How do you define (meaningful) choice?

[Shurrikhan]

I also think it's interesting two replies back to back say that Broil IV vs Ruin II both is and is not a meaningful choice...

The way I see it, such depends on tuning. Under the present tuning, for instance, there's "meaningful" choice only if the downtime is around some 25-35% of a GCD, as in that case the best solution is not quite so obvious:

Broil IV will deal 34% more damage, but shift your GCDs by that 25-35% of a GCD accordingly, which means that the optimal action then depends on predicted future loss, as well, whether you'd lose a GCD under raid buffs from distancing the start of your GCD further from their activations times, and your DoT tick alignment.

...Which is, frankly, more than most will have the remaining capacity/willingness to track, and therefore the best decision will at least seem like a gamble that favors personal affinities/preferences (whatever optimizations you best click with and mindful of what total load you're willing to deal with). Which is as close to real choice as anything ever gets.

If the downtime is (obviously going to be) just some 10% of a GCD of downtime, the best option is obvious and fails to offer much, if any, "choice": use Broil V instead of wasting the 75 extra potency possible for that (roughly a) GCD's time. Similarly, if it's (obviously going to be) much more than a third a GCD, the best option likewise becomes obvious: you use Ruin II's since what else could you do with that time.

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Even then "choice" is largely subjective (though not any sense of irreconcilability) based upon what degree of informed-ness a player might have by which to solve the given optimization, and so when we talk about designing meaningful choice into a kit, we are then really just talking about that "choice" as perceived by an average or iconic cluster among the job's players.

And yes, we can expect that some players will be more familiar with different things and therefore intuit more or less, and/or track such more easily or less, among the different bits of information useful to solving optimization problems. We wouldn't expect the average Black Mage to be as mindful of baiting mechanics for future positional access for self, tank, and co-DPS as we would a Monk, etc., etc.

[TheDustyOne]

Another thing to note as this is related, this is also why I think people push back against single-button combos.

The combos themselves aren't deep, there's no reason to ever start the fight with your second combo hit over your first, but the choice of it being there is what makes the first combo hit meaningful. That's why when the buttons are consolidated, even though no depth was lost, some meaning behind the choice is also lost with it. Including things like the potential to fat-finger, or slip up because you were paying attention to something else, etc. By condensing combos, you are technically stripping away a meaningful choice, even if it's in reality a completely shallow choice.

I'm in favour of consolidated combos (with the choice to separate them again) because it's a shallow choice, but not necessarily that it's a meaningless choice. There have been extremely niche times in the past to break combos when optimizing because it better lined up with certain fight mechanics and bursts, but such times are extremely rare and, as far as I'm aware, were only really a thing in ultimate when going for stupidly optimized runs.

[Shurrikhan]

but WHM literally gained nothing in its loss, and lost more stuff, sorta like how DRK lost most of its kit to all tanks going into StB with the advent of Role Actions.

Which has nothing to do with old Cleric Stance being shit design. As you just pointed out, every role was affected that way, not just healers and certainly not just Cleric Stance. Its removal was largely unnoticeable to anyone who wasn't bad at handling Cleric Stance. Even the addition of Lilies and Benison being locked behind having at least one Lily was more impactful to our decision-making than was CS.

Also, I know. I specifically started that post with "been bollocks since StB" because that's when the change to Cleric Stance happened. StB means Stormblood.

Mate, I only have what you wrote to determine whether by "since" you mean "since Stormblood began" (i.e., when leaving Heavensward) or "since Stormblood ended" (i.e., when going into Shadowbringer):

The reason it improved going into ShB is they basically didn't touch it aside from their dumb lillies in StB, except that they drastically changed Cleric Stance.

Given that sentence, one would have to assume the latter.

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Tl;dr:

No, old Cleric Stance was not a good mechanic -- fundamentally, or certainly in execution.

