Should Cleric Stance be disabled in party instances?

[Cynfael]

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.

I didn't miss it; I've already explained at length why I don't think that simply bumping up healing requirements across the board is a better option and didn't want to go into it again.

Besides, my favorite healer classes across the MMOs I've played have involved damage skills and/or heavy debuffing. "Pure healing" classes were always in decreased demand since their exclusive focus on healing and cleansing debuffs was rarely needed even in games where basic mobs could 2-3 shot anyone other than a tank. These classes ended up being rare because of lack of demand and also because they were widely regarded as boring.

[Legion88]

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.

They could. The damage doesn't come from INT it comes from Attack Magic Potency and this scales with INT. If they change the scaling stat for Attack Magic Potency for all healers from INT to MND, there wouldn't be any problems.

[Ghishlain]

-Snip-

I appreciate this analysis and the time it took to perform it. It would be interesting to see a similar analysis performed but with a completely ilvl synced party. Given I get the impression the game is balanced around the minimal ilvl it would be interesting to see what the "baseline" healing requirement is for this dungeon.

[Taika]

I appreciate this analysis and the time it took to perform it. It would be interesting to see a similar analysis performed but with a completely ilvl synced party. Given I get the impression the game is balanced around the minimal ilvl it would be interesting to see what the "baseline" healing requirement is for this dungeon.

Expert dungeons aren't almost ever done at the minimum item level though, even when they've just come out (with the exception of the first expert dungeons of a new expansion). And I don't think item level makes any difference on the point, which is that there is more or less room for healer DPS in all content in the game, and since the healing requirements for majority of the content are so ridiculously low, not doing DPS makes a healer useless for even 80% of the dungeon time in this kind of standard content.

[Ghishlain]

Expert dungeons aren't almost ever done at the minimum item level though, even when they've just come out (with the exception of the first expert dungeons of a new expansion). And I don't think item level makes any difference on the point, which is that there is more or less room for healer DPS in all content in the game, and since the healing requirements for majority of the content are so ridiculously low, not doing DPS makes a healer useless for even 80% of the dungeon time in this kind of standard content.

Yeah, a test like that would have to be with a preformed group that would enter the dungeon using the ilvl sync function. I did make my comment as a "for the sake of science" comment than to actually add anything meaningful to the discussion at hand since I've been part of the discussion far too often and to be frank, I am pretty tired in participating in it, lol. My TL: DR stance is "maximize your GCD usage" when it comes to optimizing for healers.

[TaleraRistain]

I didn't miss it; I've already explained at length why I don't think that simply bumping up healing requirements across the board is a better option and didn't want to go into it again.

Besides, my favorite healer classes across the MMOs I've played have involved damage skills and/or heavy debuffing. "Pure healing" classes were always in decreased demand since their exclusive focus on healing and cleansing debuffs was rarely needed even in games where basic mobs could 2-3 shot anyone other than a tank. These classes ended up being rare because of lack of demand and also because they were widely regarded as boring.

Not in all games. Clerics and druids were in high demand in EverQuest and those same pure healing classes (under many different names) were important in EverQuest II as well. Healing-focused builds were necessary in early WoW.

[FunkyBunch]

Not in all games. Clerics and druids were in high demand in EverQuest and those same pure healing classes (under many different names) were important in EverQuest II as well. Healing-focused builds were necessary in early WoW.

VERY early WoW, like the first couple months. After the first balance update you could heal just fine without a heal-centric build. Some raids required a few dedicated healers, but Shadow Priests and Feral Druids were always things that off-healed and DPS'd.
I played Feral Druid from about 2 months after release and still healed in WoW. I was constantly popping out of an animal form and healing and then switching back for DPS purposes.
In other games, "healers" were more like support DPS like in FFXIV.

[basketofseals]

VERY early WoW, like the first couple months. After the first balance update you could heal just fine without a heal-centric build. Some raids required a few dedicated healers, but Shadow Priests and Feral Druids were always things that off-healed and DPS'd.
I played Feral Druid from about 2 months after release and still healed in WoW. I was constantly popping out of an animal form and healing and then switching back for DPS purposes.
In other games, "healers" were more like support DPS like in FFXIV.

Are you talking about Vanilla WoW? The entire feral tree was regarded as a joke of an endgame spec probably only outmocked by Prot Paladin, and shadowpriests were discouraged from joining raids because you tried to minimize as much DoTs as possible so your tank could still sunder. What you experienced was something that you got away with because the general experience and knowledge of the community was a lot lower than it was now.

What you did was probably really fun, and it worked for you, but you did the equivalent of ice maging while casting physick.

[Rawrz]

Yeah, that's smart. Let's disable cleric stance so healers only meld Accuracy and INT and wear/compete with casters for INT jewelry. That worked out great for tanks with slaying accessories...

[Connor]

I've been trying to stay as far away from these kinds of threads as possible, but I can't resist giving my personal input.

Personally I'd be happy with them removing / moving away from Cleric Stance, but only if they
implemented increased healing requirements (more incoming damage), GCD support abilities, or at least something to fill the large time gaps when healing isn't required.

None of these are even remotely likely though because they'd require a pretty significant amount of time/resources/etc. And considering 4.0 will add at least one or two new dps abilities for each healer it's likely that using Cleric Stance will become even more necessary, or at the very least the need for healers to dps will remain as is.

To be brutally honest, if you're completely against dealing as much damage as possible as a healer then you're going to have to either stop playing healing jobs or find a different game. It really sucks, but there isn't any alternative.