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

[Alahra]

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.

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).