Dear Square Enix, do something with GCD healing please.

[Shurrikhan]

That would be a disaster.

You can't just "make healers heal 80% of the time". A 20:80 ratio of dps and healing for a reasonably new player in min ilv prog would be a 75:25 ratio for an experienced player in BiS with a good group using mitigation. The difference between a new player and a well geared and optimized player is massive. It's impossible to set a fixed percentage on how much a healer should heal and design exactly that.

The main difference now would be that the experienced player would have to afk half the fight because their mana pool can't even support half the amount of Glare casts.

So extreme a shift would indeed leave little room both for shifting towards offense, thus devaluing the feeling of benefit made through optimized utility, and for those less capable, making the healer role more exclusive (a good thing to some degree, but that finding that degree is a fine and very precarious step).

However, a lesser difference really would amount to just MP adjustments, especially when you consider where that damage can be placed without breaking fights (one-shotting tanks whose defensives, even optimized, have been exhausted): "white" or "sustained" damage, the likes of P3N's off-tank quadruple-hits every few seconds (enough to consistently pop TBN, a decent benchmark for answering "Is the sustained damage significant?" if started just before a volley).

That's an area that, if anything, reduces the punishment from lesser knowledge or less developed habits for our healers, because there's a smaller difference in optimal action between damage spikes and damage lulls and damage intake and response therefore become more intuitive.

[Kabooa]

However, a lesser difference really would amount to just MP adjustments, especially when you consider where that damage can be placed without breaking fights (one-shotting tanks whose defensives, even optimized, have been exhausted): "white" or "sustained" damage, the likes of P3N's off-tank quadruple-hits every few seconds (enough to consistently pop TBN, a decent benchmark for answering "Is the sustained damage significant?" if started just before a volley).

To be quite honest, I don't think any of FF14 has any room for MP management. That probably ended in Shadowbringers or earlier, but barring specific cases such as Black Mages and raises, there might as well not be any MP costs on damage spells.

MP doesn't matter, it hasn't mattered for a while, and very few have wanted it to matter again in any meaningful way. As far as a universal resource goes, MP is dead, and perhaps its time to formalize that just as they did with TP.

[ty_taurus]

To be quite honest, I don't think any of FF14 has any room for MP management. That probably ended in Shadowbringers or earlier, but barring specific cases such as Black Mages and raises, there might as well not be any MP costs on damage spells.

MP doesn't matter, it hasn't mattered for a while, and very few have wanted it to matter again in any meaningful way. As far as a universal resource goes, MP is dead, and perhaps its time to formalize that just as they did with TP.

I don't think MP needs to die really. PLD, DRK, and BLM are able to utilize MP as a meaningful resource, and once upon a time, BRD did as well. I won't say they ever will do more with MP, but I honestly feel like every job could take advantage of MP in some fashion or another, even if on a very simple scale.

One day, we'll likely need to see some kind of healing rework, and while it may not pan out the way most of us here might want, how MP is utilized would probably be one of the most likely things that could be addressed, probably including the casters in on this aspect as well. In this case, Lucid Dreaming would likely die, and jobs would have their own built-in ways of handling MP like BLM does, and perhaps Piety just might evolve to no longer being a dead stat?

[Shurrikhan]

To be quite honest, I don't think any of FF14 has any room for MP management.

MP hasn't mattered for a while, no, but I don't see why that would indicate that XIV, conceptually, has "no room for" MP management, even if present circumstances haven't left room for player agency via that mechanic.

there might as well not be any MP costs on damage spells.

While I agree with this, if not for an awkward further way of punishing Spell Speed, there is already, effectively, no MP cost on damage spells. They're net-MP-positive, though the passive MP generation in that equation includes a button's worth of bloat (Lucid Dreaming) that can lead to some rather wonkily uneven punishment for death.

Consider: If damage spells truly cost nothing, and MP gen was adjusted accordingly, you'd just have, in effect, less MP gen during true downtime (nothing to do whatsoever, such as between fights in dungeons) and lower maximal healing resource.

Now, just as far as personal preference goes, I'd rather go the opposite way, making MP an actual mechanic (rather than simply removing it for its being a pretense on 80% of jobs).

