Physick on SMN

[Shurrikhan]

Oh come on now, like SMN is the only job in the game with near to useless actions for end game content. Repose, Sleep, Tether, Fluid Aura... Is there any excuse to leave these actions as they are? Not really, but Yoshi has explicitly said there is no intention to base Physick on INT.

You give SMN a working Physick and we'll be back to threads of BLMs complaining they have no practical healing spell (as if they don't complain though about not having a Rez action...)

They could always, you know, not strip BLMs of half their shielding -- one of them originally a 100% physical mitigation tool on a ridiculously short CD -- and their previously unique anti-magic external...

they could just give physick a trait on SMN that changes it completely
turn it into Nature's Minne/Mantra OGCD or something

but there is no need to buff physic to work well on SMN

No one has asked for Physick itself to be buffed. They've been asking that it use one's primary stat, a fundamental given for all other actions and their users, such that it's not as exactly as weak at level 70 as at ~level 20. It is literally stronger in the Cutter's Cry set, just prior to splitting Intelligence from Mind, than on a i370 level 70. That should not be the case.

Might and Mend can still be retroactively adjusted upon equipping the SMN job crystal not to include healing, or to include only one's healing done to one's pets, in order to reduce it from an effective 400 potency to 280, still lacking the dualcast or burst-heal advantages of RDM. Further, one could increase RDM's Vercure back up to 400 potency, increasing its efficiency by some 14.3%, such that its healing potential, too, is about double its damage potential.

In either case there's no reason to leave Physick dead in the water, nor to make it any more powerful via a CD effect (say, competing with Bard) than it ought to be.

If bloat seems an issue, I'd argue that what you should be looking at is Sustain. Attach a HoT component to Physick if/when cast on your pet, and Sustain becomes useless, all without losing that broader functionality.

I suspect SMN/SCH will finally be separated come 5.0, thus Physick will simply go away. Scaling it off mind makes RDM entirely obsolete. Granted, it doesn't use Vercure often, but that's one more thing SMN does better. And SMN does a LOT of things better already.

But, why, though? It makes sense to split the two jobs' experience gains at their branching point if and only if there are lucrative future branched job ideas or if the gameplay Summoner and/or Scholar will, at the only level developers really seem to care about (level cap), improve based on a complete revision of their bottom end actions. So far neither of those things have been hinted at, while the systems already in place could just as easily allow the developers to decide which actions will or will not transfer from Arcanist to Summoner or Scholar; a Scholar's Arcanist (i.e. 1-30) traits are already retroactively changed when equipping the Scholar stone. A split isn't required to trim Physick or Resurrection from Summoner nor, say, Shadowflare or Bane from Scholar, let alone adjust their effects within either job.

So the real question then becomes... why bother? Apart from the leveling imbalance that's already been around through the entire life of Yoshida XIV, is there any real benefit?

I disagree also with the idea that giving Summoner a heal that isn't wholly just a joke would somehow kill Vercure, and by extent RDM. RDM is not Vercure, and Vercure would still retain a number of advantages.

Moreover, you're looking at two jobs that are already foils to each other in terms of general viability. Summoner is the most solid of all casters, and a top 4 performer among DPS. RDM is notoriously... far from either of those qualities. Far greater mana strain from raising, Embolden poor practical parity, necessarily poor CD alignment, and the like are just the tip of the iceberg for that job.
Let's balance those issues before we decide conclusively what offside mechanics should be barred to either, 'button bloat and design waste be damned'.

And let's be clear about this: BLM already had its answer to Resurrection in the form of LB-padding Manawall atop its Manaward atop its Apocatastasis. Sure its cross-classed Swiftcast meant a lot more to SMN/SCH than their Physick meant to BLM, but the unique options had their balancing points. Those were since removed, with nothing being provided in their place.

And then there's the poor parity between, say, Drain and Bloodbath... The caster situation is subtlety to obviously problematic no matter how you look at it. So, yes, such fixes should come first, but to say that SMN should lose utility, or -- as a rule -- be left with obvious crumbled holes in its toolkit, just because it's currently doing well seems ridiculous to me.

[Dualgunner]

Vercure used rotationally in healer-less dungeons or FATEs tends only to take the place of Jolt II, however; thus its fairer comparison would be that potency loss relative to its healing potential.

240 potency and 3/3 mana lost for 350 potency healing.
Versus 120 potency lost for effectively 30 potency healing.

Which seems the fairer trade? The one that outputs half again more than its potency cost, or the one that puts out a quarter its potency cost?

You do have to take into account that RDM, unlike SMN, has no other sources of damage running. If they take a GCD to cure, that's a whole GCD of them doing 0 potency, whereas a SMN will have two dots and their pet beating on the enemy while they cast physick.

That said? Physick should be an INT spell for summoners. It doesn't affect end game balance much, since even RDM doesn't use vercure except to proc dualcast, and summoner doesn't get benefits like that.

