Mp management of the healers

One of the many design changes SHB brought out was the removal or reduction of mp management. Pretty much nobody complained about 10000mp being the unified max mp limit- makes it easier to do maths after all.
But there has been some low key grumbling about the different healers having to rely on shroud of saints lucid dreaming and how healing between the amazing healing kits and barely noticable damage and frequency.
As a result, mp management is almost a thing of the past for whm and sch, astros on the other hand- well they are getting changes next patch

How did we get here though?

In sb we saw whm get hit with a wrecking ball and ending up with lots of free healing which has continued to this day. In shb unless the whm has some reviving to do, they have practically infinite mp to cast
Curiously whm's don't have much in terms of mp restoration, just lots of mp neutral abilities:
Whm's have 500mp every assize plus healing and damage, 4-6 free casts of any spell or 2 free revives per thin air (3 for the skilled) and 5 free casts of cure 2 every 90 seconds where 3 of those can be exchanged for medica between lillies and tetragrammaton

Astro lost luminerferous aether in sb and ewer in shb. It struggled as much as rdm at shb launch and nocturnal still has severe mp issues. Its mp neutral is being removed from lightspeed and in return getting some mp changes elsewhere in its kit.
About time really as its got no method of mp restoration outside of lucid dreaming

Sch has aetherflow and energy drain and a long list of healing tools plus a flying eureka potion (instead of two fairies of yesteryear). Its mp is very neutral from what I have seen but its very slow to get back into a fight after being ko'd due to its resources management unless recitation is available
(haven't played scholar past 60 since hw so any scholar mains that want to correct me on this please do)


So here's the question:

Should healers get their unique mp management styles expanded on (or readded in ast's case) and lucid dreaming be scrapped?

As a WHM main since 2.0 i was so upset when they took away my divine seal and shroud of saints in the name of role skills and had the audacity to change the icons and rename them. I personally miss the old flavor classes used to have before they took certain skills that did the same thing and set them as role skills for everyone. EX: esuna and got rid of leeches and exalted detriment, lucid dreaming, rampart (war had no true equivalent but foresight was taken away), low blow (pld had no ogcd stun before this). So from a class flavor point of view I’d like these skills returned. From an MP management point of view SE has already said in the live letter that they’re reducing MP costs on AST and moving the MP management from light speed to something else so we'll just have to wait and see what gets done.

I just wish that mana management was a relevant part of healer gameplay, asking the player to balance output versus efficiency depending on circumstance, rather than just "press mana button on cooldown to ignore mechanic." Unfortunately that would require not just a rework/removal of the mana buttons, but also fights that regularly demand varying levels of mana-costing GCD output.

I would say it started in heavensward because mp management was just as easy back then for sch and astro.

Sch has aetherflow but back then, it restored 20 percent of their total mp back then instead of the 10 percent that it was in stromblood. Combined with the fairy's strong healing, mp management wasn't really a thing and they could meld accuracy if they need to and get melds for damage.

Astro lumonious aether was 15 seconds when it first came on a 2 min cd just like shroud of saints but in 3.2 it got increased to 24 seconds and in 3.4 with the buff to celestial opposition, they had a strong mp economy back then as well.

Whm were the weak link back with their mp management on top on everything which why they were so universally lambasted back then and why stormblood went to such lengths to make the strong mp battery then with the change from shroud of saints into lucid dreaming, whm getting thin air and assize getting reduced from 90 seconds to 60 seconds. Whm in arr and heavensward had procs for their mp managemant. Free cure, overcure, hald medica and free esuna. The first one is still in the game, the second one was a chance for a cure 2 to make reduced cure 3 mp by 50 percent, a chance for medica to half as well, and a chance for esuna to be free. The problem here was that all these procs had a low percentage of happening. They were 15%, 15%, 20%, and 20% respectively. Shroud of Saints was only 15 seconds on a 2 min cd and Stoneskin was a costly spell back then. Thats why they went really overboard back then in stormblood to try to give the whm one defining trait outside of being the strong healer.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

its very slow to get back into a fight after being ko'd due to its resources management unless recitation is available
(haven't played scholar past 60 since hw so any scholar mains that want to correct me on this please do)

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Can confirm that it's a bit sluggish to get back up after a KO as Scholar. (Then again, it might be because I meld DH over Piety. Shh.)

