Purpose of Mana For Most Jobs?

[Lyth]

I do that on my UI manually. The gauge goes right next to MP. Depending on the job I'll go for simplified or the stylized version.

I do that too, it just ends up being a painstaking process where you have to try and manually align everything up on each job. It's worse when there are two gauge elements.

I think the ideal would be if HP, MP, and the job gauges were all individual elements that could be hidden individually and assigned to a 'resources' group with snap alignment options, and once positioned and locked could be moved en bloc around the HUD.

It could also make for some interesting self-imposed challenges, like a no HP bar Deep Dungeon run.

[Eraden]

Mao is BLMs. Mao doesn't even thinks about Mana. If Mao doings rotation properly for max dps, Mao never ever runs out of Mana. Even if Mao dies, Mao has two buttons to tops Mao off at max Mana within seconds. Mao thinkings that at least for BLMs, Mana is just training wheels to teach young BLMs how to do proper rotations.

[Supersnow845]

BLM is arguably the only job that mana actually does have a meaning as high level optimisation of the rotation actually involves playing with mana ticks to maximise uptime (such as a very simple example of transpose fire 3 procs needing good umbral ice ticks)

The standard line never cares about mana (outside of when to use manafont but 999/1000 times you just use it for a second fire 4/despair) but a lot of optimisation does care

Every other job it’s either self regulating or really only regulating excessive rezzing

[Gemina]

Mao is BLMs. Mao doesn't even thinks about Mana. If Mao doings rotation properly for max dps, Mao never ever runs out of Mana. Even if Mao dies, Mao has two buttons to tops Mao off at max Mana within seconds. Mao thinkings that at least for BLMs, Mana is just training wheels to teach young BLMs how to do proper rotations.

Whether it is second nature or not, few, if any jobs integrate mana management as heavily as BLM. It has much less to do with your ability to restore your mana than it does remaining in Astral fire phase as long as possible. And because BLM is so niche, this management is not a transferable skill to other mana users in the game.

[Valence]

Come Stormblood, if memory serves, everything was set to have 10k MP, since all spells were % based anyway, with the old MP values mainly being for fluff (though Piety used to increase total MP, and there were BLM rotational benefits to having a few points in piety).

Shadowbringers, the one and only that butchered the whole battle system to smithereens.

[Sjol]

BLM is arguably the only job that mana actually does have a meaning as high level optimisation of the rotation actually involves playing with mana ticks to maximise uptime (such as a very simple example of transpose fire 3 procs needing good umbral ice ticks)

The standard line never cares about mana (outside of when to use manafont but 999/1000 times you just use it for a second fire 4/despair) but a lot of optimisation does care

Every other job it’s either self regulating or really only regulating excessive rezzing

Interestingly the way they managed to do that is making mana regeneration different from all other classes while completely ignoring how the basic system works. And that's okay, but it doesn't give credence to how BLM is an example of mana being necessary. You could call it anything else and make it work the same way as it does now. Or even just make it it's own meter.

[Oizen]

Shoutouts to Dark Knight for having a more engaging use of MP than Summoner

[Eastwall]

All job needs to use mana to use recuperate in pvp.

[Rithy255]

MP could effortlessly just be a gauge resource rather than MP as a system, because MP for those jobs isn't really about situational choices. The way you gain and spend MP is generally consistent regardless of the fight you're in, because there's not really any choice to make it with.

I don't really think we need another tacky gauge for certain jobs. Instead you can just make MP more useful and interesting on jobs which was my suggestion anyway.

[Sjol]

I don't really think we need another tacky gauge for certain jobs. Instead you can just make MP more useful and interesting on jobs which was my suggestion anyway.

I'm happy for the SE art and UX department to take another crack at making good artwork for the gauges, but I didn't think you can it should shoehorn mana into jobs that don't really need them. Job design seems to work best when they can play with meters and counters that match that specific job. It certainly introduces a lot more potential variation and is one of the few sources of class identity. In fact I would love to see a lot of the 0 to 100 meters reworked into something other than 100.