Manafont fix suggestion

Good morning,

I am suggesting a fix to Manafont, in the later levels of BLM especially it becomes very easy for the buff timer to lag behind the timers of ley lines and amplifier, since it is best to use it at 0 MP post-Despair for single target, and multi target post-Flare.


Consider a level 50 trait that makes it so rather than restoring MP upon use, Manafont instead gives you a 30s buff that grants you the MP as soon as your MP bar hits zero and then expires after one use (or multiple, if you feel like that could be level 91-100 skill territory). This means you could use the buff earlier to avoid any potential drift.


If you wanted to avoid making the trait at a later level, make a pre-Flare AOE spell that uses all mana at level 30 and then upgrade that spell at 50 to Flare as it is now. Then 0 MP could always be hit post-Manafont, AOE or single target (and if you really want to fix pre-umbral heart single target, have Manafont give 3200 MP instead of 3000).



Lots of things to think about but tl;dr:

Manafont should give you a 30s buff that executes the MP restore when you hit zero MP, rather than having to use it already at zero MP, in order to fix buff drift.




Or if that is also too complicated, consider this breakdown:


How it is now:
Manafont restores 30% MP when you press the button.


How it should be:
Using Manafont grants a 30s buff that restores your MP when it hits zero, and then expires.


The why:
Due to many factors, Manafont buff timer tends to drift, unsyncing it with other buffs.

bump I guess

Also, a discussion in NN recently led me to believe that low level BLM deserves a pre-Despair (call it "Sorrow" if you will) that uses remaining MP like Despair at level 30 and is upgraded to Despair at 72. This would ensure the Manafont buff ALWAYS triggers properly for single target pulls.

Drift is fine, especially when the optimization of the skill, in itself, that would otherwise drift affects what is net-optimal for one's rotations, allowing for further rotational variance and skill expression than would be present with a fool-proofed / nearly non-optimizable skill.

If not for the MP costs of opposite element casts being reduced to 0 under AF3/UI3, I could see a place for a reduced CD on Manafont, but I do not want to see it handled through what is effectively an additional partial charge per your suggestion, nor foolproofed in any other way.

I guess I'm not going to argue whether drift is fine or not, and I'm also far from discouraging non-standard rotation, but this isn't really about either of those things. The button just feels like crap (has NEVER felt good) and comes up at bad times (usually), especially with current raid fight design. Watch Eksu's video of P10S with pugs where he talks about how crappy it feels if it will help convince you.

Also as an aside there is button bloat to consider, who knows what they are going to give us with DT.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

I guess I'm not going to argue whether drift is fine or not, and I'm also far from discouraging non-standard rotation, but this isn't really about either of those things.

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Yet it will probably have that impact, as you've removed any conflict between optimizing Astral Fire cycles and LL sync and optimizing Manafont itself, reducing the value of varying rotation.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

Also as an aside there is button bloat to consider, who knows what they are going to give us with DT.

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Making Manafont something you can hit on CD regardless of one's point in rotation has zero impact on button bloat.

For it not to consume a button, you would need to either (A) remove it altogether, reducing BLM's agency by its difference, or (B) make it passive (after reaching zero MP, the cost of your spells will be nullified, to a maximum of 3k MP thus saved; once used, effect cannot reoccur for X seconds).

If you want to address Button Bloat in a far more reasonable way, look instead to mutually exclusive actions.

For instance, add to Blizzard IV "Automatically converts to Fire IV under Astral Fire if Fire IV is not equipped to your hotbars," and vice versa for Fire IV. Do the same for Freeze and Flare. Do the same for Between the Lines and Ley Lines, so the first takes the place of latter after the latter's use.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

snip

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I'm just going to respond to this at large, but I really don't feel like manafont really needs any changing. If you make it so that you press it and when you hit 0 mp, that is going to disrupt the low level gameplay outside of aoe (because of Flare) and remove situational skill expression, even if it drifts.

