Cleric Stance Discussion - Is it needed?

[Ultimatecalibur]

CS used to have a recast timer of 12 seconds, and they did decrease it to 5 seconds, which IMO was a very encouraging step towards healers wanting to dps
but scared to mess up....cos 12 seconds is a loooong time. Sometimes, even 5 secs can be. Maybe they could decrease it some more so you can swap anytime?

They decreased the cooldown not to get healers to dps but to lessen the punishment caused by the post-50 split of DoM gear into Casting and Healing. A minor but significant penalty of 20 main stat for 12s at level 32 when leveling became a major penalty of 221 at i90 when when DoM gear split in Healing and Casting post-50.

[Faliandra]

They decreased the cooldown not to get healers to dps but to lessen the punishment caused by the post-50 split of DoM gear into Casting and Healing. A minor but significant penalty of 20 main stat for 12s at level 32 when leveling became a major penalty of 221 at i90 when when DoM gear split in Healing and Casting post-50.

i never stated that it was changed SO that healers dps more, i said it was a very encouraging step for it. Purpose or not, it sure helped ME starting to manage my stance dancing (12 secs is pretty frightening when youre still a new player)

[Grimr]

As a healer i barely use Cleric stance outside of soloing. I don't use it at all inside the dungeons simply because if tanks takes critical dmg and I'm in cleric stance that tank is dead. If i dps it is when the tank is stable but i won't use cleric stance to dps. I absolutely hate it when healers use cleric stance and "attempt" to heal my tank. They can not. Even with cleric stance the dps doesn't compare to my blm.

[Lexia]

Even with cleric stance the dps doesn't compare to my blm.

That why I call a healer (mainly whm) a second class blm when they dpsing.

[Clethoria]

As someone aiming for WHM, I use it all the time in PotD when healing is at lowest priority or PvE and I'd rather kill the mob over healing myself.

[Tsunenori]

IMO If you take away Cleric Stance, you're taking Away the only Challenge mechanic in Healers. People Will complain that healers are boring, some Will complain that healers are only attacking and forgeting to heal, and others Will complain even more that healers aren't dpsing. So no, don't take It away

This is what I mean in my post when I say:

I think the better question to ask is if stance dancing is the only thing keeping healers engaging for a number of players then maybe there's a deeper design problem.

Not jumping on you Blazinhart, but this sentiment is treating the symptom instead of the problem. Saying Cleric Stance shouldn't be taken away because it's the only challenge and it'll become boring is leaving a band-aid on a wound that really could use some stitches instead.

[Launched]

If you remove Cleric Stance you remove the risk from dpsing, so healer DPS would have to be nerfed which sucks for anyone that already uses Cleric Stance.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I don't necessarily like it since stance dancing is both fun and provides a small challenge. Nevertheless, I think removing it would be beneficial unless they intend to increase healing requirements. With the current DPS meta only likely to become worse, this is a simple adjustment that would make it easier on healers too nervous to DPS. I would prefer they simply make healing more of a requirement. Alas, I have my doubts they will.

[Duelle]

If you remove Cleric Stance you remove the risk from dpsing, so healer DPS would have to be nerfed which sucks for anyone that already uses Cleric Stance.

Not necessarily.

If Cleric Stance were to go away, what would need to change is pace of combat and damage taken overall. DPS skills would likely have to scale off MND rather than INT (since WHM, SCH and AST have to solo their quests like every other job), but what should happen to balance that out is reduce the number of opportunities to DPS and waste GCDs.

This is where it becomes a branching path because pace of combat can be changed in several ways. One way would be to make MP conservation critical to healing (meaning you don't want to waste MP, and if you do use MP it'll be for heals because you going OOM = wipe). Another would be to reduce the strength of outgoing heals so that you spend more GCDs healing (instant-cast DoTs would be fine to squeeze in now and then, but you wouldn't have stretches of time casting Stone/Malefic/Broil unless your tank is notably overgearing the content). Increasing damage taken and encouraging people to take as little damage as possible via mechanics would also be an option.

[Hyperia]

I'm ok with CS, what I want is it put in the GCD so I can't accidentally turn it back on when turning it off. So many dead tanks because of that...