It's time to ask again: what's MP for?

[Selsix]

I feel MP should have a use, but I am also tired of seeing the MP bar on jobs that don't use it considering you can't hide it. Like my mains are RPR/GNB these days, why do I have a useless MP bar clogging up my screen I can't hide?

[UkcsAlias]

MP is practically useless when it comes to normal content, aside from blm, but plays an important role in skill expression for healers in high-end content. Mana management is important if you want to clear high-end content, just because you feel it's useless doesn't mean that it's not.

From my SCH experience. Mana management in the current savage tier is as straightforward as it can be, just do your rotations and you wont run out of it, even if you would have to rez someone at some point. Only with multiple rezzes it can become a problem (but that usualy indicates another problem: either people died because they made the mistake, or they died because you lacked healing)

As long as piety isnt going to matter as stat (as in needing more than the minimum), mana management is just your basic job rotation.

[Valkyrie-Veil]

And my point is, "players won't like it," is not a valid excuse to not bring back a staple mechanic in an RPG.

For what it’s worth, I agree with you. However, the OP’s post is saying that if they aren’t going to make MP management meaningful again (and they are not. There is no universe in which SE makes anything more complicated again), there is no point for the MP to exist.

[Inputnamehere]

This game is no longer a conventional RPG, or Final Fantasy. Everything now revolves around the stale, overcooked battle design, which is currently called the 120s meta. "Trading MP for power" is unnecessary in this scheme and breaks the cycle, so they won't allow it.

[RedLolly]

I was a SCH main in ARR. I know how the class played. The only reason SCH could even DPS the way it could was because Eos did the vast majority of the healing back then.

Nothing I said had anything to do with healers leveling in the overlord. I never mentioned nerfing their damage. I said that healers (implied: raid environment) should be healing, not DPSing. I didn't roll a healer to sit there and cast Medica 2 while spam Stone on a boss while healing with OGCDs. The design is absolutely stupid and a ton of people are and have always been unsatisfied with this design.

There are plenty of ways to do this. Give Medica 2 a cool down. Have more unavoidable damage. Nerf healing potency on OGCDs so healers have to spend more GCDs actually healing instead of pressing their DPS button. And addressing your first sentence: make healing spells cost more mana if they aren't going to reduce potency so healers actually have to pay attention to whether they should cast DPS spells or regen MP while strictly healing. Any of these, or some combination of them, would make healers less braindead.

Sage was built around DPS healing. Much like one of the reworks for Disc priest in WoW years ago along with Mistweaver monks.

I was also a Scholar main, and we also had to manage Eos's placement in arenas and own HP bar.

Anyway, I could absolutely live with your concepts in place myself as a healer enjoyer, (except in the DT dungeons and trials that don't play fair with high ping) but I can just as easily see players become equally angry healer DPS suddenly dropping to near zero in content being wholly unacceptable because it's been the gane’s standard for the entirety of FFXIV's lifetime as healers are now to just how bland the role feels.

Which is kind of the same issue with being against dropping MP, isn't it? We're, as in the collective player base, too used to having it, even if scrapping the mechanic wouldn't be as fundamental a change as it seems.

Honestly, I'm more interested in how it would completely change Black Mage, unless MP just became a bar on their gauge system that was exclusive to them.

[Chasingstars]

The list of reasons for MP:

• Overhealing
• Spell speed memes
• Rezzing multiple people
• Rezzing the same person who dies multiple times
• Black mage
• Dark Knight
• Paladin

[Valence]

And, if it isn't obvious, my opinion is that MP management should be more engaging on jobs, however, getting MP from an outside source would necessarily lessen the experience of playing that job.

When you don't get heals, which comes from an outside source, sometimes you die, and it lessens the experience as well. I'm sure that's why they made tanks invulnerable and healers borderline useless in many types of contents, and tried to fix it a little by allowing us the use of phoenix downs as the final nail, so that nothing from an outside source can completely spoil our individual experiences. And the more they go about it, the more they try to remove any source of friction in parties not to "lessen the experience".

Just feels bad when someone messes something up and you have to deal with the consequences of it!

But then again instead they shifted everything on having mechanics where someone messes up their DDR the party wipes anyway, turning every other player into a potential enemy.

Food for thought.

For what it’s worth, I agree with you. However, the OP’s post is saying that if they aren’t going to make MP management meaningful again (and they are not. There is no universe in which SE makes anything more complicated again), there is no point for the MP to exist.

Yes, that was irony, part of a rhetorical process to show how already useless MP is and that keeping it up at this point is purely hypocritical of them.

[Aidorouge]

And, if it isn't obvious, my opinion is that MP management should be more engaging on jobs, however, getting MP from an outside source would necessarily lessen the experience of playing that job.

Another thing to consider is they tried a certain level of job co-dependency in the past via damage types. Slashing, piercing, and whatnot that "required" bringing certain jobs to get the most out of it. Of all the "old ways" people bring up wanting to see return, this is one of the things I see the least amount of wistful nostalgia for. Can't imagine why.

But yeah, having a job mechanic that's reliant on having another specific job to make it work just diminishes the job when its by its lonesome, and again, even when you DO have the job that you rely on show up... there's no guarantee that one's supposed buddy is going to cooperate on that level, or if they'll do so effectively. I mean, I'm not exactly going to be paying attention to healer/caster MP bars on my own DPS. At best I blow the skill on cooldown to "not waste it" with little thought to whether or not it actually made any difference.

[Terhix]

The list of reasons for MP:

• Overhealing
• Spell speed memes
• Rezzing multiple people
• Rezzing the same person who dies multiple times
• Black mage
• Dark Knight
• Paladin

Paladin? The only time PLD needs to look at MP is when spamming Clemency or Holy Spirit for some god forsaken reason, and even then it's a stretch. You never manage MP when doing normal rotation and tank stuff.

[NegativeS]

The only people who would benefit from MP being removed are curebots, actual bots, and people who are playing Final Visual Novel XIV instead of Final Fantasy XIV.

Please don't.