Your Stance on Cleric Stance

[loreleidiangelo]

My question is whether people enjoy utilizing Cleric Stance and whether they would like to see more focus on designing healers around it, or whether they would prefer to see the role move away from dps'ing

The healer subforum seems pretty in favor of it. I'd rather DPS abilities scale off of MND instead, like they do in other games, but I've been roasted for suggesting it before here. Given this game's GCD, I don't think turning off your healer abilities for 5 seconds makes you all that skilled, and I don't think it's engaging, just hotbar bloat.

In general, making another thread to debate healer DPS in general is just asking for trouble, IMO. Some people like it, some don't, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the devs don't really understand that it's a serious hot topic (I don't think the JP care much about it at all?), so I doubt it'll see any sort of serious change. I play other games for their healing, not this one.

[Astraxus]

I really like the idea of Cleric Stance, it makes sense to have a clear demarcation point between DD and Healing. That being said, I do find it a little cumbersome. Until now I've relied heavily on macroing the cross bars to swap when Cleric is enabled/disabled, although now the W cross bars are here I think this will significantly simplify the process (at least for console Healers).

Should healers be DD'ing? I'd argue it depends on the context; if you are comfortable with the mechanics/strategy, why not help your party out? Equally, if you're pushing new/difficult content, you tell your party you will be focusing on keeping people alive otherwise you could make a hash of things. The general consensus seems to be that not DD'ing as a Healer is greatly frowned upon. In reality a Healer is not performing to the best of their ability if they are not dealing damage when it is safe and/or appropriate to do so in an encounter/phase that would greatly benefit from it.

[Connor]

The healer subforum seems pretty in favor of it. I'd rather DPS abilities scale off of MND instead, like they do in other games, but I've been roasted for suggesting it before here. Given this game's GCD, I don't think turning off your healer abilities for 5 seconds makes you all that skilled, and I don't think it's engaging, just hotbar bloat.

In general, making another thread to debate healer DPS in general is just asking for trouble, IMO. Some people like it, some don't, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the devs don't really understand that it's a serious hot topic (I don't think the JP care much about it at all?), so I doubt it'll see any sort of serious change. I play other games for their healing, not this one.

Yeah, I don't know much about the JP forums so I can't comment on whether or not it's been discussed there as much as it has here. Tbh, I've ended up taking the same stance that 'If I want to be a full-on healer I'm going to have to play a different game'. It's pretty unfortunate, and I don't know whether there's been a precedent set in most other MMO's where healers are more pseudo-dps than jobs that focus on keeping the party alive and supporting them as they did in traditional FF games.

[FunkyBunch]

(I don't think the JP care much about it at all?), so I doubt it'll see any sort of serious change. I play other games for their healing, not this one.

The Japanese sub-forums has less arguments about it, but there's still a pretty big thread on it.
They're of the consensus that like in soccer just because you're playing "defense" (Healer) doesn't mean you shouldn't help do "offense" (DPS).
They are all in agreement that the devs are half-hearted in their treatment of Healer DPS and the hate that there's no accuracy on Healer gear.

The last real comment about it was that they think the Devs want to lower Healer DPS (by removing accuracy) and increase DPS' DPS because Healers are doing too much damage.
As for my thoughts on it, I'd love to be able to DPS without Cleric Stance, or have it auto-cancel if you cast a Healing spell, but I think it's fun.

I only started Healing because I was tired of bad Healers. Now I'm seriously considering switching it to my main, pretty much because of Cleric Stance.

[FunkYeahDragons]

I think the role is fine as it is. DPS is something you utilize during downtime, and that you can try to plan opportunities for. If you want to keep healers busier, slip in more fights and dungeons where they might need to utilize hots, shields, or plan cooldowns.

[loreleidiangelo]

I think the role is fine as it is. DPS is something you utilize during downtime, and that you can try to plan opportunities for. If you want to keep healers busier, slip in more fights and dungeons where they might need to utilize hots, shields, or plan cooldowns.

Your last statement I think is the true crux of the debate. I don't think a single skilled player here would argue that if you CAN DPS as a healer, you should. But there's quite a few of us who think that healing throughput is tuned too high and damage rates tuned too low such that there are a lot more windows where you CAN DPS than there probably "should" be.

Obviously even that point is a subjective view, but I get frustrated when people handwave away arguments about the overarching complications stemming from the healer DPS meta with "you just want to be lazy and run around in circles and jump instead of actually contributing".

