Bring Cleric stance back

[Melorie]

Why? So we have to press one button before spamming glare ad infinitum?

I like the stances and managing them and would love to see more of "get a better reward (damage) if you're able to time your healing kit well" to healer's kit, but I don't think cleric stance would even remotely help the current healer state. Besides, it was a nightmare if you had bad ping.

[Averax]

I wasn't around when this was implemented , what did cleric stance do?

Healers used to scale with intelligence and mind, mind affected the damage of their attacks, and mind the potency of their heals. Now it's just mind that affects everything.

Less a problem early on, as gear had both int and mind on it for healers and casters to share, but healer specific gear only hand mind on it later in the game.

"How did healers do any damage then?" You might ask. Cleric stance.

Cleric stance was an ability that, once toggled, swapped your int and mind values, and provided 10% bonus damage on top of that. In a perfect world, healers would turn it on when damage needed to be dealt, and turn it off when healing needed to be done.... we did not live in a perfect world. It had a 5 second recast timer. So once you pressed it, you could do virtually no healing for 5 whole seconds. Someone gets dunked on immediately after you pressed it, or you fat finger it on accident during a period of heavy damage? You're screwed, they're screwed, everybody's screwed.

It used to be fine for SCH back in the day because Lustrate didn't scale with anything and just healed a flat 25% of the target's HP. Similar to how benediction heals a fixed % of health. For WHM it was more catastrophic to mess up because benediction was/is on a 3 minute cooldown and it's all you had. And for AST you had nothing of the sort to circumvent a cleric stance mixup at all.

There was also the culture of main heal and off heal back then for a bit with it, iirc. Especially in just pugs. Main healer would leave it off for the most part, and the off healer would just weave in and out as needed.

[Shougun]

It's subjective, and I can hear arguments of thematic at least, but I just don't think it was that fun even when done right.

I used to tank and cleric dance (or just tank without stance at all when possible), but I just felt like it was a burden, unfun, and countered the purpose of my role (ruined the theme objective, imo).

When I say I can see a theme argument I mean let's take Dark Knight for example, what if some of the spells cost health-- that could be cool, but since it's a tank that'd also probably be pretty bad unless it was basically a 'theme' only mechanic that didn't have much gameplay impact. Even if it wasn't a tank it could easily create a situation where bad players make healers dislike the job overall (more so than normal, although speaking of Dark Knight... their anti-tank buster certainly counts lol). Or like when you use those shield skills in games that also cause you to move slower for a time, but that can be annoying and sometimes just make you not be able to (or want to) use it if the con wasn't made to be fun (even if the skill offers good defense it could still be so punishing that it's just not fun to use, like imo the blue mage self stun skills). A skill of similar concept might be the old version of Dragoon's lance charge which caused you to take more damage but deal more damage (blood for blood, technically lancer skill but w.e :3).

Now... there is the issue of making things so silky smooth that you've no wrinkles, like no wrinkles on your brain, smooth brain. Sometimes everything is hyper sleek and simple to the point it's not frustrating.. yet somehow that is now making it frustrating lol. Too complex, jail. Too simple? Believe it or not, also jail.

Anyway, the skill as it was, imo, was not very enjoyable. Yet I imagine you might be able to make a mechanic semi-akin to it that could be more fun. For example you might have a oGCD spell that causes your next X damage spells deal more damage, afterwards you will AoE heal for a portion of that damage. If you use healing skills during the duration of that ability you will lose the secondary heal effect of the mechanic. You've now been encouraged to deal more damage and not heal, but technically you can still absolutely heal (and heal well), and you don't even lose the bonus damage either. Encourages you to mix up your play but doesn't really slap you upside the head for messing it up either. Cleric stance didn't just slap you upside the head, it choco stomped you into the ground (if you messed up) lol. I love thematic or quirky things / skills, sometimes I call it new old school or something along that line, but I'd hope we can leave some of the more, imo, unnesccary rough elements out of it.

[Knot_D]

Go back to bozja if you want cleric stance...

[IDontPetLalas]

Much as I love Lost Seraph Strike (and loved it even more with the pre-nerf Thin Air, since along with Lost Chainspell, if you had Misery up and Assize off cooldown and Presence of Mind ready to go, you could do an absolutely unreal amount of damage -- to the point that I frequently ripped aggro away from tanks with that burst in Delubrum Reginae), the Cleric Stance it gives you isn't quite the same thing.