[Fytayn]

Yes some of those actions have use but for general recent content (not solo like msq, potd, eureka etc) and end game the majority are useless. Any SB duty Repose, Sleep, Tether have literally no use at all.

In being completely ineffective in every situation, and thus having no true purpose or situation for its use, Physick is useless; in having a noticeable effect in a niche situation, or having a particular use, any of those other abilities have times where they are very useful.

I honestly don't know what you're talking about. There are plenty of SB duties that have foes which are affected by sleep, heavy, bind, silence, pacify, stun, etc. If "SB duties" was supposed to mean "SB raiding and trials" then, yes, unless a duty has a specific mechanic involving them you have a point. I'll admit the emphasis on speed and DPS output in duty finder parties means that crowd control is often ignored but it is still effective if a group wants to use it. If we're being fair about whether something is useful or useless in FFXIV you can't carve out whole categories of content.

(not solo like msq, potd, eureka etc)

My point in calling a Summoner's Physick useless is that it is ineffective in every situation, in nearly all content (Arcanist/Summoner Physick is crappy-but-functional until Caster gear loses Mind at iLv50), in the game -- definitively ineffective in all of HW and SB. It has no specified use.

To correctly define "useless" is something that does absolutely nothing in certain situations. Target immune to Sleep well Ripose is no good, immune to Bind that's Tether out of the window. Physick still does something even if it is pitiful and barely worth it.

If we are "to correctly define" useless then its first definition is "not fulfilling or not expected to achieve the intended purpose or desired outcome." Nearly every other ability achieves its intended purpose in one type of content or another. Summoner's Physick achieves no purpose nor outcome regardless of the type of content; starting from iLv50 and continuing through HW and SB it is never worth it.

Physick for Summoners is entirely ineffective. Fix Physick.

[Frizze]

And while we're at it lets give SMNs a piercing resist debuff and trick attack too. And why not refresh and battle litany if they ask nicely? Nothing is too unique or special to deny to SMNs.

[Kurando]

If we are "to correctly define" useless then its first definition is "not fulfilling or not expected to achieve the intended purpose or desired outcome." Nearly every other ability achieves its intended purpose in one type of content or another. Summoner's Physick achieves no purpose nor outcome regardless of the type of content; starting from iLv50 and continuing through HW and SB it is never worth it.

The intended or desired outcome of Physick is restoring a target HP, it still does that, it cannot be denied, therefore it does not exactly fall under being "useless". In the end it still does it's job, the outcome still happens regardless, but it's effect becomes very lackluster the further past ARR it goes. Again using something like Sleep where the target is immune to Sleep, that IS useless because nothing happens for the outcome except a waste of MP/casting time.

By the way, no one mentioned anything at all about status effects such as Silence, Stun, Blind or Pacify, as THESE still work in a lot of content We are only discussing the likes of Sleep, Bind, knockback, to which I also mentioned this does not include solo content where a lot of it can actually be used,. You won't however seen them being used in DF content for the reason they just don't won't do much at all (knockback tends to be more viable but still not so much).

[Cabalabob]

The intended or desired outcome of Physick is restoring a target HP, it still does that, it cannot be denied, therefore it does not exactly fall under being "useless". In the end it still does it's job, the outcome still happens regardless, but it's effect becomes very lackluster the further past ARR it goes. Again using something like Sleep where the target is immune to Sleep, that IS useless because nothing happens for the outcome except a waste of MP/casting time.

By the way, no one mentioned anything at all about status effects such as Silence, Stun, Blind or Pacify, as THESE still work in a lot of content We are only discussing the likes of Sleep, Bind, knockback, to which I also mentioned this does not include solo content where a lot of it can actually be used,. You won't however seen them being used in DF content for the reason they just don't won't do much at all (knockback tends to be more viable but still not so much).

Those moves aren’t useless though, the content is designed to exclude them, that’s not an issue with the move it’s an issue with the content design. Physick is not made useless by the content you are doing, it’s made useless by the design of the move scaling off a stat that SMN doesn’t use, when this is a simple fix of changing the stat it scales off of.

[Kurando]

snip

If it's "designed to exclude them" then they are useless, simple. Something that in effect does nothing as the outcome is useless, I mean it can't be any more black and white than that. Physick needs a fix yes, but it still provides an outcome regardless of our expected result.

[Duskane]

No one has asked for Physick itself to be buffed. They've been asking that it use one's primary stat

that is a buff

[Cidel]

Oh hey, I remember this complaint from June of last year. People rallying to get a potent Physic in 4.1 because RDM. I think instead they just brought back Sustain. Although I also was of the opinion that SMN's Phsyic should have just turned into the pet heal with some new job trait instead of making action bar -1 with Sustain.

Whelp. Keep rallying. The devs will cave-in to the pressure eventually, right? Right?

[Brightshadow]

I wouldn't be opposed to SMN losing both Raise and Physick that way RDM being weaker would actually be justified.