Should Cleric Stance be disabled in party instances?

[Fyrebrand]

I'd be in favour of getting rid of Cleric Stance, if it means boosting our base damage to compensate. Why do we need this extra button to toggle on/off constantly? As a healer, I feel like I'm doing a good job when I'm able to balance keeping my party comfy with finding opportune moments to throw in some damage. I NEVER say to myself "Oh man, what a great Cleric Stance I just did." It doesn't even feel like a real action my character is doing; it feels like I'm toggling UI options. It's basically a confirmation box you have to click OK on, like "Are you sure you want to do damage?" "Are you sure you want to heal?"

I guess you could argue that remembering to hit that extra key every time you swap back and forth is some measure of "skill"? I dunno, do any of you feel "skillful" at Cleric Stance? Personally, I just find it to be an annoying hassle, and probably a large part of why some healers feel reluctant to contribute meaningfully to damage.

I don't think any healers should of needed Cleric Stance in the first place, as our damage should of come directly from our MND stat instead of INT.

I don't want to oversimplify, but what if Mind and Int were just combined into one stat, with spell potency balanced accordingly? Is there any real reason we need to differentiate? In most Final Fantasy games, we just have a "Magic" stat, and that seems to work just fine.

[dragonseth07]

I guess you could argue that remembering to hit that extra key every time you swap back and forth is some measure of "skill"? I dunno, do any of you feel "skillful" at Cleric Stance? Personally, I just find it to be an annoying hassle, and probably a large part of why some healers feel reluctant to contribute meaningfully to damage.

With the number of people around here saying it's too hard for them to manage, it must take at least some level of skill. I mean, that level is probably "basic ability to play video games", but it exists. :P

Disclaimer: Jokes aside, I won't seriously claim that anyone who can't manage it is bad at the game. I've only played healers sub-30 so far, and it's SUPER easy to manage Cleric there. It's probably far more difficult at 60, so without personal experience there, I won't judge.

[Fernosaur]

I don't want to oversimplify, but what if Mind and Int were just combined into one stat, with spell potency balanced accordingly?

Depending on what your take on balance is, this would allow SMN and BLM to use Physick at full potency. I wouldn't really have a problem with this, tbh, I love the idea of DPS having more options to blur the lines between DPS and support that aren't "this deals more damage," but the game itself isn't built like that, and I get the feeling Yoshi P would never allow DPS to heal or do more than what SMN can already do.

I have to disagree with your opinion on Cleric Stance. It is kind of a hassle, but, as with everything in this game, the skill it requires is not particular dexterity, it's just awareness and knowledge of the fight. The limitation it imposes on healing and the 5-second CD make it a way to punish poor decision making. It also punishes unfortunate situations in which other party members stand in the bad or a tank dies, and unable to foresee this, you entered CS and whoever needs healing is then fucked for the next 5 seconds. Quite honestly the risk-reward mecanic of that 5 sec CD is one of the only things that make healer DPS interesting, considering our DPS "rotation" is spamming the same attack over and over and DoT upkeep.

[TaleraRistain]

I don't see why you'd need to disable Cleric Stance if dungeons hurt more.

Because unfortunately while stance dancing remains an option, then it's still going to be expected. I've been harangued in heavy hitting dungeons or with groups who would NOT stay out of the stupid for not swapping over to CS to "do my part" so we could finish in their expected 15 minutes. Of course I'm not going to in that situation. I have to babysit their health too much. So it's kind of a "this is why we can't have nice things" because there are so many ignorant non-healers who don't understand our reasons for not using it that would require the option to just got away.

[Cynfael]

Because unfortunately while stance dancing remains an option, then it's still going to be expected. I've been harangued in heavy hitting dungeons or with groups who would NOT stay out of the stupid for not swapping over to CS to "do my part" so we could finish in their expected 15 minutes. Of course I'm not going to in that situation. I have to babysit their health too much. So it's kind of a "this is why we can't have nice things" because there are so many ignorant non-healers who don't understand our reasons for not using it that would require the option to just got away.

