Is it time to get rid of the PIE party bonus?

With the addition of AST to the game we now have 2 healers that give a PIE party bonus while only one (WHM) gives a MND bonus. This creates some imbalance as MND not only affects healing, but healer DPS as well. It's in fact probably the biggest loss in an AST/SCH party and has been bemoaned countless times in discussions involving AST/SCH on this forum and others.

Now, I think everyone gets that party stat bonuses were added early to the game to avoid class-stacking. However, I think it is now largely obsolete because:

• In terms of utility, the jobs balance each other out well enough in a typical full party setup that you don't really want to stack a single class.
• Similar roles typically give similar bonuses (MNK and DRG give STR, all 3 tanks give VIT etc.), with the only disparity we have being in the healer role. It was designed that way to promote having a WHM/SCH combo during 2.x and pretty much nobody complained because WHM/SCH was the norm back then. Well, it still is, but for different reasons.

I'm questioning why the only healer combo to be penalized with a significant (3%) main stat loss would be AST/SCH. There are two (maybe three) ways to adjust this system:

• Give every healer a MND bonus and give up on PIE. This is probably not ideal but would be reasonable. Alternative would be to give every healer a MND bonus, PIE bonus on top of it for full party.
• Give a MND bonus to Diurnal AST and a PIE bonus to Nocturnal AST. I'm not really sure they can technically make that work as it seems to be inherently tied to the jobs in the party.
• Significantly revamp the whole party bonus system as it is trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist in the first place.

What do other players think? Is it an interesting system that should be kept as is? Should it be revamped? Should it be dropped?

No it doesn't need to be changed. PIE bonus is great for WHM, and BLMs love it too because of the extended MP pool.

When 4.0 comes around, the next healer will likely have MND party bonus. That is why.

If you get rid of the PIE party bonus, the BLM population will cut you. Even now total PIE matters for specific rotations unless you're a Dunefolk Lala.

I don't see any reason for PIE to be a party bonus, it isn't a main stat for anyone and ends up only punishing healers.

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Originally Posted by RaeyFonzur

I don't see any reason for PIE to be a party bonus, it isn't a main stat for anyone and ends up only punishing healers.

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MP regen rate is a percent of your max MP, so on top of a larger total MP pool everyone also gets more MP over the course of an instance.

As an alternate suggestion, why not give all healers both MND and PIE stat bonus? Not like any other role in the game provides either of these bonuses and it would balance out all the healers in terms of party bonus.

Ok, so let's transpose this between healers and casters, just for kicks.

Assume that all healers have MND bonus, Black Mage doesn't have an INT bonus but a PIE bonus, and SMN is the only class with an INT bonus.

Technole, Cynfael, your arguments still hold:
* PIE bonus is great for healers, and SMNs love it too because of the extended MP pool!
* If you get rid of the PIE party bonus, the healer and SMN population will cut you.

But the BLMs, most of the time, will lose 3% of their main stat if there is no summoner. And this is currently what happens to healers when there is no WHM in the party.

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Originally Posted by Keewee

But the BLMs, most of the time, will lose 3% of their main stat if there is no summoner. And this is currently what happens to healers when there is no WHM in the party.

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It's been a long time since I've run in a static with double casters... or even seen one.

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Originally Posted by Keewee

Ok, so let's transpose this between healers and casters, just for kicks.

Assume that all healers have MND bonus, Black Mage doesn't have an INT bonus but a PIE bonus, and SMN is the only class with an INT bonus.

Technole, Cynfael, your arguments still hold:
* PIE bonus is great for healers, and SMNs love it too because of the extended MP pool!
* If you get rid of the PIE party bonus, the healer and SMN population will cut you.

But the BLMs, most of the time, will lose 3% of their main stat if there is no summoner. And this is currently what happens to healers when there is no WHM in the party.

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Then give all healers both MND and PIE party bonuses if it's a big concern, as Ghis suggests. This is what they should have done to begin with.

Better idea than penalizing a different group in the process.

I don't heal so didn't even know about this. But DRK I would think gets benefit from piety with reliance on MP.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

Then give all healers both MND and PIE party bonuses if it's a big concern, as Ghis suggests. This is what they should have done to begin with.

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That change now allows the WHM/WHM, SCH/SCH, and AST/AST situation which is heavily discouraged. The real issue is they address the AST healing toolkit, which we know is going to happen in some capacity.

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Originally Posted by SpecialKK

I don't heal so didn't even know about this. But DRK I would think gets benefit from piety with reliance on MP.

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DRKs benefit too and all the MP regeneration we can get aside from Blood Price is a bonus. In terms of DPS, BLMs probably benefit the most because that can mean another fire in the rotation.

