Should Cleric Stance be disabled in party instances?

[Shurrikhan]

My favourite change would be:

Main stat for damage is MND. CS gives a +50%/-50% buff/debuff on damage/heals (potencies adjusted to be balanced) and a boost to accuracy. Higher CD to make it more difficult to use, because of the overall beneficial change to healer dps.

It would be more similar to tank stance dancing: Always using all of your GCDs and CDs when appropiate, but when the situation allows it you can adjust your stance for extra dps.

A healer not comfortable with stance dancing can still do dps on a level which is not totally negligible (like a tank unneccesarily staying in tank stance), a healer which is comfy can still do very good dps.

I'd be cool with that. It'd still be a waste to dps without Cleric, but not so much that it's not even worth the mana when you're over half full, and not so weakened that one would feel like rollingtheir eyes when a healer spam attacks without it (cast after cast while all the while being too afraid to actually use CS when there's no outgoing burst damage). Similarly, having to pop a half Lustrate or Tetragrammaton in CS would suck, but not so much that you just Stoneskin, Swift, Stoneskin until CS is droppable.

Minor note: can we reduce it to 2 GCDs instead of a hard 5 seconds, as to avoid that extra .3s wait for those with decently high SS?...

The literal only downside would be during leveling, on a hybrid caster, and for whatever reason wanting to prioritize your emergency or while-dpsing stat?... (You'd need some wacky multi-charge or spammable ability heal for that to ever be a thing though.) That'd be super niche, even if it were made to exist, which it doesn't presently.

[Fernosaur]

While I like your way of thinking, if offensive spells scaled off MND and Cleric Stance gave a +50% damage buff, it would need to be put on a recast timer of at least 15 seconds. And I'm being very generous...

You can't really lower the potencies of the offensive spells the three healers get because then you'd indirectly shaft SMN. The only solution I'd see for this would be to have healer offensive spells scale at a rate of 1:0.6 or something similar from MND, similar to the way tank damage scales at 4.5/4.5 from Vit and Str.

[Alisa180]

Gonna go against popular opinion here: Yes to disabling Cleric Stance in party instances! Please!

I loved healing, but couldn't pull off stance dancing, and believe me, I tried. Despite being a career healer in WoW, and otherwise loving healing itself, I was forced to abandon the role for a (much more successful) career as DPS SMN, followed by a tanking PLD role. Leaving behind WHM, THE reason I started playing FFXIV to begin with, was one of the most disheartening things I ever experienced.

For perspective, I regularly put out 1.2-1.3k during the Midas tier as a SMN, one of the more complicated DPS jobs. I think, maybe, it should say something when I say I found stance-dancing as a healer nigh-impossible in comparison.

So long as Cleric Stance exists, so will some version of the 'healer DPS' meta. For every person that proclaims to love CS in party instances, I'm willing to bet there's one or two (like me) who couldn't hack it and were driven away from healing. The healer DPS meta demands a high skill level, higher then many DPS or tanking jobs if my experiences are anything to go by. Many would rather fall back on 'easier' jobs, then deal with the criticism at failing what wasn't even an intended part of our job, according to the devs.

If CS is disabled in instances, single-handily killing off the healer DPS meta, I will return to healing. No question. And I sincerely doubt I am the only one who feels this way. The loss of people who liked the high skill level of stance dancing might very well be mitigated by an influx of those, like me, couldn't do CS but are otherwise wonderful healers, and perhaps some who avoided healing because they were intimidated by the healer DPS meta.

This is my fondest wish for this game, even though its unlikely to happen. Sorry, but that's just how I feel.

[Normalizer]

Snip...

Don't know if you are serious or not... so you want to remove CS from all healers just because you can't do it! And call yourself a wonderful healer while you can't even stance dance properly? One of the requirement for stance dancing is knowing the fight well and know when dmg gonna happen. I doubt any healers who cannot stance dance have enough experience of any fight and can heal "well" (as in efficient) when they don't know when they need/don't need to heal. But of course without the need to DPS healers can just spamming medica 2 and call that a wonderful job, when everyone at full HP and no one die. Sorry for sarcasm :P

Even if they remove CS they will have to give healer good dps in some way (eg. scale it with mind instead), and in the end you will be demanded to dps even harder than now (cause there is no need to stance dancing anymore).

Unless they change the design of the dungeons/raids so it always outputs high raid dmg (like in WoW) the requirement for healer dps won't go away, because there will always be time when you don't have to heal, and standing idle while others are working is just plainly bad. I don't like that idea though, cause at that time you reduced from a stance-dancing healer to a heal bot (as in casting medica1/2, cure non-stop).

[Khalithar]

Cleric stance is fine.

It's also extremely effective on SCH with the caveat that SCH really needs macros to be 100% effective with. One of the SCH mains I know has a macro for every single spell on her hotbars that gives commands to Eos on who to heal for every spell she casts. She stays in cleric stance for 95% of dungeons just doing dps because every dps spell commands her fairy to heal so more dps = more healing. SCH + macros turns them in to a powerful DPS/Healing machine, if you're maining SCH without macros you're not playing it at 100% effectiveness.

Also, players who believe getting rid of cleric stance will end the healer DPS meta are deluding themselves. Even if Cleric wasn't a thing, you'll still be expected to do something besides healing, you CAN cast your dps spells without cleric stance after all. I use cleric as much as I can when I play my healers, the idea of just standing there doing nothing while waiting for someone to take damage is absurd, be proactive instead of reactive.

[Feyona]

You are talking about healers that may be seriously outgearing the instances I just cleared as9 as just a healer and was active 95% just healing. I am an average healer in terms of skill, but I probably represent the majority of players of that level. More is being expected of me cos of the handful of exceptional players out there. There will also be always instances that people are over geared for. I do understand that healers do not want to stand about doing nothing sometimes but you still have to watch out for people's health. I think dps lovers should go dps and allow healers to be healers. Also, in reply to the Scholar above that quoted me, your not getting the point that I dont like dpsing. I also think that healing and keeping people alive is enough contribution to the group and its debateable whether the game was actually designed to necessitate healers dpsing.

[Rawrz]

I just cleared as9 as just a healer and was active 95% just healing.

*Shivers*.

[Feyona]

*Shivers*.

Wonder what that means?

[Taika]

You are talking about healers that may be seriously outgearing the instances I just cleared as9 as just a healer and was active 95% just healing.

Yes, with almost 50% overheal and healing more than your AST (someone has uploaded your parse). When you get more used to the fight and learn to only heal when necessary (and perhaps give more healing room for the main healer), you will find more opportunities for DPS.

[Ahki]

I don't think anything should be done to cleric stance, but monsters need to do more damage. It's ridiculous that some lower level dungeons are more heal intensive than lv60 dungeons. I would go so far as to say that DPSing 95% of the time is BORING. I want to heal people. I picked a healer because I like healing and supporting people. I hope there is someone else out there who feels the way I do. You all just sound like you want to be damage dealers.