, but it would almost certainly change what it means to be "a" (i.e. "any") tank, which is itself a form of identity. That's probably what they're referring to.

I'm also against the idea that only Warrior should uniquely have a way of thus varying its strengths, while Paladin and Dark Knight are then forced into an uncomfortable medium that will only further niche MT and OT positions. Now, there could be other ways to give almost all that stances do, but I see it as essential that each tank should have nearly the same range of potential and simultaneous capabilities, even if in drastically different ways.

I'm personally saddened that Shield and Sword Oath gameplay aren't more differentiated, but alternatively, I kind of feel -- and this is quite a turn-around from my original thoughts -- like Dark Knight not always having access to Blood Weapon actually gives it more of a sense of being a Dark Knight, maybe not in terms of thematic arsenal, exactly, but in the mindset. Blood Weapon being inaccessible in Grit just gives that dire wish to escape protective play and blow your stuff all over that boss as quickly as possible. Now, you could say that concept, that mindset, that direction of gameplay, is better suited to a Warrior (and their respective Fell Cleave, which does a similar job), but it's something many a Dark Knight may well miss. It more or less epitomizes the best parts of risk-reward optimization of stance-dancing as it is right now. Having to blow one more cooldown pre-pull, and likely having your arsenal tuned back a bit to match, is not a quality of life change. It's a further obligatory action, rather than something to look forward to or pace oneself around. It's, essentially, bloating.

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Originally Posted by magnanimousCynic

Half of the stances (Diurnal/Nocturnal + Fists of

Also how is it convoluted? Convoluted means extremely complex and difficult to follow. These simple buttons are anything but complicated...

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Stances are not the issue, its the implementation. As you mentioned, Cleric Stance, most tank stances and AST ones are necessary and well done because they add depth and a skill ceiling to the class. Removal of those would only cheapen the experience.
The main issues are stances which have no alternative (i.e. there is extremely situational or zero reason for keeping on/off), the Kisses could easily be removed and merged in to a trait with the utility merged in to Jugulate, the MNK stances are also redundant complexity as their impact is too low to warrant dancing.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

Healers would be less annoying to play if their damage-dealing spells scaled off the Mind stat instead of Intelligence, allowing Cleric Stance to be removed with no dps loss.

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and that is what SE just don't want xD

havent Yoshi just said a while ago that healer and tanks should be more focused to their base task? why should i play smn/blm if Ast/Whm would out damage me easily with holy and gravity by throwing aoe heals and hots at the same time? for me personally SE should remove cleric at all... but thats just me ^^

Not going to address tank stance (I think they should stay to add depth) but going to mention cleric stance. The biggest issue with cleric stance is that it didn't scale with gear like pretty much every skill does. At 2.0 with ilvl 70 gear you could expect to do about 45% of max dps outside of cleric stance, and about 40% of max healing in cleric stance. At current levels its more like 13% of max dps out of cleric stance and 11% of max healing in cleric stance.

edit: If they made dps spells scale off mnd they could simply cut the potency of all dps spells in half, make the bonus for cleric stance 120% instead of 10%, and make the healing penalty 60% instead of 20%. No stat swaps and would effectively nerf healing output in cleric stance to the same levels as it was at i70. Not sure how it would work with cross class blizzard II though.

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Originally Posted by Deathgiver

Not going to address tank stance (I think they should stay to add depth) but going to mention cleric stance. The biggest issue with cleric stance is that it didn't scale with gear like pretty much every skill does. At 2.0 with ilvl 70 gear you could expect to do about 45% of max dps outside of cleric stance, and about 40% of max healing in cleric stance. At current levels its more like 13% of max dps out of cleric stance and 11% of max healing in cleric stance.

edit: If they made dps spells scale off mnd they could simply cut the potency of all dps spells in half, make the bonus for cleric stance 120% instead of 10%, and make the healing penalty 60% instead of 20%. No stat swaps and would effectively nerf healing output in cleric stance to the same levels as it was at i70. Not sure how it would work with cross class blizzard II though.

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That is technically because it scaled with gear. But then, keep in mind that only one of the two stats does; as you gear levels increased, so too then did the difference between your Mind stat (which increases) and your Intelligence stat (which does not), and therefore the difference in proportion. Now, given that there is no point at which Intelligence will ever be viable for healer, they easily could have instead removed the gear-to-effect difference over time by making it a simple toggle of 20% increased damage and 60% decreased healing while active, etc., while scaling healer-class offensive abilities off of Mind, but at a normally 16.67% reduced effectiveness.

In a way you could say the same for caster heals. At level 41, a Summoner was often a more efficient healer than a Scholar, because he could spend GCDs that would otherwise have been wasted on 80-potency ruin casts with equally stat-sourced 400 potency Physic casts, all while pumping out pet damage instead of one's own (i.e. the Scholar's) own heals becoming redundant in the light of his (dps-incapable) pet. But once Mind and Intelligence split, BLM and SMN Physics became laughably smaller and smaller. I'd be fine, too, with seeing those simply descale a bit with time, rather than hitting a hard point at which, say, a level 44's off-heals suddenly become weaker than a level 31's.

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Originally Posted by CookieMonsta

Stances are not the issue, its the implementation. As you mentioned, Cleric Stance, most tank stances and AST ones are necessary and well done because they add depth and a skill ceiling to the class. Removal of those would only cheapen the experience.

The main issues are stances which have no alternative (i.e. there is extremely situational or zero reason for keeping on/off), the Kisses could easily be removed and merged in to a trait with the utility merged in to Jugulate, the MNK stances are also redundant complexity as their impact is too low to warrant dancing.

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This, for the most part. On one end you could get rid of the two poison types and simply have Jugulate as a silence and, say, Spinal Tap as a stun, and put them on a shared CD (as per MCH). On the other, you could make something out of those poisons. The only issue is that you'll have some people who'd rather not have to stance-dance to play optimally, and once it's an actual concern, that will occur. Sadly, we've no customization choices by which to forgo mechanics we'd rather not handle, mitigating the lost output.

I'd argue though that MNK's stances are a different issue entirely. It's not that they're not worth enough. It's that they cost too much. Animation locks are already something of an issue for any Monk with more than minimal skill speed and a fair distance from Montreal or any Level 3 route there. The Fists of animations are on the long side, activate slowly, and can take up valuable gaps between the GCDs. They simply need to be fixed, as to activate more quickly, be more easily clipped, and to have a scaled cooldown—aimed exactly 1 or just under 2 GCDs, rather than some variable fraction of them (starting at 1.2, but likely as low as 1.57 with high skill speed).