Should Cleric Stance be disabled in party instances?

[ty_taurus]

Many argue that allowing a Healer's Magic Damage Potency to build off Mind would make healer DPS too 'free,' and to a degree, they're right.

If CS was removed, and healer DPS was rebalanced so that it matched the numbers we're currently putting out with CS, then you're not losing anything but the stance dance concept. Is this too much free stuff for healers? Maybe it is, but the one thing I really like about that idea is freeing up a spot on my hotbar.

In my opinion, while I don't think stance dancing is difficult, and learning it should be important, I'd value that free hotbar space a lot more than this complexity for the sake of complexity action.

[Lyth]

You can already "disable" CS in the game. Take it off your hotbars if it bothers you.

Requesting that CS be disabled in parties is more about making it so that other healers can't use it. You have the right to heal how you want, but so, too, do they.

[Yona87]

This thread hasn't been locked yet?

[Dogempire]

Not being able to dps would make healing extremely boring.

That being said, I wish people who can't swap out of cleric stance to heal and let people die because of it would just delete cleric stance from their bar.

[Taika]

That being said, I wish people who can't swap out of cleric stance to heal and let people die because of it would just delete cleric stance from their bar.

These kind of comments aren't helpful in any way though, since they make people scared of even starting to DPS as a healer. It's always better to try to be good and effective and make some mistakes while getting there than just not trying at all.

[Dogempire]

These kind of comments aren't helpful in any way though, since they make people scared of even starting to DPS as a healer. It's always better to try to be good and effective and make some mistakes while getting there than just not trying at all.

Well I expect it in pre-60 dungeons, but I pretty much only play level 60 dungeons now, so my annoyance is justified.

[Chubby13]

Healers were intended to dps why else give them skills that do damage? Without Cleric Stance you hit like a wet noodle and that is depressing. If you take away Cleric Stance you take all the fun out of a healer's role. Imagine for a moment that you had no Holy/Stone III/Gravity/Malefic II/DoT's/Broil on the various healers and those damaging skills were all heals. The way the game is currently set up even with a below average/average tank and DPS that don't take unnecessary damage, you would basically cast a heal, can walk away and come back to heal again, walk away and the process repeats. Honestly how would healing be any fun/challenging like that?

[Neophyte]

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.

Thing is, this doesn't work well in a system with any kind of progression.

When you have to heal 100% with perfect use of CDs at minimum ilvl, upgrades only lower your required average GCD/heal uptime.
The group group benefit of a healer upgrade would be: The healer has to press some buttons less often and can stay around.

A dps getting upgrades will still use all there CDs and rotation (with noticable benefit for the group), tanks will still use all there CDs and rotation (also noticable group benefit), but healers would just use less and less of their toolkit with every upgrade.

That's bad design.

[Averax]

Healers were intended to dps why else give them skills that do damage?

How else are they supposed to, you know, level up and do quests and junk? They don't heal targets to death, and they can't dungeon grind from the get-go.

This is not an argument against cleric stance, but yeah that's the main reason we have offensive abilities

[Connor]

snip

Just to clarify, this was just some ideas I was throwing out for stuff to do other than dps'ing for more variety / appease non-dps healers / etc. You're totally right that more healing requirements would still end up becoming pointless because better gear = less healing = more downtime, and it's not really possible for them to avoid that. That was why I added the GCD support abilities suggestion, since it's basically contributing dps and filling downtime, but I accept there's just as many problems with that idea. I' ve said before, but to me stance-dancing is fun and interesting, but it grows very old very fast when you're doing the exact same thing on all three healers.

Disabling Cleric Stance anywhere in the game's state makes absolutely no sense, but I do think it'd be nice if there was more variety. For example, a healer that focuses on dpsing (e.g Scholar), one that focuses on support (Astrologian), and ones that focus more on healing (White Mage) would probably cut each head of the Cleric Stance Hydra at the same time. I think deep down the main reason people don't like Cleric Stance is purely because they have no choice in the matter whatsoever; every healer follows the same pattern of shield / regen, dpsdpsdpsdps, maybe use a healing cd like Tetragrammaton, then go back to dps. Add in a chance of getting a support buff every 30 seconds if playing Astrologian (though there's no guarantee it'll be a worthwhile one).
Like I said in my first post though, unless they drastically change the way healers function (which they won't), the bottom line is that if you don't want to dps, don't play a healer. While I strongly believe this shouldn't be the case, I won't deny that it's just the way healers are in XIV.

I feel like the devs should be more transparent with healer dps requirements though. Until the words 'healers must dps' come straight from the horse's mouth the debate will never end. Yes, there's a ton of stuff in-game that makes it clear that healers are expected to do damage, but there's nothing that outright says 'Hey, you know that ability Cleric Stance? You should get used to it as soon as you can because you will be expected to deal damage at every given opportunity. Maybe even add in Hall of the Novice training specifically designed to get players used to finding openings for dps. Yes, there's that one NPC that says that you can dps, but anyone who speaks even basic English should know there's a pretty big difference between can and should, and the healer's personal dps has no actual bearing on the victory conditions for said training exercise.

Lastly, I haven't seen it referenced recently, but please for the love of god stop using Sylphie's reluctance to commune with the elementals as evidence that healers should dps. The two are not related in any way and there's much more convincing quotations from the game that get the point across