Possible alteration to Cleric Stance

[JackFross]

I'd rather see the requirement reduced, especially the base from zero bonus accuracy to back-cap, so that it stands at least as much an optional stat for hitting from the flank and front, at least for melee dps, as it does a stat dump.

Hitting flank and front is not optional as a Melee dps. In all of the newest raid tier, you cannot guarantee that you will never use an attack from the front of the boss you're fighting. Bosses spin to face you if they target you with their random target skills in every single fight. Sure, you'll run away sometimes, but other times you won't, as a melee. So, like, yeah?

All they'd need to do is give Cleric the ShO/Def/Grit treatment and slap on a 5% accuracy buff to the stance. 95% accuracy rate is easy to hit, and that's all you'd need to hit every time.

I don't think Accuracy is a worthless stat as everyone here is saying. I don't think it should be gotten rid of. Yeah, we need better, more interesting secondaries, so that gearing up becomes a choice - not an easily-discovered BiS set. I'd love for there to be more stats with boosts you can't measure as strictly weighted. I've never played an MMO besides this one, though, so I have no idea what people mean when they say "MORE STATS PLS" since I have no framework for thinking of a stat that does something other than strict damage gain, crit rate increase, and speed boosts.

As it stands, Accuracy is the only thing that makes gearing up interesting, challenging, and fun. If you remove that stat from the game, everything just becomes boring. You just slap on the highest dps piece and you're good, because, at the end of the day, this game is all about how much damage you can do to the target. Unless these secondaries are some fourth, fifth, or sixth way of boosting damage dealt in a meaningful way, they'll be widely ignored for the crit/det options.

tl;dr: Constantly reminded why not everyone is a game developer.

[AeraLure]

If you're gonna give Healer's such a large boost in accuracy in Cleric Stance you might as well just remove Accuracy as a stat for the entire game if you're going to do this. I disagree with this proposal for that very reason.

Absolutely. That's what I was getting at too. I want more customization options in gearing choices and play styles when developing a character, not less. It's already way too simple now as it is in terms of stat complexity or anything to plan during character development. It's pretty easy to meld a few ACC and be able to dps in all but savage raid content.

[zuzu-bq]

There is no reason to add accuracy or chance to hit on Cleric as the game is right now. The current gear give us healers the opportunity to meld Heaven's Eye. Without advanced materia slots we can already reach accuracy cap for all Gordias Savage, all dungeons and scratch on the cap of Midas Savage (you can get in cap for A5S). So there is actually no need for this. If you want to miss less just meld accuracy, but do note that you need a high amount of accuracy melded to stop missing, but you don't need that much to just make your spell miss less.

I think SE had this in mind when they made this gear tier. Back on ARR, starting on i100 gear (Second Coil and Soldiery gear) the equipements had just a few accuracy in it to help healer to not miss that much. So if you just put one or two Heaven's Eye V you may see a great change in your miss rate. But you'll still depend on randomness.

[Shurrikhan]

Hitting flank and front is not optional as a Melee dps. In all of the newest raid tier, you cannot guarantee that you will never use an attack from the front of the boss you're fighting. Bosses spin to face you if they target you with their random target skills in every single fight. Sure, you'll run away sometimes, but other times you won't, as a melee. So, like, yeah?

tl;dr: Constantly reminded why not everyone is a game developer.

It is when you have a Bard... Even when healers aren't dpsing, it'll be worth the 50 potency for me to put up RoD before the next random target ability if and only if my melee dps are merely flank-capped. In my suggestion, that'd be an extra 4% secondary stats, not spent in accuracy, for the OT, healers, and melee dps, just for my 50 potency. I'd call that an option. As is standing closer to hitbox center and holding the GCD for a quarter second's movement, especially when not in a tight window (excess SS) and in a fight in which I'm going to run out of TP without Paeon/ProRook/Goad anyways.

If accuracy itself is the only thing that makes gearing up interesting, challenging, or fun, I think we have larger problems than just the required expenditure on a given stat around which to select our next gear purchase. The stats themselves suffer from imbalance and oversight, and their direct effects exist only among a few classes.

