Revisiting the physick question

[Rongway]

Who needs a cure spell more? A nuking based DPS. Or a DPS with a tank pet whose main damage source is damage over time, oGCDs and a pet they need to keep alive? There is nothing fun about having this vestigial lump of a skill on our hotbars when it could be something extremely useful to our kit.

RDM should absolutely have Vercure because RDM is RDM. However, in a party, RDM should only ever need to cast Vercure as a Dualcast trigger, never as a heal. Neither job should ever have to heal anyone in group content, and if they do, it means something has gone horribly, horribly wrong, and the situation is outside the realm of intended play and balance considerations. So my argument will consider this from a solo perspective.

SMN's low powered Physick is not a problem, because they got Sustain back. But Sustain isn't that great because the pets themselves are so muted and useless. If you "need" more than Sustain to keep a tank pet alive, the tank pet isn't tanky enough. If you need Physick to keep yourself alive, the tank pet isn't tanky enough.

In a perfect world, a DD pet would be squishier but deal enough damage to kill a level-appropriate enemy before either the pet or master died; and a tank pet would be able to survive against level-appropriate enemies and generate enough enmity to keep level-appropriate enemies off the master.

That the tank pet isn't so great at either of those things is a side effect of how non-petcentric SMN is. 99% of SMN button presses make the SMN do something. I won't argue that they should have to push any fewer buttons than other jobs, but more of those button presses need to make the pet do something instead. The SMN himself should be generating much less enmity and damage, while the pet is a whirlwind of force. If 75-85% of the SMNs actions commanded the pet to do something; and if the SMN himself mostly stood back and supported the pet; and if the pets' stats were rebalanced for the appropriate level of survivability; then we'd be addressing the real problems with SMN as SMN.

Unfortunately, this late in the development/life cycle of the game, SE committing the resources to a fix of this magnitude seems unlikely.


tl;dr: SMN doesn't need a better Physick; they just need to be real SMNs.

[Kurando]

Although I do miss the usefulness Physick had back in ARR content, it did practically become unnecessary in the expansions that followed. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want Physick to now be based on INT instead of MND, but going forward it might be in better interests to just have a trait to evolve it in to something more useful whether it be a pet enhancing action or some kind of ally/party utility.

We also do need to consider that if Physick was updated to effect INT, we'll have people complaining that BLM has no healing/rezzing actions whilst the other two casters do, and then it'll just be whiny threads of wanting to them to have fair access.

[Karshan]

As long as no one bullies me in raid for not using it and prefering my primary role, you can base Physick on whatever stat you deem relevant.

"Meh, should have physick the tank after that TB" - Not my job (and yes it's different than healers heal/DPS strawman, cause it means not only lost GCDs but also lost focus on a rotation more complex to keep up than healers' DPS)

I personally think you shouldn't though, and Vercure, to me, is a mistake the way it is (not in solo where it's nice, but out of place in a raid environment with a role trinity)

[zuzu-bq]

Vercure isn't really there to be a decent heal anyways. So even if they make Physick heal for the same on SMN, why would it be good even?

I don't think Vercure is a mistake though, people just randomly do the weak heals of it thinking they're helping when in fact they're not and just wasting time not dpsing. Vercure is neat to get a Dualcast proc on downtimes though, and its a fun mechanic to work around.

[PrismaticDaybreak]

Although I do miss the usefulness Physick had back in ARR content, it did practically become unnecessary in the expansions that followed. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want Physick to now be based on INT instead of MND, but going forward it might be in better interests to just have a trait to evolve it in to something more useful whether it be a pet enhancing action or some kind of ally/party utility.

We also do need to consider that if Physick was updated to effect INT, we'll have people complaining that BLM has no healing/rezzing actions whilst the other two casters do, and then it'll just be whiny threads of wanting to them to have fair access.

Those threads already exist haha

[Shihen]

In solo content incoming damage should be going into the pet and is handled by Sustain, in party content there should already be at least one healer. It's hard to imagine a situation that calls for Physick on SMN at all. The real problem is that an ability that hasn't survived the game's scaling remains untouched. I can only guess they have internal reasons for keeping it around but IMO if it scales off MND it should be found on, and only on, a job that has some way of using MND.

Also will get hate for saying so, but that interview answer is a cop-out. SMN + Cure != RDM, and suddenly jumping to "We don't want to make all the jobs the same" is one hell of a leap. No one is asking for all the jobs to be the same, and even if they copypasted Vercure directly into SMN, the job would still be as different from RDM as MNK is from DRG is from NIN is from SAM. They're just asking why SMN has a spell it doesn't ever need to cast.

[Deceptus]

All they had to do was have SMN change Physic to Sustain via a trait in 4.0 and there wouldn't have been an issue.

[Hasrat]

Personally, I'd be against any of these changes to reduce/remove Physick. I understand the reasoning and all, but, having healed a low level dungeon on ACN (FC-mate was on wrong job when registered), I enjoy the option of having it in case of emergency. It'd be nice to have in less challenging content, just in case the healer DCs or poorly geared/skilled, etc.

It's kinda fun to be a back-up tank/healer when situations arise and you don't want stand around doing nothing waiting for a refill.

[Cynfael]

Personally, I'd be against any of these changes to reduce/remove Physick. I understand the reasoning and all, but, having healed a low level dungeon on ACN (FC-mate was on wrong job when registered), I enjoy the option of having it in case of emergency. It'd be nice to have in less challenging content, just in case the healer DCs or poorly geared/skilled, etc.

It's kinda fun to be a back-up tank/healer when situations arise and you don't want stand around doing nothing waiting for a refill.

I definitely understand where you're coming from, and I've had those moments myself in the past.

I suppose my issue is that I don't see that sort of gameplay being a persistent sort of fun except possibly for the player who deliberately runs very low-level dungeons constantly and frequently runs into major group problems (in other words, for very, very few people). Once the leveling phase is over and the expectations of lvl 50-70 gameplay set in, Physick becomes a truly vestigial spell for the SMN. Considering that most players seem to level at a fairly rapid pace and settle into running mostly higher level content on a regular basis, it doesn't make a great deal of sense to have Physick taking up a slot.

Does it have to be removed? No. However, I think that replacing it with something that adds value past fixing derps in Sastasha NM might offer more enjoyment and practicality in the long run.

[Joe777]

Historically in the series, there is also no reason for SMN not to be able to heal, SMNs have used both black and white magic in previous titles. Examples such as, child Rydia, Terra, Garnet and Yuna.

FF6 and FF10 did not have magic limitations. Any character in those games if done right can have both black and white magic regardless of their inherent class and are therefore bad examples for this. Rydia is also a bad example since when she grew up she lost all her White Magic which would in this case imply SMN should too, which is basically saying drop Physick and Resurrection. As for Garnet: She never learned Black Magic, all White and Summon.