No one is arguing against the idea of MP regen. People are arguing that its current implementation is too powerful - especially when you consider the insane efficiency of healing spells in this game.

Just take a look at Sacrifice III. It costs 32 mp, heals for ~600 hp (~50% of a mage's max hp), and adds ~120 hp/tick regen for 30 seconds. It can also be AoE'd for free.

That is like the equivalent of Curaga IV and Regen-ga III for less than the cost of a Cure III and without the insane hate generation.

Another major imbalance is the speed at which that first tick of MP regen goes off in passive mode. Put away your weapon and you will recover 30-40 mp (assuming ~1k base MP pool) on that first tick within 10 seconds. You get another tick every 5 seconds after that. It is very easy to toss a big cure bomb and not need to do anything for another 15 seconds. Being able to hit 'F' and recover 100 mp at will mid-fight while still being on top of cures is crazy.

In FFXI, that initial tick took 25-30 seconds to go off - after which you'd get another tick every 10 seconds after that. This meant that you had to commit to not assisting the party if you wanted to regain MP.

Every mage in FFXIV has access to aspirga, (which can be used on nearly every mob), mp spikes, a mini-convert every 10 min, and the option to touch a crystal for full mp regen if they happen to be fighting near it.

Call me old-fashioned, but one of the main tenets of challenging content in RPGs is the management of scarce resources. Currently, MP is never scarce.

Here are a few things that SE could do to balance things in the right direction:
  • Re-evaluate the potency of single-target spells vs AoE spells
  • Increase MP cost when using AoE versions of spells
  • Increase the amount of time necessary to regen MP after switching to passive mode

While I don't expect anything to be done about this until after the major battle update, I hope SE will take another look at MP management and balance things such that having good MP management will matter in challenging/endurance-based combat.