Cleric Stance Discussion - Is it needed?

[Sebazy]

I've been healing in mmos since 1999 (Or even longer if you count anatomy in UO!) and I honestly can't think of another mmo that is so deathly afraid of healer DPS as this. That coupled with what I suspect is a lack of coordination and communication amongst the various content teams handling things. PvP being such a miasma of additional changes and abilities is a prime example of this.

My co healer is going to hate me for this, but personally I think EQ and WoW had healers (on healer specs of course) pegged at about the right level relative to to their DPS brethren, I was linking videos guides here in the early days of 3.0 on how to do 1000+ sustained dps as a SCH in the dungeons which was very competitive with highly competent DPS players which is too much. On the flip side healer single target dps is more in the right sort of territory.

IMO SE need to be a little more shameless and look afield at other mmos that have done a good job of not only enabling healers to do more than just heal, but in some cases actively embracing it. WoW is obviously the biggest yardstick, but for all it's faults I'd say Warhammer Online is a good one to look at with several of the healing classes actively having to get involved in combat rather than merely staring at health bars and working out windows for cleric stance. AST was both a mistake and a missed opportunity imo.

Oh and yes, cleric stance should go, healer DPS abilities should be based off MND and IMO damage should be tuned somewhat downwards in the case of aoe potential. Yes it's a very fair argument to say that it removes some of the skill element from healing, but it'll open up and streamline the job for the masses. Lets be honest now, those that are doing the best numbers with cleric stance as it is will likely still be doing the best numbers with it gone. Removing it would go a long way towards narrowing the gulf in between. Isn't that one of the main aims of 4.0?

[Vivi_Bushido]

Why not just add INT to healing gear?
Or even make it to where healers can't miss while in Cleric Stance so they don't have to waste every slot on Accuracy.

[Risvertasashi]

Late as I am to this thread...

I think you got the wrong takeaway. Yoshi isn't ticked that healers need to cleric stance to DPS, he's ticked that healers are DPSing instead of keeping people alive. If they did take it away, it would be more like PvP, not 'healer damage now scales from MND'.

Realistically, if they changed it, it would probably be restricted to solo (otherwise how would healers complete solo duties?), but since they're not touching it, it's a bit of a moot point...

[SaitoHikari]

The takeaway I got from Yoshi's statement isn't that he hates the fact that healers in this game have the capability to DPS. He only said he hates Cleric Stance. That could mean a number of things, especially coming out of the mouth of a developer.

MOST LIKELY, from a developer standpoint, his statement really means that he hates how Cleric Stance WORKS. The way it currently is, it's a button you either press to DPS or to heal instead. There's no real creativity behind it. Yoshi and the rest of the team probably feels that they designed themselves into a corner with this, because changing it at ALL will piss off a sizable portion of the community one way or another. Get rid of Cleric Stance and severely nerf the ability for healers to DPS, many raid healers would likely quit the game out of sheer boredom. Scholar suddenly becomes a dead class in raids, tossed aside for WHM/Noct AST combo. Get rid of Cleric Stance and simply allow healers to DPS and heal at once, suddenly pacifist healers cry foul over no longer having an excuse to not use the offensive half of their toolkit.

They could try to change it to be a bit more elaborate, but compared to the simple activation that Cleric Stance is now, the only thing that adjusting it would achieve is essentially making something more complicated only for the sake of becoming more complicated.

[Spiroglyph]

Can we stop asking for healer jobs to be simplified please

Most of the time I go into CS because there's literally nothing else to do and I need SOMETHING to do in order to not fall asleep, CS just makes it more interesting

Also... balance issues (the kind that can't be fixed by ast carding), because you'd have jobs able to push out significant DPS AND heal, so something would have to counter that... either lower the potency of damage spells, by a lot, or make it so he incoming damage is more significant to allow for less DPS-windows for the healers

[Squigley]

Simply taking away CS and making the damage spells scale off MND would make healers completely overpowered in PVP. Stormblood is said to do a complete overhaul of PVP, let's see how it goes. But if things will stay close to as they are now, I'd say do the CS removal & MND -thing, but nerf the heal potencies by 30% or so and show the nerf bat to damage spells too. That would solve the "I want more heal intensive dungeons" problem too.

[Mikaeru_Umbranox]

you can give healer short-time (like 5-7 sec) buffs enchancing dps of other party members. various buffs affecting various stats, like ASTR cards, but with shorter duration and lesser CD time.
Make healer to do support instead direct damage.

[Altena]

The biggest issue with Cleric at the moment, in my opinion, is the scaling got wacky when they raised the level cap.

You used to still be able to toss out the odd heal while in Cleric if absolutely necessary and it would be enough, however with the increase in level cap and the wider gap between MND and INT, heals while under Cleric do significantly less in terms of the target's HP percentage than they used to. A heal under cleric does practically nothing and you are at the mercy of the CD if someone takes some unexpected damage and needs an emergency top up.

I can't count the number of times in EXP dungeons where the tank would be full HP, tanking a bunch of trash, so I turn Cleric on to toss out a nuke and they suddenly drop to sub-50% because they don't dodge an AoE or eat a bunch of crits.. This is when the 5sec CD can be rather dangerous.

Currently the only healer that has an emergency heal under cleric is WHM (with Bene). I really wished they didn't change Lustrate to a potency based heal rather than the 20% target's max HP, in addition to this I feel like Dignity should have worked based on % Max HP as well.. Mostly because you had Lustrate as an emergency heal if you couldn't toggle Cleric in time.

The safety net of having an emergency heal under cleric was more encouraging for healers to nuke, mix that with the higher efficiency of Cleric stance heals - it was far less stressful to DPS..

In terms of the cooldown.. I would prefer it if it remained 12secs (old CD) to turn it on, but remove the cooldown entirely to turn it off. Also detach the need to wait to finish your cast before toggling it off. Let us get rid of it mid-cast if we need to as toggling it off in its current state can be rather jarring.

As far as the removal of it is concerned, I don't think that's necessary. However I am indifferent. On one hand I think it would make DPSing on healer rather dull and boring - on the other hand I think it would encourage more healers to DPS which I am a huge advocate of.. So if that's the price to pay for more healers to toss out some nukes then I am fine with it.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

I can handle Cleric Stance fine, but would much prefer if this was removed as I feel it'll make Healer DPS a lot more entertaining and applicable.

[BigRed5392]

OP

yes

It would be 1 less "must have skill" healers will need and make it easier for healers to dps. I find cleric stance counter intuitive, and easy for new players mess up using. And mistimed cleric stances will cause wipes, which is will cause more time in dungeons.

I'm of the opinion that jobs shouldn't be hard to play/master (for obvious reasons such as the multiple healers must dps or they suck threads) and the content itself should be the challenge.

from what my g/f stated, healer dps in ff11 was mnd based.


Also i think this will open up healers to dps more as the non dps healers I talked to, don't like cleric because of causing wipes due to misclick. if anything........

rework cleric to simply add more damage to spells, not flip int/mnd and reduce healing.

I'll go for anything that reduces how cut throat this community can be in game/ on forums.