The grand return of Cleric Stance, with a twist

[Aravell]

Is that including Rapture/Solace casts as 'GCD healing uptime', or is it not/a non WHM log being looked at, because if it's a WHM and Rapture's being counted, we kinda have to discount it somewhat, as the pitch posed for 'make healers heal more' seems to be to incentivize more use of Medica or Cure 3. We can already handle a lot with Rapture, and people are complaining, so as long as it remains 'solvable with Rapture' it's not enough healing required. In that sense, Rapture is like the WHM equivalent of OGCD healing

SCH/AST comp, our combined total GCDs spent healing on J Waves is about 65%. So 80% would have to be a lot more intense than J Waves are, is that really a good idea?

[Renathras]

I understand what you're saying,...

I actually do appreciate this (and a second near-complement? In one day?? It's like all my namedays have come at once!), but there's a second part to that you're missing: Boss autos/crits.

And that, good god, oGCDs would have to be toned down more. Well, the long lasting/HoT ones, anyway. Though I think that's more a HoT issue in general. They were designed to be MP efficient when you could afford to take smaller heals over longer periods vs the higher MP cost of heals that you needed right now. But that doesn't translate well to oGCDs where the cost is no different than another oGCD with an equal CD. Physis has the same opportunity cost as Tetragrammaton, and yet is considerably more powerful overall. Also goes into some other balance issues, for example, Asylum being powerful was more constraining when the field effect didn't eclipse the battlefield.

Again, let's say you do that, and lower content like dungeons or EX trials are fun and engaging, entirely because of the increased healing required...

I'm a bit curious, do you believe that healing potencies can be changed but boss damage...cannot?

You might suggest that they can, but it would be too much work, and yet we've already had it done in the game in the past. And that's ignoring the Echo effect they granted people that liked to roll old content unsynced before the stat squish to maintain their relative power level to the content.

In other words, encounter design and heal potencies would all be changed, not one while the other remains static.

Anyway, as I say, rather discuss in the other thread where people like IDPL aren't heckling folks.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

So, CMIIW. Am I understanding the tooltip will look something like this?

Cleric Stance (On)
Ability | 1s Recast
Enters a Cleric Stance, increasing damage dealt by 30%. If a healing spell is cast while under the effect of Cleric Stance, cast time is increased by 1 second and removes Cleric Stance. Cleric Stance will be unavailable for 10s.

Cleric Stance (Off)
Ability | 1s Recast
Removes Cleric Stance.

Both actions shares a hotkey so no need to be put on 2 diff slots.

Does that look right?

Having tasted the pseudo cleric stance in BSF in form of LSS and have been abusing it to my heart's content, I will absolutely love this.

[...]I just want anyone who asks this to go and do either P10S, and do Harrowing Hell there, or do P1 of TEA. Imagine that healing amount required, but that is now what EX roulette looks like too. That, is 'healing required in a way that means I need to heal all the time' and I don't expect it'd go over well with... well, most players, really.

Honestly, after getting into some less common but nonetheless existing P10N (Yes, normal) paired with two DF healers who's incapable to heal through the NORMAL Harrowing Hell, I would suggest people to start from there and imagine a 100% uptime of THAT before they even ask for a 'make me heal all the time' lol.

We're going lower, aye... /playdead

[Sebazy]

And that, good god, oGCDs would have to be toned down more.

In that regard I actually think things aligned really quite well. Spending 2/3rds of our GCD time healing even when a hot and our short cooldown oGCDs are being factored in is a great result, that gives us enough headroom beyond that to catch back up once you start factoring things like vulnerability stacks, people eating avoidable damage, greed strats etc. This aspect is fine. No issues here in my eyes.

Where the problems arise is with relative healing pressure. If we take a 10 second snapshot of Harrowing Hell Normal, we get 5 hits in that time frame, ~5500 damage taken per second to be dealt by with 2 healers in a mechanic that is primarily a 'plant your feet and mash out heals' until Savage introduces movement and positional puzzles into the equation.

With my rough math simulation, we're at 3000 damage taken per second to be dealt with by a single healer and we've not even broached the subject of what happens once you add mechanics and role responsibilities into the mix there. If you stop the damage to allow healers to focus on a mechanic we're right back to square one again. If you don't stop the damage and you have much of anything that forces your healers to run around to resolve something, you've pretty much made Barb (Ultimate).

Lowering our HPS capabilities further relative to our HP pools doesn't really work like I suspect you may think it does as well. The net result there is that you end up being able to 'borrow' time as a resource by banking against much larger and deeper HP pools before compressing healing time into tighter windows by way of healing potency buffs and chunky burst heals like Cure III. It puts us straight back into square 1 unless you also neuter our burst healing potential. Which also opens up it's own can of worms (See healers using low level heals as bread and butter in vanilla WoW).

The net result of all of this is that yes, the math does math, but you end up with round the clock J Waves/Normal Harrowing Hells to get there.

So, CMIIW. Am I understanding the tooltip will look something like this?

Cleric Stance (On)
Ability | 1s Recast
Enters a Cleric Stance, increasing damage dealt by 30%. If a healing spell is cast while under the effect of Cleric Stance, cast time is increased by 1 second and removes Cleric Stance. Cleric Stance will be unavailable for 10s.

Cleric Stance (Off)
Ability | 1s Recast
Removes Cleric Stance.

Both actions shares a hotkey so no need to be put on 2 diff slots.

Does that look right?

Having tasted the pseudo cleric stance in BSF in form of LSS and have been abusing it to my heart's content, I will absolutely love this.

