Quote Originally Posted by Sol_Aureus View Post
First off, thank you for the info Rukkirii, we appreciate the responses.

This information worries me though, if the development team truly thinks that 7 MP/tic is worthwhile at all, given the current MP costs of spells and the potency of in-battle MP recovery. This is one of the reasons the Darklight Cowl is practically worthless, the +3 Refresh is...a nice bonus I guess, but it's so negligible. It'd take 4 minutes and 40 seconds to get enough MP for one Cura, or 3 minutes and 30 seconds for one Thunder. Those are very basic spells for White Mage and Black Mage, and considering how long boss fights last, it's one, MAYBE two extra of those spells. I think the development team is putting way too much weight into how good they think the Refresh effect is.

Personally, it'd need to be a minimum of +10 for me to even consider using it, especially over the +7~10% extra cure potency I get from AF.

This includes the auto-refresh that WHM and BLM get as well, 3 MP/tic is negligible. Especially considering how easy it is to recover MP in battle as a mage. Stand in place. It takes 9 seconds for your first "resting" tic. With my current MP pool of 3299, that's 35 MP (without a Party Bonus). Next tic is 101 (12 seconds), followed by 200 where it caps (15, 18, 21, etc. seconds)

So for standing in place for 15 seconds, I get 327 MP (336 - 9 from auto-refresh trait). For Auto-refresh or the Darklight Cowl's 3 MP/tic to give me that much MP, it'd take 5 minutes and 27 seconds. 15 seconds versus 5½ minutes. This is the reason refresh and a lot of other MP recovery methods are practically worthless: that we can regain MP in battle very very easily. If we couldn't get MP back so easily, refresh would be much much more valuable. If it took, say, 30 seconds to get the first "resting" tic and it took longer to get to the higher values (instead of 35-101-200-200-200, have it go 35-35-35-70-70-70-130-130-130-200-200-200) then in-battle MP management might actually be an issue. I certainly don't really want to be out of commission for so long just to get a little bit of MP, it'd take 51 seconds to start getting substantial returns (the 130s) under this model. This would make me actually want to manage my MP during combat, it'd give more incentive to bring more Ethers and Elixirs, and refresh would actually mean something, as every little bit would help. As it is now though, the most effective way to get MP is to stand there and do nothing for a short period of time.

That being said, BLM would need something more for MP gains, or Parsimony needs to get buffed a lot (reduce to 45s cooldown, much higher MP returns? somewhere around 600-700 like Blissful Mind?) otherwise BLM's would be out of MP really quickly.

In any case, something needs to be done with in-battle MP regeneration, it's much too potent right now which makes other means of MP recovery practically obsolete. Please pass this concern along to the development team.
Facts:
Quote Originally Posted by Rukkirii View Post
In regards to manathirst materia specifically, our counterpart in Japan posted the following insight from the team. As stated here, and other language forums, players feel that the effects of manathirst materia are too weak, but the team disagrees. The current maximum MP recovery rate is 7.5% of the player’s maximum MP, so if their maximum MP is increased by 100 through use of manathirst materia, an additional 7 MP is recovered every tick (3 seconds). Therefore, the team believes that the effectiveness of manathirst materia is balanced alongside other materia.
Problem:
Quote Originally Posted by Sol_Aureus View Post
With my current MP pool of 3299, that's 35 MP (without a Party Bonus). Next tic is 101 (12 seconds), followed by 200 where it caps (15, 18, 21, etc. seconds)
3299mp x0.075 (7.5%) = 247.425 mp

Why is your mp per tic capped at 200 when it should be 247?

Is there a secondary stat necessary to up the mp per tic past 200?

Theoretically: There are 5 pieces to which manathirst materia can be melded: Weapon, Head, Body, Legs, and Waist. A tripple meld = 100mp on average. If you have triple meld Grade IV manathirst materia on all five pieces thats +500mp total x0.075 = +37.5mp/tic That's not so bad... ontop of your 247.425mp per tic you could get close to 300mp/tic.