Cleric Stance Discussion - Is it needed?

[Cabalabob]

I think it would be interesting to keep cleric stance, but remove the INT and MND swap. So cleric's stance would become just the 10% damage increase and 20% healing reduction. And make healer dps work off of mnd.

This would lower the barrier for entry into healer dps as you could dps without cleric's and all you'd be missing out on is 10% damage. And then when you're comfortable with a fight you can start stance dancing to get that extra damage with the risk that you're now healing 20% less, but 20% less isn't quite such a huge deal as the current lowered MND AND 20% less. So even if you mess up and get stuck in cleric's your heals won't be near useless.

The only issue I see is, as usual, scholar being tied to arcanist. I don't know if it's possible for them to separate the DoTs into being INT on SMN/ARN while being MND on SCH.

[Kaethra]

The only issue I see is, as usual, scholar being tied to arcanist. I don't know if it's possible for them to separate the DoTs into being INT on SMN/ARN while being MND on SCH.

That's easy, scale off of whichever is higher, but heals only scale off MND.

[Kaurie]

My thoughts are that I also dislike Cleric Stance. I'd prefer if damage scaled off MND and Healers damage was notably tuned down. It seems odd to suggest that the dev team wants healers to focus healing in group content, but then provide powerful AoE spells to healers, as most outdoor content (leveling, beast tribes etc.) involves single target DPS.

I'd much rather have a healer that focused on buff-combos. This would be similar to Astrologians buff-focused play, but instead of buffs determined by RNG, they're determined by combos. Cast this spell after benefic, and it gives a bonus arrow-type effect. etc. The idea isn't fully fleshed out, so I can't go into full details, but I think focusing on comboing your spells to provide maximum buffs to your team and maximum heals would be a lot better than stance dancing to DPS. In the end it could provide the same amount of Raid DPS, but would be more support-focused. Further to this, casting buffs on your allies could combo your heals to be more potent, thus causing a beneficial relationship between healing and buffing that encourages the player to do both.

[Ayer2015]

Personally, I would prefer if the amount of healing required in standard content was higher.... to the point where CC is actually needed again and healers would rarely have the opportunity to dps unless over geared.
That said, I highly doubt this will ever happen.

[Alistaire]

Personally, I would prefer if the amount of healing required in standard content was higher.... to the point where CC is actually needed again and healers would rarely have the opportunity to dps unless over geared.
That said, I highly doubt this will ever happen.

Raid-caliber dungeon runs? Yeah, highly doubt that will or should ever happen.

[Ayer2015]

But mythic dungeons are so much fun in WoW.....
This game needs systems like that. Its not like they are strenuous on the dev team either given all the assets are the same.

[Alistaire]

Long as they're not the only option yeah. But they've claimed before it's too much work, so...

[Ayer2015]

everything is apparently too much work it seems for our devs

[Feidam]

Cleric stance should go imo. Use mind as the healers dps stat as well. Cleric stance is just tedious imo. I'd rather they change healing so that just trying to dps is a risk and tweak from there.

[Sebazy]

I've been healing in mmos since 1999 (Or even longer if you count anatomy in UO!) and I honestly can't think of another mmo that is so deathly afraid of healer DPS as this. That coupled with what I suspect is a lack of coordination and communication amongst the various content teams handling things. PvP being such a miasma of additional changes and abilities is a prime example of this.

My co healer is going to hate me for this, but personally I think EQ and WoW had healers (on healer specs of course) pegged at about the right level relative to to their DPS brethren, I was linking videos guides here in the early days of 3.0 on how to do 1000+ sustained dps as a SCH in the dungeons which was very competitive with highly competent DPS players which is too much. On the flip side healer single target dps is more in the right sort of territory.

IMO SE need to be a little more shameless and look afield at other mmos that have done a good job of not only enabling healers to do more than just heal, but in some cases actively embracing it. WoW is obviously the biggest yardstick, but for all it's faults I'd say Warhammer Online is a good one to look at with several of the healing classes actively having to get involved in combat rather than merely staring at health bars and working out windows for cleric stance. AST was both a mistake and a missed opportunity imo.

Oh and yes, cleric stance should go, healer DPS abilities should be based off MND and IMO damage should be tuned somewhat downwards in the case of aoe potential. Yes it's a very fair argument to say that it removes some of the skill element from healing, but it'll open up and streamline the job for the masses. Lets be honest now, those that are doing the best numbers with cleric stance as it is will likely still be doing the best numbers with it gone. Removing it would go a long way towards narrowing the gulf in between. Isn't that one of the main aims of 4.0?