If you disable cleric stance during combat, when would you use it?

[Nihility]

I am actually really curious about precisely how Assize will work, and if/how Cleric will affect it. Well, not too much longer till the expac...

I've been wondering about that one myself
Will the damage just equal the healing or will it be like a cleric stance flip-flop to choose what you want the main component of it to be

Either way has ups and downs too for how it can be used

[Nadirah]

I would hate to be sitting there just waiting for an ally to get hit, so I can heal them. I've played Tera and seen how the healers are in the dungeons. They look bored as hell. If I was stuck in one stance the whole fight I would probably just turn on follow place Eos on sic and go to sleep.

Could still DPS. Dont *need* CS for that.

[Risvertasashi]

I would hate to be sitting there just waiting for an ally to get hit, so I can heal them. I've played Tera and seen how the healers are in the dungeons. They look bored as hell. If I was stuck in one stance the whole fight I would probably just turn on follow place Eos on sic and go to sleep.

I may or may not have been guilty of this with SCH in low level dungeons. >.> <.<

[Cynfael]

Could still DPS. Dont *need* CS for that.

You kind of do. DPSing outside of CS is incredibly ineffective. As in "only a little better than solely auto-attacking with your book or cane" ineffective.

At lower levels where all caster gear comes with both INT and MND it isn't as noticeable of a difference, but the gap between bothering to turn on CS and not becomes enormous when you end up with MND-only equipment.

[amihavingfunyet]

Could still DPS. Dont *need* CS for that.

Cleric Stance: My DoTs + Shadowflare tick for about 600 damage per tick and my Energy Drains hit for about 600 damage non-crit. Ruin hits for about 300 damage.
Without Cleric Stance: My DoTs + Shadowflare tick for about 200 damage per tick and my Energy Drain hits for about 200 damage non-crit. Ruin hits for about 100 damage.
Shouldn't be too hard to see how hard this gimps my damage output? Hint: I lose 66% of my potential output.
If SE really was stupid enough to give in and remove Cleric Stance, what do you think would happen? Everyone would stop DPSing and heal only? People either stop playing healers, because they lost a part of it that was fun to them, or people would just DPS without Cleric Stance, which leaves you with the same problem (not recieving heals), but actually removes a good portion of DPS from your group.

[KisaiTenshi]

If SE really was stupid enough to give in and remove Cleric Stance, what do you think would happen? Everyone would stop DPSing and heal only? People either stop playing healers, because they lost a part of it that was fun to them, or people would just DPS without Cleric Stance, which leaves you with the same problem (not recieving heals), but actually removes a good portion of DPS from your group.

The problem is the mechanic itself means that when you are in CS, you are not being a (effective) healer.

Here's a bunch of scenarios and how they would likely play out:

1.) CS disappears altogether from the game.

- Players would still DPS, whine about how hard solo-content is (indeed I did the entire Conjurer/WHM healer storyline without it, because it made healing worse and had no perceived increase in DPS at the time, hence all leveling was done from dungeons) and likely groan about picking healer for dungeons. Every solo piece of content (eg Alexendrite) becomes impossible even with BiS gear, instead forcing players to do "harder" solo stuff on a DPS job instead.

2) CS disappears only from Dungeon instances (Already gone from PvP)

- No change from how things are now, except players would just complain that DPS is pointless on a healer, why have any DPS skills at all, and thus this argument changes from "why did you get rid of CS" to "Why did you Nerf healers?" See PvP. Some people who were actually skillful at DPS stance dances would complain, but generally it would not change things in any significant way.

3) CS disappears only from the Dungeon instances AND certain skills are disabled to enforce roles selected during DF:
- Healers unable to enter the dungeon with CS, and CS can not be toggled during the dungeon. DPS skills with no effects are disabled (which is just Stone II)
- Tanks are unable to use their DPS stance, and can not use self-healing or cross-classed healing.
- DPS casters can not use cross-classed healing skills, ACN/SMN can not target another player with Psysick, DPS non-casters can not use their self-healing skills.

