Cleric Stance

[RiceisNice]

The question shouldn't really be "who would seriously do that?", though. It should be "why would we seriously feel forced to do that?" =/

Like has been mentioned, we don't even have enough accuracy for Coil. As in the first Coil tiers. And that's at level 60. There's a reason I as scholar stuck with my level 50 i130 gear for as long as possible. Comparing my Accuracy at level 57, I'd gone down somewhere around 100 in accuracy from level 50 ;_; (Mostly due to my Acc/Crit-melded relic, but...)
)

Flip it around to a dps perspective, I can't use my i220 because it has no accuracy on it, instead I have either have to swap my gear pieces around or do the same thing as the healer, and meld my pieces that don't have accuracy. The difference is that from the perspective of a DD, their purpose is contingent on being able to hit their targets (such as much as the tanks need to be able to hit their targets in face of a frontal-accuracy requirement, which is much higher than rear/flank). It's not a burden exclusive to healers is my point, and double on the fact that it's technically not required, only there to optimize your performance

Whether or not the content was designed with it in mind (specifically goridas savage), the developer's stance has always been that healer dps is not considered for the checks, and none of their abilities (save for holy and it's stun, but that's not even applicable in raids since most are immune to it) that relate to their role of keeping the party alive is required to hit the enemy.

Same with adding Accuracy to Cleric Stance. Yes, it's more comparable to Sword Oath and other "off-tank" stances in that it's used when you're not fulfilling your main duties (healing/tanking, respectively), but on the other hand it's comparable to tank stances in the sense that they're used when you're in a position of needing more Accuracy than you otherwise would. (I.e. an off tank isn't supposed to be in front of the boss, and thus only needs the same amount of accuracy as melee dps do. A CS healer isn't supposed to heal people, and thus doesn't benefit from the 100% healing accuracy.) Same as adding accuracy to tank stances didn't 'break' the game, because it allowed tanks to stop chasing accuracy all the time, adding an accuracy bonus to CS wouldn't break the game either.

The primary duty of a tank is still to be there to tank, and dpsing being the secondary. Much like the healer's primary duty is keeping the party alive, and dpsing is secondary. Their primary function in a party does not change because of the stance.

[Noxifer]

Flip it around to a dps perspective, I can't use my i220 because it has no accuracy on it, instead I have either have to swap my gear pieces around or do the same thing as the healer, and meld my pieces that don't have accuracy.

That is true, and I'm not arguing that part at all. But even with the tiny amount of Accuracy provided on all the healer gear at level 50, it didn't reach the Accuracy needed for casters in coil. Hence Accuracy-melded relics. Now, the Accuracy caps are even higher than they were back then, and healers are stuck at less accuracy than they had at 50. Yes, melds are possible. Melds have always been possible by using crafted gear instead of raid/tomestone. It's the same for the dps in your perspective -- you could use the i220 and just meld accuracy to it. Unless it's a belt or an accessory, that'd give you a whooping +24 accuracy on the piece if you used two grade V materia. That's awesome, no? =D
Putting the salty sarcasm aside... No, healers don't need to do DPS. But at the same time, they're expected to. If they don't DPS, they tend to be called subpar, or scrub, or bad. Likewise, if a DPS doesn't fully meet the Accuracy cap, they'll miss now and then. They'll do less DPS, but they'll still do DPS. It's not like they're going to have a 0% hit rate. ...Alright, I failed to put the sarcasm aside completely. I admit that. But while yes, DPS classes might have to juggle their gear upgrades around in order to meet accuracy caps (and others might have accuracy bloat *cough2.xBLMcough*), and this is the primary focus for their role, imagine how it'd feel if things like Mage's Ballad or Goad or similar support skills (which is a secondary focus for those jobs that have support skills) had a chance of missing, and Accuracy had no effect on this. Would people be happy about that?

The primary duty of a tank is still to be there to tank, and dpsing being the secondary. Much like the healer's primary duty is keeping the party alive, and dpsing is secondary. Their primary function in a party does not change because of the stance.

Which... is pretty much what I said. Tanks need higher Accuracy when standing in front of the enemy. Which they do while MTing. This is why tank stances were given an Accuracy bonus, to account for the need to meet a higher Accuracy cap. Another way they could have done this is to put higher Accuracy scores on tank gear, and put an Accuracy penalty on the off-tank stance (or in DRK's case, a penalty for being without tank stance).
Tanks' primary task = need more Accuracy.
Tanks' secondary task = need less Accuracy.

Healers' primary task = need less Accuracy (other than Holy's stun effect and Repose, all CC spells have 100% hit rate, afaik. And I'm not certain about Repose).
Healers' secondary task = need more Accuracy.