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Originally Posted by Synaesthesia

Scholar seems like it's in a good spot for me from a gameplay perspective? You can run low, but also recover by using your tools carefully, and that's enjoyable to me.

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Indeed. It is as you say. I would add that part of Scholar's versatile MP management is much thanks to Energy Drain. (I still can't fathom they removed it a while ago? Yikes...)

Part of the reason I enjoy running DH over Piety is because it forces me to really optimise my MP management, a factor -- and also a personal challenge -- that I've come to enjoy.

I feel like it should be either something that every healer has to actively manage and control their skill usage over, or something that none of them need to worry about at all. Scholar seems like it's in a good spot for me from a gameplay perspective? You can run low, but also recover by using your tools carefully, and that's enjoyable to me. White Mage is so easy to manage mana on that it's almost not even a thought point while playing aside from recklessly blowing through mana or forgetting to use some skills at all, and Astrologian is virtually powerless to stop their MP pool from running low eventually and the death of either the Astro or one or two extra party members turns the run into misery.

I feel like both WHM and Astro feel worse from a gameplay perspective as a result, and I'm happy they're addressing Astro. I'm not really advocating for nerfing WHM though.. it's supposed to be a more approachable healer, and while it's super easy to manage, it's still a small factor in gameplay.

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Astro lumonious aether was 15 seconds when it first came on a 2 min cd just like shroud of saints but in 3.2 it got increased to 24 seconds and in 3.4 with the buff to celestial opposition, they had a strong mp economy back then as well.

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And has the option to extend to 34s with CO.

I think that our mana household should also be our job. Even though I was really sloppy with LD at the beginning of the add-on. I also think it's good that every healer has a common component in the form of LD and also keeps his mana household with job-specific skills.

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Originally Posted by Heilstos

And has the option to extend to 34s with CO.

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That probably had a much bigger impact than Ewer, being able to extend LD and Lightspeed with CO.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

Should healers get their unique mp management styles expanded on (or readded in ast's case) and lucid dreaming be scrapped?

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So if we take a wider view outside of just healers...

A raw resource pool like MP/TP has had increasingly less relevance. I mean, TP's been flat out removed - and why wouldn't you. Optimal play is about keeping uptime, managing resources in more of a builder-spender sense, and so on.

Then looks look at MP on caster DPSs. It's pretty irrelevant. Doing their DPS rotations, they will never ever run out and can DPS indefinitely. And in a game that's about optimizing up time, minimizing movement, and so on, why would it make sense to have it be otherwise? --But there's one exception. Raising. MP still limits raising.

Then we have healers. The only classes left that can actually run out of MP doing their normal thing. AST most notably, though that's being addressed shortly. And, yes, even WHM needs a certain piety minimum or it can't really come back from a KO in a high uptime fight.

The logical progression would be to make MP irrelevant outside of raising.

oGCDs are already throttled by their CDs. If you're GCD healing, you're already punished for that by slipping DPS. With how optimization works, there's not really a particular reason for MP to restrict normal spell usage. Every other class gets to not have TP or pretend MP doesn't exist, outside of raising. Why should healers be the exception?

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

The logical progression would be to make MP irrelevant outside of raising.

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This sounds like pretty boring gameplay to me.

I main Scholar, so I can't really speak as clearly for the other healers, but I find the inherent need for MP management to be an exciting and challenging aspect of the job. If this was to be simplified to the point where GCD-healing meant I never ran out of MP, there wouldn't be any challenge left. The thing is, I don't think one should view the fact that healers have to manage their MP as a form of punishment; rather, I think it needs to be considered necessary for the core enjoyment of playing the job in itself. If there were no resources for me to manage, no dps skills to weave in on my downtime (as we've talked about regarding homogenisation in another thread), then it wouldn't be any more enganging than pressing one button over and over until you win the game. And that, to me, does not sound like fun.