If added back, it would almost certainly do more harm than good, whether it just become two additional weave spaces required per oGCD cast in the present context or if we actually had our way in terms of increased relative healing requirements, etc.

Yes, WHM should have had better additions in Stormblood than <literally the most iconic example across any expansion of a poorly executed addition to ever be added to any job>, but that is not relevant to its quality as a mechanic, nor was its removal significantly more felt on WHM than on other healers.

[Renathras]

...

I know it's not often, but I extremely agree with you on this one.

Cleric Stance was SUCH a bad ability, and it's removal made the Jobs better. Either they were hamstrung by it and it was just all floor (WHM mostly, also AST), or it didn't matter because they did their healing through mitigation and other things instead that at least partially bypassed the negatives (SCH); and it was also janky as heck.

[Mortex]

I do agree that cleric stance was a pain in the butt but you can’t deny that it was “the” skill expression for any good healer worth his salt. I think it felt better then use a empty lily when the party is full because I want my blood lily ever minute. I argue I had more decision making with cleric then I do have now, with my 100 ogcd buttons.

[Shurrikhan]

I do agree that cleric stance was a pain in the butt but you can’t deny that it was “the” skill expression for any good healer worth his salt. I think it felt better then use a empty lily when the party is full because I want my blood lily ever minute. I argue I had more decision making with cleric then I do have now, with my 100 ogcd buttons.

You had more button presses, because it added a button-press before and after any moment of healing, but it did not add decision-making. After the stat split after Stone Vigil gear, potency of anything using INT instead of MND was so low that it was basically just a waste of MP.

Luckily, its cooldown locked us into CS, not locked out of it, but even that meant you'd stay out of CS only for a single GCD of healing (preferably a Regen or AspBen), and only so long as that because of the limited weave space at the time.

To say CS caused "decision-making" is like insisting that a half-broken clutch complete with a jank gearbox provides more "decision-making" than flipper shifters and perfect gear box operation. There was a clear best answer for when to change gears (which you could have done without CS by just... casting an attack/heal) and the lock-in was virtually irrelevant unless the shifter jammed. And if it jamming is all that forms that "decision-making", yeah, that's a shit mechanic.

[ForsakenRoe]

To say CS caused "decision-making" is like insisting that a half-broken crutch provides more "decision-making" than flipper shifters. There was a clear best answer for when to change gears and the lock-in was virtually irrelevant unless it jammed.

I assume you meant clutch, rather than crutch, but you also make me realize that I'm like those people who insist that manual is better than automatic when it comes to gearboxes on cars

[vetch]

I assume you meant clutch, rather than crutch, but you also make me realize that I'm like those people who insist that manual is better than automatic when it comes to gearboxes on cars

It is, though. Having a little lever to ka-chunk around is cool.

[ty_taurus]

The choice to use Cleric Stance was the exact same choice you’d make when using any of your DPS actions, and inversely, the choice to end Cleric Stance was the same choice you’d make when stopping DPS.

Unless there was any circumstance in which you would use one without the other, old Cleric Stance was arbitrary when it came to gameplay decision-making, and at worst punished the entire party any time the healer had so much as a minor technical error or lag spike at the wrong picosecond.

Even the reworked Cleric Stande was silly. A 5% DPS increase on healers who already have extremely low DPS output amounts to almost nothing. You ask the server for more bread for your tomato soup, and they sprinkle a pinch of crouton crumbs on top of your soup. That’s what Stormblood Cleric Stance was.

[Shurrikhan]

I assume you meant clutch, rather than crutch, but you also make me realize that I'm like those people who insist that manual is better than automatic when it comes to gearboxes on cars

I did. I'm not sure why my phone auto-corrected that.

Note also, though, that the contrast was still between two forms of manual -- just one being jankier than the other. The same not-quite-controllable/predictable delay and unresponsiveness that tends to make an automatic gearbox feel inferior... is nearly the whole of what CS "added" to the equation.