Cleric Stance Discussion - Is it needed?

[Delmontyb]

So at PAX East this weekend, Yoshi-P talked about how he hates Cleric Stance, but he feels that people would be upset if they took it away. So I wonder... if they just made Healer Damage Calculations based off of the MND stat, would that be better?

I'm just curious after having put some thought into the question. This would allow for healing and damage without the stance dance.

So do we still want the Stance Dance? Or would something else be better?

Thanks,

[Emstidor]

I'm don't think stance dancing is the end-be-all of exciting mechanics, but I feel a straight damage rotation with no other mechanics would be a litttle boring.

[Ghishlain]

It would make things simpler, so it might encourage new players to try to DPS more frequently, which would be good as the best healers are those optimizing their GCDs appropriately for the scenarios.

A side effect to the removal of Cleric Stance is that it would create an even larger expectation for healer's to DPS since there's no "barrier" that would inhibit healing while DPSing.

[EDIT] The other thing the removal of Cleric Stance would do is reduce healer DPS by about 10% since Cleric Stance also provides a boost to damage, though that could easily be fixed by bumping potency values by 10% too.

Overall I wouldn't be opposed to it but I feel Yoshi's statement indicates both a deeper community issue and game design issue.

[Tsunenori]

I've always enjoyed stance dancing, but I would be willing to sacrifice it if it meant more people were comfortable throwing in damage when they felt like it. I know quite a few players who self-admittedly can't handle the stance dancing but wish they could and throw out some DPS here and there without it.

I think the better question to ask is if stance dancing is the only thing keeping healers engaging for a number of players then maybe there's a deeper design problem.

[Serilda]

I honestly don't really like it and don't care whether it's there or not. However, until they fix healers and give us more proper support abililties and/or make us need to heal more consistently throughout content, we absolutely need the ability to DPS outside of solo content in order for most of us to stay sane. If they can fix the actual underlying issues I wouldn't object to them rebalancing Cleric Stance to make it more interesting mechanically.

(I would, however, not object to the English name being changed as I swear every new CNJ goes through a phase of not really understanding whether they should use the stance when healing or not. Completely avoidable with a less confusing name.)

[Blazinhart]

IMO If you take away Cleric Stance, you're taking Away the only Challenge mechanic in Healers. People Will complain that healers are boring, some Will complain that healers are only attacking and forgeting to heal, and others Will complain even more that healers aren't dpsing. So no, don't take It away

[Ririta]

I'm not a fan of how Cleric Stance works currently. I mean, that would be like if tanks couldn't tank with their DPS stance on.

Cleric Stances should stay, stance swapping is fun. But it should be less punishing.

[Tsunenori]

IMO If you take away Cleric Stance, you're taking Away the only Challenge mechanic in Healers. People Will complain that healers are boring, some Will complain that healers are only attacking and forgeting to heal, and others Will complain even more that healers aren't dpsing. So no, don't take It away

This is what I mean in my post when I say:

I think the better question to ask is if stance dancing is the only thing keeping healers engaging for a number of players then maybe there's a deeper design problem.

Not jumping on you Blazinhart, but this sentiment is treating the symptom instead of the problem. Saying Cleric Stance shouldn't be taken away because it's the only challenge and it'll become boring is leaving a band-aid on a wound that really could use some stitches instead.

[Launched]

If you remove Cleric Stance you remove the risk from dpsing, so healer DPS would have to be nerfed which sucks for anyone that already uses Cleric Stance.

[Faliandra]

Cleric Stances should stay, stance swapping is fun. But it should be less punishing.

CS used to have a recast timer of 12 seconds, and they did decrease it to 5 seconds, which IMO was a very encouraging step towards healers wanting to dps
but scared to mess up....cos 12 seconds is a loooong time. Sometimes, even 5 secs can be. Maybe they could decrease it some more so you can swap anytime?