Quote Originally Posted by HyoMinPark View Post
It is a waste of a GCD, and a wasteful contribution to a party.
So there's a concept in MtG called utility. Where oftentimes the best cards to put in a deck are not the ones that are the most efficient at accomplishing the deck's primary goal, but because they can serve several different functions depending on context. The idea being that even if the *optimal* context doesn't present itself, the card still will likely have some kind of use that substantially impacts the board state in your favor. So let's say you don't care about having a creature on the field, or that creature ends up dying next turn, if it enters the battlefield with a "destroy/exile X type card", or triggers another card with "whenever X type card enters the battlefield, do Y", then the card will still likely justify itself. It can be viewed not as a creature with an ability, but a utility with a bonus creature attached to it.

So the fact that abilities have extra utility and don't always optimize the ability doesn't automatically mean the ability is poorly designed. The utility of adding MP to do anything in theory justifies overhealing--especially since needing MP as a decent healer really only comes down to two situations where you *need* to generate MP regardless of your skill as a healer: 1) Time going long (DPS are sucking) or 2) Players not doing mechanics and asking you to overheal/rez (again out of your control). So in the hands of a flexible healer, having a utility ability like this *could* in theory be a safeguard for healers to salvage runs that would otherwise wipe.

Now, I haven't put enough thought in as to whether this is actually the case here, but I don't believe in simply dismissing the possibility of using an MP-regenerating heal for suboptimal healing at face value.

Why do you think current Afflatus Misery is a damage loss? Because the GCDs spent on Solace or Rapture to build up to it do not offset the three Glare IIIs that you have to lose in order to get your blood lily—unless you are building up to Misery during downtime and not losing out on Glare III casts at all. This same thing applies to SGE’s Toxikon: because it is the same potency as Dosis III, it is a better use of your GCD to just cast Dosis III and heal with an oGCD Addersgall stack versus casting E. Diagnosis to absorb damage and farm Toxikon stacks. The only time you farm for them is during downtime.
Again, on the topic of utility. I agree that E. Diagnosis is best used for downtime. However, when a tank is...ahem...tanking, and forced me to expend all my OGCD shields, I may throw out a E. Diagnosis for the shield value. And then I get a bonus Toxikon for mobility/mobs. With a tank that knows what they are doing, I don't need it, but for random matchups, it's a versatile verb.