Should Cleric Stance be disabled in party instances?

[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.

[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

[Ilenya]

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.

I'm confused. We know they don't take healer DPS into account for end-game fights, and the newbie thing that I cannot recall the name of says (paraphrased) "If there is no healing to be done, don't be afraid to toss out a few attacks."

What more do you want?

[Cynfael]

I'm confused. We know they don't take healer DPS into account for end-game fights, and the newbie thing that I cannot recall the name of says (paraphrased) "If there is no healing to be done, don't be afraid to toss out a few attacks."

What more do you want?

Besides, at this point in the game we are fooling ourselves if we think it really matters what the devs "intended" regarding healer DPS. When you code it into the game, the players do what they will with it. The devs have had years to observe the ramifications of their design choices, and not a single response has been to scale back healer DPS abilities and their effectiveness except when it was an overall game balance issue, as it was when Holy received the same successive target nerf as Flare. If anything they went on to provide more DPS options and upgrades for 51-60.

Anyway, I don't think the devs are well known for telling players how they must play the game. There is unlikely to be any further Word of God declaring either that all healers who utterly refuse to DPS effectively (read: using CS) in group content are terrible or that they should be vindicated in their choice to do less.