Quote Originally Posted by ty_taurus View Post
EDIT: Let met put it this way. If you don't want to use old Cleric Stance, you're stuck at 0 and not allowed to go any higher. Perhaps sitting at 0 is 'good enough' for most content since most content has no enrages, but even someone who isn't popping a blood vessel trying to max their parse at any given moment would appreciate the freedom to go above 0. There are people who don't care about reaching 99, but also would like to not sit at 0 and be forced to stay there.
I hope you'll interpret my words not as opposition, but rather an attempt to add nuance. I think what this summary lacks is the perspective of more casual players who have no idea what 99 would even look like, and no understanding that they're not hovering around 50. They're not parsing, they're not on Balance, they're just playing the game and doing the best they can with the tools the game has given them. If you looked at my play during ARR and Heavensward, you might indeed have said, "That player's damage is 6% of what it could be." But the important thing to remember is that I didn't know that, so that information wasn't part of my decision-making process.

My perspective back then was that when doing damage as a healer you have two options: you can have Cleric Stance on and do crap damage, or you can have Cleric Stance off and do very crap damage. One of those options deals more damage than the other, but that damage boost from "very crap" to "crap" comes with a risk to my primary purpose: keeping the party alive. As a healer, I saw dealing damage as a secondary goal, one that shouldn't be done if it puts my primary goal at risk — especially because at best my damage was crap. And because of that perspective and those priorities, when I cast Aero II without Cleric Stance, I was perfectly happy and felt like I was doing a good job. I was dealing very crap damage, but that was more than zero, and I was doing my damage in a way that felt like it kept my party safe.

I think it's fair to say that that perspective is less-informed, but it's absolutely a perspective that many casual players would have had, so it's important to include it in the analysis of the possibility space.