What Happened to Potion Consistency?

[Jeska_D_Estraad]

Long post, have a Tl,dr: Potions and need to be adjusted and made to be useful again at the end game stage.

Potions stopped healing for a mathematically consistent amount by the end of Heavensward.

When you look at the end of ARR, an X-Potion HQ would heal you for 1,300 HP as a non-tank role, when you would have around 5,500 HP. That is only 350 HP off from what 30% of 5,500 HP would be, but that can be overlooked due to iLv being between 115-130 which would give a slight variation of HP.

By level 60, however, the potions are no longer consistent with the math.

This is counting iLv 270 gear, as in ARR potions kept up with the highest ilv gear, which was 130. By ilv270, any non-tank role is looking at over 20,000 HP. And the highest potion craftable? A Max-Potion, going at a rate of 24/30% of HP Restored with a cap of 1,920/2,400 HP. That would be a little more than 10% of any non-tank role; which is a far cry from 30% of your HP.

By level 70, it becomes even more inconsistent. At ilv290, which is a very conservative baseline as it is your Relic ilv, you are looking at over 25,000 HP to any non-tank role.

By ilv380 you start seeing any non-tank role having over 40,000 HP and on the far side you see Warriors reaching 80,000 HP without breaking a sweat.

The highest potion available? The Super-Potion. Which restores a whopping 12/15% of your HP at a 4,800/6,000 HP Maximum. That is the maximum amount of HP healed is what we should have seen at the end of Heavensward potions. Now remember that this came out in the middle of Stormblood.

Mathematically speaking, 6,000 HP is indeed 15% of 40,000 HP. However, that is a far cry from the 40% HP restoration that the lowest tier Potion gives. By lowering the HP% healed in that way you made it so the items become practically useless. Even more so when you take into the account of the fact recast times are going up on potions.

Now, most jobs have a few ways to gain HP back in a rotation basis between Second Wind, Bloodbath and whichever class ability they may have. But Second Wind is on a 2 min recast, and Bloodbath is a minute and a half. Potions are needed for clutch healing, and to do that they need to heal for a halfway decent amount.

Because not only are they -not- healing you in a consistent manner with the lower level variants, they are also a consumable. Which means it costs gil. Either in a straightforward way of you buying said potions, or in the time=money way, along with potential profits of selling the ingredients.

The main problem I have is that in ARR potions were necessary -and- healed for a useful amount. Now at the end of Stormblood they're still necessary, but aren't nearly as useful. Hopefully potions will get a much needed fix, as they are a nice feature that help out especially with all the high end single man instances that have been popping up.

The whole "You don't need potions when you have a healer" argument falls apart right there.

[Jeska_D_Estraad]

And all of that is not even mentioning the recast time of Ethers. Which start at 2 minutes and 30 seconds base, and skyrocket up to 5 minutes at the Super-Ether.

Fortunately, Ethers are fairly consistent with MP tables for non-healer roles until you reach Super-Ether; where it starts to fall behind. Realistically, base 2 and a half minute recast is semi-reasonable as it would fit into rotations fairly easily.

However, gaining 2,300 MP back every 5 minutes is where it plummets in usefulness. The main time you would see people needing Ethers at max level is when there are a few deaths; and the amount you get from it isn't even enough to cast another Raise.

[Shougun]

For casual content would be nice to have a bottomless variant, perhaps taking care of these lower values you're mentioning (casual "eh, I need 200 more mp"). And then a more powerful consumable variant for end game players looking to gain an edge. Certainly making them stronger would make people keep an eye out for the non-consumeable players more though, perhaps a good thing (for alchemist at least lol) perhaps a bad thing (players who didn't want to use them often).

I did feel the HP and MP potions becoming less impactful as time went on, still useful if you were like 500 hp away from being shot down by a boss (gives your healer time to pick you up further) but is a bit underwhelming lol.

[Nora_of_Mira]

I've never once used HP potions in any party content in FFxiv, I feel like they need to be seriously boosted to have any significant impact on anything. Do I think we need them? currently, nothing really asks for that much self healing.

