Quote Originally Posted by Zairava View Post
I think both sides have good arguments, really. I don't personally find it a bad thing to have fewer constraints, but I would honestly prefer to have a higher skill ceiling that isn't just "dump everything into your burst window and just spam 1-2-3 and use bloodspiller to not overcap otherwise."

At the very least, I would like my downtime to be more interesting.
Mostly agreed, but, I have to wonder... are there really even "sides" there, per se?

Is it a matter of "Native Damage Buff Window Good"? If there's a side for that, the only camp opposite it I'd represent for instance, is just that a native damage buff window isn't necessarily good.

That is to say, I don't particularly find all that interesting any damage buff window that doesn't rely of at least potentially active sync even in 100% uptime (or, via a striking dummy). If you could just pick the right GCD and thereafter hit your damage buff on CD (or, on CD +/- using at end of the GCD-gap), I'm not convinced it does anything. Add in a skill that you specifically want to start and stop on, like Goring Blade, and it gets a bit more potentially interesting, but even then, not necessarily. It's contextual, though contextual to one's toolkit.

Greater freedom, on the other hand, offers a higher ceiling for contextual nuance based on the encounter... not that we ever see that exploited in XIV outside of the very rare add phase. More bankable = more (frequently) available deviation between "best" cases and "normal" cases.

Neither seems inherently superior, though I'll admit that when I lack enough encounter-contextual nuance to exploit, I tend to look enviously at kits with a bit more internal nuance; though even the latter requires a fair deal of supportive context, else you more often end up with just finnicky-ness, not nuance.

I think the mp spenditure in itself is ridiculously streamlined compared to what it once was, and would do with some revisioning in order for BW to have any merit of feeling more than just being enough for one more tbn or edge/flood.
I could go either way at this point. Either MP could remains just a DarkShinten gauge where you make sure not to overspend for fear of delaying a necessary Senei/TBN, or maybe it could go back to cutting every defensive in two such that you have soft and full uses available to each while making sure not to overspend for fear of losing out on the efficiency of DA-CnS. Neither's perfect; neither is altogether bad. I faintly prefer the latter, but only if it's decently balanced, because I'm tired of pretense of depth essentially just widening performance gaps through otherwise short-lived gaps over unintuitive understandings (e.g., that most of X options are actually awful).

The only reason why DA exists as is is because it's currently a damage neutral.
I don't even consider it as existing, so much as just being an unnecessary, fancy throwback name for TBN's "Don't just throw this out on CD / even at the dumbest of times" minor constraint, haha.

Unless they went full throttle and made Dark Arts purely offensive again (albeit not as spam heavy as Stormblood), I'm not sure we'll ever see meaningful mp management.
I don't think that would give us "meaningful MP management" even then. In the end, meaningful MP management will essentially be just a matter of rewarding factor-dense understanding of a given fight in a particular situation (with the latter becoming decreasingly relevant as one's party increasingly optimizes / gits gud).

It's a matter of being rewarded for putting the best bets forward / putting your mana where your returns will be highest. That requires those bets being complex ones, which in turn requires there being a lot going on contextually.