Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[QooEr]

Cleric Stance was a matter of committing to damage... for literally just two GCDs. No more, no less. It extended the current 1-GCD commitment of any given action... by a single GCD.

You also wanted to maximize time in Cleric Stance because (A) there was more damage to be done than healing and (B) the CS lockout began on CS activation, not upon leaving it. You could instantly refresh Cleric Stance, so you never needed to commit to healing for any particular number of GCDs. You just couldn't instantly leave it. (HW Wanderer's Minuet and Gauss Barrel, btw, worked the same way, to their notable detriment.)

meant to say out, not in. as little time out of CS. there, i fixed the typo

[ty_taurus]

thats a bit reductive. with cleric stance the timing of your heals start mattering a lot more. if im exiting cleric stance, i want to do it at the right time and put out as much healing as i can so that i can spend as little time in CS as possible. compare that to just, using heals whenever. oh i used celestial opposition a gcd late, big deal.


moreover i think people arent remembering how CS worked back then. while cleric stance itself had a 5s cooldown, disabling it didnt have a cooldown, so you could be in CS, disable it without weaving anything, use an ogcd heal, and then immediately going back into CS.

The sentence I bolded doesn't make sense to me. The longer you spent outside of CS, the less damage you did, yes... but that's not exclusive to CS. Every GCD heal you perform (excluding the lilies) is DPS lost anyway because you're not attacking when you're using GCD heals. The logic of wanting to maximize the power of your GCD healing when its needed does still exist even if something we almost never have to engage with. And the reason isn't because we don't have CS anymore, it's because we're heavily OGCD focused.

I stand by what I said previously which is that CS is superfluous. What people liked was not the button you pressed before and after using a GCD heal; it was the fact that you had to GCD in the first place, and often no less. If we trimmed down OGCD healing and replaced it with GCD healing, that interaction would return without needing a clunky punishment system.

[QooEr]

The sentence I bolded doesn't make sense to me. The longer you spent outside of CS, the less damage you did, yes... but that's not exclusive to CS. Every GCD heal you perform (excluding the lilies) is DPS lost anyway because you're not attacking when you're using GCD heals. The logic of wanting to maximize the power of your GCD healing when its needed does still exist even if something we almost never have to engage with. And the reason isn't because we don't have CS anymore, it's because we're heavily OGCD focused.

I stand by what I said previously which is that CS is superfluous. What people liked was not the button you pressed before and after using a GCD heal; it was the fact that you had to GCD in the first place, and often no less. If we trimmed down OGCD healing and replaced it with GCD healing, that interaction would return without needing a clunky punishment system.

i understand what youre saying, im just pointing out that with cleric stance the timing itself matters more, because youre more pressured to heal everything in as little time as possible. this includes ogcds. a good example of what i mean was the preys in a12s at the beginning. healing both of those preys in the span of a single gcd using well timed essential dignity and synastry felt very satisfying. without cleric stance, there would be no pressure to try to heal all of that in such a short time frame, and i would probably just be like yeah essential dignity whenever who cares.

Yes, turning it off, like any other toggle-off, did not trigger a further cooldown, but you were locked into it until the cooldown was up. Like so many other toggled buffs, it could not be toggled off until its cooldown had elapsed.

im aware, which is part of why i also think it encouraged more precise timings on heals. im not saying cleric stance was the best thing ever, i just personally enjoyed the implications it had.

[Shurrikhan]

im aware, which is part of why i also think it encouraged more precise timings on heals. im not saying cleric stance was the best thing ever, i just personally enjoyed the implications it had.

Admittedly, I really miss that whenever I saw my co-healer go back into CS, I knew 100% that I was expected to grab the rest of the heals, no communication required. And if I saw Bio, Miasma, and Bio II falling off all in order while I'd only lose a tick of Aero at this point for continuing heal, I could pretty well assume my filler damage was going to take the hit, not the SCH's. It added some fun little interactions between co-healers.

(Of course, most of that could still be had through simply be returned by trimming oGCD healing somewhat and increasing ally-trackable (soft) CD-based GCDs, be they DoTs or otherwise, and slightly amping relative damage intensity towards at levels seen in, say, the Caduceus fight -- which in turn could as easily come from removing the Tank Mastery passive and reducing only the strongest TBs in compensation.)

But since it was literally just one extra GCD of commitment (beyond just... beginning to cast a given heal or attack), I can't say I ever thought its implications --especially for oneself-- were worth its button. I'd say, for instance, that early Rescue had far more implication even for casual dungeon-running, let alone KB prevention in raids, than Cleric Stance ever did. At the personal level of implications, I was sad to lose CS only for as long as it took to imagine (perhaps too optimistically) what could then be added in its place.

I'd offer one further condition to what Taurus mentioned above, though: the DoTs. Because you had multiple and more frequent DoTs, you had multiple and more frequent, essentially, soft CDs by which more powerful ppgcd attacks were available. Those in turn offered shifting relative costs to not only a given GCD of healing, but a given GCD of healing at a particular time.

[MintnHoney]

Mid-night reminder that engagement for healers is still lacking, even amidst the fits being pitched.
Unfortunately, Ultimate did not change that, either, so..........................

[Sebazy]

I've been helping out in P4S as double Whitemage for a couple of evenings, that's been entertaining at least

[Deceptus]

Yes, turning it off, like any other toggle-off, did not trigger a further cooldown, but you were locked into it until the cooldown was up. Like so many other toggled buffs, it could not be toggled off until its cooldown had elapsed.

I understand well played SCH's were pretty busted but I mained SCH in ARR and I always thought that Cleric Stance REALLY played well into the Scholar Fantasy of knowing the battle before hand. Knowing what times would be good to use it and what times would be good to have it turned off.

Lustrate being a percentage of max hp based heal instead of a potency based heal (same with stoneskin) really helped in that aspect because both of them weren't affected by Cleric Stance.

To me, that was good design. Here is this ability that lowers your healing done, here are some tools to mitigate it.

[Aarchie]

This is a topic it can't be that far from the first page.
SE forgets. We don't.

[Shurrikhan]

I understand well played SCH's were pretty busted but I mained SCH in ARR and I always thought that Cleric Stance REALLY played well into the Scholar Fantasy of knowing the battle before hand. Knowing what times would be good to use it and what times would be good to have it turned off.

And if it actually changed the affected skills such that it wasn't just effectively choosing which half of one's buttons to grey out, I'd agree. If I were to try to revamp healers as a role such that each job has more nuance, engagement, and identity, a Light/Dark stance swap would probably be included for Scholar.

But the thing is, outside of early prog, the SCH would scarcely ever GCD heal except during downtime, and no Aetherflow curative/defensive tools were affected by Cleric Stance (nor even Infirmity), so it was only ever toggled off briefly for downtime, the likes of HW Darkside, except even more rarely. It did very, very little.

[MintnHoney]

This is a topic it can't be that far from the first page.
SE forgets. We don't.

SE doesn't forget, they cover up. There's a big difference.