I just looked at BLM piety for the first time since expansion, did they nerf piety this bad for all jobs? Spell costs tripled, and the amount of MP given per piety dropped by 20%.

it makes sense to me, as you never wanna stack two AST or SCH anyways. plus it makes it more beneficial to take WHM + non whm.

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Originally Posted by technole

That change now allows the WHM/WHM, SCH/SCH, and AST/AST situation which is heavily discouraged. The real issue is they address the AST healing toolkit, which we know is going to happen in some capacity.

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Let's be real about this: the presence or lack of MND party bonus isn't making or breaking any healer combo.

I'd rather see both bonuses given to all healers just to make it even across the board.

It should be done away with in some way, whether that be giving all healers both bonuses, or just increasing Piety by 3% across the board and not having the Piety bonus, or even by just getting rid of it altogether and making people deal with slightly less MP.

The Mind bonus makes a pretty big difference. Right now, it's up to about 30 Mind. That's pretty close to what you get by upgrading your healers' weapons by 10 item levels. Healers can absorb that penalty a lot more readily than DPS or Tank classes can, but it's still kind of an unfair choice for people to have to make.

It's a pointless system that should be dropped. Roll the stats in baseline. Most people bring their own stat, all it does is penalize ast + sch parties and maybe tanks if your melee is a ninja or something and doesn't give him strength. Minor penalties, sure, but why? It's not encouraging varied parties, it's discouraging them.

I love the PIE bonus, I don't want to see it gone, but I do want to see something done about the fact that AST only offers PIE. There is definitely a lot of SCH vs AST for spots in Alexander Savage prog parties (at least on my server) because WHM is mandatory for that MND bonus. AST was advertised to us as being a fluid healer, able to fill both roles, though that is true in context, only offering one party buff does provide a problem in achieving this.

And the MND bonus is very significant. My WHM has 977 MND outside of a party, and 1,006 MND in a party. That is 29 MND. That's basically a free accessory value of MND (not a very high ilevel accessory, mind you. XD).

What if every class brought two stat buffs a primary/secondary if you will, but if you also get a class in your party that gives the secondary stat as their primary, it is their stat bonus that is used in that slot. So WHM brings MND as primary and Piety at 1/2 the bonus value. if they have a Scholar or AST in the party you get both at the full bonus, but if you're doubling WHM you only get a small PIE bonus. or maybe a part of the minor bonus gets stacked on to the major bonus if you have stacking secondaries. Just rambling musings

Off the Cuff:
Tanks
Vit/Str

Dragoons/Monks
Str/Dex

Ninja
Dex/Str

Bard/Mch
Dex/Vit or Pie

BLM/SMN
Int/Pie

WHM
MND/Pie

AST/SCH
Pie/MND

How about we leave it as it is because there's nothing wrong with it and this whole thread is mostly nitpicking.

Or we can have AST give mind when in diurnal and PIE when in nocturnal, that'd make more sense than anything I think.

I've always been of the opinion that it should have been WHM that brought PIE and SCH that brought MND, considering that SCH are meant to be tactical geniuses, and WHM are Amdapori priests

for AST, I'm in agreement that it should be based on stance

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

How about we leave it as it is because there's nothing wrong with it and this whole thread is mostly nitpicking.

Or we can have AST give mind when in diurnal and PIE when in nocturnal, that'd make more sense than anything I think.

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It is nitpicking, and the only reason it's coming up is because of the weaker AST potency and toolkit. One more MND accessory in stats won't fix the stubborn RNG of the cards, nor the high cooldown cost of it's niche skills. Giving both jobs both bonuses adds new questions, and new possible problems are created that could upset the apple cart in balance (SCH+SCH with MND bonus, that is a problem). Not to mention there will be more healer jobs in the future.

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Originally Posted by technole

It is nitpicking, and the only reason it's coming up is because of the weaker AST potency and toolkit.

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Astrologian and scholar are support healers, people seem to love to forget the fact white mage is the main healer and that simple fact warrants certain perks.

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Originally Posted by mp-please

Astrologian and scholar are support healers, people seem to love to forget the fact white mage is the main healer and that simple fact warrants certain perks.

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This is 100% wrong. They are all healers that each have a different focus and kit, mitigation and mana efficient dot dmg (sch), raw dmg/heal and excellent recovery tools (whm), and all I can really come up with is card utility for astro (and I play one at 60 too, really not much kit here).

The game is designed to have any mix of players in a group for success (so long as all the proper roles are filled). Problem with Astro currently is they are a bit under-tuned and are being looked at and adjusted accordingly..