Skill and spell speed are probably the two with the most obvious potential as both could have very, very meaningful effects on rotation if 1) we had a bit more secondary stats outside of accuracy to work with and 2) if the oversights affecting each (especially Skill Speed) were fixed. Skill Speed itself would need approximately three things: a faint effect on AA and oGCD damage, to reduce TP ticks by 20% and tick per player GCD (bonus TP regen similarly applied on player tick at 20% reduction), and for animation speeds to scale with Speed. Ideally, its weight, rather than GCD reduction, should be linear, as well, rather than being undervalued at low amounts and being strong at very high amounts. Now certain classes are no longer locked out of using it based on lower weaponskill damage percentiles (compared to AA & oGCD), it no longer prevents double-weaves, and it no longer TP starves an SS-heavy player far more quickly than others (though it will still punish above-average TP cost moves), potentially forcing Paeon use for the party's lowest denominator. That much mere 'fixes', though admittedly large ones, would solve.

The other issues lie in the class designs themselves. Only two classes in the game actually give noticeable effects to anything but rate of attack, and the latter is debatable. Archer's have River of Blood, Arcanists have their on-pet-crit proc. Everyone else simply finds that they parse a bit higher overall the more they crit, with zero effect on their actual gameplay. And then there's Det....

[Ghishlain]

My only real question there is what comparison do they have for whether Healer dps is "in check". Is it combined HPS-DPS output compared, in which case they've almost always exceeded DPS, or even HPS/Mitigation-DPS output, in which they'll now likely outdo tanks in casual fights? By either of those comparisons, it's not exactly "in check" right now, not that I especially mind this. After all, DPS is unlimited, where as healing and mitigation quickly max out as soon as fights lose their challenge, making it unlikely that a DPS would lose their spot to a bonus healers in virtually any content, even if healers were given bonus accuracy enough via Cleric Stance to need only half as much melding as they would now for 'rain-proofing'.

To be clear, I'm not a fan of removing accuracy entirely, I'd just like to see the amounts needed reduced, and to see less of a gap between "raid" content and all other content types. It makes no sense that the larger the enemy gets, the harder he is to hit.

I'd rather see the requirement reduced, especially the base from zero bonus accuracy to back-cap, so that it stands at least as much an optional stat for hitting from the flank and front, at least for melee dps, as it does a stat dump. Have its relative cost increase a bit, as it does now, but such that it's still no more than maybe 8-12% of our overall secondary stat expenditure, down from some 18-22%, and likely decreasing that proportion a bit with further ilvls.

An additional option would be to increase magic accuracy requirements to be equal to flank-cap for melee, at which point their average expenses are equal, but that's just to keep caster stats from gradually scaling ahead of physicals' now that a larger portion of accuracy only affects flank>frontal capping, in other words now that the optional range is a larger portion, rather than relatively small compared to the base (zero to back). In the first case, Cleric Stance and Rain of Death could each cover one step out is the progression of Zero Accuracy > Halfway > Back/Caster Cap > Flank Cap > Frontal Cap, guaranteeing healer hits with Rain of Death without allowing others to bypass accuracy requirements outright, while in the second, Zero > Half > Back > Flank/Caster > Frontal, Cleric Stance would get you 25% of the way, and could either give another 25%, nearly guaranteeing healer hits, or 50%, guaranteeing hits for healers and nearly for no-acc casters. While it's true that this would give a lot of free stat to healers, at present, no one else has to consume nearly every materia slot they have just to reach cap. Moreover, with such changes the overall value of accuracy will have been reduced. At that point it's really not much different from when accuracy was included for free on i100-130 gear.

inb4 "Why keep accuracy as a stat sink at all?"
Mostly so that Rain of Death and other evasion reducers still have a place, and to keep that optionality from being either too expensive or too trivial a cost, especially if caster cap remains equal to back cap. I mean, ideally it'd be a much more analog stat, where excess still contributes in some way, but as it functions now in gameplay I feel that roughly equal halves are perfect, especially with an adjusted caster cap.