I'm not too sure I would want a low level despair, either. Every bit of leveling on Black Mage feels like it has natural progression, and it wouldn't feel right if we got such potent single target at a low level imo.

To me, Black Mage is essentially perfect right now, and I'm not sure how they could possibly expand upon it further. Though, I said that for Shadowbringers Black Mage as well, so I'll just have to wait and see.

I have a better solution.

Amplify and Manafont are mechanically redundant skills. They are both oGCDs, both on 2m cooldowns, and both give you, in its simplest form, "more uses of GCDs than you'd otherwise have." Manafont gives you 2 extra fire 1s, 2 extra fire 4s, or a fire 4 and despair, whereas amplify gives you 1 xenoglossy charge.

It naturally makes sense to align Manafont to work like Amplify. Instead of 'giving you mana the next time you run out,' it is mechanically simpler to understand and less prone to wonkiness to simply make it: "Your next 2 fire spells are free and are cast as if you are in Astral Fire 3 and have enhanced flare. Your timers are frozen until the end of this ability."

By doing this, Manafont becomes a guaranteed 2 fire 1s below 60, a guaranteed 2 fire 4s at 60+, and 2 despairs at 72.

You might think to yourself, "Where does amplify fit into this?"

At level 84, Manafont upgrades into Amplify, giving you 2 uses of some new ability, let's call it High Despair, that replaces Despair, giving you 2 uses of a very powerful ability.

But wait, there's more. It also gives you a 'high flare,' and may or may not be instant cast.

This solves the mechanics redundancy, adds some oomph to the spell giving the class some much needed 2m burst, while still slotting into the role that Amplify and Manafont both provide without causing issues or delaying when you actually get your burst, allowing for a variable-length burst rotation to have a guaranteed fixed point of burst.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Making Manafont something you can hit on CD regardless of one's point in rotation has zero impact on button bloat.

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This says to me that you didn't really read what I originally wrote, which is fine, I guess. Let me know if I can clarify anything.

I don't disagree with your assessment of mutually exclusive skills, although I'm not a fan of giving BLM The SMN Treatment™ and making it like six total buttons.

As an aside I disagree with your assessment that such a proposed change to manafont would reduce the value of rotational optimization, now you just get to do it WITH manafont better instead of watching it drift and lose usage.

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Originally Posted by Zairava

I'm not too sure I would want a low level despair, either. Every bit of leveling on Black Mage feels like it has natural progression, and it wouldn't feel right if we got such potent single target at a low level imo.

To me, Black Mage is essentially perfect right now...

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I don't think the skill would necessarily need to be extremely potent, it would just need to serve the rotational purpose and be worth using. I agree with you that the skill progression genuinely feeling like you are getting stronger with black magic as you level up feels good, but lore/fantasy should NEVER outweigh accessibility and experience. That's how people give up on jobs, and anecdotally that is what I am seeing happen with BLM currently.



Once again I despise the mentality "this thing is perfect."

If you believe any class in the game is perfect at any time, you're either a victim of grass-greener nostalgia (ie. "SCH was perfect when it had 4 dots to manage in 2.x"), or you don't play the class enough.

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Originally Posted by Llugen

This says to me that you didn't really read what I originally wrote, which is fine, I guess. Let me know if I can clarify anything.

I don't disagree with your assessment of mutually exclusive skills, although I'm not a fan of giving BLM The SMN Treatment™ and making it like six total buttons.

As an aside I disagree with your assessment that such a proposed change to manafont would reduce the value of rotational optimization, now you just get to do it WITH manafont better instead of watching it drift and lose usage.

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How do you possibly read from "I prefer actually having to time Manafont instead of just foolproofing it to be hit on CD" anything to do with a desire that BLM be reduced to six buttons?

You're asking to make the job more fool-proofed; I'm saying I'd rather not.

???

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I don't think the skill would necessarily need to be extremely potent, it would just need to serve the rotational purpose and be worth using.

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Flare with a higher base but AoE falloff, if just tuned to be a damage increase (as it already was, pre-Despair), already serves that purpose.