Shadowbringers RDM Wishlist

[Kalise]

The only reason your point falls flat is because you're comparing active MP gain tools on RDM to every class whose playstyle is based on active MP management in the first place.

Since when is WHM based around MP management?

Since when is AST based around MP management?

Heck, they're both Healers so much of their design is around passive MP regen from Piety, the Healer specific stat.

Also, these are almost all of the MP using jobs in the game. I'm hardly going to compare to WAR's MP management with their grand total of literally no actual use of the bar.

The only other MP using jobs are Arcanist ones. Which, I mentioned that SMN was poorly designed because you just use Aetherflow irregardless of its MP restore because you need to use it for damage.

SCH, I'm not 100% sure about, I know in my experience of leveling up, I had to go out of my way to use up flow in order to cast Aetherflow again without wasting any flow (Often I'd cast Energy Drain for more MP because the heals either didn't exist at that level or lulshields/Lily was preventing me from actually needing to heal)

If the core of our playstyle is based around building and dumping Black and White Mana, then forcing us to actively manage our MP on top of that is somewhat of a distraction.

Hence why I mentioned that MP management mechanics don't all need to be to the same complexity of DRK.

RDM is focused more on Mana management. But that doesn't mean that MP management should be trivialized. Especially when Verraise is balanced against its MP cost. Having essentially infinite MP so that your MP bar is literally just a "Verraise Points" measure is not particularly interesting design in my opinion.

Literally how is this any less passive than what I suggested? As stated, it'd be "part of your rotation anyway".

The first suggestion is not. It's literally the same thing, just making your rotation infinite.

As such, I'm not for it either.

The second suggestion, has some merit, because you'd want to time it around maximizing your spell cast output to maximize gains. Whether or not such a thing would end up working well is questionable.

But it's something that has some potential. I kind of like the idea of having some way of dynamically adjusting the potency of the MP restore. So that basic usage can more of less cover your standard rotation (Provided you use it decently and use Lucid somewhat regularly) while there's options to alter your rotation to try and maximize the gains to make up for large expenditure (Dying or Raising).

That would be the kind of thing I'd like to see. Nothing too taxing to manage, outside of the times when you really go ham on MP loss.

As opposed to "You just regen more MP while you have your 1 DoT active" or "You regain MP when you do your rotation as normal"

[Kurando]

The only other MP using jobs are Arcanist ones. Which, I mentioned that SMN was poorly designed because you just use Aetherflow irregardless of its MP restore because you need to use it for damage."

I just wanted to interject that originally Aetherflow was the only action that ACN/SMN/SCH had available (excluding Energy Drain) to restore their own MP. The original recovery cost was 20% instead of the 10% we get now, and there was no role action like Lucid as an alternative. Sure AF was used to deal damage, but if no other player was in the party with Refresh capabilities (e.g. BRD/MCH) then you did have to watch your MP with it (especially when Ruin III used to cost a stupid amount to cast and Miasma II was still available to them as a dot option).

[Cetonis]

I think MP regen is a hard topic to theorize about, in general, without knowing the fate of Role Actions. Maybe SE decides they don't even like Lucid and each job gets more unique MP sustain methods, maybe Drain becomes RDM only and restores MP, who knows.

That aside, my personal theoryhope is that I think the ice and water abilities could be upgrades to Verthunder and Veraero, proc'ing the 50% of the time that Verfire/Verstone do not.

So when you use Veraero, half the time you get Verstone Ready, the other half you get Verwater ready. And Verwater is a 5s cast 350p spell or something that adds a little more mana and has just the 50% Verstone proc chance.

This way you add a little dash of extra complexity to the core rotation without really messing with the general flow, which has proven so very popular.

AoE can honestly be fixed with tweaks to existing things - making Enchanted Moulinet cost 20 mana and auto-proc Enhanced Scatter, for instance, would lead to a pattern that mixes is Moulinet more often, and two skills + an oGCD is pretty typical for AoE complexity. It'd also give Moulinet some 2-target applications maybe? Haven't crunched numbers, just exampling.

Other than that, yeah some way to fiddle with burst window timing would be a boon, maybe something that can slight tweak mana to offset it when you're even. Assuming they want to add something flashy for level 80, I'm not sure what would fit the bill from FFs past - maybe Shock, maybe Saber? Or some splashy buff / oGCD effect I guess.

[Sunako]

MP regen is easily fixed by increasing more melee comboes. PLD used to have tp problems too, but once holy spirit become part of rotation, tp become infinite. Same way rdm regain mana while rotating melee combo, since melee combo is free mana wise and passive mana is 2% mana every 3 seconds.

[Shurrikhan]

What "maintenance buffs" do we have as RDMs? Access only to Lucid Dreaming is precisely the point being argued, and we don't juggle buffs or debuffs like other casters or even most other DPS.

The game as a whole has enough maintenance buffs, imo -- Lucid Dreaming included. It does virtually nothing for entertainment or nuance in the vast majority of circumstances and could as easily be replaced with a simple buff to passive in-combat MP regeneration rate.

Why have a DoT just to have a DoT? Why weave in inferior spells for mana restoration, at cost to the cohesion elsewhere, when you could just increase regen?