[AxlStream]

Potions are needed? Man I must of been raiding savage wrong. /s

[Deceptus]

And all of that is not even mentioning the recast time of Ethers. Which start at 2 minutes and 30 seconds base, and skyrocket up to 5 minutes at the Super-Ether.

Fortunately, Ethers are fairly consistent with MP tables for non-healer roles until you reach Super-Ether; where it starts to fall behind. Realistically, base 2 and a half minute recast is semi-reasonable as it would fit into rotations fairly easily.

However, gaining 2,300 MP back every 5 minutes is where it plummets in usefulness. The main time you would see people needing Ethers at max level is when there are a few deaths; and the amount you get from it isn't even enough to cast another Raise.

This is my biggest issue.

Ethers are basically pointless.

I've never once used HP potions in any party content in FFxiv, I feel like they need to be seriously boosted to have any significant impact on anything. Do I think we need them? currently, nothing really asks for that much self healing.

I used them all the time leveling. Gives the healers more time to dps. In synced content Max-Potions and Super-Potions can heal for a significant chunk of HP.

[InkstainedGwyn]

Savage, extreme, raids, trials are all designed around an exact "dance" - healers need to heal the raidwide damage at x point, heal the tanks at x point, everyone needs to dodge mechanics because the encounter is built for them not to take extra damage. There's really no challenge in these beyond memorising the steps, which could be faster or slower depending on the difficulty of the content.

Potions would skew that. Suddenly it would be okay that the dragoon decided to eat every single one of Mustadio's right/left handgonne moves (since he'd only be standing in one anyway and one won't kill you) because he could just pop a potion before the energy burst hits. Fights would suddenly be a lot easier to cheese (since right now the only reason they work is because of the challenge of keeping everything going when one person messes up mechanics.) And granted, as a healer, I wouldn't mind the idea that I would no longer have to do clutch healing (ideally I shouldn't be anyway, because everybody should know their steps) but I really hate the level of braindead that would turn most of the content into.

If the fights were less scripted, I could see potions mattering. As it is now, it would simply add a safety net for folks who don't want to learn mechanics.

[Jeska_D_Estraad]

If the fights were less scripted, I could see potions mattering. As it is now, it would simply add a safety net for folks who don't want to learn mechanics.

To be fair, I'm not a raider so I didn't -quite- take that into account, but it doesn't seem like it'd be the end of the world to adjust a rotation, especially with rotations going to need to be redone most likely with Shadowbringers.

Outside of that, in certain content- especially synced content, potions can definitely be the difference between a complete wipe or survival. Again, it's not raid-tier stuff so it's not like it's the end of the world; but it can lead to some of those crazy close call stories. I mainly noticed the discrepancy due to me being an Alchemist- and it's bugged me for a while. Just decided to mention it and see what others thought.

[Nora_of_Mira]

Potions would skew that. Suddenly it would be okay that the dragoon decided to eat every single one of Mustadio's right/left handgonne moves (since he'd only be standing in one anyway and one won't kill you) because he could just pop a potion before the energy burst hits..

I can attest to this as that is exactly what I would do. However, dodging right/left handgonne doesnt affect my GCD at all as you can hug the boss just fine. what I WOULD use the Pot for is Seiryu's In-and-Out mechanic and stay in regardless of the AoE. currently, I pop Bloodbath and Second Wind and take a Vuln stack whenever I don't have any to begin with. Yeah I'm technically cheesing it, but it just means I CANT get hit by any mechanic for the rest of the fight or its certain death, so I kind of think that balances it out.

edit: its certainly NOT because I dont know the mechanics or I like being lazy, its because I miss a ton of GCDs moving out of that AoE for what seems like minimal damage and minor punishment.

[Vaer]

I think they stopped caring after they added sustain pots in PoTD/HoH where potions are still regularly used in low man situations.

The potions/ethers trigger cooldowns with infusions/stat pots so people barely use them outside of solo situations which seems to be what they were designed for.

Refresh/Shift replaced Ethers but sort of nice to use if you die and don't have Lucid.