Cleric Stance Discussion - Is it needed?

[Ogulbuk]

Not necessarily. The formula does not have to be entirely linear, nor over-penalize that there are people at 80%, it can also weight roles. It's the kind of thing that could be designed carefully so that you encourage the healer to always keep everyone at least at 80%, with a minor incentive on top for keeping everyone at 100%, major incentive to not let anyone be at 20%.

[Elleia]

Not necessarily. The formula does not have to be entirely linear, nor over-penalize that there are people at 80%, it can also weight roles. It's the kind of thing that could be designed carefully so that you encourage the healer to always keep everyone at least at 80%, with a minor incentive on top for keeping everyone at 100%, major incentive to not let anyone be at 20%.

Not sure I like this idea either, it seems like it might lead to lots of overheal as both healers try to scramble and top the party even when it's not needed right away. Could also fall into the trap of one healer solo-healing while the other goes full-time DPS, with the DPS healer yelling at his co healer to top the party faster to keep up the damage buff. Not to mention server ticks would make this very annoying, having to wait for your buff to come back on even though the party's been topped.

[Zhamkyong]

Yes it is! The GCDs are also very similar in speed in WildStar as in FFXIV. Didn't Yoshi say they were putting in a dodge-roll or something? Or was it just suggested? Either way it's a fully implemented mechanic in Wildstar and it works well alongside the high intensity fights and healing demands!

I think the dev team can do more with healer dps and getting some inspo from high action games and how they do it could be a stepping point.

The way i see it thinking about it calmly, it's like they tried to set a middle ground between a FF game and a action-based MMO. Not only Wildstar, a lot of MMO on this day use that kind of 'rotation based skills' + dodge movement to give an intense feeling in their battle system. Also those games have a smaler ability bar, 10 slots or something like that? We have enough buttons as it is (too much for my liking xD) so i dont know how it would fare a dodge system in the game. I know it will be fun adjusting to it in certain combat areas where you die by falling off a cliff.

[Ogulbuk]

Could also fall into the trap of one healer solo-healing while the other goes full-time DPS, with the DPS healer yelling at his co healer to top the party faster to keep up the damage buff.

Already been in raids where one of the healers refuse to turn off Cleric. As for overhealing, well, at least that makes sure the healer is doing his primary job, and is not unlike people that refresh all their 30 second DoTs every 9 seconds.

If I was to nitpick the idea myself, Id say the biggest issue with it is solo play, when Cleric is the most needed, you are unlikely to be full HP because you actually got agro.

[Marxam]

So at PAX East this weekend, Yoshi-P talked about how he hates Cleric Stance, but he feels that people would be upset if they took it away. So I wonder... if they just made Healer Damage Calculations based off of the MND stat, would that be better?

I'm just curious after having put some thought into the question. This would allow for healing and damage without the stance dance.

So do we still want the Stance Dance? Or would something else be better?

Thanks,

He's just mad because he went a little crazy with the "dps push" designed bosses and content. If he's really adamant about the dmg when in cleric then he should just nerf it like he did with tank damage and scaling. Don't get angry at us when you clearly design content that rewards pure dps over proper execution of mechanics.

[Elleia]

Already been in raids where one of the healers refuse to turn off Cleric. As for overhealing, well, at least that makes sure the healer is doing his primary job, and is not unlike people that refresh all their 30 second DoTs every 9 seconds.

If I was to nitpick the idea myself, Id say the biggest issue with it is solo play, when Cleric is the most needed, you are unlikely to be full HP because you actually got agro.

I'd rather they increase the healing needed in fights for Stormblood to help reduce idle/DPS time than force players to overheal the party so they can DPS better. The idea of a damage buff increasing as the party's health increases just seems unnecessarily clunky to me. It's an interesting idea but I'd rather them figure out something else if they really want to cut cleric stance.

[Ogulbuk]

I'd rather they increase the healing needed in fights for Stormblood to help reduce idle/DPS time than force players to overheal the party so they can DPS better. The idea of a damage buff increasing as the party's health increases just seems unnecessarily clunky to me. It's an interesting idea but I'd rather them figure out something else if they really want to cut cleric stance.

It is impossible to permanently increase how much healing is needed in an RPG. Progression will continue. EX Roulettes require iLVL of 230, if you go there with a group exactly of that level, you may indeed find that the healer needs to stick to healing. If everyone is i270, the healer will have idle time. Take those players to any other lvl 60 dungeon, even more so.

Personally, I used to love a dead MMO called City of Heroes, it was a balance mess, BUT it had some good ideas. One of them is that "healers" didn't exist per se, instead you had support, healing just happened to be a support tool. A "healer" wasn't just healing, he was also buffing players and de-buffing enemies, and also doing some damage, all while also healing (if they had to.)