Besides, how would reducing the costs across the board to be closer to our base regen be any better than just raising our regen (and maybe the cost of Verraise)?

I never said we shouldn't. I just listed the one because the two are functionally identical; one (reducing MP costs) is one step and the other (increase regen and increase MP cost) is two steps -- that's literally the only difference.

[Shurrikhan]

I just wanted to interject that originally Aetherflow was the only action that ACN/SMN/SCH had available (excluding Energy Drain) to restore their own MP. The original recovery cost was 20% instead of the 10% we get now, and there was no role action like Lucid as an alternative. Sure AF was used to deal damage, but if no other player was in the party with Refresh capabilities (e.g. BRD/MCH) then you did have to watch your MP with it (especially when Ruin III used to cost a stupid amount to cast and Miasma II was still available to them as a dot option).

Which then actually gave it [well, came as part of] a sense of gameplay instead of merely "hit this every couple minutes, roughly on cooldown"...

[Kabooa]

Which then actually gave it a sense of gameplay instead of merely "hit this every couple minutes, roughly on cooldown"...

Summoner rotation then was MP Surplus. You spent excess on Ruin 3, generally during raid buffs down to like 50%, then just let the natural surplus from Aetherflow 20% top you back up for the next burst window to happen outside of Dreadwyrm.

The MP restores was secondary and it still was entirely around the actual stacks themselves. Any further consideration was largely due to dreadwyrm stacks having a duration.

[Shurrikhan]

Summoner rotation then was MP Surplus. You spent excess on Ruin 3, generally during raid buffs down to like 50%, then just let the natural surplus from Aetherflow 20% top you back up for the next burst window to happen outside of Dreadwyrm.

The MP restores was secondary and it still was entirely around the actual stacks themselves. Any further consideration was largely due to dreadwyrm stacks having a duration.

Oh I don't care much that the MP itself wasn't gameplay, only that it was bound to something with an actual sense of tempo. Aetherflow-DWT had that. Why we needed to add something like LD, which just feels saggy and bloated by comparison, is beyond me. We already have Diversion. And frankly I'd have been fine with enmity skills still belonging solely to Shadewalker, Quelling Strikes, and Elusive Jump.

I'm fine with MP being a non-factor for casters apart from rez costs. I'm not fine, however, with spending even more buttons on said non-factor.

[Archwizard]

Since when is WHM based around MP management?

Since when is AST based around MP management?

Exactly as you said, they're both healers -- some of the most MP intensive jobs in the game, and the majority of the reason BLMs can consider Mana Shift a semi-viable utility. If your healer runs out of MP, people die.

The second suggestion, has some merit, because you'd want to time it around maximizing your spell cast output to maximize gains. Whether or not such a thing would end up working well is questionable.

My concern with a suggestion like this, much like the question of having our Enchanted melee restore MP, is that we have to already have a significant MP investment in order to be able to replenish our MP in this manner.
A DoT may be boring, yes, but at least you can use it when you're at low MP to catch up more easily.

MP regen is easily fixed by increasing more melee comboes. PLD used to have tp problems too, but once holy spirit become part of rotation, tp become infinite. Same way rdm regain mana while rotating melee combo, since melee combo is free mana wise and passive mana is 2% mana every 3 seconds.

Except that TP is going the way of the Dodo in Shadowbringers, so we have no idea whether the melee combo will continue to be 'free' or begin consuming MP like our other abilities.

I'm fine with MP being a non-factor for casters apart from rez costs. I'm not fine, however, with spending even more buttons on said non-factor.

My take on this, from a design perspective, is that every gap in the design should be taken as an opportunity for expansion rather than just a problem to slap down.
Increasing MP regen or cutting costs would fix the problem, but it wouldn't expand the gameplay in any way. Restoring MP by doing our melee combo doesn't expand the gameplay either.
About the only options for expansion are "create new interactions between skills we already have" or "more buttons" -- and personally I don't see why we should overcomplicate the solution to such a simple issue.

[Shurrikhan]

My take on this, from a design perspective, is that every gap in the design should be taken as an opportunity for expansion rather than just a problem to slap down.

And I would normally agree. I've suggested as much in regards to MP since HW. However, I have to wonder what even the most ideal manipulation of MP as a mechanic would add, and at what costs.

About the only options for expansion are "create new interactions between skills we already have" or "more buttons" -- and personally I don't see why we should overcomplicate the solution to such a simple issue.

And, again, I'd be fine with the first, so long as it doesn't get in the way of whatever more attractive gameplay it would cost. I'm not at all fine with the second.

Restoring MP by doing our melee combo doesn't expand the gameplay either.

Naturally, as you most often need MP after Verraise, which doesn't remotely sync to your melee combos, or after death, which depletes the resource needed to perform your melee combos...

What can expand gameplay, however, is to make RDM's sword and its melee aspect more than just a tacked-on accessory. If there was reason to actually weave in melee more than once per vH/F cycle, you could use that to manage MP. The only issue is that it still comes at the cost of weaving melee for actual utility, power, timing, burst, or efficiency beyond simply "I overexpended MP/died recently".