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.