Can we make Lucid Dreaming Optional?

[Iedarus]

I second this notion. Lucid Dreaming is mostly a button you press on cooldown when you're AoE spamming. Now that AoEs are going to cost the same mp as the rest of our damage spells, the ability serves no purpose other than saving the day when fights go wrong, which, in that case, commit to how it's used in practice and make it a high impact, high cooldown ability. With Astrologian getting Astrodyne and a more steady supply of mp via Draw, I love the idea of Selene being repurposed into an mp pet and White Mage getting some changes to help its mp issues.

Come to think of it, it's honestly baffling how the job that's supposed to be beginner friendly is the one with the worst mp economy.

[AnotherPerson]

Will disagree with the removal of Lucid, Lucid dreaming is basically a MP recovery skill for all caster jobs other than Black Mage, which can easily translate between different caster jobs and build muscle memory to use it earlier (healers included). Sure, you can change it, but that's just adding more work for the same MP economy gameplay than what we have currently for balancing issues since now SE would have to redesign all the healer's MP again to accommodate for this difference of gaining an extra 3500 MP over 60 seconds at lower level content as well. How is that not more punishing for new players compared to a skill that comes up frequently enough and just needs one button to use? It's a lot more simpler to just add a new skill or adjust existing ones to cover for the MP imbalance that currently exists between healers instead.

That's not to say these new skills that affect MP management can't be synergistic to the toolkit.

Finally, Lucid Dreaming also acts more akin to a safety net for less experienced players. People would complain that they're not using Lucid Dreaming often enough that they're running out of MP... but I've also seen the number of people who doesn't use Aetherflow or Draw on cooldown - which equally affects their MP economy. Removing Lucid Dreaming actually makes things worse since there's an even heavier emphasis on using your job's skills to do it, and less ways to manage your MP right by drawing experiences of other jobs you played with.

I don't think it's very possible to make Lucid Dreaming "optional" in that sense, because the skill would have to be drastically weakened to put more emphasis on the healer's MP toolkit themselves. In the end, that just moves the problem over to the healer's toolkit themselves. MP will never be crazily high since they also have to balance high-end content like Ultimates to be fairly taxing on MP too.

Plus, as a role skill, it means this skill can also be used in content and instances under level 24, and not strictly in content above it. It's actually a lot more lenient at lower levels as a result when you are level-synced since most newbies would overlevel as a result of Road to 70/ Armoury Bonus / Food buffs / Roulette / MSQ compounding on each other. This is also true with other role actions like Rampart, Reprisal, and Arms Length.

However, I will agree that there is quite a clear imbalance on AST and WHM in MP currently on paper, so hopefully that'll be adjusted. I just don't think removing Lucid Dreaming is the right way to go about it, or rather it's not the core of the MP imbalance problem.

[ty_taurus]

Here's an interesting concept, though it doesn't quite work with how the healers are set up now...

What if Lucid Dreaming had 2 charges, and similarly to Thin Air, negated your next spell cost while also restoring MP equal to that cost? We don't really have high MP-costly spells other than Raise really, and to a lesser degree, Cure III, but if we shifted to have some more expensive tools, it could be rather interesting to use effectively.

[Bryan_Weary1]

As a SMN main that has a tendency to die a bit in higher level content(apologies to my healers), it's nice to be able to pop Lucid on rez and get ready to pull a pinch rez when needed. Yes, I should be better at my position, but it's nice to be able to help rez after something goes wrong.

[BlueMageQuina]

Ironically we did at one point have individual MP recovery options for each healer class. Lucid Dreaming was the WHM Shroud of Saints skill. I forget what the others had.

• WHM had Shroud of Saints which turned into the role action Lucid Dreaming.
• AST had Luminiferous Aether (I think that’s what it was called.) And back then, the Ewer Card was an MP refresh and could be buffed to double potency, double duration or be aoe, and then it could be further extended in duration with Celestial Opposition and Time Dilation.
• SCH had and still has Aetherflow and Energy Drain.
• (BRD also had an AOE MP refresh with Mage’s Ballad (ARR) which turned into a ranged role action Refresh (SB) then got deleted (ShB).
• Casters also had Mana Shift to help in SB.)

