Shadowbringers RDM Wishlist

[Archwizard]

Especially with something as vague as "If a Black spell were to recover MP". What are its mechanics? Where does it fit? Is it akin to Assize? Or is it more like Syphon Strike/Riot Blade? How much Potency does it have? Will people actually ever cast the thing instead of trying to play around Lucid/Refresh? Is it oGCD?

Well, what I've been working with, refined by our more recent discussions:

Verfreeze (240 MP, 2 sec cast): Deals ice damage to the target and enemies nearby it with a potency of 50 to the first target and 40% less for all remaining enemies.
Additional effect: Ice damage over time
> Potency: 35
> Duration: 30 sec
> The caster can only have one instance of this effect active at a time.
Additional effect: Damage over time ticks inflict 60% damage to enemies within 5y
Additional effect: Refresh
> Potency: 20
> This effect persists while Verfreeze is active on an enemy.

If my math's right, Refresh 20 is about enough to double our base MP economy and allow us to break even with our main rotation, saving LD for emergencies.
Damage numbers are subject to change, but they're presently based on the removal of potency from movement skills (approx 195p/30s), replacing one Jolt II per cast, and the approximate damage difference between Thunder III and IV (40%). This isn't accounting for the effect the loss of a GCD of mana would have on our theoretical DPS, of course, but I would hope the MP generation and reduced cost would net neutral at least.
And of course, the TAoE portion allows us to save button space from gaining 3-4 iterations of the same DoT, with one button that's equally useful in ST (for the MP) and AoE (for the cleave damage).

I believe this fits all of your stated criteria, and works as a "BLM utility" given the connection to Umbral Ice. Would you not concur?

[Mansion]

Some "unbalance" could be implemented and keep the job's flow logical. (Mind this is still built in my support-oriented mindset)

I already talked about a single ability that could me called "Black/White Sword", turning in one or the other if your mana is disbalanced and using one source of Mana. With Black Sword being something DPS oriented (maybe a soft Vuln up on the target) and the White Sword being more passive (like a Nature's Minne, or something like this).

Then you could have another ability working the same way (proc-ing according to your higher mana) ; if your Black mana is higher, it places a DoT on the target and ticks black mana, if White is higher it could be a single target medium regen, ticking White Mana.

That way you could arrange a ticking up of one mana and using the matching "Sword" ability before it gets too high (or keep using the other mana spells).
But in the end, it is still about managing your mana balance.

[Jonnycbad]

Stick MP regeneration on Enhanced Spellblade weaponskills with a trait. Makes your combo restore 15% of your MP (5% each hit). Should be fine and becomes part of your rotation anyway. That, or let RDM r ake advantage of that vampirism thing in their job quests and let them get a skill like Bloodbath that lets their spells refund MP back equal to 2% of their damage.

[Archwizard]

Bards try and time their Refresh for when its most beneficial and has to deal with it also being an Enmity cut skill.

WHM's have to use Thin Air when they're about to spam a bunch of spells.

AST has to actively decide to fish for a Ewer and use it over a better card.

PLD has to make sure to build up MP for its Requiescat phases while it wants to use Holy Spirit a lot when possible at the same time.

DRK has to manage how it utilizes its MP because it has far higher potential expenditure than it has gain as well as having the flexibility to pool MP for burst phases.

BLM has to actively go into UI phase in order to regen MP and it would rather sit in AF 24/7 if it could do so with no MP issues.

Resources should be actively managed (This can also be about actively gearing for Piety breakpoints for healers too). With thought into how to maintain sufficient levels of them, it doesn't necessarily have to be as complicated as DRK, especially if resource management isn't the core focus of the job. But something more than just emulating the infinite TP of physical jobs is what I would like to see.

The only reason your point falls flat is because you're comparing active MP gain tools on RDM to every class whose playstyle is based on active MP management in the first place. I'm not saying "RDM's playstyle should be based on pooling and expending MP as rapidly as possible" -- if anything we're the one Magic DPS that goes against that grain by completely ignoring the concept of MP recovery, albeit to our detriment -- I'm saying that in spite of being ostensibly efficient, we're leaky with resources and need some holes plugged. If the core of our playstyle is based around building and dumping Black and White Mana, then forcing us to actively manage our MP on top of that is somewhat of a distraction.

Besides, only so much can be said about "emulating the infinite TP of physical jobs" when we're having this discussion right before the removal of TP. If Square's concern with TP was that it was too passive, then for all we know every DoW will end up having to actively manage their MP as badly as any caster now.

Stick MP regeneration on Enhanced Spellblade weaponskills with a trait. Makes your combo restore 15% of your MP (5% each hit). Should be fine and becomes part of your rotation anyway. That, or let RDM r ake advantage of that vampirism thing in their job quests and let them get a skill like Bloodbath that lets their spells refund MP back equal to 2% of their damage.

Literally how is this any less passive than what I suggested? As stated, it'd be "part of your rotation anyway".

[Kalise]

The only reason your point falls flat is because you're comparing active MP gain tools on RDM to every class whose playstyle is based on active MP management in the first place.