In that aspect, Cleric Stance (used for Healers' secondary task, thus needing more Accuracy) is comparable to Tank stance (used for Tanks' main task, thus needing more Accuracy). It's not comparable in the sense of fulfilling the role's main task.

I never said the primary task changed just depending on the stance. But the purpose of the stance dancing (for both healers and tanks) is to make them more effective for the task (be it primary or secondary) they're performing at the time. (That Off-tank Stance tanks are more effective at MTing than Cleric Stance healers are at healing is a minor issue and not worth arguing over.)

[RiceisNice]

Putting the salty sarcasm aside... No, healers don't need to do DPS. But at the same time, they're expected to. If they don't DPS, they tend to be called subpar, or scrub, or bad. Likewise, if a DPS doesn't fully meet the Accuracy cap, they'll miss now and then. They'll do less DPS, but they'll still do DPS.

This is more of a community thing rather than the game is designed (to some extent). There just isn't a lot of constant incoming damage toward tanks in general, outside of tank checks/busters, so you have those times where a healer can stand idily and do nothing. It also doesn't help that Yoshida insists that dps checks, including savage, are designed without healer dps in mind and isn't required (which is another can of worms that should be saved for another discussion).


A dps should strive to meet the accuracy caps no matter what, them missing an attack is a lot more detrimental than it is to a healer since it means interrupted combos and no buff refreshes. If a DPS isn't performing their role effectively, it's pretty bad (although at the same time, there isn't a lot to hold dps accountable for this, which is a second can of worms)

I never said the primary task changed just depending on the stance. But the purpose of the stance dancing (for both healers and tanks) is to make them more effective for the task (be it primary or secondary) they're performing at the time. (That Off-tank Stance tanks are more effective at MTing than Cleric Stance healers are at healing is a minor issue and not worth arguing over.)

This is precisely my point; its because that they aren't primary tasks that I wouldnt draw a direct comparison to tank stances having accuracy vs cleric stance having accuracy, epseiscally when their secondary role is already being fufilled by four DDs (while the tank and healing roles have no alternative other than the two that are present). If its understandable, I feel that healer (and tank) dps should not be highly valued, because that ends up taking away the value (and responsbility) of the DDs, and it gets bad to the point that when it comes to progression, the responsibility for wiping to a enrage was, more often than not, not on the dps, but the healers/tanks (which can is also more of a community thing, but I digress)

[Felis]

The healers weren't carrying, they were just doing dps because that's what the content required.

Only because everyone was undergeared at the beginning (no full ilevel 200)

[Noxifer]

This is more of a community thing rather than the game is designed (to some extent).

Very true. Though afaik, the addition of Accuracy on level 50 healer gear was based on community expectations that healers should push some DPS during raids. With this not exactly having changed, I don't see why it should be an argument against Accuracy being reinstated to end-game gear ^^; Or, as this thread suggests, added in the form of a bonus to CS (though with no Acc on gear, it'd be pretty much a static number and do little to compensate as Acc caps go higher and higehr).

There just isn't a lot of constant incoming damage toward tanks in general, outside of tank checks/busters, so you have those times where a healer can stand idily and do nothing. It also doesn't help that Yoshida insists that dps checks, including savage, are designed without healer dps in mind and isn't required (which is another can of worms that should be saved for another discussion).

This is precisely my point; its because that they aren't primary tasks that I wouldnt draw a direct comparison to tank stances having accuracy vs cleric stance having accuracy

Yes, Accuracy is more important to tanks than it is to DPSing healers (since tanks missing too much = murder on the dancefloor). I'm not arguing that, especially having been there myself as a tank. But lacking accuracy meeting even a halved Acc cap makes it sometimes feel about as worth switching to CS to throw off some damage as it does participating in the jumbo cactpot in the hopes of winning the #1 prize ^^;

Like I've said, even with the bonuses to 50-gear, healers didn't reach the Acc caps (unless prioritizing Acc weapons, which don't exist today, or Acc-melding their relic -- and I'm not sure we did even then o.o). So adding small bonus Accuracy to 60-gear wouldn't do that either. It'd just remove that whole sense of gambling with your party's lives in order to MAYBE get a few offensive spells in. I mean, some people may enjoy that feeling, but... I don't ^^;

[Waliel]

A 5% increase wouldn't be noticeable, so it'd be a waste to program. In order to be noticeable, it'd need to at least be 20% or so.

5% as in going from 90% to 95% and not 5% extra rating. I have this memory of Squenix saying 5% when they said they would be implementing an accuracy increase on tank stances, but I'm not sure if I'm remembering right.

[Lethallin]

5% as in going from 90% to 95% and not 5% extra rating. I have this memory of Squenix saying 5% when they said they would be implementing an accuracy increase on tank stances, but I'm not sure if I'm remembering right.

Yeah, it's 5% in tank stance.

