Do we even need MP any more?

I mean maybe at lower levels, for healers, it makes sense - but can't they get skills similar to BLM who can regen their manna - if they don't already have them?

I ask because manna is capped at 10k and if I remember correctly, could be wrong, when I started (before deleting) my toon summoner I had 10k manna out the gate.

Do we even need mana anymore? As a BLM I never even get close to depleting it - even with flare, I have umbra soul(?) something (think Ice BLM) so mana is not even an issue.

Again, I can't remember what lover levels were like so maybe we do, but still .....

thoughts?

MP works differently for jobs but is still needed.
Ressources managment.

Dark Knight : The Blackest Night (shield), Edge-skill to attack
Paladin : Holy-spell rotation, Clemency for emergencies or else

BLM has unlimited MP thanks to UmbralIce but is still a mechanic to deal with. Your mp are limited in Astral Fire so you have to juggle between the two.


RDM and SMN have raise capabilities, especially for RDM where it works as a limit of raise you can do (so that, you can still help but death still is something you must avoid as much as possible).

Healer MP managment, as easy as it is nowaday still works to ensure you properly use the entirity of your toolkit, and works as a raise limitation as well.


It's fine.

Think of it less of 10K capped and more of a percentage based MP system.

10000 MP translates to 100.00% MP. Same number of zeros, just move the decimal place a bit.

A spell like Cure uses 400 MP or 4% of total mana. Medica uses 1000 mana or 10% of mana

Mana only really matters to

1) Healers in low level content where Lucid Dreaming isn't enough to always be casting. AST's are the exception as Draw gives back 8% mp every 30s once it is learned at lvl 30. WHM and SCH don't get their extra MP abilities until later since the low level skill rework.
2) RDM's who have to raise often
3) Non-BLM casters who die.

You don't run out of MP on BLM - if you restore it like you're supposed to. MP exists so that people can play it wrong.

Healers and red mages run out of MP, especially if they have to resurrect a lot.

Any magic class has to find a way to get the necessary MP to continue after being resurrected, because they start with none.

A paladin uses MP for their magic attacks. Requiescat only works if you are at 80% or more of MP and there can be situations you use it without that. You may also have a really bad situation and need to heal a lot. In part because of your limited MP, you have to choose wisely who is a priority.

A dark knight has to maintain 3,000 MP all of the time in case they need to use blackest night, using their shadow attack when they are at 6,000 MP or more. Managing this poorly leaves them without their most powerful mitigation that is blackest night and that will frequently get them killed.

10k MP is the amount you have at all levels. What happened before was MP scaled with your level, but the MP cost of your actions scaled with level too. It seemed pointless to change the MP at all if both these things scale with eachother, especially when TP was fixed at 1k and worked fine.

MP on melee classes like monk? Nah, not needed in the current format. Im sure there are some cool things they can do with it (and should) but currently on those classes no.

MP on caster classes? Yes, it is required. It is the idiot skill-check requirement in mid to higher tier content. It is literally there to make sure that people are properly optimizing their class to some respects. Is it galaxy brained skill check? No, of course not. It is the "minimum understanding of your class" skill check. So if you know the basics of your class, you're not gonna have mana issues in upper tier content.

Also as a side note, its meant to punish people for dying. Res is an expensive skill both as an MP cost and casting cost (even with swift cast - that is a pretty good resource for a variety of other things so its better spent else where than on ressing people). Not dying ensures your healers are doing fine with their mana. Just go watch any raid where a ton of people die constantly and see how fast healer mana drains out.

Hmmm. Maybe I am doing it wrong then cause I have never run out of MP as a BLM or a SMN (when I started a toon, got him to 60). I guess I could see for healer and such. I also never thought of MP as a % based system before.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SavishSalacious

Hmmm. Maybe I am doing it wrong then cause I have never run out of MP as a BLM

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If you never run out of MP as a BLM, we need to have a talk about BLM fundamentals--like, Lv01-04 fundamental. BLM by design runs out of MP about every 20 seconds. That's their job gimmick. Blow all your MP on high powered fire spells, then switch to ice and cast weaker spells until your MP is back to full.

BLMs absolutely need a yoyo-ing meter because that's how their elemental mechanics work. If you took away MP, they would need yet another 0-100 gauge and spells would need to cost (currentMpCost / 100) of this new gauge.

There is no way to directly remove MP from the other jobs without changing their gameplay.

On RDM, the whole purpose of MP is to punish me for casting Verraise. You could remove MP and then give Verraise three charges on a 30s recharge, but it wouldn't be the same because currently, if Dreaming is available and I'm in a carrying mood, I can choose to cast Verraise five times in a span of 30s as long as I'm willing to pay the cost of having to sit half idle for the next 30s because I'm waiting for MP to slow refresh between even my cheapest attack spells. Currently, if I die and get raised myself, I can't cast Verraise at all without having Dreaming available, but with Dreaming I can cast it twice subject to the aforementioned subsequent half-idling cost. If Verraise had charges, you'd have to consider how to prevent me from getting raised and then blowing all of my charges to get the party up and then going back into a full attack rotation immediately. Take away charges when I die? Okay, but then it's a big gameplay change.

Another consideration is that the MP bar provides important information to people other than just the player. The rest of the party can see if a healer's low on MP and needs help with further raises. If you take away MP you will have to charge certain abilities or introduce an additional job gauge, and neither of these are visible to the rest of the party, which means that people would have to create OOM macros and people would have to keep an eye on the chat box for other players' OOM macros. This would be a direct nerf to situational awareness.

tl;dr: Yes, we need MP.

Besides BLM's gimmick IS blowing off their MP then having a literal cooldown period while they gain it back, it's especially based on managing that currency with all its resources. If you took out MP you'd have to add charges to Fire IV which would get consumed and force you into Umbral Ice to regain them, and it'd make BLM's rotation even more set and unforgiving and... kind of boring (Use Fire IV 3 times because you have 3 Umbral Hearts, then use Bliz 4 to get 3 more UHs, then spend them on Fire IVs, repeat, where does Despair fit into this? idk).

Right now a BLM has to juggle their AF timer with Fire IV/Fire/Fire III, they can use Manafont every 180s to squeeze in more Fire IVs+Despair and that resource management widens the gap between a decent and a great BLM. Without MP, Manafont would need to be reworked to instead give "Fire IV" charges or whatever. Without MP, BLM would suffer the most as its whole kit would have to be reworked.

For the other Casters it's more of a punishment for bad resource management or dying (if you die as a RDM and don't have Lucid, you'll be stuck casting one spell per tick until it comes off CD, SMN is... more forgiving with Egi Assaults and Ruin's low MP cost and aaaall its CDs). And on healers it's really a punishment if other people die, or you're spamming your big heals like Cure III (looking at YOU, Terminal Velocity, 2-3 deaths during Triple Apocalypse and we're guaranteed to wipe because healers won't have MP for the heal check).

If we removed MP we'd have to rework BLU as well. As it stands, with MP everything it does costs something. It can reduce its crazy DPS by using Blood Drain to gain back 300MP per cast on top of natural regen, but when you're doing anything serious, you can't afford to cut your DPS except as needed.

You run out of MP on BLU for its most powerful spells, like White Wind and Diamondback.

Similar to other examples, you could change these powerful spells to skills that are on timers instead, but that would dramatically lower the power of the job, and the point of the job is to be an overpowered do-it-all.

It's a lot better for them to keep an existing resource that's going to be universal anyway than get rid of it.

Also I miss TP and the considerations that went along with it. I know people found it to be annoying, but it made everything take a little more thought.

I'd like to go back to more MP management on healers personally. We have enough MP for days at level 80.