Final Fantasy XIV - The green DPS
Yes, I am back with another lecture on long forgotten FFXIV abilities, this time around a healer ability which no longer exists in the game... or does it?
To understand why some healers are still do this day referred to as green DPS we need to look at various role icons in the game. Tanks (the big and strong warriors going ahead and keeping the attention of the enemy on them) have an icon with a blue background, DPS or damage dealers (the ones with strong spells and big guns going pew-pew) have an icon with a red background, and the healers (who will heal and shield the party) have an icon with a green background. But who said that healers are only there to heal? Unlike in some other games, healers also have a prominent damaging toolkit, which they have to use if the party wants to beat the big bosses in endgame.
So these days, a healer who will focus more on doing damage instead of healing and supporting the party, is often called a green DPS (given the background of their role icon) and this not always meant to be a compliment, as their focus on damage often means sacrificing some other members of the party for their own personal glory on the not-official damage meters and leader boards.
Back in A Realm Reborn 10 years ago just like tanks had a defensive and damaging stance, healers also had one. This ability was called Cleric Stance, and if you activated it, it swapped your current Mind and Intelligence attributes, while increasing the potency of your damaging spells and decreasing the potency of your healing spells. Why is this important? Just like in tabletop RPGs like D&D, in FFXIV each job also has a base attribute which will determine the strength of their skills. For healers this is Mind and for magical DPS it's Intelligence. For healers the strength of healing spells was based on Mind, the strength of their damaging abilities was based on Intelligence. So with Cleric Stance they could swap between healing or damaging. Back in those days there were only 2 healers in the game, White Mage and Scholar. White Mage is a healer with strong pure heals and healing over time (regen) abilities, while Scholar focuses on pre-emptive shields and barriers and has a fairy companion.
In A Realm Reborn it was mostly Scholar being referred to as THE green DPS. Due to having the 2 fairies one being able to buff the party with attack speed and such, the other providing healing Scholar had an advantage compared to White Mage: the fairy was not affected by the attribute swap of Cleric Stance. So you could stay in your damaging stance the entire fight and let the fairy do the healing. This required you to know the fight, your party and in case of encounters with 2 healers, trust your co-healer and be able to co-operate even without having a voice chat. It was a system far too difficult for the casual players but giving the thrill and excitement to veterans. For me, coming from an MMO where a healer's role was purely to heal and didn't even have enough damage actions to be able to level without the help of other players I have to say it was overwhelming first and got yelled at in dungeons for not doing damage... I didn't know I was supposed to! But once you get the taste of Cleric Stance... you stay in Cleric Stance... and I got to love doing damage and leaving the healing for my fairy.
During the Stormblood expansion they changed Cleric Stance to be a 15 second buff giving you the damage potency boost and reducing the healing potency (without swapping your attributes) intended to be used during your so called burst window (where everyone in the party throws out the buffs and big damage skills). As I haven't been actively playing during Stormblood, I'm not sure what was wrong with this system, but when I returned in the next expansion, Shadowbringers, I was surprised to see Cleric Stance completely removed from the game.
There is still one content where this skill exists, it's the are called Bozja, the lvl80 endgame content from Shadowbringers. Here you get to use special potions and abilities, basically removing the roles of tank, DPS and healer, as everyone gets something which makes them able to do any of the encounters in Bozja even alone. One of the abilities healers get to use is called Seraph Strike, which is basically Cleric Stance as we knew it in Stormblood, paired with a dash attack. It even has the icon! Though Scholar's toolkit has changed a lot since A Realm Reborn and it's not as much a green DPS anymore as it used to be, Bozja and Seraph Strike made me learn to love White Mage, as I could be a green DPS again, completing trials and speedkills which were designed for DPS jobs to do, like this one here:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/7AivAA4DXfE?feature=oembed
