It'd be nice to have an MP dump on healers

[Atmaweapon510]

Currently, Piety is a wasted stat on healers since you have more than enough MP sources to get through a fight unless you die or spam raise, both of which are fairly infrequent once you're use to a fight or essentially force a wipe anyway due to enrage. As such, it'd be nice to have a dedicated "MP dump" damage spell, a spell that does marginally more damage than a basic damage spell but with terrible MP efficiency. This allows some modicum of skill expression as you can now gauge the pace of a fight and see how much you can get away with, while also making Piety less redundant by putting it in the Tenacity tier instead of just being outright garbage.

For example:

WHM: Water/Banish- 700 MP. Instant cast. Deals 350 Potency damage
SCH: Ruin II/III/IV- 700 MP. Instant cast. Deals 330 Potency damage
AST: Comet/II/III/IV- 700 MP. Instant cast. Deals 300 Potency damage.

In this example, these MP dump spells cost 300 more MP and have 50 more potency than their base counterparts at Shb tier. It's also a marginal buff to WHM and SCH who now gain access to an on-demand weave window for ogcd abilties (and yes, I know that Thin Air is now a DPS cooldown for WHM.)

AST right now is generally better and overall harder to play effectively than WHM or SCH. This change lets WHM and SCH close that gap by opening up more opportunities to play efficiently, that is, not wasting oGCD times like AST does with its Malefic window.

[Risvertasashi]

Hmm...

I'll be honest, as an MP dump, I don't think it would work. I think if SE added these, people would just complain to SE until they were pressured to lower MP costs/improve MP availability (and then of course SE would likely lower the potencies to compensate).

With that said, I love the idea of having more weave opportunities.

[Eloah]

The AoE skills are already MP dumps with how quickly they can drain your MP, if you aren't careful. And I don't mean tunneling either I mean doing what healers do best. SCH is the easiest to lose track of since it has the highest cost and is instant cast. Plus you'd use it on 2+ targets. Sometimes it's just so easy to do everything you forget about your MP until it's basically gone.

[ItMe]

But if you have an MP dump how can the healer be expected to be able to heal or revive when called on?
If healers can turn MP into DPS it shifts the focus of the class a bit too much.
The optimal way to play healers would be for the rest of the team to play near perfectly so you could dump all but the bare minimum MP into DPS... and that would just lead to a lot of friction between players.

I'm also worried about how this would inform how much HP devs would give bosses.
If the healers need to heal a bit more in a run then sorry you don't meet your DPS check. Not to mention this would require a fair bit of coordination between healers to make sure they're not both healing when only one of them can cover something.

Suddenly the game is much tougher towards any mistake and it demands a much higher level of party coordination.
These aren't inherently bad things, but I don't think this is the way to do it.

[Liam_Harper]

I think Piety simply needs the Tenacity treatment, in that it should both increase mana regen and increase damage at the same ratio as Tenacity. A zero damage stat just doesn't work in a game built around tight enrage timers.

That said, I rather like the idea of an on-demand weave ability at high mana cost. It would be far more preferable and make more sense compared to things like Ruin II's dps tax or having to misalign Dia or burn a lily just to move/weave. I'm surprised they never thought of it, tax our mana instead of our dps/tools.

I would suggest giving Piety the same damage increase as Tenacity, then adding your suggested spells but giving them equal damage to Glare/Broil/Malefic. The instant cast would be more than worth it for weave and moving and you can't spam them or you'll empty on mana. Those two changes would be a major healer QoL.

[Jaelommiss]

The optimal way to play healers would be for the rest of the team to play near perfectly so you could dump all but the bare minimum MP into DPS... and that would just lead to a lot of friction between players.

I'm also worried about how this would inform how much HP devs would give bosses.
If the healers need to heal a bit more in a run then sorry you don't meet your DPS check. Not to mention this would require a fair bit of coordination between healers to make sure they're not both healing when only one of them can cover something.

Suddenly the game is much tougher towards any mistake and it demands a much higher level of party coordination.

All of these are already true for healers trying to minimize their healing GCDs. At the top levels of play every GCD and oGCD is scripted exactly, and someone taking excess damage can be lethal because people aren't topped off and specific instant casts and slidecast timings are used to preposition for mechanics. I suspect that healers who plan fights to that level would be aware they they might need spare MP for unexpected healing and hold ~3k MP until the final moments of a fight. There's little reason to burst to empty at the very start of the fight.

I agree with Risvertasashi that the community would be the biggest issue with these sorts of spells. The response to AST needing Piety to maintain 100% uptime was terrible and I don't see how this would be any different. SE might be able to get away with it if these attacks were part of a complete MP economy overhaul or if they were made prohibitively expensive (1200+ MP) so that no one would think that high usage is possible, but even in those cases I wouldn't be confident in the community's response.

[MaraD_]

I want MP dumps. (I miss Stone2 from 2.0 WHM)
I also think these MP dumps should have lower cast times.


It also makes soloing more enjoyable.

But as it stands, AoE costing more MP is meaningless, since youre never given a choice bwteen "use more or use less MP" you're only ever given the option of "Raid wide went out, use AoE" or "Tank buster went out, use single target" Only when ppl mess up, do you have to actually chose between an AoE or multiple single target heals. So with an MP dump, it gives you one more choice in how to manage your MP. (I love resource management, and far too many RPGs and MMOs try to change resource management into "Time management" as a replacement resource. IMO there just a completely different feeling/enjoyment that they just dont share.)

[Limonia]

I think it could work if these instant casts were the same potency as Glare/Malefic/Broil (or maybe only very slightly weaker, if at all). You could use them to weave or for movement, but in turn they would cost more MP.

It reminds me a little of how Ruin and Ruin II were in the past. I don't know the potency difference, but Ruin II was instant and much more expensive, so it was used to weave, use auto-attacks and for movement. You had to be careful not to empty your MP with it. But it worked really well.

Other than that, they absolutely do have to make piety useful in some way. Right now, outside of progression, it's an empty stat, kind of if a piece of gear only has one instead of two substats if piety is one them.

[Gemina]

You're basically asking for MP management to return, in which case I am definitely on board with that. Unfortunately, not having infinite MP just leads to complaints, demands, and ultimatums. The resource is now basically there to limit our AoE and Raises.

[GrimGale]

More than an MP dump, I wish SCH specifically had a flashy "finisher" type of spell.

While I agree SCH's kit holds a certain identity in it being a collection of independent CD's, I would like it to have some sort of build up to a powerful and satisfying spell, like WHM Afflatus Misery or AST Divination.

Hopefully, SCH will get Kaustra at some point.