How do you define (meaningful) choice?

[ty_taurus]

If we are assuming that we must get as close to optimal play as possible, then there are no choices, only right and wrong answers. When operating in this framework, you are correct that Cleric Stance was mandatory because without it you could not achieve optimal results.

However, from the standpoint of a player who is satisfied with "good enough", it was most definitely a choice. Back then I was maining WHM, and I never used Cleric Stance because once you turned Cleric Stance on you weren't able to turn it off for a few seconds, which meant that activating Cleric Stance was a risk, a gamble that nothing would go wrong that needed urgent healing attention during that window. If your team is a well-oiled machine, I can imagine you might be able to confidently take that risk. But I was always playing with random strangers, so I erred on the side of caution so I could better fulfill my role as a healer regardless of what missteps my party made.

Except Cleric Stance was mandatory to achieve any results in regards to DPS at least. When attacking as a healer, there is a total theoretically achievable amount of damage you can do. Obviously, you can also do no damage at all. We can represent this with a scale from 0 to 100, with 100 being that theoretically highest possible damage output.

Any player who wanted to do any amount of DPS contributions at all regardless of whether or not they cared about pushing to try and reach that 100 were required to use Cleric Stance because your damage output was nil without it. In other words, the "choice" to ignore Cleric Stance if you didn't like meant you were never allowed to go above, let's say a 1 on that scale because your damage was really that low. Meanwhile, the choice to play defensively in Stormblood where old Cleric Stance was removed was vastly more realistic. In the example I gave, choosing to reserve your Aetherflow for healing instead of Miasma II + Energy Drain meant you'd still probably hit a far more reasonable number. You don't have to be an optimization obsessed player to not want an all-or-nothing ultimatum.

Because that's what Cleric Stance was, an ultimatum.

As a Stormblood White Mage, you had the freedom to toss out an Aero II or III, or get in a few Stone IVs without that fear of being locked out of healing.

EDIT: Let met put it this way. If you don't want to use old Cleric Stance, you're stuck at 0 and not allowed to go any higher. Perhaps sitting at 0 is 'good enough' for most content since most content has no enrages, but even someone who isn't popping a blood vessel trying to max their parse at any given moment would appreciate the freedom to go above 0. There are people who don't care about reaching 99, but also would like to not sit at 0 and be forced to stay there.