The grand return of Cleric Stance, with a twist

[Renathras]

As I said, oof, no.

Cleric Stance was a bad ability and was removed from the game for good reason. It caused gaps between top and bottom healers that made balancing encounters for "the average party" nearly impossible, it discouraged damage dealing (this would, too, due to the "fizzle" mechanic), from new healers, and it led to big fights in the community about whether healers should be in cleric more, less, deal damage more, heal more, etc. This would do that same thing, and the community is more prone to fighting about it now.

We aren't ever getting Cleric Stance back as a toggle, and I suspect you recognize that as well.

Aravell is right that if Cleric Stance were to return, it would get the Tank Stance treatment of a 3 sec CD to prevent accidentally activating/deactivating it. But I don't expect to ever see it again. IF it does come back, it won't be as a role action but would be limited to a single Job like SCH or SGE which would probably be designed around it. For example, if SGE's Eukrasia wasn't a single ability but a stance that turned its heals into attacks (and got Kardia ticks), and deactivating it defaulted you to your base heals. In such a case, it wouldn't have attack and heal GCDs at the same time. It would have Cure 1, Adlo, Regen, Medica 1, and Succor (for simplicity of names), and when turning on "Eukrasia Stance", these would be replaced with Dosis, Bigger Dosis (maybe a dualcast mechanic like RDM), DoT, AOE attack, AOE DoT attack. While in this stance you can oGCD heal and you can hot-swap Kardia (no CD or a 1 sec CD on use to allow for swapping), and probably have some kind of AOE Kardia on a 1 or 2 min CD for party healing. Slap on an Energy Drain (Toxicon?) to compete with the AG heals and you've got a "damage dealer focused healer" Job. If damage is too great, you drop out of Eukrasia to do your GCD healing to get the situation back under control before going back into Eurkasia Stance.

If we ever see a Cleric Stance as a toggle type ability again, something like that is probably how it would work. Some continuous passive healing while it's active, oGCD healing options while it's active, but which compete with an extra damage oGCD to force an opportunity cost on use.

[Sebazy]

1) Does the spell fizzle as soon as you press it or at the end of the cast? If it fizzles as soon as you press the button, it could be annoying if you misclick a GCD heal and queue it up which causes a fizzle.

It would basically just hit a 1 second GCD and fail to cast your spell. Imagine fat fingering a dance step instead of Cure 2 and you're there. I did think that another option would be that a fizzle could simply add 1 second to your cast time rather than straight out canceling the cast but I didn't want to overcomplicate the suggestion.

2) Wouldn't it be better to have a 1s recast native to Cleric Stance? One of the biggest problems Cleric Stance had back then was that you could immediately toggle it back on after turning it off, a 1s recast wouldn't hurt at all since you'd only turn it off to cast a GCD heal and every GCD heal already has a recast of 2.5s base (Eukrasia + Prognosis/Diagnosis is 1+1.5).

Yeah, a 1 second recast would absolutely make sense as it entirely puts the double cleric stance thing to bed. I just wanted to keep the original suggestion as simple and easy to digest as possible for reasons that will likely come clear soon.

snip

Are you sure about your assumptions there? I'll give you a chance to actually look at the math. You might want to take it before you make yourself look a little silly.

[fulminating]

As I said, oof, no.

Cleric Stance was a bad ability and was removed from the game for good reason. It caused gaps between top and bottom healers that made balancing encounters for "the average party" nearly impossible, it discouraged damage dealing.

Are you saying that the removal of cleric is what directly caused tighter enrages? After all a narrower gap between the better and worse healers allows ‘fair’ enrages to be tuned significantly more precisely than when the healer contribution is much more variable.