How do you feel about MP?

To me, it feels like MP doesn't matter any more. Now that lilies have been buffed, it's so hard to run out of MP on any healer, unless you completely forget about Lucid Dreaming for several minutes. And that's with every healer avoiding Piety like the plague. So what's the point of having MP at all? Just to make death even more punishing? To encourage newbie healers to stop spamming AoE heals when everyone is at full health?

Personally, I like it when I occasionally have to worry about MP. It can be an extra bit of complexity for the healing puzzle. I wonder what it would be like if oGCD heals cost MP.

I dunno, how do y'all feel about it? Should MP management be an important element of healer gameplay? Should it just be a niche optimization? Or is it boring/outdated and not worth the time to fix it?

Not only should it be something to worry, I wanna bring back TP too.
Resource management is part of the fun of combat and without it you're just pressing buttons.

MP are only a thing to limit consecutive resurrection and that's all.

Outside of that it's only a system which force you to push 1 button every minutes so, a basically useless system nowadays.

MP is only interesting if you have to make choices to conserve it. Since current healer kits have almost no choices in them, it would be like Heavensward WHM; you just run out of MP doing what you're supposed to do, and there's not much of anything you can do about it other than standing around not doing anything and waiting for MP ticks.

Does any job actually use MP in a slightly interesting way other than BLM? I feel like RDM, SMN and every healer are just "hit Lucid/Aetherflow/Cards/etc on CD lmao" and that's the extent of ""management"" on them all. On any healer, I'm never doing anything interesting with my MP, it's just slowly being depleted by Broil spam until I hit Aetherflow and Lucid again. I don't want it removed but other than preventing someone from just spamming GCD heals and being able to res more, what really would change if it was removed?

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

Does any job actually use MP in a slightly interesting way other than BLM? I feel like RDM, SMN and every healer are just "hit Lucid/Aetherflow/Cards/etc on CD lmao" and that's the extent of ""management"" on them all. On any healer, I'm never doing anything interesting with my MP, it's just slowly being depleted by Broil spam until I hit Aetherflow and Lucid again. I don't want it removed but other than preventing someone from just spamming GCD heals and being able to res more, what really would change if it was removed?

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pld, drk and tank!blu all have more mp management than all the healers

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Not only should it be something to worry, I wanna bring back TP too.
Resource management is part of the fun of combat and without it you're just pressing buttons.

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I feel like the only remotely relevant reason to bring back TP would be DRK and PLD. Otherwise, why have two separate gauges just to arbitrarily waste one or the other? Apart from those two hybrids, all would be either a pink gauge class or a yellow gauge class, with no crossover. That or you'd have to somehow add meaningful TP usage to every caster.

Then again, "meaningful" is a higher standard than any MP users follows right now. Outside of, again, DRK and PLD, MP gauges are basically just soft rez-charge meters.

And as Semirhage mentioned, constraints are only as interesting as your ability to maneuver around them is more interestingly than what gameplay would be present without those constraints. Simply losing access to your kit every other GCD after X minutes is fun to no one.

If you can't actually manage it (only be managed/stopped by it) --and in more depth than just hitting a bloat button once per minute or two-- it's not resource management.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Not only should it be something to worry, I wanna bring back TP too.
Resource management is part of the fun of combat and without it you're just pressing buttons.

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Man, I wish. I'd love to have more resources to manage. :(

Personally, I feel like MP should not be as "plentiful" as it is on most/all classes. MP should be a resource that forces players to make a decision between safety, and risk-reward game play.
"Should I cast flare to maybe kill the enemy right now, making the fight shorter but potentially getting me killed in the process? or should I just NOPE outa there and play it safe? I've been casting recklessly until now and now I only have enough MP to choose one option."
MP as it is now is more of a meter that tells you if your pulling off your rotations correctly (or in the case of healers) spamming your 1 button too much. its not necessarily a limited resource that needs careful planning and strategy.

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Originally Posted by QooEr

pld, drk and tank!blu all have more mp management than all the healers

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DRK maybe, but PLD's MP is an illusion--the correct choice is to spend your whole bar during Requiescat, and therefore there is no choice.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

DRK maybe, but PLD's MP is an illusion--the correct choice is to spend your whole bar during Requiescat, and therefore there is no choice.

