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

[RiceisNice]

It's largely because vit is essentially a wasted stat. In the case of healers, mind is desirable even for damage because cleric stance inverts your mind value into intellect; the more mind you have, the more intellect (and thus spell damage) you'd "gain" from cleric stance. Tanks with vit and str have no compromise in this regard.

[Pence]

What, honestly, is the difference here?

Both now have a stance to swap between DPS and Tank/Heals without the need for different stats. It's leveled the playing field.

You didn't think this through, did you?

[Shurrikhan]

Guys, I totally get that Cleric Stance adds potency to attack and reduces potency of heals, and that it's the mark of a good healer to use it properly. My point is more, does anyone feel like the *spirit* of what they did with folding all of Tank damage into VIT, compared with the existence of this mechanic for Healers, is something of a double standard? I sorta do.

I don't. Honestly, it's moving away from that double standard. Mind meant better dps and healing for healers, due to Cleric Stance. Intelligence was just sheer pointless waste. Now Strength is too. (That is, unless Vit somehow caps before you can use all of your normal materia slots, in which case it's just your best secondary stat, basically.

That's not to say I like the change. I just wanted the gap closed and then Vit to actually have noticeable and unique tanking benefits. It had only increased max eHP while Strength had increased enmity and survivability, arguably more tank-like than Vitality. Doubling Vitality's indirect benefits or whatnot to give it a uniquely tanky edge while just somewhat bridging the gap between it and Strength would have made that one tiny avenue of customization we had more enjoyable, rather than just doing away with it completely.

[Saccharin]

No, Cleric Stance is there to allow Healers to meet the DpS requirements of Solo content without being forced to party like they are in other MMOs. Healers stance dancing in duties is the result of unintended emergent gameplay.

That's not quite accurate.

Some MMOs just have one caster stat and both heals and damage spells are based on that.

Some MMOs have separate stats for healer spells like FF14 but their damage and healing spells scale off the same stat.

These mean that they dont need a special stance to do some damage while questing.

FF14 has two stats and all casting damage scales from one stat and all healing spells scale from that. This is in theory ideal since it means that healers can't be effective damage dealers. (Well..) It however poses one problem: how do healers do adequate damage while levelling outside, or downtime in instances. The solution: cleric stance. No matter what your class you have all four stats and these are usually known as base stats; these increase slightly while you level. During levelling when you have poor gear your base stats usually are more than enough. It's not until higher gear levels that you gear for your main stat and that means your main stat it's significantly higher than the others.

Take paladins for example: they use conjuror as their job support class. Now if you take cure you can do reasonable heals at lower levels and that's because it uses your base stats. When you gear up the mind component stays the same so with gear you'll have much more health so each heal will cover less of your overall health leaving it useless.

A similar thing happens for healers. As you level up and gear for mind you're damage spells will do proportionately less damage to mobs that are the same level but your heals will obviously increase. Cleric Stance introduces a give and take approach; it gives you the intellect, for damage, but it reduces your mind so you dont heal as much. This is accomplished by swapping the stats around - we can't have healers doing lot's of damage and heals! The 10% extra damage is probably to discourage healers to carry a dps gear set around.

[Duuude007]

The change was one step of apparently a number of changes meant to rebalance tanks.

...because its been badly skewed for a long while.

[Synrin]

Both now have a stance to swap between DPS and Tank/Heals without the need for different stats. It's leveled the playing field.

You didn't think this through, did you?

This is pretty much the answer to this thread. Ever played as healer?
If they removed the cleric stance I would be very disappointed (as a healer who uses it in various occasions). It gives healers freedom and a lot more possibilities in both dungeons and when playing solo/questing. I don't see anything wrong or unbalanced with the stance. Might be I'm ignorant.

[Lemuria]

If they removed the cleric stance I would be very disappointed (as a healer who uses it in various occasions).

You mean kind of like they did for PvP, which caused a mass-exodus of healers from any and all Frontlines matches? Talk about the proof being in the pudding there!

Anyway, yeah. Now both healers and tanks have their 'DPS stance'. The main difference is that tanks previously had to gear differently to do this, while healers did not. Now tanks can stick with tanking gear and get all of the benefits of good damage along with their crazy defense and HP. I'm very interested to see what it does to my Paladin, since I have always geared for Vitality, and I'll be more than a little disappointed if it amounts to a tiny damage boost.

[Evangela]

I'm doubt they're gonna make tanks do as much damage as they used to be able to do with Str gears. This change is most likely to force tanks to wear tank gears and not Str gears. They'll need to switch to offensive stance to do real damage anyway.

[Mycow8me]

Ima join the ops side, healer stance changing can be dangerous. Tank stance changing not nearly as much. If earth wind and water are the true spirit of white magic in this game they would be mind based anyway. I never understood how you could take a spell like holy and make it int based. When and if whitemage gets banish it would be int based to?
The only thing cleric stance does at the moment is hold back some healers from dpsing simply because swaping can be dangerous in a fast pace raid enviornment or for very skilled white mages i guess allow them extra dps while chancing a wipe.
Just my 2 cents.

[Felis]

Why healer still have cleric stance?
Because no healer equiped int accessories instead of mind accessories for more damage