Where to go with the Lily Gauge

[Kabooa]

Afflatus bliss is effectively 525 offensive potency.

People complain about the 75 effective loss currently.

What would you do to discourage only using Bliss?

[ty_taurus]

Afflatus bliss is effectively 525 offensive potency.

People complain about the 75 effective loss currently.

What would you do to discourage only using Bliss?

You only get the damage from Bliss if the party member takes 30% of their HP as damage. I made a mistake though, I meant for the duration to be 15 seconds instead of 30. If you don't get the damage, then Bliss is a weaker Solace

[Kabooa]

You only get the damage from Bliss if the party member takes 30% of their HP as damage. I made a mistake though, I meant for the duration to be 15 seconds instead of 30. If you don't get the damage, then Bliss is a weaker Solace

It's extremely easy to break 30% in 15 seconds. That's any raid buster, tank buster, aoe dungeon pull, etc. It's also not much weaker than Solace as a single target heal, as it cannot overheal by itself. It's a retuned Excog with the benefit of granting a huge potency bonus. (RE: Just double the damage you get from Misery now, that's how much potency this is.)

As far as other Afflatus abilities can go - No real issue with Gladioulus in concept, but the trigger effect should probably be the consumption of Lilies instead of one singular ability. Effloresce seems like something you'd just use on cooldown with no regards to its healing component.

[ty_taurus]

It's extremely easy to break 30% in 15 seconds. That's any raid buster, tank buster, aoe dungeon pull, etc. It's also not much weaker than Solace as a single target heal, as it cannot overheal by itself. It's a retuned Excog with the benefit of granting a huge potency bonus. (RE: Just double the damage you get from Misery now, that's how much potency this is.)

As far as other Afflatus abilities can go - No real issue with Gladioulus in concept, but the trigger effect should probably be the consumption of Lilies instead of one singular ability. Effloresce seems like something you'd just use on cooldown with no regards to its healing component.

Possibly, though I think the idea needs something to prevent it from just being free damage per lily. The idea was that you wanted to use specific lilies at specific times, and I was actually basing the idea more off Blackest Night than Excogitation.

[Kabooa]

Possibly, though I think the idea needs something to prevent it from just being free damage per lily. The idea was that you wanted to use specific lilies at specific times, and I was actually basing the idea more off Blackest Night than Excogitation.

There's nothing wrong with providing damage per Lily. That's what the current system does - It refunds potency you didn't get to use for damage because you had to use it for healing, in theory. In practice, most of the game is tuned low enough that the best use of Lilies are to heal between pulls or when the boss goes untargetable.

There is a fairly intuitive solution that we've seen in Bozja, and that is giving White mage Seraph Strike (And the other healers something similar, but SS works best on White Mage). A signifcant burst increase of at least 40% would turn the 225 (-75) refund into 300+. So long as you land Misery within Seraph Strike's window, previous Lily expenditure is neutral at worst, and a large gain at best.

So Gladiolous can be something more like

Spell - Instant Cast / 2.5s Recast
Effect: Only usable when Readied. Deals 300 Potency. Grants X for 15s.

X: The Potency of the next spell is increased by 25%.

Every Lily readies it, providing a universal spellboost, with Glare for filler, dia for bonus damage, Misery for big nuke. This doesn't include having other spell options as well. This addresses a few things.

1. It isn't a flat potency boost. We could easily improve Misery to 1200 and it'd be 'neutral' but this doesn't address the play issue of White Mage. If every Gladioulus improvement is spent on glare, it's approximately 225 additional potency, or, a little less than needed to be neutral.
2. It provides both ideal and 'good enough' responses to the situation at hand.
3. It discourages Lily dumping on transition phases. By turning it neutral to positive, you're no longer "losing" Glares by healing with Lilies. To come out ahead, you have to use your Lilies as they are demanded, and then make the best choice with your spell after. There are few cases where Lily 3 isn't going to be used immediately on Misery, but some will exist where Misery will be more useful 21 seconds from now (Two+ target situations).
4. A few more weave windows.

As far as Effloresce goes, I'd like to see more interactable abilities, so this will be a point of personal preference.

Afflatus Effloresce
Instant Cast / 2.5s Recast
Effect: Drop a blooming flower at your feet. After 12 seconds, fully blossoms, healing the first party member to run over it for 400 potency. Once consumed, Nourishes the Blood Lily after 6 seconds.

This is your "No one actually needs healing, but Dia's about to fall off." button. Throw a healing pick up on to the ground. Delayed Lily Nourishment. Enjoy the implications.

[ty_taurus]

There's nothing wrong with providing damage per Lily. That's what the current system does - It refunds potency you didn't get to use for damage because you had to use it for healing, in theory. In practice, most of the game is tuned low enough that the best use of Lilies are to heal between pulls or when the boss goes untargetable.

There is a fairly intuitive solution that we've seen in Bozja, and that is giving White mage Seraph Strike (And the other healers something similar, but SS works best on White Mage). A signifcant burst increase of at least 40% would turn the 225 (-75) refund into 300+. So long as you land Misery within Seraph Strike's window, previous Lily expenditure is neutral at worst, and a large gain at best.

So Gladiolous can be something more like

Spell - Instant Cast / 2.5s Recast
Effect: Only usable when Readied. Deals 300 Potency. Grants X for 15s.

X: The Potency of the next spell is increased by 25%.

Every Lily readies it, providing a universal spellboost, with Glare for filler, dia for bonus damage, Misery for big nuke. This doesn't include having other spell options as well. This addresses a few things.