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Indeed. Both are likewise just fancy indicators for charges shared across 3 skills. 3.33 charges for the one, 5 for the other. One should be used minimally outside of raidbuffs to avoid overcap. The other may as well not exist outside of the job's native buff (and its 3rd option is worthless even then).

I feel like you can remove MP, it mostly exists to prevent a lot of raise but Raise is a 8 second long cast, instant raise is a 60s cooldown.
So you already can't chain res.

MP also exists to prevent spamming big healing casts like Cure III, Medica but even if there wasn't MP, you would be a terrible healer if you did this.
So you already don't spam those healing spells.

As DPS, MP never comes into play except for BLM. Other than that, you spam Lucid Dreaming.
On the contrary, sometimes is simply prevents the job from attacking "too fast", honestly that just reminds me of HW PLD or HW MNK.

PLD? Make it a gauge already...
DRK? Also make it its own gauge.
SMN? MP never comes into play, Res is 8s long cast.
RDM? Put the res on 30s and voila.
BLM? Make it its own gauge, MPs are basically a BLM gauge.

Healer could see MPs infinite or removed, they wouldn't change the slightest in their gameplay.
KO already reduces the potency of healing, that's far enough punishment.

To me it feels like MP are there for the same reason we have branching combos for some jobs instead of the 1 button pvp combos: so you can still make mistakes. Like, I'm currently leveling SAM and GNB and because I'm not so used to them I sometimes forget where in the combo I am and have to check my hotbars. I even pressed the wrong button once or twice (or more... I'm clumsy and stupid). For healers MP are there so you don't forget to press Lucid Dreaming, use your stacks as SGE, and so on. If you forget to press them or just spam Cure III you run out of MP.

Other than that it's just there to punish the healer for the other party members' mistakes. Like if multiple players have to be raised you run out of MP and get yelled at because you can't do anything meaningful anymore. Or you just used your MP heals and someone drops their AoE on you, and you get raised with nothing. If it was my fault I'd gladly take it...

If MP are the way they are now they can just as well remove them completely and give the jobs that need them another job gauge that functions similarly.

For Raise it could just cost this gauge and/or have a longer CD with multiple charges. Expensive heals could cost gauge as well.

The other option would be a complete overhaul to MP management to make it meaningful again, but I'd rather have they make healers more engaging in a different way.

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Originally Posted by Limonia

To me it feels like MP are there for the same reason we have branching combos for some jobs instead of the 1 button pvp combos: so you can still make mistakes.

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Except, you'd be more than capable of enough mistakes even without them.

Spamming Medica II, for instance, is mistake enough in wasted time. Using the outright wrong combo for one's place in rotation or the given circumstance is already a costly mistake.

And yet we spend up to 7 buttons per job on what amounts to just fat-fingering traps or bloat like Lucid Dreaming.

No, neither can be warranted on the mere basis that one can thereby make mistakes. Universal MP tools are sheer bloat, and the primary purpose of separate keys for each step in a fixed combo is a combination of pretended depth and the enjoyment of varied button presses and their tactile cues. The two sets are fairly different.


Personally, I'd just like to see Lucid Dreaming removed, its potency per minute essentially made baseline, and for players to have the option of hitting just one button per combo, with non-choices (i.e., anything but restarting into an alternate combo or the next step of the current one) blocked out for fairness.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

DRK maybe, but PLD's MP is an illusion--the correct choice is to spend your whole bar during Requiescat, and therefore there is no choice.

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You don't spend all of it during req though. You also use the spells for ranged uptime (although it's true you have so much surplus MP it won't matter for the management by itself). The real reason to have MP is to make Clemency a limited resource, or at least force you adjust your rotation to maximize MP recovery instead of damage if you have to play blue healer. It's a really good feature for letting PLD have their healing capabilities without making healers completely redundant, since the more you have to step in the more severe the DPS tax gets.

MP is in a strange spot. The players who used to run out of MP most easily were the good players who were keeping near 100% uptime and constantly spending it. Medica II spammers rarely ran out of mana because their uptime tends to be 50-60% and their gear tended to be riddled with Piety because they don't care about stats. It doesn't even limit Raises that much in that example. In that regard it simply became a punishment for playing well.

If we wanted MP management to be a thing, it would take a full rework. Perhaps make dps casts free, or even a small mana restorative and make heals cost mana, including some oGCD's. Balance it so it didn't regenerate fast and it would essentially limit how much healing you have per encounter, encouraging planning and smart use of cheaper heals and discouraging blindly spamming GCD heals.
But it would mean bad players can potentially go OOM or bad tanks drain a healer too much and cause wipes, which would go against their policy of everything below Savage being clearable regardless of player skill.