I like that they had more identity with their MP skills in the past but really they still do. The problem for WHM is that it has the highest spell costs while not getting its own MP skills until after 50, (while AST’s Draw is at 30 and SCH/SGE get their MP skills at 45). Assize (56) is barely MP positive at only 500 MP and Thin Air (58) will be nerfed soon but doesn’t generate MP, it only conserves it. The simple fix is to move Aetherflow and Druochole to a lower level for SCH and SGE, but WHM would need something new probably.

[Silver-Strider]

• WHM had Shroud of Saints which turned into the role action Lucid Dreaming.
• AST had Luminiferous Aether (I think that’s what it was called.) And back then, the Ewer Card was an MP refresh and could be buffed to double potency, double duration or be aoe, and then it could be further extended in duration with Celestial Opposition and Time Dilation.
• SCH had and still has Aetherflow and Energy Drain.
• (BRD also had an AOE MP refresh with Mage’s Ballad (ARR) which turned into a ranged role action Refresh (SB) then got deleted (ShB).
• Casters also had Mana Shift to help in SB.)

I like that they had more identity with their MP skills in the past but really they still do. The problem for WHM is that it has the highest spell costs while not getting its own MP skills until after 50, (while AST’s Draw is at 30 and SCH/SGE get their MP skills at 45). Assize (56) is barely MP positive at only 500 MP and Thin Air (58) will be nerfed soon but doesn’t generate MP, it only conserves it. The simple fix is to move Aetherflow and Druochole to a lower level for SCH and SGE, but WHM would need something new probably.

There's a million different ways that SE could handle WHM's MP issues.
Dropping the cost of WHM's GCD skills (Cure 2, Regen, Medica, and Medica 2) to be equal to the cost of AST's equivalent skills would be a huge benefit because the overwhelming majority of them are worse than AST's version in some way; Helios has a Cure potency of 330 and a 2s cast time vs Medica that has a 300 cure potency and 2.5 second cast time and yet Medica is the more costly spell. The only exception is Medica 2 having more range than Aspected Helios but that's hardly enough to warrant a 500 MP difference between the skills. That one change alone would go a long way to helping WHM in terms of its MP economy.

Next thing would be to buff Assize to a 8-10% MP restore. Again, comparing to AST, when they had MP problems, SE added an 8% MP restore to Draw and they were fine. 8% might not be enough for Assize considering it has a 45s CD vs Draw's 30 but we will have Thin Air, even if neutered, so it might be enough when coupled with the cost reduction as well.

[Kraniel]

Not saying that i'm against your idea at all.

BUT, in the current state of things, the natural MP regen is so ridiculous that as a healer, if nothing happens, you'll never have to use Lucid Dreaming. In essence, it's already kind of like having it on an 180 seconds CD.

I would be 100% in favor of giving back tools to each healer class for MP regen, and put Lucid Dreaming on a longer CD, but for that to have a meaning, SE would first need to nerf the natural MP regen of healers.

And this, in turn means two things :
- Healers will become more difficult to play, and we know SE wants the opposite
- Piety materias will become a thing again, which means less damage output/healing potency for healers, which again will make them slightly more difficult to play

So yeah, in conclusion, as much as i'd be in favor of getting back to a more complex resource management system for healers, with all the things that it would imply i can't see it happen realistically, since SE wishes the opposite for their game.
Also, keeping Lucid Dreaming as THE common MP utility skill for all healers is more convenient for them, since they're also aiming at standardizing all healer jobs.

[Maxilor]

Reading this thread made me realize I never once had to pop a single Ether while leveling my healers.

Not once.

I think Lucid Dreaming is mostly responsible for that.

[NobleWinter]

Ethers are probably the most valuable and underrated item in the game. The problem is that when we run out of MP and it causes a wipe most people don't think, "An Ether would have saved the run." Instead its more likely to feel the wipe was inevitable so many scenarios where an Ether would make all the difference go unnoticed. Lucid Dreaming still bugs me tho for multiple reasons. It's a role skill and like all role skills it doesn't show up in the same menu as class actions so its easy for new players to miss altogether. Our natural MP refresh could be tuned to function without Lucid Dreaming as an action as someone else mentioned, and it just isn't fun to press. Shroud of Saints cutting Agro in half on WHM felt great in ARR when healer agro was outrageous. Call me crazy but I want more out of the action instead of a mandatory keep me casting button.

[Sebazy]

I still carry hundreds of Ethers as a habit from Stormblood and before =(

I might use one once in a blue moon these days though.