Why do the devs hate MCH so much?

[Shurrikhan]

Doesn't matter how we got here, we are here and 6.XX is a good time to step back and re-tool the Battle System and address what isn't working. Here some examples:

Every Job has an MP bar, why?

My hope is that we eventually...

• consolidate MP and TP to reduce UI bloat and allow for the DRK and PLD resource-duality in any other way (or, failing that, give casters some use for TP beyond just sprint),
  
  
• make MP more about potency and less about starvation (e.g., MP regen up to quadruples as %MP falls low, but potency can fall to a half by that time) and potentially leverage that for more granular burst vs. sustain (perhaps even replacing the fixed combo systems such that one can rush combos at equal cost via reduced total potency and increased cost, allowing for a little more flexibility),
  
  
• have MP generation scale with GCD speed (and therefore with Haste, so no stat is left unable to increase actual resource-efficiency,
  
  
• make healer MP economy matter (such as by attaching hefty MP costs to oGCD heals),
  
  
• allow some further utility for skills not typically used in single-target (ranged attacks on melee AoEs, etc.) to make them situationally useful, if costly, in single-target (in place of their having so useless of single-target potencies that they're never used anyways, even if the resource were there), and
  
  
• return at cost, non-CD-based tools to certain jobs for transferring or granting MP (allowing for greater flexibility than was the case with just CDs like Refresh, Tactician, and Mana Shift, and reduced baseline taxation for those utilities).

Job Roles, do they need to be reexamined?

They could be, but there's also little reason to do so beyond the gearing unfriendliness of melee (3 sets required to play 5 jobs, as compared to the 4 sets required to play the remaining 15 jobs). I guess it just comes down to what thematic distributions the game wants to protect across sub-roles.

Personally, I don't hugely mind being stuck with one slot each of 'any of 3', 'any of 3', 'any of 5' and 'any of 11' -- instead of just 'any of 11' four times over -- but it doesn't particularly make sense, either.

I'll save your last two questions/topics for later, as they seem more involved.

[Jeeqbit]

consolidate MP and TP to reduce UI bloat and allow for the DRK and PLD resource-duality in any other way (or, failing that, give casters some use for TP beyond just sprint)

TP doesn't exist though. Personally, I always found TP useless. I only noticed it as a tank if it took ages to aoe mobs down, which probably happened when healers and DPS weren't good at doing their aoe rotation or using their TP boost button. When I actually noticed that TP existed, it was just annoying and a consequence of low DPS.

Being attached to Sprint made it so that you couldn't use Sprint at all in battles unless you were prepared to sacrifice your damage and there were only a few situations that justified it for me when a boss disappeared for a mechanic, such as the proximity aoe and web placement in Weeping City.

Whereas, although MP has become easier to manage, almost to the point of only being an annoyance sometimes like TP, it's still very relevant because you eventually can't rez people anymore, even on red mages. Eventually you have to do something or other to get a bit of MP if you have been spamming Clemency. It's still more of a dynamic resource and it's a more universally-understood resource because MP is in a lot of games, whereas I don't think TP is.

It doesn't make much sense to give physical jobs MP because MP is supposed to mean Magic Points and physical jobs don't use magic, so it would need to be something a bit different to work for all of them such as Stamina.

[Shurrikhan]

TP doesn't exist though.

As a resource to actually manage (beyond just hitting your CDs on CD), neither does/has MP. It's been, at best, a way for Bard/MCH to minimize their damage loss, and that ended with Stormblood.

The point is what could/should be, not what things have been.

Being attached to Sprint made

I just said, in what you quoted, that TP should not be pigeonholed into caster-Sprint.

Whereas, although MP has become easier to manage, almost to the point of only being an annoyance sometimes like TP, it's still very relevant because you eventually can't rez people anymore, even on red mages.

Which is effectively just rez charges, not a larger resource economy.

It doesn't make much sense to give physical jobs MP because MP is supposed to mean Magic Points and physical jobs don't use magic.

The game depicts a world where every vaguely superhuman action has a component of aether usage. And those "physical jobs" are firing spirit dragons and launching wind and fire magics from their kicks and fists.

[ASkellington]

Whereas, although MP has become easier to manage, almost to the point of only being an annoyance sometimes like TP, it's still very relevant because you eventually can't rez people anymore, even on red mages.

As Shurrikhan says if MP is to be an economy to be managed can't be locked to JUST ressing. Case in point - all abilities/skills that require MP costs on a healer are on the GCD. Guess what we don't heal with? If MP is to be something to properly managed oGCDs need have mana costs.

[Jeeqbit]

As Shurrikhan says if MP is to be an economy to be managed can't be locked to JUST ressing. Case in point - all abilities/skills that require MP costs on a healer are on the GCD. Guess what we don't heal with? If MP is to be something to properly managed oGCDs need have mana costs.

Yes, I agree with this. Healing essentially all happens off the GCD and white mages are really the only exception if they use their GCD instants. I think what should especially cost MP is situational abilities like Rescue, Surecast, Swiftcast, Benediction, Divine Benison, Asylum, Afflatus actions, Excogitation, Indomitability and Whispering Dawn, because routine abilities that you use off cooldown for damage like Assize are not really adding anything to the management beyond what spamming the GCD attack and dot is.

[Shurrikhan]

I think what should especially cost MP is situational abilities like Rescue, Surecast, Swiftcast, Benediction, Divine Benison, Asylum, Afflatus actions, Excogitation, Indomitability and Whispering Dawn, because routine abilities that you use off cooldown for damage like Assize are not really adding anything to the management beyond what spamming the GCD attack and dot is.

That seems a totally solid plan. I'm in.



A follow-up note and a question:

[Note] While it might not seem, then, that anything else needs an MP cost, it's better to think of these costs in terms of (shared) recovery time rather than just whatever cost is pained over the hotkey. If we recharge 400 MP per GCD, for instance, a 400-MP spell is MP-neutral. The difference is simply in the tuning point for rewarding (or reducing the opportunity cost of) downtime; the higher the floor MP cost and MP generation, the less downtime punishes a healer / the more shared resource time a healer recovers during downtime.

I would guess a good tuning point is "High enough an MP floor that some downtime can still be leveraged and, if truly everything went to hell in a handbasket, one could idle a little bit to milk out enough MP for another oGCD and thereby prevent a would-be death, but where there's otherwise/generally no feeling that attacks or other filler spells come at cost."
__________

[Question] How "free" should those abilities be? E.g., about how much oGCD potency per minute should one be able to milk out sustainable? How long, if hitting every possible ability as quickly as possible, should it take to go oom?

(Another small note here - you can allow for a higher maximum sustainable ppm or longer minimum time until oom if you also have some MP-costly attacks that are expected to be cycled on cooldown, since they'd combine to form parity.)