This results in players having to play the dungeons like they were designed, but unable to salvage a situation where the healer is dead. So this makes things largely more frustrating for hard content, as weak players can't be carried by strong players anymore.

4) CS cast time, time it can be used and cooldown are changed to make "full time" CS impossible. Otherwise unchanged.

- Let's say CS had a timer like Adloquium has, otherwise unchanged. This disincentive "spamming" DPS, while otherwise still allowing strategic use.
- If it had a longer CD before recast (eg 30 seconds,) then players would also consider more strategic use of DPS instead of full-time DPS.
- If it had instead a long cast time (like raise) that would also require more strategic use of DPS, or one could burn their swiftcast it if it's really needed.
- Players would complain that this makes spammable DPS actions useless to consider. Which is the point. The timer alone, or the timer combined with the longer CD would still be fair without making the healer a "preferred DPS" in content. A longer cast time would likely just make people not use it at all.


5) CS works more like Aetherflow, where CS must be used before Damage-only skills.

- If it could only be used "for the next 5 DPS actions" while a CD ticks down, that would also get rid of the "full time DPS WHM" while not destroying healing capacity. DPS damage-only skills would require that CS be used (So Aero, Aero II, and Stone II), using DPS skills with debuff effects (Stone I, Blizzard II, Holy, Fluid Aura) without CS would double the effect of the debuff (heavy, stun, bind,) while using CS before would also increase the DPS to the levels they are now.
- I think this is an interesting compromise, but it changes the skill mechanic too much, and likely players would think that WHM became "Scholarized"

6) CS goes back to V1.2 Mechanics where it only buffs DPS a flat 20% and debuffs healing 20%

- V1.2 also had Sacred Prism which turned some skills into a "Attack all targets" instead of single targets. A more strategic skill that turns the next DPS skill into an AOE or buffs the next cure? It's unrelated to the PvP action of the same name in the current version.
- You have to also consider how slow the pace of play was in 1.2. A "full time" turned on CS had no "stance dancing", and you couldn't just avoid AOE's by walking out of them. So in 1.2 CS was more strategic than it is now, as damage was a lot harder to avoid.

7) Turning CS on before selecting DF puts you into the DPS queue, and CS state is locked on. Turning CS off before entering DF puts you into the healer queue and does not allow you to turn CS on or off during combat.

- I think this is probably the most "fair" solution while minimizing the amount of existing complaints. Allows players to use healers as a DPS in a DPS role, allows players who want to heal-only or decide when to use CS on a battle-by-battle basis instead of the healer slot being consumed by players who only want a faster queue.
- This however requires re-evaluating game balance since Healer characters DPS output were never taken into consideration in designing the dungeons. Likewise it presents the potential problem of the healers being the "best" characters to use for all content. So even if a healer could queue as a DPS, the healer should not be able to out-DPS the dedicated DPS on otherwise identical BiS iLevel gear grades.
- This may cause players to want to kick healer characters that aren't in the role they want for the content selected.

8) Changing the CS mechanic so that it can not be toggled while in combat (like StoneSkin II)

- This would allow some instances to use only one healer, but would also result in a lot more players being kicked for using or not using CS.
- This would be consistent with some upcoming mechanics being talked about for the Astrologian but probably make certain healer roles less popular with those that want to DPS and those that do not want to DPS.

9) Leaving the CS mechanic as it is now, but locking out DPS skills/Healer skills

- This would make CS less error-prone, and players less likely to cast Swift-Holy without it.
- This would otherwise not solve the problem of "full-time DPS-healer"'s who queue as a healer for faster queues.

10) Leaving the CS mechanic as it is now, but removing it from the cross-classable skill list.

- This would make SCH unable to use it, and make the SCH a less viable DPS. It would likely also prevent the AST from being used as a DPS.
- This does nothing to solve the problem of players taking up healer slots in content and then only DPS'ing.