If we go with a fizzle stalling the GCD rather than outright canceling the failed cast, yeah I think those tooltips are spot on. If we go with a fizzle causing the failed heal to not cast necessitating a recast after the GCD rolls round, I guess it would look more like Mudra's tooltip, something like:

'If a healing spell is cast whilst under the effect of cleric stance, the spell will fail to cast causing a brief delay'

[Post]

I'd dig a return of Cleric Stance like this or in some form for at least one healer. I suppose it's no surprise but I've missed it since it was made into a minor DPS cooldown in StB. I don't think it was a mistake; like most their changes they're pretty deliberate. I just don't think they think about how it all feels when they keep removing stuff to streamline every job but don't put in reasons for things to be streamlined.

I just want anyone who asks this to go and do either P10S, and do Harrowing Hell there, or do P1 of TEA. Imagine that healing amount required, but that is now what EX roulette looks like too. That, is 'healing required in a way that means I need to heal all the time' and I don't expect it'd go over well with... well, most players, really.

I think I hear your point, but I really do think they could start making trash harder to heal. I don't think expecting a tank to be able to solo heal themselves through wall to wall pulls is healthy for the fun of dungeons nor for getting new healers comfy with some pressure (keeping veterans entertained aside). Trash doesn't have to be as hard hitting as Savage Criterion, but that's actually the most pressed I've felt healing since like... t1 or Ifrit Ex. I found it fun.

Early early on, Dungeon trash could be expected to kill tanks. Brayflox Longstop , Qarn and its 100% max HP final stings, Stone Vigil and the multi-Aevis/Ice Sprite pulls... This continued only until they dialed things back in 2.2 after Amdapor Keep and Pharos Sirius were routinely too hard for random groups of entirely new players, but like, now the jobs are much easier to play and more powerful/group supportive. They could return things to that level and it probably wouldn't be as difficult, but it might make things like Harrowing Hell not blindside so many healers.

Heck, maybe if the occasional fight just began with a heavy healing check (instead of always ending with them), more healers would have opportunities to learn how to deal with high damage in less high-stakes settings.

[Eastwall]

It's a nice idea, but have you thought through what that actually entails?

A run of the mill dungeon that requires us to actually make use of our kit and doesn't give us time to DPS would be pretty bonkers without a complete across the board rework of our entire healing kits.

Again, don't get me wrong, I'd be all for it. I genuinely would love a slice of that. But every time I see this suggestion, I genuinely don't think that people appreciate just how much incoming damage it would take to actually force us to heal all the time *AND* how much of a knife edge it would be actually sustaining our MP through that.

I admit the reason l want that is my experience from playing other games. I guess l like more reactive healing. I maintain offensive buff, And when something goes wrong, l heal them. Depending on the fight, l adjust my utility skills to handle them.

[Rithy255]

Just make dungeons in a way that l need to heal all the time... I want to play healer, not a green dps.

I think a nice compromise Is letting healers just gcd heal actively a lot more (I don't think healing 100% of the time would be fun either for me).
I'm certainly one for healers Healing a lot more then current, as that actually makes optimising out DPS more fun for me rather then the 100% DPS uptime we got.

I don't think Cleric stance would fix healer at all, they wouldn't simply use healing gcds... like they already dont, I feel like this would also just punish white mage for no reason compared to other healers.

[Rongway]

I guess it would look more like Mudra's tooltip, something like:

'If a healing spell is cast whilst under the effect of cleric stance, the spell will fail to cast causing a brief delay'

Maybe just say the spell gets interrupted, since that's a term we already have. The way you're describing your proposed "fizzle" it sounds like having a Paralysis debuff that only affects healing Spells and is guaranteed to interrupt the first healing spell before dropping off. I would probably also just list the recast as 10s in general.

Cleric Stance
Ability Cast:Instant Recast:10s
Increases damage dealt by 30%. Attempting to cast a healing spell will remove the effect of Cleric Stance and the spell will be interrupted. Removing Cleric Stance in this way will trigger its recast timer.

Release Cleric Stance
Ability Cast:Instant Recast:1s
Cancels the effect of Cleric Stance and reduces the recast time by 10s.

Personally I'd rather see the less punishing one where the spell still casts but it removes Cleric Stance and locks you out for 10s but that's how I'd word it if I wanted to describe the fizzle effect.

[benji42]

Honestly this sounds cool. I don't even think all the healers need it. I can imagine this ability would be really fun with the lily system! Switching into a mode that makes misery even more powerful would be very fun. Maybe you can even get a momentary healing bonus from not fizzling the stance? I think that would also fit well with the lily system. Plus, you could fizzle your lily on purpose and not loose any MP whilist leaving the stance. I think this would work really well in WHM's slow and methodical playstyle.

[Sylvain]

It's important to note that unless you fizzle, Cleric Stance has no recast time, you can drop it, cast a Medica II or Lily, then recast straight back into Cleric akin to how it used to be.

Then what's the point? it's like the boringest mech ever, especially on a whm.
I remove it before every gcd heal and recast it after? It's just extra work for 0 benefit, it's not dynamic or anything, it just makes healing with gcd more tedious. (And tbh it's not like we need more reason to avoid gcd healing in that game...)

SCH wouldn't care one bit, they do 1 gcd for deploy once in a blue moon during some EX trial and maybe on 1 or 2 mech in late savages. More often in ultimate, still, that'd be an extra weave once every 2min for SCH.
AST are mostly the same altough I feel we neutral sect even more rarely.
SGE... I guess that would kill pneuma somewhat, you either get the full healing or the full damage...
WHM... Ooohh the fun, weaving clerci stance after EVERY SINGLE LILIE

Like... you proposed something that barely affects 3 out of the 4 healers, they probably can entirely ignore it for about 90% of the current content, and make WHM the worst healer to play.