Since when is WHM based around MP management?

Since when is AST based around MP management?

Heck, they're both Healers so much of their design is around passive MP regen from Piety, the Healer specific stat.

Also, these are almost all of the MP using jobs in the game. I'm hardly going to compare to WAR's MP management with their grand total of literally no actual use of the bar.

The only other MP using jobs are Arcanist ones. Which, I mentioned that SMN was poorly designed because you just use Aetherflow irregardless of its MP restore because you need to use it for damage.

SCH, I'm not 100% sure about, I know in my experience of leveling up, I had to go out of my way to use up flow in order to cast Aetherflow again without wasting any flow (Often I'd cast Energy Drain for more MP because the heals either didn't exist at that level or lulshields/Lily was preventing me from actually needing to heal)

If the core of our playstyle is based around building and dumping Black and White Mana, then forcing us to actively manage our MP on top of that is somewhat of a distraction.

Hence why I mentioned that MP management mechanics don't all need to be to the same complexity of DRK.

RDM is focused more on Mana management. But that doesn't mean that MP management should be trivialized. Especially when Verraise is balanced against its MP cost. Having essentially infinite MP so that your MP bar is literally just a "Verraise Points" measure is not particularly interesting design in my opinion.

Literally how is this any less passive than what I suggested? As stated, it'd be "part of your rotation anyway".

The first suggestion is not. It's literally the same thing, just making your rotation infinite.

As such, I'm not for it either.

The second suggestion, has some merit, because you'd want to time it around maximizing your spell cast output to maximize gains. Whether or not such a thing would end up working well is questionable.

But it's something that has some potential. I kind of like the idea of having some way of dynamically adjusting the potency of the MP restore. So that basic usage can more of less cover your standard rotation (Provided you use it decently and use Lucid somewhat regularly) while there's options to alter your rotation to try and maximize the gains to make up for large expenditure (Dying or Raising).

That would be the kind of thing I'd like to see. Nothing too taxing to manage, outside of the times when you really go ham on MP loss.

As opposed to "You just regen more MP while you have your 1 DoT active" or "You regain MP when you do your rotation as normal"

[Kurando]

The only other MP using jobs are Arcanist ones. Which, I mentioned that SMN was poorly designed because you just use Aetherflow irregardless of its MP restore because you need to use it for damage."

I just wanted to interject that originally Aetherflow was the only action that ACN/SMN/SCH had available (excluding Energy Drain) to restore their own MP. The original recovery cost was 20% instead of the 10% we get now, and there was no role action like Lucid as an alternative. Sure AF was used to deal damage, but if no other player was in the party with Refresh capabilities (e.g. BRD/MCH) then you did have to watch your MP with it (especially when Ruin III used to cost a stupid amount to cast and Miasma II was still available to them as a dot option).

[Shurrikhan]

I just wanted to interject that originally Aetherflow was the only action that ACN/SMN/SCH had available (excluding Energy Drain) to restore their own MP. The original recovery cost was 20% instead of the 10% we get now, and there was no role action like Lucid as an alternative. Sure AF was used to deal damage, but if no other player was in the party with Refresh capabilities (e.g. BRD/MCH) then you did have to watch your MP with it (especially when Ruin III used to cost a stupid amount to cast and Miasma II was still available to them as a dot option).

Which then actually gave it [well, came as part of] a sense of gameplay instead of merely "hit this every couple minutes, roughly on cooldown"...

[Cetonis]

I think MP regen is a hard topic to theorize about, in general, without knowing the fate of Role Actions. Maybe SE decides they don't even like Lucid and each job gets more unique MP sustain methods, maybe Drain becomes RDM only and restores MP, who knows.

That aside, my personal theoryhope is that I think the ice and water abilities could be upgrades to Verthunder and Veraero, proc'ing the 50% of the time that Verfire/Verstone do not.

So when you use Veraero, half the time you get Verstone Ready, the other half you get Verwater ready. And Verwater is a 5s cast 350p spell or something that adds a little more mana and has just the 50% Verstone proc chance.

This way you add a little dash of extra complexity to the core rotation without really messing with the general flow, which has proven so very popular.

AoE can honestly be fixed with tweaks to existing things - making Enchanted Moulinet cost 20 mana and auto-proc Enhanced Scatter, for instance, would lead to a pattern that mixes is Moulinet more often, and two skills + an oGCD is pretty typical for AoE complexity. It'd also give Moulinet some 2-target applications maybe? Haven't crunched numbers, just exampling.

Other than that, yeah some way to fiddle with burst window timing would be a boon, maybe something that can slight tweak mana to offset it when you're even. Assuming they want to add something flashy for level 80, I'm not sure what would fit the bill from FFs past - maybe Shock, maybe Saber? Or some splashy buff / oGCD effect I guess.

[Sunako]

MP regen is easily fixed by increasing more melee comboes. PLD used to have tp problems too, but once holy spirit become part of rotation, tp become infinite. Same way rdm regain mana while rotating melee combo, since melee combo is free mana wise and passive mana is 2% mana every 3 seconds.

[Ariel_Valmont]

No DOT spells