Mp management of the healers

[Recon1o6]

One of the many design changes SHB brought out was the removal or reduction of mp management. Pretty much nobody complained about 10000mp being the unified max mp limit- makes it easier to do maths after all.
But there has been some low key grumbling about the different healers having to rely on shroud of saints lucid dreaming and how healing between the amazing healing kits and barely noticable damage and frequency.
As a result, mp management is almost a thing of the past for whm and sch, astros on the other hand- well they are getting changes next patch

How did we get here though?

In sb we saw whm get hit with a wrecking ball and ending up with lots of free healing which has continued to this day. In shb unless the whm has some reviving to do, they have practically infinite mp to cast
Curiously whm's don't have much in terms of mp restoration, just lots of mp neutral abilities:
Whm's have 500mp every assize plus healing and damage, 4-6 free casts of any spell or 2 free revives per thin air (3 for the skilled) and 5 free casts of cure 2 every 90 seconds where 3 of those can be exchanged for medica between lillies and tetragrammaton

Astro lost luminerferous aether in sb and ewer in shb. It struggled as much as rdm at shb launch and nocturnal still has severe mp issues. Its mp neutral is being removed from lightspeed and in return getting some mp changes elsewhere in its kit.
About time really as its got no method of mp restoration outside of lucid dreaming

Sch has aetherflow and energy drain and a long list of healing tools plus a flying eureka potion (instead of two fairies of yesteryear). Its mp is very neutral from what I have seen but its very slow to get back into a fight after being ko'd due to its resources management unless recitation is available
(haven't played scholar past 60 since hw so any scholar mains that want to correct me on this please do)


So here's the question:

Should healers get their unique mp management styles expanded on (or readded in ast's case) and lucid dreaming be scrapped?

[Eclipse12187]

As a WHM main since 2.0 i was so upset when they took away my divine seal and shroud of saints in the name of role skills and had the audacity to change the icons and rename them. I personally miss the old flavor classes used to have before they took certain skills that did the same thing and set them as role skills for everyone. EX: esuna and got rid of leeches and exalted detriment, lucid dreaming, rampart (war had no true equivalent but foresight was taken away), low blow (pld had no ogcd stun before this). So from a class flavor point of view I’d like these skills returned. From an MP management point of view SE has already said in the live letter that they’re reducing MP costs on AST and moving the MP management from light speed to something else so we'll just have to wait and see what gets done.

[Corbeau]

I just wish that mana management was a relevant part of healer gameplay, asking the player to balance output versus efficiency depending on circumstance, rather than just "press mana button on cooldown to ignore mechanic." Unfortunately that would require not just a rework/removal of the mana buttons, but also fights that regularly demand varying levels of mana-costing GCD output.

[Maltothoris]

I would say it started in heavensward because mp management was just as easy back then for sch and astro.

Sch has aetherflow but back then, it restored 20 percent of their total mp back then instead of the 10 percent that it was in stromblood. Combined with the fairy's strong healing, mp management wasn't really a thing and they could meld accuracy if they need to and get melds for damage.

Astro lumonious aether was 15 seconds when it first came on a 2 min cd just like shroud of saints but in 3.2 it got increased to 24 seconds and in 3.4 with the buff to celestial opposition, they had a strong mp economy back then as well.

Whm were the weak link back with their mp management on top on everything which why they were so universally lambasted back then and why stormblood went to such lengths to make the strong mp battery then with the change from shroud of saints into lucid dreaming, whm getting thin air and assize getting reduced from 90 seconds to 60 seconds. Whm in arr and heavensward had procs for their mp managemant. Free cure, overcure, hald medica and free esuna. The first one is still in the game, the second one was a chance for a cure 2 to make reduced cure 3 mp by 50 percent, a chance for medica to half as well, and a chance for esuna to be free. The problem here was that all these procs had a low percentage of happening. They were 15%, 15%, 20%, and 20% respectively. Shroud of Saints was only 15 seconds on a 2 min cd and Stoneskin was a costly spell back then. Thats why they went really overboard back then in stormblood to try to give the whm one defining trait outside of being the strong healer.

