If RDM and SCH can't have Cure 5, give us Afflatus Misery/Solace

[SpankWustler]

could still cure more than whm with just rapture, which with how we are borderlined forced to use now, wouldnt change much with the addition of cure 5, we've been using rapture and we will continue using rapture (when needed) if sch were to get cure 5.

I agree with the statement that it would cure a vast amount of HP. I guess this might make some people feel weird on an aesthetic level?

I just wonder when restoring that much HP would actually be useful, excluding Abyssea. Especially accounting for the time required to use a job ability when someone is missing 1500-2000 HP. Maybe combining it with Ascension for something that uses 10,000 needles-type attacks regularly or a similar situation, but that seems pretty niche.

[Economizer]

Maybe combining it with Ascension

This isn't something I commonly think of... If Scholar gets Cure V, they'll probably get Accession for it, won't they? I don't even want to think about the balance implications around this.

Hmm. You DON'T need to have at least one JA from each job, the proof is in NIN and WHM who give you no real JA's and if you want to compare Divine Seal with Convert it's lacklustre at best.

Fact of the matter is Convert was one of RDM's biggest buffs outside of Composure, and I'm fine with subjobs getting it, but they should NOT have got it at the same potency. It's a subjob so it should have been half the potency like with most the JA's.

The only ones that were not gimped were the ones that are not all that impressive.

Convert is not that impressive. As it has been said by many intelligent people here, in some depth, subbing Scholar is generally a bit more impressive then Convert AND self Refresh. Nerfing this unnecessarily makes Red Mage a weaker sub, which is also a major part of balance.

Ninja has other things it gives that aren't job abilities. So does White Mage. But Divine Seal is pretty useful, considering that many of the other buffs White Mage gives as a sub aren't things Red Mage can generally make use of (ignoring White Mage's substantial spell list). Of course, White Mage gets buffs to it at higher levels that make it more useful to cast.

But, like I said in the comment you quoted, I believe that like stuff like Divine Seal, Red Mage should get a buff to Convert. This retains the incentives to sub Red Mage - particularly for Black Mage which gets the most usage out of subbing Red Mage for Convert, while giving Red Mage a very fair buff to Convert.

If you still think that Red Mage getting a buff to Convert is an unacceptable better solution (you don't necessarily have to agree with the numbers I provided earlier) then gimping everyone who subs Red Mage, I think there may be more problems here then an issue with other people getting the same strength Convert that Red Mages main jobbing the ability get.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

This isn't something I commonly think of... If Scholar gets Cure V, they'll probably get Accession for it, won't they? I don't even want to think about the balance implications around this.

Convert is not that impressive. As it has been said by many intelligent people here, in some depth, subbing Scholar is generally a bit more impressive then Convert AND self Refresh. Nerfing this unnecessarily makes Red Mage a weaker sub, which is also a major part of balance.

Ninja has other things it gives that aren't job abilities. So does White Mage. But Divine Seal is pretty useful, considering that many of the other buffs White Mage gives as a sub aren't things Red Mage can generally make use of (ignoring White Mage's substantial spell list). Of course, White Mage gets buffs to it at higher levels that make it more useful to cast.

But, like I said in the comment you quoted, I believe that like stuff like Divine Seal, Red Mage should get a buff to Convert. This retains the incentives to sub Red Mage - particularly for Black Mage which gets the most usage out of subbing Red Mage for Convert, while giving Red Mage a very fair buff to Convert.

If you still think that Red Mage getting a buff to Convert is an unacceptable better solution (you don't necessarily have to agree with the numbers I provided earlier) then gimping everyone who subs Red Mage, I think there may be more problems here then an issue with other people getting the same strength Convert that Red Mages main jobbing the ability get.

I'm fine with a buff for RDM main, I'll ignore the insult you threw in your comment.

[Raksha]

This isn't something I commonly think of... If Scholar gets Cure V, they'll probably get Accession for it, won't they? I don't even want to think about the balance implications around this.

We can more or less do this already with acession+rapture cure4.

If you have a decent enmity set and tanks that dont suck enmity is rarely a problem either.

SE could always just make cure5 not stack with accession, but then WHM/SCH wouldnt be able to do it either. how does that sit with you?

[SpankWustler]

This isn't something I commonly think of... If Scholar gets Cure V, they'll probably get Accession for it, won't they? I don't even want to think about the balance implications around this.

