I find chill indifference is the best way to deal with being asked to play in a way you don't enjoy.
I usually whip out the old:
Folks usually get the picture that I'm confident in what I'm doing and leave me alone about it.
If they push it, I usually make small talk about my shitty attention span and the fact I'm more comfortable DPSing out of Cleric Stance than potentially accidentally healing in it. With good humour and a friendly attitude, folks usually back off, and/or share their own stories of how they totally get it because they once made this similar dumb mistake, and so on.
And then they leave me alone about it. Or that's my experience so far, anyway.
Beyond that, I think it's easy to mistake what people are trying to communicate when they ask you to stance-dance. I think usually what they're saying, especially if it's the tank, is "I got this; you can focus on doing something other than babysitting my ass if you want". Tanks who are proud of their ability to survive pulls without much healing (through mitigation, large HP, or usually a combo of the two) are gonna want to flag themselves up as not being like that DRK who queued for 50 roulette in 30 gear and isn't using Grit, so they say "hey you can use Cleric Stance if you want" in order to do that.
It does come across as patronising, and it does annoy me too. But I try and take a step back and remember that they're just trying their hardest at the game too, and whether their ~advice is coming from a place of genuinely trying to notify you or of actually being patronising, at the end of the day it doesn't benefit anyone for me to verbally snipe back. Even if I do sometimes go off about it in my linkshells, lol.
So I make my lil Parks & Rec reference, then either keep doing what I'm doing, because if no one is dying then I'm sorry but I'm doing fine; or I try to decide if it does look like the tank's HP and mitigation is okay, good enough that it's a good 3-5 seconds between needing to cast a healing spell, in which case I'll see if I can't remember to throw Cleric Stance up when chucking Stones around.
The annoying one is when you end up in, like, Sastasha NM, as SCH, and you only have 1 cross-class slot and everyone will throw a tantrum if it's not Protect, and also get mad if you cast Protect and then stand still for 30 seconds while your skills cooldown from swapping your cross-class ability, but then they still ask you to stance-dance likeeeee... what do you want from me, lol. It's Sastasha, me having Cleric Stance or not isn't going to make much of a difference to my sick level 18 Scholar deeps. Just simmer down and do the damn run.
I usually whip out the old:
Folks usually get the picture that I'm confident in what I'm doing and leave me alone about it.
If they push it, I usually make small talk about my shitty attention span and the fact I'm more comfortable DPSing out of Cleric Stance than potentially accidentally healing in it. With good humour and a friendly attitude, folks usually back off, and/or share their own stories of how they totally get it because they once made this similar dumb mistake, and so on.
And then they leave me alone about it. Or that's my experience so far, anyway.
Beyond that, I think it's easy to mistake what people are trying to communicate when they ask you to stance-dance. I think usually what they're saying, especially if it's the tank, is "I got this; you can focus on doing something other than babysitting my ass if you want". Tanks who are proud of their ability to survive pulls without much healing (through mitigation, large HP, or usually a combo of the two) are gonna want to flag themselves up as not being like that DRK who queued for 50 roulette in 30 gear and isn't using Grit, so they say "hey you can use Cleric Stance if you want" in order to do that.
It does come across as patronising, and it does annoy me too. But I try and take a step back and remember that they're just trying their hardest at the game too, and whether their ~advice is coming from a place of genuinely trying to notify you or of actually being patronising, at the end of the day it doesn't benefit anyone for me to verbally snipe back. Even if I do sometimes go off about it in my linkshells, lol.
So I make my lil Parks & Rec reference, then either keep doing what I'm doing, because if no one is dying then I'm sorry but I'm doing fine; or I try to decide if it does look like the tank's HP and mitigation is okay, good enough that it's a good 3-5 seconds between needing to cast a healing spell, in which case I'll see if I can't remember to throw Cleric Stance up when chucking Stones around.
The annoying one is when you end up in, like, Sastasha NM, as SCH, and you only have 1 cross-class slot and everyone will throw a tantrum if it's not Protect, and also get mad if you cast Protect and then stand still for 30 seconds while your skills cooldown from swapping your cross-class ability, but then they still ask you to stance-dance likeeeee... what do you want from me, lol. It's Sastasha, me having Cleric Stance or not isn't going to make much of a difference to my sick level 18 Scholar deeps. Just simmer down and do the damn run.