Now that TP is gone, I suppose this kind of resource management is more of a healer-only concern. Personally, though, I like it. A little challenge -- and sometimes more, if you ask me -- goes a long way in keeping the game enganging.

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Originally Posted by Torunya

This sounds like pretty boring gameplay to me.

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Now that TP is gone, I suppose this kind of resource management is more of a healer-only concern. Personally, though, I like it. A little challenge -- and sometimes more, if you ask me -- goes a long way in keeping the game enganging.

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Well this complaint hasn't plagued the other classes, so presumably if the rotation and boss fight is engaging enough, it shouldn't be too boring overall?

And, piety requirements aren't very exciting to me. Meld and be done.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Well this complaint hasn't plagued the other classes, so presumably if the rotation and boss fight is engaging enough, it shouldn't be too boring overall?

And, piety requirements aren't very exciting to me. Meld and be done.

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The only way removing an MP cost works here is removing it from the damage spells, but you'd probably couple this with weakening MP restoration since that's primarily what they're neutralizing for cost.

They'd need to fundamentally change healer kits to make this interesting. MP management goes hand-in-hand with making choices to keep your mana managed after all. What meaningful MP saving choices do current healers have outside of...uh...casting Cure/Benefic versus Cure 2/Benefic 2? Right now, if you made MP management a real thing (take WHM as an example), say you're facing an enemy. Your choice is cast Glare or don't. There isn't exactly a catalogue of spells to choose judiciously from based on their MP cost. Adding this as an element to healer gameplay as the kits stand now would only do one thing: lead to healers standing around doing nothing and effectively doing the /sit for MP thing that people did in MMOs past.

Oh ew no, I just realized that forcing healers to sit around and do nothing between healing spells sounds -exactly- like what the current design direction would just love healers to do. Please don't let this give them ideas.

MP only really has significance during prog tbh, currently and in the past. That hasn't changed. MP as a resources is a key element in games that push the healing meta. In those games overhealing tends to be beneficial so it becomes a game of trying to maximize your MP use (and finish dry right at the end of the fight). In a game like FF14 that is never going to happen though so it's really just an extra resource to manage when things go wrong. It's pretty discrete and I don't mind keeping it as is imo.

I felt like we need more MP management and not less. Healers need a single target DPS skill that really burns mp. WHM has so much sustain that an on demand Misery with high cost just makes sense. Something that would allow them to capitalize on the full bar of MP they never really need. With the changes coming up all healers are going to have great sustain it seems and it's going to make our choices even less important if MP stops being a consideration at all.

Lucid for SCH and WHM is a tool to use to recover MP in situations where it is greatly lost. WHM has tools to prevent this from even happening, and the best means to recover from a KO. SCH is not as good, but can recover mana quickly enough to only need Lucid in drawn out healing scenarios or KO recovery. AST straight up needs it, and it always has to be on CD. This can make it extremely difficult for them if they are KO'd, and will need more assistance than the other two healers getting back into action.

We know all that already, so where I am getting at is that MP management still exists, but I am not so sure that AST should be the rule when it comes to it. To truly get rid of Lucid, SCH and AST would need MP utility like or similar to WHM since they have the strongest kit to not only mitigate it, but also recover it. But then you take away a very strong advantage WHM currently has. However, I think the sun has long set on such matters having any kind of bearing on how things are currently. Given SE's history, I am actually worried that they will overtune AST MP recovery, and this thread will be more relevant than ever.

This might be more for some, but I feel like this would mainly just hurt prog and newer / lower ability healers.

I was thinking about this the other day, too. MP is really only a concern for Healers (mostly AST and, to a lesser extent, SCH) and a RDM who is forced to Verraise. As a SMN I never worry about MP unless I've died and have to pop Lucid, and then that's it. There's not a lot to it other than that. BLM has MP management baked into the core of their kit, and it makes me think maybe that's the healthy approach for resource management in the future? Casters in any game worry about mana, including every other FF game. It's just strange to me only one caster has mana management as a core component in its rotation.