Which is still kind of silly, because if you avoid parry (like practically all tanks do), you're going to get accuracy coming out of your butt, and have no use for the +5%.

But I digress.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

SE is also sending very mixed signals on what they consider a healer's role to be. If healers aren't supposed to dps, then why do so many of their post lvl 50 skills revolve around dealing damage?

Because clearly I enjoy attacking LV60 mobs in my dailies and solo quests with only Stone 2!

[Ghishlain]

The question shouldn't really be "who would seriously do that?", though. It should be "why would we seriously feel forced to do that?" =/

Like has been mentioned, we don't even have enough accuracy for Coil. As in the first Coil tiers. And that's at level 60. There's a reason I as scholar stuck with my level 50 i130 gear for as long as possible. Comparing my Accuracy at level 57, I'd gone down somewhere around 100 in accuracy from level 50 ;_; (Mostly due to my Acc/Crit-melded relic, but...)

In my eyes, it's similar to tanks 'gimping' their ilvl by wearing lower-ilvl pentamelded accessories because they're more effective than the latest tomestone/raid accessories. SE saw fit to 'fix' this by removing the possibility to meld STR/VIT on anything but the first meld slot, and by changing the damage main stat (but pentamelds are still more valid -- you just can't make those anymore).
Except... in the case of healer Accuracy, they 'fixed' it by removing all accuracy from their gear, while the accuracy requirements have kept on rising from what they were at level 50. So, the way I see it, they could have kept the same accuracy/ilvl as they did for lvl50 gear (so lvl 51 i120 would have had the same accuracy as lvl 50 i120, etc). If it had gone up at the same rate as it did, and comparing it to how other stats have gone up, I'd expect the numbers to be around ~15 accuracy per piece (not done the math, though). Would that really be so... game-breaking? When DPS/tank gear have ~30-50 accuracy on their pieces or more? (I really should look up exact numbers and compare them. It'd be interesting to see, actually.)

Same with adding Accuracy to Cleric Stance. Yes, it's more comparable to Sword Oath and other "off-tank" stances in that it's used when you're not fulfilling your main duties (healing/tanking, respectively), but on the other hand it's comparable to tank stances in the sense that they're used when you're in a position of needing more Accuracy than you otherwise would. (I.e. an off tank isn't supposed to be in front of the boss, and thus only needs the same amount of accuracy as melee dps do. A CS healer isn't supposed to heal people, and thus doesn't benefit from the 100% healing accuracy.) Same as adding accuracy to tank stances didn't 'break' the game, because it allowed tanks to stop chasing accuracy all the time, adding an accuracy bonus to CS wouldn't break the game either.

(All in my opinion. YMMV.)

Allow me to offer a different perspective to the accuracy on gear paradigm.

In 2.2 Healers began to see Accuracy added to their gear. The common consensus was this "bonus" accuracy was to assist healer's in DPSing on the smaller dungeons. I know I'm just re-iterating your thoughts ATM because you mention that yourself in your post. However, I feel this is relevant for the next point.

In 3.2, Tome / Raid Gear are introduced with slots of Materia. If you consider this from a healer's perspective, you could say that instead of S-E forcing Accuracy onto every piece of gear 3.2 and onward like they did the in the 2.X series, they have now given the players the choice to choose the "bonus" stat. The +4-6 Accuracy each gear gave you in the 2.2+ era was basically equal to a T2 or T3 accuracy Materia.

Now S-E has given the players the choice of which stat they would like as a "bonus". From a long term perspective, this is sensible because healer's who dislike DPSing still have a choices that are applicable to them and more DPS-inclined healers can choose to slot more accuracy as they see fit. Basically a win across the board if you think of it from that perspective.

Basically, what I'm saying is we never lost the "accuracy bonus" given to our equipment in 2.2+. Instead, in 3.2+ we were given the open to pick a "bonus stat" and Accuracy just happens to be one of those choices.

With that being said, I agree with your assessment that the +15 should be approximately what you should be aiming for per piece. And yes, S-E did increase the accuracy curve faster in this patch cycle than the previous. In the end, I'm going to meld accuracy and not really expect any assistance from S-E in the accuracy matter until they state it directly though an accuracy bonus to Cleric Stance would be an unexpected buff that I would not complain about.

It's funny though, I only made that post you commented on because it's clear that accuracy is a serious meld choice for healers.

[Andrea]

Because clearly I enjoy attacking LV60 mobs in my dailies and solo quests with only Stone 2!

Better question then. Why do Healers have so many damage spells when people seem to think they aren't meant to do damage and "Healers only heal."?

If the answer is to do open world stuff then why do we need so many? Why not just give us one spell before Heavensward and another after to do open world stuff and actually give us spells that help us do "our actual job" as people like to put it.

I highly doubt we got given so many skills and they expected us not to use them in 99% of the game.