[mp-please]

The last real comment about it was that they think the Devs want to lower Healer DPS (by removing accuracy) and increase DPS' DPS because Healers are doing too much damage.

Healers do half dps of dps classes and roughly 10% more than tanks and healer dps, at least WHM wise its balanced enough considered how mp starved they're, but either way a nerf would be dumb considering healer dps is all about high risk "high" reward.

[lulunami]

The 5 second cooldown on Cleric Stance can make for some clenching moments in fights you are progressing in. I believe people that are looking just to heal in raids may find it frustrating since that is sub-optimal play in this game. In this game, both healers have to liberally use Cleric Stance to be optimal in raids (especially the SCH off-healer).

Healing in this game is just memorizing the timing of tank busters and raidwide AoE and preparing for that with your teammates. Then you figure out how many GCDs/seconds you have to be in Cleric Stance to put up your dots and/or spam Broil/Stone III/Malefic II. The more you overheal as a SCH such as with Succor, the less optimal you are playing since that could have been a GCD spent on Broil.

So as a healer, you memorize damage patterns, memorize mechanics, look at party health bars, look at your buff bar, look at your cooldowns, look at the enemy bar to maintain your dots, and communicate with your teammates. Lots of multitasking skill and awareness are required.

[FunkYeahDragons]

Your last statement I think is the true crux of the debate. I don't think a single skilled player here would argue that if you CAN DPS as a healer, you should. But there's quite a few of us who think that healing throughput is tuned too high and damage rates tuned too low such that there are a lot more windows where you CAN DPS than there probably "should" be.

Obviously even that point is a subjective view, but I get frustrated when people handwave away arguments about the overarching complications stemming from the healer DPS meta with "you just want to be lazy and run around in circles and jump instead of actually contributing".

Both paths are fun, imo. But I do feel like the healing aspects specifically can be underwhelming, and it's better to plan around healers healing than around healer DPS to challenge them.

This is especially true in dungeons like Xelphatol/Gubal HM where I just have my static's tank pull big, I pop a CD and regen, Gravity spam, and then we go into a boss where I spend 80% of my time in cleric stance and the rest applying a single-target or occasional party-wide regen. Maybe fixing up someone who botched a mechanic. Learning those big pulls initially takes a little healing finesse, but after that there's not much.

For Sophia Ex, I feel like we don't need to think much about healing. Mostly it's doing mechanics or looking for DPS opportunities by sprucing up our fight performance, which again is fun and does test your knowledge of how to squeeze the most out of your healing skills, but is also very heavily oriented towards the DPS side of things.

Planning your CDs and using that Bole is a means to an end for DPS, not party survival there outside of a tank with weakness after a raise. You'll still be a smart healer if you remember that Lightspeed decreases both cast time and MP cost for multiple raises, or to stack regens for more DPS time. Having more time to DPS is inextricably tied to knowing how to heal well, but the pressure to work with your healing spells and cooldowns specifically is not very high imo.

Main thing that affects me as N.Ast is the strategy of letting someone get zombified on Sophia before the first tilt, because they pick at my shields that I put up before the AOE after. :|

[Connor]

I don't think a single skilled player here would argue that if you CAN DPS as a healer, you should. But there's quite a few of us who think that healing throughput is tuned too high and damage rates tuned too low such that there are a lot more windows where you CAN DPS than there probably "should" be.

Obviously even that point is a subjective view, but I get frustrated when people handwave away arguments about the overarching complications stemming from the healer DPS meta with "you just want to be lazy and run around in circles and jump instead of actually contributing".

I think the first part of this sums up my feelings on this perfectly. There's really nothing to justify not dps'ing as a healer, but because healing is so high and damage is so low, there ends up being very little times where you have to think strategically about using Cleric Stance. When there's lots of damage going out, being able to move between healing and dps'ing requires a lot of skill and knowledge of the fight. Because of the way content is tuned, however, there really aren't many instances where this skill or knowledge is needed. 90% when I use Cleric Stance it's because there's nothing else to do, rather than it being anything to do with skill.

When there's lots of damage going out, being able to move between healing and dps'ing requires a lot of skill and knowledge of the fight. Because of the way content is tuned, however, there really aren't many instances where this skill or knowledge is needed. 90% of the time when I use Cleric Stance it's because there's nothing else to do, rather than it being anything to do with skill