"In check" might not have been the best way to describe. However Accuracy is a good way to arbitrarily limit Healer DPS to a curve that satisfies the dev team. If a Healer has 85% accuracy on content and can do 200 DPS on a dummy, then that 85% accuracy will restrict them closer to 170 DPS (ASTs and SCHs will most likely be slightly higher due to non-missing DoTs). When it comes to pushing DPS, healer's are the easiest way to add that in a raid. It's much easier for a Healer who's not DPSing in the first place to add say, 100 to 150 DPS versus a DPS who's already pushing 1,200 DPS to add that 100-150 DPS when they're already pushing 98% of their capacity due to the nature of the fight.

That's also why I feel the Accuracy stat is here to stay - because of Healer DPS. It's an arbitrary limit that the Dev team can put without actually removing Cleric Stance from the game. Healer DPS has so much potential in this game due to the nature of Cleric Stance (you get enough INT to rival a BLM/SMN of equal ilvl), they want to try to control it so it's harder for healers to contribute damage. Of course if they make the accuracy requirement to stringent it'll just dissuade any healer from DPSing because it starts to become a waste of MP. We're not at that point yet but if we continue the current trend we'll probably hit that point in 3.4.

Having Cleric Stance have a accuracy bonus based on ilvl is a good way to work around that. Healer's will still need Accuracy but perhaps not to the magnitude we will most likely expect at 3.4. ATM it's not bad, but it has the potential to become absolutely terrible in the future and should be addressed at least in some capacity. Even if that address is "Please meld Accuracy onto your pieces" from the Dev team, I'd be happy because at least then I know what direction the Dev team is going with this trend.

[JackFross]

It is when you have a Bard... Even when healers aren't dpsing, it'll be worth the 50 potency for me to put up RoD before the next random target ability if and only if my melee dps are merely flank-capped. In my suggestion, that'd be an extra 4% secondary stats, not spent in accuracy, for the OT, healers, and melee dps, just for my 50 potency. I'd call that an option.

It's literally 10-20 points. That's not 4%. I'm currently sitting at ~1600 stat points added to my character at i222.

586 Det - +368 points
1003 Crit - +649 points
655 Sks - +301 points
660 Acc - +306 points

Moving 10 points from accuracy to crit so I could drop to the flank cap is a 0.6% gain. That's called negligible and makes it pretty clearly obvious that melee should just be stacking the acc for whichever side they're required to be hitting, rather than rely on a Bard to use their evasion reduction skill every time I'm gonna have to poke the face. In A6S, on Blaster (the very first boss), I need to be hitting it in the face consistently for a rather substantial time in order to properly handle mechanics and not wipe the raid. Every single time the Bard has to sacrifice damage so that I can not miss for those periods is a dps loss for the Bard that would otherwise not happen if the melee would just carry the appropriate accuracy.

Not optional.

As is standing closer to hitbox center and holding the GCD for a quarter second's movement, especially when not in a tight window (excess SS) and in a fight in which I'm going to run out of TP without Paeon/ProRook/Goad anyways.

Holding the GCD is a bigger dps loss than pretty much anything else. That would be a larger loss over the course of the encounter than the 0.6% stats you shift into Accuracy so that you don't have to hold those GCDs for 10-15s while handling mechanics that require you to stab the enemy in the face.


Basically, you and I have very different definitions of "optional." While you consider it "doing sub-optimal things" I consider it "doing something equally optimal."

The stats themselves suffer from imbalance and oversight, and their direct effects exist only among a few classes.

The comments on sks/sps are pretty spot-on, but none of that addresses the point that I was making. Accuracy is right now the only stat that actually requires thought while gearing out. I'm aware that everyone keeps saying that the stats are bad and this is the issue, and I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm just saying that the people shouting to get rid of Accuracy without offering any sort of alternative means of making gear progression interesting and varied are completely missing the point.

