I'm bored when I heal because I need more complex DPS rotations

[Mithron]

Literally no one is, which is why it baffles me every time someone breaks the damn door down and sprays spit yelling at everyone how DPS rotations that are as complex as DPS jobs will ruin healers.

And yeah, if you casted your DPS spells outside of Cleric Stance, the damage was so low that it wouldn't be worth the MP you spent. Hop on Summoner and heal with Physick. Those are the kind of numbers you'd be seeing with healer DPS outside of Cleric Stance back then. Inversely, when you were in Cleric Stance, that's the kind of healing you'd put out if you were healing in that stance. It was an OGCD action in an era with very little weaving windows. Like I think the only way White Mage could weave it without clipping was through casting Regen first, but it didn't actually take a weave slot to drop the stance. You just had to not be casting and it would fall off without animation. That said, once you entered Cleric Stance, it had a cooldown of about 10 or 15 seconds I think (I don't remember exactly) before you could remove it, locking you into DPS for that period, but there was no cooldown after you ended the stance. You could very easily double-cast it, dropping the stance and then immediately restart it without meaning to, if you clicked it more than once, which given how much laggier the game used to be was also quite scary.

This is why it was ultimately removed and healer DPS was changed to scale off Mind instead. Which was the only change they really needed to make to end the conflict. Even with the healers having almost as many DPS spells as they had in Heavensward, suddenly there were far less arguments about healer DPS.

Cleric Stance would lock you in for 4 seconds, so it was a commitment to DPS during that time. That was largely what made it so dang fun; you had to think about when to use it, and it came with the risk of you using it at the exact same time some party members made mistakes. You could still Raise just fine with it on, and Benediction. Certain other actions like Aquaveil would've been great to use as well since they just use damage reduction % independent of your own stats, but it was gone well before then.

I really enjoyed Cleric Stance (and tank stance) stance dancing, it was some of the most fun I've ever had in any video game ever. Instead of removing it, they should've just made it less clunky. That 4 seconds of commitment isn't much different than you doing RDM sword combos currently; there's a large time window between you doing damage and being able to use Verraise viably, doubly moreso now that the sword combo is a lot longer and you do 3 of them at a time sometimes. It makes for very interesting and fun decisions that are dynamic per fight based on your party members, which is even more variable in DF/PF.

I play a healer precisely because I suck at complex dps rotations. I can perform at a mediocre level as dancer or red mage, but beyond that, no, I'm bad at dps. If healer dps rotations became more complex, and I was expected to perform at a certain dps level as a healer, I could no longer play FFXIV. I don't want my healer dps rotation to become more complex. If anything has to change, I'd prefer healing itself become slightly more challenging (emphasis on the slightly). If you want complex dps rotations, there's a plethora of dps jobs that can provide that. Healer's may be capable and expected to provide dps, but that's not their primary role, and complicating their dps will just reinforce the idea that healers are just green dps. That's not a notion I think should be reinforced.

If you can clear content as a healer, you can most definitely clear content as any other job in the game. Healers are harder than PLD/DNC/RDM/SMN. In the end, all DPS rotations are just understanding concepts, building muscle memory, and slight variations on a per fight basis. It's not as difficult as healing. If you perceive it as easier, it's due to an illogical belief that DPS is scary for some reason. Which I mean is your thing, but that doesn't mean healers shouldn't have more complex DPS rotations anyway. Your illogical trauma or whatever it is shouldn't define how everyone else is forced to play the game.