1. It isn't a flat potency boost. We could easily improve Misery to 1200 and it'd be 'neutral' but this doesn't address the play issue of White Mage. If every Gladioulus improvement is spent on glare, it's approximately 225 additional potency, or, a little less than needed to be neutral.
2. It provides both ideal and 'good enough' responses to the situation at hand.
3. It discourages Lily dumping on transition phases. By turning it neutral to positive, you're no longer "losing" Glares by healing with Lilies. To come out ahead, you have to use your Lilies as they are demanded, and then make the best choice with your spell after. There are few cases where Lily 3 isn't going to be used immediately on Misery, but some will exist where Misery will be more useful 21 seconds from now (Two+ target situations).
4. A few more weave windows.

As far as Effloresce goes, I'd like to see more interactable abilities, so this will be a point of personal preference.

Afflatus Effloresce
Instant Cast / 2.5s Recast
Effect: Drop a blooming flower at your feet. After 12 seconds, fully blossoms, healing the first party member to run over it for 400 potency. Once consumed, Nourishes the Blood Lily after 6 seconds.

This is your "No one actually needs healing, but Dia's about to fall off." button. Throw a healing pick up on to the ground. Delayed Lily Nourishment. Enjoy the implications.

Right I see what you mean. It's a really great improvement actually. With just these 2 actions, you have better options for weaving, resolve the issue of lilies fighting for your GCD casts, and your adjustment to the Effloresce is both effective and exactly what healers are thirsty for right now--something different with a lot of identity. Having it literally a flower growing from the ground not only is different than what the other healers have (the closest example being Earthly Star) but it also further solidifies the WHM's floral motif in a very literal sense.

The only thing might be the timing of the Blood Lily Nourish. They'd obviously need that information to be transmitted to the WHM in a very clear fashion, since the effect happens after the flower fully blooms and is consumed, which it doesn't have to be right away. I get why you'd want it to work that way, though it might be a bit simpler just to have the nourish occur as the flower fully blooms.

[Shurrikhan]

...

While all this would be an improvement over the original suggestion, I think it's worth asking what, generally, we even want from the Lily Gauge as a mechanic.

At present we have Cure-II-but-on-a-shared-30s-CD, Medica-but-on-a-shared-30s-CD, and a offensive potency refunder (currently at 25 potency loss per heal, available per 3 Lily actions).

Is it, for instance, really worth adding a Blood Lily action that requires only a single Lily's use... when we could just have Misery scale granularly? (I.e., Blood Lilies activate per Lily use, with Misery's potency increasing per available Lily (2 Glare's worth, 3 Glare's worth, 4 Glare's worth?)

Similarly, if we really need more weave space, mightn't that call for simply not having so damn long a DoT, or simply moving either Divine Benison or Assize over to the GCD at increased potency (or frequency, such as to 30s, in Assize's case, since it'd be use-on-CD either way)?

Do we really need to load up a refund system with options B, C, D, E when just letting option A scale more intuitively would fill each of those purposes?

Now, if the playflow itself is super compelling, that's a different story, but then... why bottleneck that whole vein of mechanics to after level 74?

[Kabooa]

While all this would be an improvement over the original suggestion, I think it's worth asking what, generally, we even want from the Lily Gauge as a mechanic.

Now, if the playflow itself is super compelling, that's a different story, but then... why bottleneck that whole vein of mechanics to after level 74?

I don't make the rules, is the simple answer. I would introduce them earlier, but I generally work within the constraint of the thread topic.

As far as just scaling up misery, it does nothing on its own to address play issues, and while we -can- adjust the play issues separately, there's little reason not to hit them all at once, so to speak.

Part of the problem with dealing with the "DPS Neutral" angle is that it's not technically neutral. I don't so much like working within that constraint of the 100% uptime vacuum, but it's the easiest to work with since its the one everyone subscribes to.

Lets say you have 10 gcds to spend. If we set Misery to be 300 + 300 for every Blood Lily consume, then you have

300 x 6, 0 x 3, + 1200. 3000 potency. "Neutral."

If at any point prior to this you can "Prep" it, during a transition phase, you instead have

300 x 9 + 1200. 3900 potency.

The end result is much the same to what we have now. You gain more by spending them in a dead window so you can keep casting glares. Part of the reason I suggested the change to Gladioulus is, in part, to discourage that. You still probably -can- do it at some points. That's a timer issue that'd need to be shortened, but you must spend the Lily first, use Gladioulous after, and then take advantage of your potency bonus.

This is a decision - Whether or not everyone finds it a pleasing one, I can't say. Simply giving Misery the 'DPS Neutral" potency boost doesn't actually change how we would use Lilies, because we already use the 'penalized' version in a manner to get a gain. So we'd just get an even bigger gain for doing the same thing.

Incorporating it into active priority use does. In return for using the Lily, you get an additional Weave and Movement window. And upon utilizing that, you get the opportunity for potency return. This option would be independent of SE having to significantly change its encounter design, so in my opinion it hits the notes we'd (Or rather, what I think we'd) want to see from them.

As far as the options for using the Lily, I also offered a particular type of heal we haven't seen yet in the form of a Pick-up. The targeting of it will need some tweaks, but there's quite a few scenarios I can think of that pre-placing a heal Pick-Up would be quite useful. In this regard, I would have to insist that all "Blue" Lily options have to remain healing options. The Heal <> Damage GCD cost interchangeability is built on this. The current implementation of Lilies is currently the curing with one hand, culling with the other, so any and all expansions must follow this.

You Cure [Blue] to Cull [Red]. Red option expansions likely necessitate more rapid Blue expenditure, unless we have some truly redonkouluos things like a 3 minute DoT or less interesting options like "Single target misery"