As for the current state of healers, until we get that rework (if we ever do), what gets to me more is why is Piety still a thing? Seriously. It's frustrating when a 580 piece is worse than a 600ilv piece because of this nonsense stat. Get rid of it, or buff it with added damage so it becomes our bread and butter stat. I'm baffled how it survived an entire new expansion unchanged though.

I think MP is fine if it's used meaningfully. These days there is far too many oGCDs that cost nothing to use. The only time I run risk of running out is if I'm forced to res a lot.

For paladin, dark knight, and black mage, MP is more of a gauge to manage due to how rapidly it fluctuates.

Didn't like TP since aside from a couple skills, you couldn't manage it. It felt more like a way to punish you for DPSing too hard, especially if you had too much skill speed. It also meant classes that used TP shouldn't use sprint, since sprinting costed TP.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Not only should it be something to worry, I wanna bring back TP too.
Resource management is part of the fun of combat and without it you're just pressing buttons.

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As a former monk no, just no. Tp leaving was the best thing. MP needs higher cost but with some abilities give back mp like what ast/sage do. plus lower regen by like maybe 10% or so. something like that

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Originally Posted by JisKing98

As a former monk no, just no. Tp leaving was the best thing.

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This.

TP = "Here, I heard some people were taking Skill Speed beyond a minimum threshold, mistakenly thinking this game should offer gameplay choice through its stats. Let's fix that and make it very clear that only one stat should be king. Embrace BiS; reject customization."

yeah MP is pretty much irrelevant now

only matters on healers after death which at this point feels like really bad design (sage gauge gets wiped, they r completely cucked after a death)

everyone else also heals for a good chunk less AND have barely any mana to throw in some GCD heals as well to make up for their lack of output

maybe if healers got ressed with like 50% MP that would be nice, i dont think any caster DPS cares about MP, ever

As mentioned, MP is basically just there to limit rezzing and makes a small appearance whenever you are determining substats (i.e. determining how much Piety you want to slot).

It also "forces" people to use Lucid Dreaming otherwise problems come up typically.

I like MP as a concept but it doesn't really function well at the moment. Healers, who have a priority to heal, shouldn't be worried about managing their MP to do so. It makes sense for MP to be a restriction on DPS classes that limits how many revives they can do but Healers should be the opposite in my opinion. A newly revived healer should still have all there healing at their disposal free of cost but lose access to MP needed for DPS. If they really wanna make healing approachable that would be the way to do it. Give each healer a unique DPS rotation with clear priorities and incentives to use their MP on spells with varying cost. Let each healer have a unique way to Regen MP as well. AST card draws, SCH Aetherflow and Energy Drain, Sage with Addersgall usage, and WHM with actual MP return on Lily Abilities. We could have really interesting DPS kits that utilize our MP in interesting ways adding the depth we are sorely missing while allowing causal healers to always be up to the task of keeping the party alive.

In my ideal world Lucid Dreaming wouldn't exist at all for healers.

*There is nothing pass that wall stop searching for things*

*But maybe if…*

*Shhh… There is no war beyond the wall*

They will never make this game require intense skill or resource management ever again

Enjoy the illusions

Better MP management would be a nice way to spice up healer gameplay, at least something more in-depth than hitting Lucid Dreaming every so often.

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Originally Posted by Limonia

If MP are the way they are now they can just as well remove them completely and give the jobs that need them another job gauge that functions similarly.

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I think this is inadvertently hitting on the issue: At some point (SB for many, ShB for the rest), they chose to give every Job a Job Gauge/Mechanic. When they did, they effectively negated MP existing. Especially true for the healers, but pretty true for the rest.

WHM = Use Lily heals. If you're using a GCD that isn't a Lily heal and you have a Lily to spend, you're generally wrong. Lilies cost no MP. Tetra, Benison, Bendiction, Aquaveil, etc also cost no MP. Assize generates some MP.

SCH = Use Lily (Eos/Selene's true name) abilities (Fey Blessing/Whisper) or use Aetherflow heals. Unless you're using Spreadlo for some specific mechanic, you shouldn't be using GCD heals.