That's not an issue with Cleric Stance; that's a more basic issue with players not understanding other roles or the game in general. Sometimes it occurs on the part of the healer who doesn't know how to use their tools correctly to create and/or take advantage of opportunities to use their DPS skills, and sometimes it's like you describe, where the party doesn't realize that their failure to play well is relegating the healer to full-on babysitting duty.

Eliminating Cleric Stance and essentially forcing healers to stand around wasting time in an average or better run does not sound like any kind of solution. If anything, general sentiment towards healers would likely become more toxic as the role became universally regarded as the lazy one out of the three. Overhealing to look busy doesn't fool anyone who knows how to heal, and DPS without Cleric Stance is cute, but so ineffective as to be virtually worthless.

[Suki-]

Stance dancing is so fun. Without CS us healers will have the attack power of a wet noodle. May as well whip Eos out and /follow :v

[TaleraRistain]

Eliminating Cleric Stance and essentially forcing healers to stand around wasting time in an average or better run does not sound like any kind of solution. If anything, general sentiment towards healers would likely become more toxic as the role became universally regarded as the lazy one out of the three. Overhealing to look busy doesn't fool anyone who knows how to heal, and DPS without Cleric Stance is cute, but so ineffective as to be virtually worthless.

You've missed the other part of my proposal on my previous comment. They can't remove CS unless they give healers more healing and status curing and other healing-focused activities to do. The only reason it's even an option is because the game lacks very much in the essential healer functions.

[Taika]

Yesterday I did some testing on how it really is like to only heal in expert roulette, which I think is a good example because it's content probably ran by majority of player base this discussion is relevant to.

I queued to expert roulette as WHM and we got Xelpathol. In addition to me, the party consisted of a WAR who had never tanked the dungeon before (no endgame experience as WAR), a BLM (his Savage job, currently on A11S progression), and a DRG (no endgame experience as DRG). So quite a random party composition with people more or less familiar with their roles in that dungeon.

The WAR pulled as much as he could at the time (not knowing the dungeon as tank he failed this a couple of times) and I would only use my healing abilities. This was the result, my every single heal cast for the whole 21 min dungeon run:

- Regen x24
- Medica II x16
- Asylum x7
- Assize x4
- Cure II x5 (between pulls, not during them)
- Tetra x4

So in addition to Medica II, the only thing I actually had to cast in the whole dungeon was Cure II, which I did a total of 5 times (between pulls, not during them). Everything else was instant cast abilities. I also used Eye for an Eye on tank and sometimes Esuna, and I cast stoneskin on everyone between pulls.

Even with this little use of healing, my overheal was 35,9%, so the actual healing requirements for this dungeon are even lower. I was active 17% of the whole dungeon while the rest of my group members were active 72-77% of the dungeon.

This is a perfect example of the low healing requirements in the game and how it causes a huge activity difference between a healer who doesn't DPS and their group members. On that run I did not contribute nearly as much as my group members, in fact I was using /icam and doing /mandervilledance while they were actually making an effort. If it would have been the tank or a DD only being active 17% of the time and dancing and idling for the rest, they would have been removed from the party, but for me, some people would actually argue I was doing just fine.

I took a video of the whole run and uploaded it in case someone's interested. This is the final boss fight, during which the only things I actually cast were 3 Medica IIs. Other than that, I used Regen (4), Assize (2) and Asylum (2). Here's the direct link to the fight: https://youtu.be/jBgMe5uHPsE?t=17m17s

TLDR: Not DPSing as a healer means you're just being carried by your group members for over 80% of the dungeon time.

[Fernosaur]

Taika, that was 100% brutal. You couldn't have offered a better example of how terrible a mindset the whole "healers should only heal" is for FFXIV. You have my utmost respect for sitting there for 20 minutes with so little to do! I would have gouged my eyes out out of boredom.

The worst part, as you said, is that some people would dare arguing that you were doing just fine. The fact that these are the minimum expectations some people have of healer roles is atrocious, and even worse the fact that some people advocate for this kind of playstyle!!

[Llynd]

I just want to say that we can't scale the healer's damages on MND simply because Scholar's DoTs comes from the arcanist which uses INT. Change it would change the smn's ones as well.