Cleric Stance Discussion - Is it needed?

[Misutoraru]

It is more than just about switching cleric stance
for me, it took me sometime to understand my party ability and equipment level since I do DF 99.9% of time
and it took me even longer to figure out how my party perform in 24ppl raid
CD on cleric stance is one of the key issue I don't feel comfort about it, since a 8 man party have more variable and higher chance of sudden HP drop
furthermore, keeping myself and everyone alive as a first priority, I have the healing skill in first few slot of my hotbar, and dmg skill in the other end, so I usually use a separate hotbar for dmg/cure skill, this swapping is making me less interest in doing DPS as healer (Since my support skill and AST card have higher priority when I arrange my hotbar)

if cleric stance change into something like Kuribu in Lost City of Amdapor HM, which turn my cure spell into dmg spell, and have a lower CD then I would say it is much more encouraging to do DPS than what cleric stance offer

[Sebazy]

Personally I think Yoshi's team has been hugely uninventive with healing as a whole, cleric stance is just the most immediately obvious example to anyone.

Imo a more significant case where SE have dug themselves into a corner would be the 2hour or boss transition phases they've kept going back to repeatedly. Everytime it ends up with apply bubbles, maybe sprinkle some mitigation ontop of that and afk for a moment. It allows for some flashy effects, but it doesn't help the gameplay along. It'd be a lot more interesting to have this big transitions come as multiple hits more in line with T13's flatten+flare breaths or the phase 1 preys in A12s. You can bubble through them or you can heal them with well timed brute force, either way is far more engaging than a single big hit and it opens up more many more options for groups to get past it.

Here's hoping SE have learnt their lesson and spent a little more time and effort on the healing side of things this expansion.

[RosaLunaCelestia]

Healer without it just heal and not dps at all . Without switch with int its a waste of mp . BUT if we use healer skill on ennemy affect them as dmg its interessant . But that mean some skills are useless :/

[Naunet]

I don't like Cleric Stance (it has a clunky delay and toggling it off can often accidentally result in toggling it back on), and I don't like the constant expectation of healers dpsing. I just want SE to design encounters that require healers to heal for at least 80% of the time.

[Adire]

Cleric stance is needed until DF isn't filled to overflowing with apathetic and terrible DDs.

You can take cleric stance away and make dungeons require heavy healing if you want. I just hope you like healers running out of MP constantly because of MP attrition due to a combination of bad DPS and heavy healing, and dungeon runs that take 2x longer.

[Ogulbuk]

I love Cleric Stance while soloing content.

I don't like it as a mechanic for healers to contribute to groups. Personally, I think they should stop giving DPS jobs "support" tools and instead make healers also support roles. Healing is not a full time job, there is a lot of idle time if that is all you do. Instead, give healers tools that allow you to boost the party/raid damage. Be it Raid buffs or enemy resistance debuffs.

Here 3 quick examples that could be given to each job:
SCH: A soil patch that increases damage taken by anyone in the patch
WHM: Stone III adds a vulnerability debuff on the target, target now takes increased damage.
AST: Not too familiar with them, but give them a card or roll or something that can buff raid damage, duration is refreshed every time the target is healed by any of the Astro's own heals.

All these 3 could either stack or not, they all could provide same numerical net effect, but all would be unique (no homogenization!)

I really don't like the idea of making Damage work off MND for healers, I already don't like that tanks use Vit for damage, it's weird. What is the point of stats if every class will use it so drastically differently? If tanks need more damage, give their gear Str stat as needed, don't just change the meaning of stats, the same goes for healers.

[Aylis]

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

My thoughts are..it isn't broke so theres no reason to fix it. Any other options I feel would result in either time spent to re-overhaul healers, which I feel will accomplish nothing because at the end of it all nothing is going to change nothing. The healers that focus solely on dps in groups will still do as such, they just have one less key to hit. The other is changes to the game world more or so in regards to leveling and MSQ and quest in general progression. Common quest monsters and general open world fodder in 3.0 took painfully longer then it felt like it needed to on a dps role trying to max damage. I don't want to imagine the time to do basic questing would involve without Cleric Stance to help. Taking it away could mean less healers in general due to the extra time it takes needed to progress vs the time it takes a dps class to progress. Changes to the game world to allow healers to level effectively without Stance could lead to month after month of complaints from dps players on how easy the open world is since they can traunce everything by default.

I say leave it as it is.

[Iromi]

I don't like cleric stance at all really. I rather have a challenge with healing, sure leave the damage spells..and let them do decent damage w/o the cleric stance, but really..healer should be focused on healing. I'd actually go back to playing healer if they changed it up...

Why not implement a support class with damage, healing and buffs?^^

[Kaethra]

I don't like cleric stance at all really. I rather have a challenge with healing, sure leave the damage spells..and let them do decent damage w/o the cleric stance, but really..healer should be focused on healing. I'd actually go back to playing healer if they changed it up...

Why not implement a support class with damage, healing and buffs?^^

4 man groups. Even in a 5 man group situation you still only have three roles. The only games that have support level roles are those with 6 man groups.

I'm not opposed to support roles. They really change up dynamics, especially when you have several classes that can fill that role in different ways. But they really do require larger group sizes as their buffs need to make the group do more damage than simply getting another DPS.

[Delmontyb]

...People Will complain...

I think/wonder if this could be applied to everything in life... :S