The thing with buff can easily be fixed by simply having mnd be the default and pie trigger only when a second healer is present. That would pretty much solve the issue.

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Originally Posted by mp-please

Astrologian and scholar are support healers, people seem to love to forget the fact white mage is the main healer and that simple fact warrants certain perks.

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They threw that already-debatable meta out the window when they drastically improved SCH's ability to handle raid damage and removed WHM's exclusive Graniteskin and Proshell traits. Clearly they intend for all healer jobs to be capable as "main" healer, albeit with different strengths. They just didn't do so well at giving AST distinctive strengths.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

They threw that already-debatable meta out the window when they drastically improved SCH's ability to handle raid damage and removed WHM's exclusive Graniteskin and Proshell traits. Clearly they intend for all healer jobs to be capable as "main" healer, albeit with different strengths. They just didn't do so well at giving AST distinctive strengths.

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Originally Posted by Alu79

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That's because this game is a MMO and every class needs to be balanced in some sort of way or everyone will play the same thing (or cry that one class is overpowered).
On every final fantasy game white mage/devout was and has always been the main healer with every other healing class sacrificing healing output in exchange for party support skills and that's what makes them support healers rather than main healers. There's 13 games before this one for god sake, get with the lore.

edit: and before someone picks on my line "this is a MMO", this is still a FF game, there's a legacy behind it that needs to be respected or the game will turn into another generic themepark rather than FF themed.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

They threw that already-debatable meta out the window when they drastically improved SCH's ability to handle raid damage and removed WHM's exclusive Graniteskin and Proshell traits. Clearly they intend for all healer jobs to be capable as "main" healer, albeit with different strengths. They just didn't do so well at giving AST distinctive strengths.

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Yet we all know what is really happening when it's a WHM/SCH paired raid. That hasn't changed at all.

See the threads asking for WHM's 20y HoTs, this one for MND bonus, among other things that ASTs want to raid from the WHM toolkit. Now why is that?

AST is supposed to bring buff utility at the cost of potency, it's not reliable. The combo is kind of like how DRK negates the loss of the highest defensive tank (PLD) with it's higher tank DPS and raid utility skills like Delirium, yet with the most inferior immunity cooldown. Clearly one job is in a better position because it is reliable utility.

Sure, YoshiP did apologize for flattening stoneskin and proshell, but also on the same line said they made up for it by giving WHM more healing power. Sure, SCH can perform the main healing role. Albeit with Indomitability requiring Aetherflow and Emergency Tactics also being a cooldown. Is it optimal? No. But it can work.

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Originally Posted by technole

Sure, SCH can perform the main healing role. Albeit with Indomitability requiring Aetherflow and Emergency Tactics also being a cooldown. Is it optimal? No. But it can work.

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It can be optimal if that's all your party requires. By the end of 2.x SCH had largely closed the healing gap with WHM simply because of ilvl inflation (remember all the SCH>WHM threads after everything was on farm?); with the new tools in 3.0, SCH provides enough raid healing even at our effectively lower ilvls to fill the main healer role even better than before when necessary.

Anyway, the real point I'm making here is that "main healer" is a subjective label. All three Jobs should be viable in this role. As you suggest, WHM brings the heaviest healing with the fewest CD and resource restrictions; SCH brings heavy single-target healing and burst raid healing restricted somewhat by CDs and resource consumption; AST is clearly supposed to bring added utility for the party, but that's where they went wrong by making the utility fairly weak and by failing to grant AST a fraction of the useful healing CDs that WHM and SCH have.

It's basically like making PLD the only tank that brings VIT and the others bring STR. All it's doing is punishing healers since the bonus is about 30 MND and 20 PIE and the MND is about +100 to Benefic and the PIE is only about 150 mp.

Easy fix for this is make it so that having one healer gives piety bonus while having 2 healers you get piety and mind.

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Originally Posted by Lebannen

Easy fix for this is make it so that having one healer gives piety bonus while having 2 healers you get piety and mind.

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When I play WHM in a 4-man, I still want my personal MND bonus, however small. More Holy, more Assize! :P

Everyone is thinking two hard on this one. This is simple. WHM gives mind bonus, SCH gives pie bonus, and AST gives both. AST is a sorta "hybrid" of the two anyways so this just makes sense. It doesn't mess or change anything from before.

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

How about we leave it as it is because there's nothing wrong with it and this whole thread is mostly nitpicking.

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Not really.

Lets pretend you main AST, its your only class at 60, it's decently geared, and you want to do some A1 Savage progression. You see one party up in the PF and they're missing a WHM. On my server, if you were to ask this party leader if you could heal instead of a WHM, because it's a pug and progression, they will turn you away. They want the healers to be healing and DPSing for as much as possible, so they take that MND bonus into consideration.