Though, the argument about TP holds no water in the current raid tier, as there is currently no situation where any Job should be starved for TP unless they're shit at managing their own restoration abilities. Even in A6S, I spam Ring of Thorns on the Blaster Mirages and have yet to encounter even close to TP-Zero in that encounter, while maintaining 1700-1900 dps through the end of that fight.

The other issues lie in the class designs themselves. Only two classes in the game actually give noticeable effects to anything but rate of attack, and the latter is debatable. Archer's have River of Blood, Arcanists have their on-pet-crit proc. Everyone else simply finds that they parse a bit higher overall the more they crit, with zero effect on their actual gameplay. And then there's Det....

Higher stats absolutely have a noticeable effect. Just look at your numbers when swapping gear around. Every Job gets noticeable effects from the various secondary stats. You need large amounts of them to get anywhere, which would be an issue if we weren't getting them by the hundreds right now.

Determination brings a very noticeable degree of consistency to your output.
Critical Hit Rate brings a very noticeable increase in the frequency of critical hits.
Skill/Spell Speed brings a very noticeable change in how quickly your gcd spins.

Every Job gets these benefits. The thing is that every Job gets different bonuses from each of them, based upon what their optimal rotations look like and (in some cases) how the stats interact with their skills.

[Duelle]

Healers got their accuracy capped completely for free in WoW, I dunno why they don't do that here.

Healers in WoW also focus on healing and rarely DPS unless their class mechanics demand that they do so (Holy Paladins come to mind).

[_slowpoke_]

Accuracy is right now the only stat that actually requires thought while gearing out.

Not everything that requires thought is interesting or fun, though, and Accuracy is neither of those. That's the point at least I was making.

I'm just saying that the people shouting to get rid of Accuracy without offering any sort of alternative means of making gear progression interesting and varied are completely missing the point.

Gear progression is neither interesting nor varied, because Accuracy essentially removes a great deal of choice from gearing progression, instead of adding any. How is this missing the point when it is the very thing I was arguing?

However Accuracy is a good way to arbitrarily limit Healer DPS to a curve that satisfies the dev team.

It's not a good way to do that. In fact, it's one of the absolutely worst ways to do it.

If the dev team thinks healer DPS is a problem (which, as far as I'm aware, they don't, they just don't want healer DPS to be required to clear content, as it was in the second half of Gordias Savage during early progression), then this should be fixed with encounter design, and not by punishing healers who want to do something when there's no one to heal with heavy RNG.

Give us fights where it's actually required to be healing nearly 100% of the time. Make it extremely risky to hop into Cleric Stance because someone might die in the two GCDs until you can deactivate it again. Or give us something meaningful to do other than DPSing while we don't have to heal (AST's cards are probably the closest thing we currently have in this regard). Hell, even straight out nerfing healer damage would be a better way to go about reducing healer DPS. The current situation is complete bullshit.

[Ghishlain]

It's not a good way to do that. In fact, it's one of the absolutely worst ways to do it.

If the dev team thinks healer DPS is a problem (which, as far as I'm aware, they don't, they just don't want healer DPS to be required to clear content, as it was in the second half of Gordias Savage during early progression), then this should be fixed with encounter design, and not by punishing healers who want to do something when there's no one to heal with heavy RNG.

Give us fights where it's actually required to be healing nearly 100% of the time. Make it extremely risky to hop into Cleric Stance because someone might die in the two GCDs until you can deactivate it again. Or give us something meaningful to do other than DPSing while we don't have to heal (AST's cards are probably the closest thing we currently have in this regard). Hell, even straight out nerfing healer damage would be a better way to go about reducing healer DPS. The current situation is complete bullshit.

I never said the Dev team thought healer DPS was a problem. What I said is I feel the Dev team is trying to limit healer DPS in specific ways (in this case - accuracy) to make it more difficult for healer's to DPS as a control mechanism to help keep DPS in line with how they perceive it should be for the current content tier. It's arbitrary but it serves the purpose they seem to have (my own opinion, I don't speak to know how the Devs operate).

If the dev team had any problem with healer DPS, they would out right remove Cleric Stance in any 4- or 8- player content like they removed it from PvP. But they haven't yet, so that clearly indicates that they enjoy how the healer meta is currently working (or they don't have a viable solution yet if they dislike how its become). Again, also my opinion based on my own observations.

