Welcome to Members' Corner! Each month, we run a bounty asking our community members to write about the subjects that matter most to them. Earlier this month, mar1gold introduced us all to Habibi Funk Records, while July saw Laser-Bicep explain the many benefits of Judo, Sturmer wrote at length about the art of photography, and Lanah Tyra shed some light on a different defunct Final Fantasy XIV mechanic.

Lanah is back again with another Final Fantasy XIV deep dive that only a true veteran of the game would know about. This time, it's all about healers and an old ability the class had around a decade ago which allowed them to perform a ’green DPS’ role. Over to you, Lanah:

"I’m back with another lecture on long-forgotten FFXIV abilities. This time, it's about a healer ability which no longer exists in the game... or does it?

"To understand why some healers are still to this day referred to as 'green DPS', we need to look at the various role icons in the game. Tanks (the big warriors that lead the line and aggro enemies) 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 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 damage-focused toolkit, which they have to use for the party to stand a chance of beating bosses in the endgame.

"These days, a healer that prioritises dealing damage instead of healing and supporting the party is often called a green DPS, thanks to the colour of their icon. This is not always meant as a compliment, as their focus on damage often means sacrificing some other members of the party for their own personal glory on the unofficial damage metres and leaderboards.

"Back in A Realm Reborn, 10 years ago, just as tanks had a defensive and damaging stance, as did healers. 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 determines the strengths of its skills.

"For healers, the strength of healing spells was based on Mind and the strength of damaging abilities was based on Intelligence. So with Cleric Stance they could swap between healing or damaging. Back in those days, there were only two healers in the game: White Mage and Scholar. White Mage is a healer with effective pure heals and regeneration abilities, while Scholar focuses on pre-emptive shields and barriers and has a fairy companion.

"In A Realm Reborn it was mostly those who took up the path of the Scholar who were referred to as the green DPS. Due to having the two fairies, one being able to buff the party with attack speed and 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 the case of encounters with two healers, to trust your co-healer and be able to cooperate even without having a voice chat. 

"It was a system far too difficult for the casual players but gave 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 damaging actions to be able to level without the help of other players, I have to say it was overwhelming at first and I 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 learned to love dealing 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). It was intended to be used during your so-called burst window, which is when 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.

"However, there is still one piece of content where this skill exists: the Bozja area, level 80 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 capable of completing the encounters in Bozja 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 same icon! Though Scholar's toolkit has changed a lot since A Realm Reborn and it's not as much of a green DPS role 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, like this one:

Thanks so much to Lanah for sharing her experience with this long-forgotten part of Final Fantasy XIV with us. If you have any questions, ask them in the comments, and if you've already read July's other Members' Corner articles, check out June's instead: tomahawk throwing, the modern reverberations of Bristol’s historic links to the slave trade, and the warning signs of pancreatic cancer. Keep your eye out for the next Members' Corner bounty for a chance to be featured next month!

Some text has been edited for brevity and clarity. You can find the original wording at the bounty post.