[Torunya]

its very slow to get back into a fight after being ko'd due to its resources management unless recitation is available
(haven't played scholar past 60 since hw so any scholar mains that want to correct me on this please do)

Can confirm that it's a bit sluggish to get back up after a KO as Scholar. (Then again, it might be because I meld DH over Piety. Shh.)

Scholar seems like it's in a good spot for me from a gameplay perspective? You can run low, but also recover by using your tools carefully, and that's enjoyable to me.

Indeed. It is as you say. I would add that part of Scholar's versatile MP management is much thanks to Energy Drain. (I still can't fathom they removed it a while ago? Yikes...)

Part of the reason I enjoy running DH over Piety is because it forces me to really optimise my MP management, a factor -- and also a personal challenge -- that I've come to enjoy.

[Synaesthesia]

I feel like it should be either something that every healer has to actively manage and control their skill usage over, or something that none of them need to worry about at all. Scholar seems like it's in a good spot for me from a gameplay perspective? You can run low, but also recover by using your tools carefully, and that's enjoyable to me. White Mage is so easy to manage mana on that it's almost not even a thought point while playing aside from recklessly blowing through mana or forgetting to use some skills at all, and Astrologian is virtually powerless to stop their MP pool from running low eventually and the death of either the Astro or one or two extra party members turns the run into misery.

I feel like both WHM and Astro feel worse from a gameplay perspective as a result, and I'm happy they're addressing Astro. I'm not really advocating for nerfing WHM though.. it's supposed to be a more approachable healer, and while it's super easy to manage, it's still a small factor in gameplay.

[Heilstos]

Astro lumonious aether was 15 seconds when it first came on a 2 min cd just like shroud of saints but in 3.2 it got increased to 24 seconds and in 3.4 with the buff to celestial opposition, they had a strong mp economy back then as well.

And has the option to extend to 34s with CO.

I think that our mana household should also be our job. Even though I was really sloppy with LD at the beginning of the add-on. I also think it's good that every healer has a common component in the form of LD and also keeps his mana household with job-specific skills.

[Absurdity]

And has the option to extend to 34s with CO.

That probably had a much bigger impact than Ewer, being able to extend LD and Lightspeed with CO.

[Risvertasashi]

Should healers get their unique mp management styles expanded on (or readded in ast's case) and lucid dreaming be scrapped?

So if we take a wider view outside of just healers...

A raw resource pool like MP/TP has had increasingly less relevance. I mean, TP's been flat out removed - and why wouldn't you. Optimal play is about keeping uptime, managing resources in more of a builder-spender sense, and so on.

Then looks look at MP on caster DPSs. It's pretty irrelevant. Doing their DPS rotations, they will never ever run out and can DPS indefinitely. And in a game that's about optimizing up time, minimizing movement, and so on, why would it make sense to have it be otherwise? --But there's one exception. Raising. MP still limits raising.

Then we have healers. The only classes left that can actually run out of MP doing their normal thing. AST most notably, though that's being addressed shortly. And, yes, even WHM needs a certain piety minimum or it can't really come back from a KO in a high uptime fight.

The logical progression would be to make MP irrelevant outside of raising.

oGCDs are already throttled by their CDs. If you're GCD healing, you're already punished for that by slipping DPS. With how optimization works, there's not really a particular reason for MP to restrict normal spell usage. Every other class gets to not have TP or pretend MP doesn't exist, outside of raising. Why should healers be the exception?

[Torunya]

The logical progression would be to make MP irrelevant outside of raising.

This sounds like pretty boring gameplay to me.

I main Scholar, so I can't really speak as clearly for the other healers, but I find the inherent need for MP management to be an exciting and challenging aspect of the job. If this was to be simplified to the point where GCD-healing meant I never ran out of MP, there wouldn't be any challenge left. The thing is, I don't think one should view the fact that healers have to manage their MP as a form of punishment; rather, I think it needs to be considered necessary for the core enjoyment of playing the job in itself. If there were no resources for me to manage, no dps skills to weave in on my downtime (as we've talked about regarding homogenisation in another thread), then it wouldn't be any more enganging than pressing one button over and over until you win the game. And that, to me, does not sound like fun.

Now that TP is gone, I suppose this kind of resource management is more of a healer-only concern. Personally, though, I like it. A little challenge -- and sometimes more, if you ask me -- goes a long way in keeping the game enganging.