Unfortunately, because of way Cleric Stance work you can't possible have an encounter so healing intensive that you're forced to heal every GCD. If you do that you're effectively going to run the healer out of MP in like 6-7 minutes without support like Mage's Ballad and thus making encounters exceedingly short at that point compared to the current 10-13 minute encounters we have (whether this is good or bad is up to the Dev team to decide). You can encourage more risk / reward of Cleric Stance by having a longer cooldown period when you toggle Cleric Stance (say in the realm of 10-15s) so there are less opportunities to Cleric Stance and keeping healing required every 3-4 GCDs or so but then that'll mean the healer is sitting there for 2-3 GCDs waiting for something to happen. Likewise, nerfing potencies of Healer DPS spells would mean healer's having difficulty clearing solo MSQ content and also not a very good solution.

It's an interesting trap the Dev team put themselves in when they made Cleric Stance. I've played quite a few MMOs in my past and FFXIV is the first MMO where a healer has the ability to have their main attack stat comparable to magical DPS and have similar restrictions and freedoms their magic wielding counterparts have too. It makes for interesting play as a healer while also making it a very difficult thing to balance from a development perspective. If you make Healer DPS too powerful, normal DPS will start to complain at the ease healer's get. It also allows for specific groups to clear content earlier than intended because of the amount of DPS a healer can provide over the course of a fight. If both healer's combined contribute 6-8% DPS total that's 6-8% DPS less the raid has to do to clear content. Since content isn't designed with healer DPS in mind, it almost feels like the dev team has to provide something arbitrary to try to keep healer DPS in check so content is cleared exceedingly fast which is a fine line to tread.

Whether we like it or not, Accuracy is here to stay until at least 4.0. In my mind, it feels like it's the check and balance to healer DPS that the Dev team can tweak to suit their liking. This can lead to issues down the line that are hopefully addressed as future content is released leading up to 4.0. Until then, I will gladly work around this limitation to the best of my ability and see where the future development holds.

[Shurrikhan]

It's literally 10-20 points. That's not 4%. I'm currently sitting at ~1600 stat points added to my character at i222.

Moving 10 points from accuracy to crit so I could drop to the flank cap is a 0.6% gain. That's called negligible and makes it pretty clearly obvious that melee should just be stacking the acc for whichever side they're required to be hitting, rather than rely on a Bard to use their evasion reduction skill every time I'm gonna have to poke the face. In A6S, on Blaster (the very first boss), I need to be hitting it in the face consistently for a rather substantial time in order to properly handle mechanics and not wipe the raid. Every single time the Bard has to sacrifice damage so that I can not miss for those periods is a dps loss for the Bard that would otherwise not happen if the melee would just carry the appropriate accuracy.

Not optional.

In my suggestion, that'd be an extra 4% secondary stats, not spent in accuracy, for the OT, healers, and melee dps, just for my 50 potency.

Sorry, I was referring to its value within what I had proposed earlier, not as it currently is. That's a very large difference in premise, which I should have highlighted earlier. As you have it listed, your Accuracy currently accounts for ~19% of your secondary stats. I said I'd like it to be around 16% max instead (front capped), primarily from taking from the base amount (between 0 and back) such that about half the total expense is from back to front (where casters general cap = flank cap). In that scenario, it would be around 25% less accuracy expenditure, or 64 secondary stat points, a 3.8% secondary stat increase, for your character. At that point it seems optional to me. It would of course depend on the predictability of the turning mechanics though, as to place Rain early enough, and on whether Rain would have healer dps use in addition (often not the case during these 'turning and nearly killing a random player' moments).

Holding the GCD is a bigger dps loss than pretty much anything else. That would be a larger loss over the course of the encounter than the 0.6% stats you shift into Accuracy so that you don't have to hold those GCDs for 10-15s while handling mechanics that require you to stab the enemy in the face.