Though conceptually, yes, it's similar inasmuch as it gives you a damage buff and a healing debuff, but it's not outright swapping two base stats. It's also only for a very brief window (rather than a toggled stance), and it's paired with a gap-closer.

Interestingly, I think part of why I've come to love sage is that you have something that, while it isn't stance dancing per se, feels a tiny bit similar. Namely, the fact that I can weave a Kardia in amongst normal attacks to shift my Kardion healing status among the party to top off whoever's a bit wounded, without having to spend an Addersgall charge and throw a bunch of overhealing at them. DRG is down a little bit of health? No problem, I'll shift Kardion from the tank over to them. BRD got Dropsy in P2S? Well, I'll shield them first, but then I'll shift Kardion over to them as well and let my damage help keep them topped up. They're good? Shift Kardion back to the main tank. Etc.

It's not quite stance-dancing, but shifting the Kardion around that way mid-fight feels at least a little like it to me, somehow.
It hurts my soul that the blood lily is not only still a DPS loss, but it's become a bigger DPS loss than it used to be. The lily mechanic has so much interesting potential.
Like, make it so the blood lily does 4 Glare III's worth of damage (so it's at least DPS neutral), and maybe make an option to 'eat' the lily and regain two normal lilies. (So that, like Sage's Rhizomata, WHM has a way to replenish their healing resource in a pinch... albeit at the cost of giving up that 'banked' 4 GCDs of damage.) Or just... something.

i don't see how kardia is at all like the cleric stance concept, however Lost seraph Strike is very much much what i had been thinking about, without realizing it. i do realize that this isn't the *only* solution, as vrankyl, for example, has also pointed out, however if i had a toggle for a Seraph-Strike-like buff? Sure, i'd take it and i would expect that to be available in parties, while in ow sure i can use my chocobo.

now if someone wants to say, now , I can't have that BUT I can have an extra DPS button (or 2), personally i wouldn't consider that button bloat and I would not feel that i then would be suddenly anywhere near the complexity of DPS jobs and their combos or rotations. Also, if someone isn't hitting their DPS buttons now, and this stresses them out, and they just want to heal, well no one can really force them to force them to hit more of them.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

There is...NO reason to bring that crap back.

[Shibi]

Interestingly, I think part of why I've come to love sage is that you have something that, while it isn't stance dancing per se, feels a tiny bit similar. Namely, the fact that I can weave a Kardia in amongst normal attacks to shift my Kardion healing status among the party to top off whoever's a bit wounded, without having to spend an Addersgall charge and throw a bunch of overhealing at them. DRG is down a little bit of health? No problem, I'll shift Kardion from the tank over to them. BRD got Dropsy in P2S? Well, I'll shield them first, but then I'll shift Kardion over to them as well and let my damage help keep them topped up. They're good? Shift Kardion back to the main tank. Etc.

It's not quite stance-dancing, but shifting the Kardion around that way mid-fight feels at least a little like it to me, somehow.

Yes, not stance dancing, but I do agree it has a touch of "situational" around it, and it's rather handy to switch it around in a mid level PUG as needed. Moreso with a front-positional RPR in the party. There are times when he needs it more than the tank.

[Greyhawk]

this is assuming that cleric stance has to be done exactly as it was before. there is no reason that it has to be implemented exactly as before. i would point out that the recent SCH rework, or even the way that shielding in general is a good example of why people shouldn't just assume that nothing can change. the past is very useful to learn from and improve from.

Yes, we learned that Cleric Stance is a useless and hindering ability.

[technole]

OP must be trolling or something.

Tank stance never gave damage, it even used to be -20% damage for Paladin for the longest time and the job became undesirable at the end of HW for a variety of reasons that are beyond tank stances.

Warrior had Unchained to use with Defiance which made it the optimal tank to always pull raid bosses because they got full aggro along with no damage decrease. You were actually losing damage pulling raids with a Paladin or to a lesser extent, Dark Knight.

All the good raids were also bringing Ninjas for aggro control so they didn't have to use tank stance at all, because the best mitigation in this game is more damage. It added division in the community between casual players who would always leave tank stance on and have lower damage versus good players who knew when to turn it off for most damage. Another thing no one misses Stormblood, DPS having to actively control aggro with a debuff.

Yeah, let's not look back.

[Kolsykol]

I don't understand the point of this.
The OP not knowing how Cleric Stance worked to begin with adds a level of comedy to it, but even that aside what's the point?

If it's about damage and healing then you can just increase potencies.
I don't think that this added anything ( and yes I did play when Cleric Stance was around and do remember it, it was just odd ).