That also means White Mage would be able to use Ascension with Cure V, most likely, so balance between jobs probably wouldn't change too much.

I shudder to think what Tier III of Voidwatch would be like to compensate for this level of healing ability, though. There's already a monster that uses straight-up Area of Effect death on the test server. No damage. No timer. Just enough time to stun, then BAM! DEATH! I think it's the praying mantis.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Could just give it to RDM at 99 that way SCH wouldn't get it until 106.

(Just joking)

[noodles355]

BRD/WHM has 5% less cure potency than RDM, better buffs, more refresh, better debuffs.

More refresh isn't really an issue. Best possible refresh a bard can get for himself is 14 without Empyrean Harp or Gjallerhorn. Best Rdm can get is 13.

And actually that 5% Cure potency will outweigh the 1% refresh. It'll take 88 ticks to get an extra cure spell off, of 264 seconds. And if you're spamming Cure4 during that time, the one extra C4 you get for free at the end (assuming you run out of mp at the same time) wont be enough to out-cure the rdm's higher potency ones.
Furthermore, if spamming C4 like that you will run of MP first due to a lower MP pool and no Convert.
And on top of that you're never cure spamming in that situation anyway and MP wont be an issue on either job so potency wins.

And then we get onto the other aspects. Brd is a better buffer, well no shit. It was designed as a party support job. Bard is not a better debuffer than Red Mage. Elegy is 50% Slow. AF3+2 body Slow II caps at 49%. Saboteur AF3+2 body Slow II with AF3+2 hands caps at 108% Slow and it's duration is longer unresisted than the Saboteur recast.

Even if you only have 3/5 Slow II merits (Low 25~%, Caps 37%~, let's average 30% against a hard NM), with Saboteur and AF3+2 hands/body that's still 90% Slow against a NM, which is significantly higher than Carnage Elegy.

[Economizer]

We can more or less do this already with acession+rapture cure4.

If you have a decent enmity set and tanks that dont suck enmity is rarely a problem either.

SE could always just make cure5 not stack with accession, but then WHM/SCH wouldnt be able to do it either. how does that sit with you?

Aside from the bit about enmity - which I also totally didn't think about - these are all reasons I didn't really want to think about it over half an hour ago. I probably overreacted a bit too over all the brain hurt. Definitely probably.

Generally, I think that a) If Scholar gets Cure V, it should be able to Accession it and b) Accession probably is the reason at the very, very bottom of the list to give or not give Scholar the spell.

I don't think that WHM/SCH being able to Accession Cure V would be that big a deal, since White Mage has Curaga IV already. Accession is more of an issue for Scholar which can use it more, but just like Curaga for White Mage, I don't really expect Accession cures to be used much.

The main thing Accession has going for it is alliance targeting though (to be honest, I wish Curaga could do more then just party target too, but that's because I want to nuke the everliving #̶̧̳ͪ̈̍ͭ̓ͣ̀ͭͣ͜$̷͍͖͖͖̊̏ͯ̑%͑̿̍̐ͫ̎͌͜͏̟̺̜̱̱̥*̗̼̖̯̤́̆ͩͣ͟ͅ out of undead mobs). This would be the big part where balance comes in I suppose?

Now if there was ever an argument for Scholar to get Cure V, it would probably be Campaign Battle. Divine Seal + AOE Cure V on everything ever? I just wish more NPCs would work like Campaign Battle NPCs do when it comes to getting Accession. Sure, you get massive amounts of enmity, but it feels good watching twenty or so things get hit by a cure.

[Karinya_of_Carbuncle]

ISTM that a big part of the resistance to giving other jobs cure 5 is that it's the best cure, period. It's not just better than the ones below it, it's *also* better than the one *above* it.

So my solution is simple: nerf cure 5. Not so much that it becomes worthless, but enough to make it a simple progression from existing cures and not the god of efficiency, hate avoidance, and everything else. Improve cure 6 so that it's not just the thing you might use while cure 5 is on recast (if cure 5 becomes smaller and also possibly cheaper, cure 6 could become cheaper without becoming smaller, for example).

Once cure 5 is just another cure, not the one perfect cure, then it's fine to give it to other jobs.

WHMs would have more than one cure they might *actually want* to use and RDM and SCH have at least one cure they *can* use for more than trivial amounts of healing.

In the meantime, since WHM keep Afflatus, they'd still be the best, but not the only (except for the hardest cutting-edge content where the best basically *is* the only, but RDM and SCH might have other uses in those fights).