10 sec cooldown on stance swapping incredibly Prohibitive

Anyone else feel like the 10 second cooldown when changing stances is just way too long and that it should be lowered?

Say you are running 1DPS and 1HPS stance. If you swap to heal you are locked from doing any damage (and applying the super beneficial branded effect in group play) for 10 seconds. If you swap to DPS to apply Branded for your group/maintain it's uptime) you are then locked from healing for 10 seconds.

Thinking of it from a group perspective: The Paladin currently seems like the support class for groups. it applies branded, it puts down damage reduction area, it can shield team-mates. A lot of these buffs are in the healing tree, but branded isn't. So you can't maintain an up-time on that skill if you still want to actually heal. That would leave the application of branded up to a DPS focused paladin. But considering current damage/attack power numbers, a DPS focused paladin in a five man group buffing the damage of the other two DPS and tank by 20% would probably be weaker than just taking a full fledged DPS class over that DPS Paladin.

Not only is Paladin DPS a bit lower than other dps classes, but he has two other issues. In DPS1 tree the the first ability (1) hit's like a wet noodle, but it's needed to go into verdict (main spammable damaging chain). To get dot's up, you have to start with retribution, which is just a very very low heal. So it's not a steady output like all the other classes. DPS2 has more upfront damage (that isn't as spammable), but it's one glaring issue is the mana consumption in this tree. Crusader's Will is a very very minor mana regen that, maybe, gives you enough mana to do one more attack then what you normally would. So instead you would have to switch back to DPS1 to use the vastly supperior Prayer, which restores base 40% of mana.

From a PvP perspective. Say you are dueling it out with someone. You have taken a bit of damage so you go to heal and stance swap. You are now stuck there for 10 seconds with no attacks (HPS1). If fighting another paladin, you just gave him free room to also switch and heal himself, letting him keep advantage. If fighting against other classes you just gave them the ability to potentially start up a high damage chain (against a mob, then turning to you), buffing themselves, letting them regen their resources, etc (advantage remains for them). If they keep attacking you, you just have to heal through it with no CC/impairing effects to use, until you are able to switch back to attacking. But then you are locked out of healing for 10 seconds again.

Also, since we can't really move at all while healing, they could just CC you. So, there's that.

You could say HPS2 has an attack chain. But it's base starting heal is sacrifical plea, which damages you to heal, then the followups are the long cast time/big heal. Since damaging yourself because you need to heal yourself is contradictory for solo play, you would have to switch to the other healing tree, but then once again you can't do any damage for 10 seconds.

TL:DR

It all just feels so wildly prohibitive.
PvE perspective: A Healing paladin is unable to really utilize branded. Instead you need a dedicated DPS Pally to utilize the abilities potential. Because of mana consumption issues and lower damage compared to other DPS classes, you are probably better off just taking another full fledged DPS class. A shorter stance cooldown would allow a well played Paladin to keep Branded up for DPS while still being able to heal without a 10 second lockout. For 10 man raids, a full DPS pally throwing around 100% uptime on branded would be useful, but that becomes pretty niche for one spec.

Solo/small group PvP perspective: You are either damaging or healing. If you go to heal yourself you have to no CC options to help protect you from getting CCed and preventing you from healing. Since you can't move for majority of healing spells you are basically giving the opponent the queue to lay into you since you can't even fight back. If you manage to heal yourself some through the attack and switch back to damage, you then aren't healing for 10 seconds.

The cooldown feels like it forces you into situations of you either heal or attack, you don't do both. It also locks out a lot of utility that the class could have by being specced as 1DPS and 1HPS stance. If you go DPS you get branded but lose some of the defensive buffs and spot healing. If you go healing you get defensive buffs but lose branded and damaging abilities. For 10 seconds. That's an eternity in PvP.

Edit to clarify: I understand mana consumption issues were probably implemented to stop spam healing, and that lower dps was implemented because they can also heal. Both those make complete sense to me. I just envisioned the paladin having three roles: Full DPS (2 DPS stances), Full Heal (2 Healing stances), or Support (1DPS and 1 Heal). But currently support role just doesn't function well, as you have 10 second intervals of either healing or damaging, being locked out of the other.

Kaisinel wrote:

If your running healing tactics with any stance that uses crusaders will your gimping that stance.

Sorry, maybe a little lost in translation. Gimping healing tactics, or gimping the stance that has Crusader's Will?

I mean, the two mana recovery options are counter to each other in terms of how you gear them.

But wouldn't that help to support that you would go Interruption tactics and Sacrifice Tacts, or Protector Tactics and Healing Tactics? One DPS and One healing to support how you gear? But then you are still just healing or doing damage with cooldown lockouts.

Kaisinel wrote:

The point is that depending on what situation your in as pally your a main healer first and formost. You DpS when you don't need to heal and having one stance that gimps another is counter productiv at this. So if currently protectors is broken and it is then its a gimp to both crusader stances. This means we only have 2 viable stance options atm.

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Ok On topic thats the point it took me some time to figure out that as paladin your not ment to be some stance dancing warrior.

I'm sorry, I don't buy all that.

The games entire combat structure is built around switching stances. Although Paladin stance swapping buffs currently don't work (whoops), it's a wasted feature if we aren't meant to do it. I don't know the cooldown periods of all classes, but I know Rangers cooldown for stance swapping is 3 seconds. They can swap every three seconds and get a buff doing so.

Our damage is lower and our mana consumption can be an issue because it compensates for being able to heal. But by saying we are a healer first and foremost just restricts everything in our kit even more. At that rate you might as well just run the one healing tree (that has prayer) and not even slot a second stance. All those other buffs/debuffs in our entire kit aren't worth it if we try to switch to a dps stance to put up branded (support our allies), give ourselves magick or physical defense, because then we can't heal. The second healing tree the only heal chain in it starts with sacrifical plea. So for 10 seconds you basically have to hurt yourself anytime you want to heal. The reason you would go into it is for the buffs that are there in the third chain, or to maybe smack something a few times. But that's wasted because of a 10 second downtime from using the more useful HoTs for dps, and quick heals for tanks while a fight is occurring. Switching to this tree also means you won't have prayer.

Essentially the game then promotes stance dancing to trigger together certain chain abilities while keeping stance buffs up... unless you are a paladin.

I'm getting the impression you are thinking my main complaint is mana. It isn't. It's being locked out of half the tool-kit. You keep mentioning "this stance is gimped because of crusader's" that we "need wisdom". All of that is mana consumption related, that's not what I'm trying to argue.

My argument is simply the 10 second cooldown on stances locks us out of half our toolkit for 10 seconds at a time.

Marfach wrote:

The problem as I see it is that this game doesn't separate balancing for PvP and PvE because so much of it is intertwined. What you are talking about makes a decent amount of sense for instanced dungeons; but if we could stance-dance any more than we can right now we would be broken in PvP, and we're already borderline immortal if played correctly.

Yeah that is very true.