SGE = Use Kardia. Move Kardia to someone else. Keep using Kardia. Use Addesergall. Use other oGCDs. You only use the Eu-Prognosis/Diagnosis for very specific things or during downtime.

I don't play AST, but I figure it probably follows a similar thing to those. For healers, why bother with MP spending (except emergencies or damage dealing) when your oGCDs or Job GCDs (WHM Lilies) are so powerful you never need to use a GCD for the most part?

SMN I don't even know that MP exists, using summons. RDM I don't even know that MP exists, though this is because they buffed it in ShB (because they legit couldn't keep casting for a full fight). Melee and Ranged and WAR/GNB don't even use it.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

And yet we spend up to 7 buttons per job on what amounts to just fat-fingering traps or bloat like Lucid Dreaming.

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This is a shockingly accurate statement. It still boggles my mind how people think non-choice rotation buttons that are, as you say, fat-fingering traps (or ABJECT <30 IQ grasshoppers trying to play on your keyboard traps) or "use on cooldown" buttons that just kinda fill up hotbars but don't have any actual meaning other than "being another button".

It's really interesting seeing PvP versions where they throw them all on one button and...nothing of value seems to be lost. When Gnashing Fang for GNB was made one button, I don't think it altered the skill floor/ceiling of the game substantially in any way (I can't remember any time I ever wiffed the combo before), and if anything it can actually be a SMIDGE easier to mess up now if you mix it with your other combo (which you have sitting on the third button for a hot minute during the opener until you finish Double Down + Gnashing Fang for higher buffed damage). In PvP, they even put MCH's tools all on one button and you simply cycle through them every 20 sec and the only thing that's different is that burst windows might work a smidge differently, but the general filler rotation doesn't seem like it'd be that different if PvE did the same thing.

I'm not saying take all those things away or make it mandatory (a toggle makes sense), but it is a bit odd when people talk about it as a matter of skill. Though I guess this could be argued for ANY system that requires using multiple buttons, like RDM's Dualcast. But at least with Dualcast, there's a choice (use a white or black magic spell) and a purpose to that choice (to build mana but keep it roughly in balance) that makes that have SOME point to it. Hitting 1-2-3 isn't really that mechanically different from 1-1-1, especially since so many Jobs are mixing with the 1-1-1 anyway, like PLD's entire Requiescat/Swordworks phase. GNB's 1-2-1-2-1-2 Gnashing Fang combo is, oddly, more engaging (and more fast paced). Though I guess it all comes down to what we consider "skill".

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Originally Posted by Renathras

It's really interesting seeing PvP versions where they throw them all on one button and...nothing of value seems to be lost. When Gnashing Fang for GNB was made one button, I don't think it altered the skill floor/ceiling of the game substantially in any way (I can't remember any time I ever wiffed the combo before).

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You actually literally couldn't whiff Gnashing Fang's combo, except by hitting a weaponskill outside its combo line, which has been unchanged in that consolidation. Like Wheeling Thrust and Fang and Claw, you could only hit those buttons when available.

Sadly, that is somehow considered the line in the sand for combo consolidation, as if Gnashing Fang could only be "sacrificed" because it was already 'crippled" by involving two fewer trap buttons.

Granted, there are also still people who'd swear up and down that Glare would be more fun if it just forced you to hit a different button each time in a three-step cycle for the exact same effect, as if they somehow don't likewise have the option of multi-binding it unless that choice is forced on everyone else as well (as per XIV's "combos" in general).


Now, I can definitely see the argument for favoring the tactile feel of hitting more buttons. There's the whole rhythm game element to hitting a different button each time, and it even makes it easier to keep track of where one is in a fight. I enjoy that. That's why I'd never care to force consolidation upon everyone. Even Gnashing Fang's consolidation should have been a choice, imo. But we shouldn't be denying others that choice over the weirdest of petty forms of pride (that "I can hit 2 after 1 more consistently than you can!").

Remove the trap element, so your choices are just to reset, switch, or continue a combo (as would be possible, too, for consolidated forms) for balance against those consolidated forms --and to stop disproportionately punishing just the dexterity-impaired or especially anxious players among us-- and give players the choice. They can slot the individual skills or they can slot the combo line (with no ugly PvP icon borders, please).

(For stuff like Jump -> Mirage Dive, likewise provide the choice so that players can ignore the built-in safety delay to immediately double-weave a Mirage Dive via the separate key if they so choose.)