Some combination of the above may also work, allowing healers to just queue as DPS or Healers and giving a permanent CS buff/debuff while the CS skill itself is not available for DPS.

[Nihility]

yadda yadda yadda

force removing an important mechanic of healer classes is not going to magically make bad healers good no matter how much you want to try and complain and justify it and it's not even a problem that needs fixing. Bad player misusing a skill is not the skills fault
With ninja threat manipulations skills coming soon, malicious player misusing skill will probably be even more common of a problem. Will you be back asking for skills entirely based on party play be disabled in parties then?

[KisaiTenshi]

force removing an important mechanic of healer classes is not going to magically make bad healers good no matter how much you want to try and complain and justify it and it's not even a problem that needs fixing.

In the context of the game, it would require making the game so extremely inflexible that you can do nothing but follow the choreography, rather than actually decide what is is a best use of MP and Cooldowns.

If we wanted to get rid of "players with bad intent" rather than encourage good behaviors, locking out CS in dungeons would be the lowest-effort solution. Rather the game needs to give players what they want, which is allowing healers to queue as DPS so their DPS actually matters, leaving the healer slot to the players that actually queued to do healing. Maybe we can call these players "red healers" and change the icon from green to red.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

If we wanted to get rid of "players with bad intent" rather than encourage good behaviors, locking out CS in dungeons would be the lowest-effort solution.

How would that be a "solution". For any content where DPS checks are a thing, the blame gets shifted to someone else and turns the situation into a blame game. In other words: Nothing new, just a different scapegoat. However, it is a fact that each encounter has a certain required healing output during specific moments of the encounter. If this healing output is met, the party stays in good shape. If it's not met, then the party will slowly bleed out. But no encounter requires both healers to be healing full time, just like how tanks aren't both tanking full time. Or are you going to argue that tanks should always be tanking like how healers should always be healing?

Dealing damage as a healer is not mandatory. No one ever stated that. It is a big plus and definitely something to aim for when a player's trying to improve their own capabilities and competence. Inability to do so is simply lack of practice. Unwilling to do so, on the other hand, could be classified as laziness or responsibility dodging. You know what it's called if a healer contributes with damage? It's making the encounter more forgiving. Maybe not for the healers themselves, but definitely for those who are "supposed" to do damage. You probably won't get recognition for doing so or any commendations for it. But glory hogs among healers is a different story.

Rather the game needs to give players what they want, which is allowing healers to queue as DPS so their DPS actually matters, leaving the healer slot to the players that actually queued to do healing. Maybe we can call these players "red healers" and change the icon from green to red.

This isn't much different from "rather giving players what they want"

Edit:
Before you requote on me, KisaiTenshi, go read this first:

I just can't get over the fact that there are players so vexed that others try to play well and maximize their job that they want to drag everyone down to their level. And they don't see the irony in this, in getting incredibly mad that people are enjoying a meta towards DPS and their solution is to force others to play the way they like playing instead.

Imagine you're driving on the road and there's a stubborn, bitter cyclist on the road ahead. Instead of giving way they just block traffic and make everyone go their pace. That's what this boils down to, small insecure people who want to make job boring and tedious to a lot of players because even though they get mad when others tell them how to do their job, they want to do the same back.

[VanilleFang]

Rather the game needs to give players what they want, which is allowing healers to queue as DPS so their DPS actually matters, leaving the healer slot to the players that actually queued to do healing. Maybe we can call these players "red healers" and change the icon from green to red.

I don't recall ever running into a healer who only wanted to DPS; I have never met a healer who queued up as a healer just to DPS because the queue was faster, and people entering CS doesn't mean they focus on dealing damage rather than healing. Like I asked in the other thread, why does it seem like it's all or nothing with you? You seem to have an issue grasping that a good healer in FFXIV can keep the party alive and can also deal damage during healing down time.