10-15s? So he's swapping about to and fro for 10+ seconds at a time? Sorry, I wasn't aware of that. I was thinking that once per 15 seconds, he'd turn and quickly turn back, which could be more easily compensated for.
I still think tight windows have a lot to do with whether a .25s hold would be a dps loss in other situations, though. My 2.39 pre-GL Monk would have to use Meditation once per Demolish as to perfect its timing, as it stands. However, I can use this at any point per Demolish, as long as no two occur during the same application of DK/Twin. Needless to say, I use it during those times. Pre-movement helps a lot as well, based on where the party is standing. If I'm the target (and not running away already, as from drill), I'll either Meditate and move or just take my chances. This is only because I'm waiting to hit sufficient accuracy at the moment, though, as Monk isn't my main. It would take the above system for that to be a real option.

Basically, you and I have very different definitions of "optional." While you consider it "doing sub-optimal things" I consider it "doing something equally optimal."

No, our definitions are the same. I just hadn't done as much math as I should have, and tend not to put my disclaimers as obviously as I should when saying what is otherwise ridiculous.

The comments on sks/sps are pretty spot-on, but none of that addresses the point that I was making. Accuracy is right now the only stat that actually requires thought while gearing out. I'm aware that everyone keeps saying that the stats are bad and this is the issue, and I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm just saying that the people shouting to get rid of Accuracy without offering any sort of alternative means of making gear progression interesting and varied are completely missing the point.

I do certainly understand that. I'm sorry if I've been part of that wave as well.

Though, the argument about TP holds no water in the current raid tier, as there is currently no situation where any Job should be starved for TP unless they're shit at managing their own restoration abilities. Even in A6S, I spam Ring of Thorns on the Blaster Mirages and have yet to encounter even close to TP-Zero in that encounter, while maintaining 1700-1900 dps through the end of that fight.

To be honest, it's not as much about the current tier to me as sheer parity. I feel like later tiers could be better if they actually thought at times about what is otherwise irrelevant, making fundamental fixes even if not absolutely necessary, because they might just cut their later options short otherwise. I'm not saying I want back endless dummy fights in which TP would be an issue without these changes. Just... it's more a matter of principle I guess.

Higher stats absolutely have a noticeable effect. Just look at your numbers when swapping gear around. Every Job gets noticeable effects from the various secondary stats. You need large amounts of them to get anywhere, which would be an issue if we weren't getting them by the hundreds right now.

Determination brings a very noticeable degree of consistency to your output.
Critical Hit Rate brings a very noticeable increase in the frequency of critical hits.
Skill/Spell Speed brings a very noticeable change in how quickly your gcd spins.

Every Job gets these benefits. The thing is that every Job gets different bonuses from each of them, based upon what their optimal rotations look like and (in some cases) how the stats interact with their skills.

...and their direct [gameplay] effects exist only among a few classes.
...meaningful effects on rotation...
...with zero effect on their actual gameplay.

Agreed. They absolutely do. To parses. My point here was on the gameplay... which I really should have written where it is now bracketed. (By which I mean personal, not just the party gameplay of 'do we need to pop CDs for this weak dps check we'd rather not waste CDs on?') E.g. would you ever end up using a different ability because you've crit every move in your combo? Would you ever do anything differently because of any stat other than Speed (or in very, very few cases, Crit)?

The only noticeable gameplay adjustment I've noticed from secondary stats are (via Crit) in how likely my Bloodletter is to take up part of my next oGCD weave on Bard, and (via Speed) in extra Heavy Shot/double buffed EA on Bard and (suboptimal) combat-Meditation/extended rotation opportunities on Monk, and the 2.33 gimmick 5-Geir/min rotation on DRG. That's it. Whereas tracking crits as part of your "gambling" has been known to matter hugely for certain classes/specs in other MMOs. Ours, as powerful as they are, are mostly rotationally insignificant. It's a shallow complaint, meant mostly to provoke a little thought about what *could* happen with certain redesigns. (Though also why I mentioned those "late-game" crisis largely shared by those same highly secondary-stat-affected classes. They're admittedly more difficult to balance across tiers of content.)