AST proposal: An idea revisited

[Shurrikhan]

Damn I forgot Enochian exists. So then, the 310 of Fire 4 is not actually effectively 558 as I thought (which is already a silly high number), but 686? No wonder there's so much optimization room regarding Thunder refresh timings and the like, when stuff all has different percentages applied to modify the 'effective potency'

Yep, and it doesn't scale linearly with stacks and there is virtually zero information in-game as to what AF's modifiers are. You'd think they'd just use a steady 20, 25, or 33% per stack, base numbers thus adjusted, but no:

30|60|80% Fire dmg amp, with 0|0|50% Ice cast-time reduction, 25|50|100% Ice MP costs, and 100|100|100% increased Fire MP costs. The only intuitive part is the -10|-20|-30% Ice damage per AF stack.

I get that they need the 100% decreased MP costs to have removed MP management and tick tracking from the class (which I think was a mistake, especially since it invited Flare nerfs, but oh well), but the rest seems like it could be made a whole lot more intuitive:

Astral Fire: +33|67|100% Fire Damage, -33|67|100% Ice MP costs, -20|40|60% Ice Cast Times.

No penalty to opposite element (since that's already, relatively speaking, baked into the greater damage amp). Can retain the doubled Fire costs in AF, change them likewise to +33|67|100% MP costs and round the base costs to the nearest multiple of 300, or just double Fire spells' base MP costs.

Umbral Ice: -33|67|100% MP Costs, -20|40|60% Fire Cast Times, and +20|40|60% of max MP generated per tick.

The current MP ticks rates are 3200|4700|6200 for whatever reason.

I'd recommend a background change of MP ticking at one's GCD rate instead (since they're not synced to the HP/DoT/HoT global tick anyways and that would automatically solve Spell Speed's MP inefficiency issue while also allowing Piety not head into "ugly numbers" territory by just further amping tick rate instead), which would incidentally buff this further, but this would work in either case.

[Renathras]

But yeah, long story short -- using flat potency bonuses would be absurdly imbalanced. +% Damage is literally already the most balanced buff possible.

Fair enough.

I don't recall...in how it's skills operate

In simple terms "at least one staying for people who enjoy healing right now". Note that AST plays the least like the other three, and is either the least played or second least played (depending on which metric you use), and the least liked (or second least liked) in most polls. I don't think most people who enjoy healing as it is now would enjoy AST as it is now, given that AST is arguably the least played healer Job. So it doesn't really meet the requirement unless it were changed to be more like the other healers.

Indeed, most of the people who play AST now here freely say it's because it doesn't play like the other healers...and are the players asking for more damage buttons and more kit in general, meaning AST doesn't appeal to the same audience that the "one for people who like healers today" needs to appeal to. Hence why it would require changes. Indeed, WHM, SCH, and SGE could probably be left EXACTLY as they are now with no issue, but AST couldn't be for that reason.

EDIT:

To make more sense of it - suppose 80% of healers right now don't play AST (AST is played by something like 15-low-20s% of the healer playerbase). Meaning people that like healing right now largely aren't playing AST. Meaning that AST doesn't appeal to them...otherwise, presumably, they'd be playing it.

So, a healer Job that appeals to them wouldn't be AST as it is right now. Again, the people who most like AST as it is right now...are the people asking for the changes you want to be made to the role and Jobs. The people who like healing right now are mostly playing the other healer Jobs. And most of the people who are playing AST right now seem to want to go back to the SB incarnation of it anyway. Granted, we don't have metrics on THAT that we can truly trust, but we have long had metrics indicating AST is the least played.

Meaning, to people who find healing enjoyable right now, AST doesn't suit them in its current form. That's why it would have to be changed for that to work.

Again, something untrue of the other three.

[Sebazy]

If you attach a flat potency increase then its value would vary hugely around offensive APM and damage modifiers. For instance, if it would directly increase the potency of each action by, say, 50, it would actually increase the value of BLM fire actions by 90... before even adding in Enochian, and Mage's and Army's Paeon would both likely outperform Wanderer's Minuet, etc., while MCH takes the world by storm, and SCHs' Energy Drain would make a much larger difference than just its current up-to-390 relative ppm.

Restrict that to affecting GCDs only and you'll have made Physical Ranged better recipients than all other DPS save Monk and BLM, and Healers better recipients even than physical ranged, just through their bonus damage from traits (20% for Rangers, 30% for healers).

A simple percentile damage bonus is already the easiest thing to balance, because it interacts only with the final product, rather than any of the varied factors in getting there.

I probably should have been clearer ya. My thoughts were more akin to ffxi en spells. A flat potency hit that’s added on independently of your own attack. That would bypass the multiplicative spiral entirely.

[Shurrikhan]

I probably should have been clearer ya. My thoughts were more akin to ffxi en spells. A flat potency hit that’s added on independently of your own attack. That would bypass the multiplicative spiral entirely.

That would not bypass the multiplicative spiral entirely, even then. Modifiers like Fight or Flight and Twin Snakes still affect such things. Even if they didn't, you'd then have only two optimal targets, a Heated MCH and Monk. Such would be far worse than what we have now, so I don't understand what you hope to accomplish by moving away from the already most balanced form the buff could take.

[Sebazy]

That would not bypass the multiplicative spiral entirely, even then. Modifiers like Fight or Flight and Twin Snakes still affect such things.

That would be circumvented by limiting the number of hits that get the added potency hit no?

To be clear, at it's most basic level, my idea boils down to 'take my nuke potency and put it on another players next attack'.

Dress it up as an enspell akin to what we saw in the old XIV intro cinematic with the Marlboro and I'd be willing to bet that it'd be received in a better light than the current crop of glare mages with different oGCDs, think Yelan's burst in Genshin if you're familiar with it. Perhaps if explored properly, this could be a gimmick for a healer other than AST?

[Shurrikhan]

That would be circumvented by limiting the number of hits that get the added potency hit no?

Not unless you don't actually give the effect over to that other person and instead generate some sort of new unit to cast the ability without benefiting from any player's damage modifiers.

To be clear, at it's most basic level, my idea boils down to 'take my nuke potency and put it on another players next attack'.

Which, if you give over possession, will be worth 25% more on them if they have 25% more damage buff value up than you do (e.g., a Fight or Flight while you have nothing).

For this to work as you imagine, the amount of damage (which cannot be simple potency, since that is an input, not an output) to be attached to the recipient's actions would have to be pre-set much like a barrier's HP (but without any possible recipient-dependent effect on that amount saved), AND exempted from the recipient's damage amplifiers, AND capped to a total value if applied over multiple hits, AND done as a separate action.

It's possible to do, but then at "best" it makes it so that timing and target selection doesn't matter whatsoever, and at second best its optimizations are identical to +%Damage.

Perhaps if explored properly, this could be a gimmick for a healer other than AST?

Aye, but see above. You have to decide how distinguishable you want its best use case to be from its worst.

Given sufficient new tech, yes, you could balance it marble smooth so that nothing matters whatsoever. You could make it so the recipient's actual output over the period to be affected is what matters (as +%Damage), or you could have different components of that output be weighed differently such that a normally worse choice (under +%Damage) could be the better choice instead.

Personally, +%Damage already seems a good balance between knowing your party's damage dynamics and 95+% of your attention being demanded just to math out the best recipient for the particular span of time, etc. I wouldn't hate a job having the latter, as we could always just do less than what is optimal and still feel pretty satisfied with that gameplay, but I also don't think it'd be treated as a noticeable improvement to most players. On the other hand, I do think a balanced-flat buff would be the least appreciated of all.