What is the point of TP by now?

[Shurrikhan]

Hey Shurri, haven't been in one of your posts in a while, how ya livin'?

That being said, let's address the topic at hand. I GUESS THERE IS NO POINT TO TP NOW!

I know it's not what you wanted though. We've had some very engaging discussions in how you do not like them scrapping mechanics whereas I am all for getting rid of unnecessary things. Ditching TP and consolidating our resources to MP is exactly what I wanted.

That being said, it will have far reaching implications for how drk and pld play especially. Along with brd and rdm. The four jobs that (to my recollection) use their MP and their TP to fuel their variety of moves and attacks!

Doing okay.

I'm actually pretty happy with the consolidation. If anything, I just think it's still not going far enough, as, whether we do not waste a bar on an utterly unused MP or TP resource (since all but PLD, to all practical extents, use only one resource) does nothing to make simply hitting a button every 2 minutes as soon as it lights up again... compelling.

I don't expect the effects of the change will be all that great, either, honestly, even for the few hybrid jobs. Foe Requiem will likely be bundled into BV and BV reduced to a 2-minute cooldown or similarly changed to a finite duration in some other way. PLD will simply see Riot Blade give back AoE damage resource directly, rather than only indirectly (by healing while the healer AoEs), with true downtime seeming to regenerate mana even more quickly with the lack of drain ticks from weaponskills. DRK will likely feel like Darkside was returned, but in a lesser and per-weaponskill sort of way, that will similarly change very little.

It's brought be back to thinking about the 1.x to ARR transition and TP therein, actually. In those days, I'd actually hoped it would stand as a replacement of a strict combo system. For instance, let's say all combo skills are somewhere between tier-1 and tier-3, with increasing cost and potency as you move up the tiers, but not quite so dynamic as the difference, say, between True Thrust and Full Thrust now (150 to 450). By comboing, you reduce a portion of the TP cost of each combo skill following it until the cost for a long combo would end up nearly TP-neutral -- the TP ticks gained equalling out the cost over the given GCDs. But, as the tier-2 and beyond skills aren't actually stripped of effects or reduced to pitiful potencies when used without combos, you'd still have the option of rushing out a finisher as needed. In that sense, a skill like Invigorate, which I feel would best belong on Dragoon only, would work a lot like combo-acceleration, allowing for a break in the rotation to get a crucial effect up sooner and giving flexibility to what is otherwise a very rotationally rigid job. Ideally, you could also play around with some spectrum bonuses, such as dealing more damage with TP spenders when at high TP, but regenning faster when at low TP, or just having weaponskill potency scale with base TP cost (which combos reduce without reducing damage) and the TP cost be slightly proportionate to your currently available TP (stronger and more expensive at first, but gradually cheapening until typical play is TP-neutral or even TP-positive). That would then have DRGs weighing the benefits of Invigorate against each other, offering a fair bit of nuance and decision-making.

Instead, it looks like we're just going to have yet another go of hitting an extra hotbar slot of button bloat every couple minutes. I'm still happy with the improved UI, but that's all it seems to amount to for now. One less bit of bar bloat, but just as much button bloat.