About a half hour of waiting later, another PF pops up. It's requesting a WHM and a SCH. Well, you have a stance that allows you to shield and you offer the PIE bonus, so you ask this party leader if he'll let you join in place of a SCH. "Lolno. Your Adlothing doesn't Crit and I know your SCH stance sucks. Go ask to WHM another party or something, bro."

For old content (like Coil), especially if its undersized, people aren't going to care if you're a WHM, SCH, or AST. And as we get more Eso each week and new items, I'm sure this too will pass. However, if you wanted to do Savage since day 1 as an AST in a pug, you were never ever considered for the WHM role (so there goes one half of your play style) and were left to fight with SCH for the second spot, and because of AST's current issue with their Noc Sect, they were almost always pushed aside for a real SCH.

You can see it as nitpicking, but it can effect part one's experience in-game and not in a positive way.

[EDIT] I made reference to the 2 PIE classes and 1 MND class causing an issue in another AST thread. And I did get this response:

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Originally Posted by Israacf

I agree with Selli, I quit Ast because of the very same reasons that they couldn't take me instead of a Scholar, since they were, technically (and they are) better.

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It does exist, it is an issue, and it does effect people who want to play the class.

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Originally Posted by Garotte14

Everyone is thinking two hard on this one. This is simple. WHM gives mind bonus, SCH gives pie bonus, and AST gives both. AST is a sorta "hybrid" of the two anyways so this just makes sense. It doesn't mess or change anything from before.

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"Hybrid" doesn't mean you give it buffs that the current healers don't have. So no, that doesn't make any sense. Then someone is going to say give all the healers MND/PIE, but see my previous page argument on why that doesn't make any sense.

You'd think PIE would be fine considering it is the only healer job with only one definite MP regen ability. The real issue is many people want the job to act like a WHM in almost every way possible when there isn't one in the party. Potency, 20y HoTs, and now MND. It's okay, there is a job with those things currently.

Address the card buffs, lower the cooldown/potency of some of the job's abilities, and add some kick to some of the more bread-and-butter skills like CO and CU. That is how you solve AST without raiding the WHM toolkit.

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

Or we can have AST give mind when in diurnal and PIE when in nocturnal, that'd make more sense than anything I think.

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Still say this is the best and easiest solution.

Why not do it this way.

1 x healer = MND bonus (for 4 man's).
2 x same healer = MND bonus
2 x different healers = MND & PIE bonus

So you only get both MND and PIE with two unique healers, otherwise you just get MND.

I can't think of a single good reason why you shouldn't automatically get all six stat bonuses whenever you're inside an 8-player instance, in a non-undersized party, regardless of party composition.

The problem goes beyond AST, Mind, and Piety, too. Imagine if your party were PLD / WAR, NIN / BRD / SMN / BLM, AST / SCH. That's a perfectly diverse party, with no duplicate jobs whatsoever, and yet neither of the tanks get a STR bonus, and neither of the healers get a MND bonus.

Half the party is taking an arbitrary penalty - a penalty that is ostensibly intended to discourage stacking a group full of the same class - that is roughly equivalent to a 10 iLevel downgrade on their weapon. I can't imagine that that's the system serving its intended purpose.

Mmm.... I wouldn't MND some PIE right now, I'm hungry. <derails off into the kitchen>

Release a 4th healer class with MND as its bonus and make things nice and square, Square!

(Or just give all bonuses all the time for full parties like some have suggested)

If AST is just a watered down, support version of SCH/WHM, I'm a little confused why a sect change wouldn't change the buff that they give to also mirror SCH/WHM. I certainly don't see why a main stat for healers would be restricted to one healer.

Then again, that would probably make AST overpowered! Some of you are absolutely ridiculous that you think something like that is unfair, but whatever you need to feel a bit more unique and special. Don't want to step on those toes.

I don't see why something like main stat buffs are restricted to one specific job anyway. If you can take 8 different jobs into a raid and you don't have all of the stat buffs, that's just stupid. That should be a restriction on having two of the same class and missing it. You should want to take a job because they offer, say, what a ninja offers a party every 60 seconds, and not because they have a DEX buff, for example. Will it make THAT big of a difference in the end? No, I don't think so, which is why I'm confused why it's a big deal to change it.

I liked the 1st healer = MND bonus, 2nd healer = PIE bonus idea (regardless of job).

To help discourage job stacking, it could also be refined to: 2nd healer that isn't same job as 1st healer = PIE bonus.