This is a detour even from what I said about a passive damage boost while everyone is full HP (I was trying to stay on topic) but ideally, Healers would simply be improved by giving them more support tools OTHER than healing.

I posted this somewhere else: Imagine if SCH had a vulnerability soil that boosts everyone else's damage, WHM Stone landed a vulnerability on the target and AST was able to give everyone a haste or damage buff, and all these would require their own meta-games to sustain.

[JunseiKei]

He's just mad because he went a little crazy with the "dps push" designed bosses and content. If he's really adamant about the dmg when in cleric then he should just nerf it like he did with tank damage and scaling. Don't get angry at us when you clearly design content that rewards pure dps over proper execution of mechanics.

Might have been mentioned somewhere else, and I don't feel like combing 13 pages to quote someone, but:
Old, but relevant.

Let's get right into it - we've seen many posts from readers relating to end-game content. When you go through development, how do you decide how to set the difficulty? For example, the amount of DPS required for each particular content.

Yoshida: When we make battle content, first we determine a minimum assumed item level required to clear. Then, we determine the total amount of party damage required to clear, taking a minimal amount of damage from tanks and healers into account during this calculation.

What do you mean by minimal?

Yoshida: Basically it's the damage from tank auto-attacks and the basic skill rotation used in order to maintain hate. We add this to the party damage needed. However, we often use zero in the calculation for damage required from healers. In other words, we only take into account the amount of damage necessary to perform as a tank or a healer and we don't take them into account as actively participating in attacking. For the clear assumption on DPS, we calculate the 100% value for the item level and we reduce that by 10 to 15 percent for the amount required to clear.

But it's often actually the case that healers do participate in attacking.

Yoshida: Well, the calculations are based on the item level assumed during development.

Ah, and that's different from the minimum item level required to try the content.

Yoshida: Yes. So if you try to clear it at a lower item level, it will be necessary for tanks and healers to participate in attacking. The difference in skill levels for DPS players will be a factor. If you're below the 85 to 90 percent damage assumption, you'll have to fill in the gap with DPS from tanks and healers. If the DPS work together and think about total party damage, it may also help to break through.

So healers may need to participate in the attack if there wouldn't otherwise be enough. Well, even if there is, healers may also attack just to provide a margin [for error].

Yoshida: Yeah. Especially in Savage because it is difficult to deal damage while handling the mechanics I think there is some opportunity there.

It may be difficult to deal DPS close to the 100% result. By the way, we also got some posts asking if the members who worked on developing the battles had cleared the end-game content themselves during development.

Added the red text and underlined super important things people tend to overlook in the grand scheme. Healer DPS is there to pick up the slack for incorrect handling of mechanics (taking too much time or sending the wrong DPS to handle it, etc.), lazy and under-geared players and attempts. The same may be said for your OT and MT that actually do DPS increasing rotations.

The only real flaw that pops out to me on this interview from over a year is that healers would more likely need to DPS if the party is closer to the minimal ilevel requirement. I can't help but think if everyone is closer to the item level requirement, there'd be even less time to heal as tanks may take more damage that otherwise not be quite as harsh. (IE: Couple of times, I've seen OT in Sophia EX get 1 shot at minimum ilevel, even with CDs up. They would live with extra mitigation like virus, stoneskin, adloquium and/or disable, but barely 25k HP really needs the extra compensation).

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Still, I always gathered cleric stance to be a solution to an issue that plagues the healer class in other MMOs: solo leveling. Not only does FFXIV make it pretty easy to level, it's not quite as painful as it is in other MMOs. It doesn't take nearly double or triple the time for a healer to kill something thanks to cleric stance.

[Kallera]

I think there is a problem with yoshi's logic here, at least in retard to heavensward and job mechanics.

So these calculations aren't even based on a party doing the content at minimum ilvl? just dps? Why are other factors like hp not considered? Or why are they hard enrages instead of soft enrages like in some turns of coil? In addition, jobs need to build into max damage, which is lost if the boss decided to not be targetable.

No wonder night every fight in HW turned into dps races that had people dying instead of trying to recover. Surely something else can be done.

[JunseiKei]

So these calculations aren't even based on a party doing the content at minimum ilvl? in addition, jobs need to build into max damage, which is lost if the boss decided to not be targetable.

Right. Minimum ilevel requirements are apparently for the absolute minimum you can have and still have a shot at clearing (made all the worse with those that further go into things under-geared).

Most jobs have tools to compensate or players eventually learn when not to use certain cooldowns for those down periods. Learning when to not use things in accordance to the fight is also part of learning any given fight. This is also where sites like FFlogs becomes increasingly handy to compare against other players. You can see when they use what at any given point in a fight to help optimize your own play.