• Remove Lucid Dreaming, as it's mere variable death punishment in ways that provide no further agency (outside the very rare occasion that you're some 5s from its CD refreshing and know you won't survive to claim its benefits).
• Have it tick per-player instead of on a global tick, matching player GCD speed.
• Give MP-consuming actions scaling costs. The less MP one has, the less those actions cost but the less potent they become. Players cannot be starved out of action, but they can certainly be badly starved out of power. It's damn near impossible to drop below 50% MP as anything but a healer, though, without having died. (A rez, for instance, might always consume just 30% of your current MP, though to a minimum of 10% of maximum, but would thereby restore an ally with that much more/less health and mana based on MP thus consumed.)
• Replace Weakness and Brink of Death altogether with just... MP's potency-and-cost scaling. Having rezzed with almost no MP, they're badly potency-starved. This also gives more relevance to rez caps in general as, the lower healer MP gets, the longer, effectively, the penalty lasts.
• Return to variable MP maximums, rather than a consistent 10000 MP. Players would still regain MP as a percentage, but that in turn curtails non-healers' rezzing capacity without having to rely on CDs or the like.
• Finally, if we wish, we can give MP cost to healing abilities, giving more reason (burst healing aside) to perhaps hold onto them and to, from the time, actually use GCD heals.

[Kabooa]

Now, just as far as personal preference goes, I'd rather go the opposite way, making MP an actual mechanic (rather than simply removing it for its being a pretense on 80% of jobs). [LIST]

• Given LD currently only exists to keep a GCD locked caster from going OOM, might as well remove it, yes.
• I have no opinion on this. Having Haste increase MP regeneration seems unnecessary, as does changing its tick rate. This to me falls under needless complexity without something to truly take advantage of it.
• I don't agree with this unless it was one specific Job's gimmick. You end up with a very real risk of being trapped in a death spiral through no fault of your own. A job designed around breakpoints with specific bonuses and ways to both build and dump MP to place itself within those breakpoints would, in my opinion, be quite interesting to toy with though.
• This really just goes back to MP only being a cap on raises. IMO we should remove Swiftcast lock on Raising. Free up Swiftcast, and then grant a 60/120s 'Charge' for Raise to bypass its cast time, while being normally available at other times. The abundance of raising as it stands is something we should move away from, but Healers being your best source of it should be the norm / stay.
• I don't agree with this. MP costs were already a % of maximum MP, the 10,000 cap just formalizes it for easy reading.
• Remove the MP cost from GCD actions for Healers (other than raise) and then applying costs / altering cooldowns to their OGCD is the primary path I would take, as this is already how the multitude of other jobs are designed with their MP-like gauges primarily interacting with their OGCD kits while being built by their GCD kits.

[Shurrikhan]

I have no opinion on this. Having Haste increase MP regeneration seems unnecessary, as does changing its tick rate. This to me falls under needless complexity without something to truly take advantage of it.

To clarify, my concern there was simply that if we want to make MP a mechanic, we can't rightly allow a stat that players might not even be able to avoid... to break it. By scaling it to the GCD, Spell Speed no longer punishes relative MP efficiency on GCD heals. (And if you put MP costs on healing abilities then at least the rate of MP gen is affected by Spell Speed, thus allowing for a greater frequency, nearer to their CDs, of actual MP-neutral usage.)

I don't agree with this unless it was one specific Job's gimmick. You end up with a very real risk of being trapped in a death spiral through no fault of your own.

I would think the opposite. I suppose I should have included more detail (I skimped because I'm usually harangued for including too many technicals) there, but the idea would be that the costs lower more quickly than the potency, and the maximum potency loss would be, well, that of Brink of Death (-50%). As such, one could not be starved or otherwise forced into a death spiral even as much as is presently the case.

This really just goes back to MP only being a cap on raises. IMO we should remove Swiftcast lock on Raising. Free up Swiftcast, and then grant a 60/120s 'Charge' for Raise to bypass its cast time, while being normally available at other times. The abundance of raising as it stands is something we should move away from, but Healers being your best source of it should be the norm / stay.

Again, at present that's the case, but MP being a real and broader mechanic (more than merely a weird, unintuitive equivalent to rez charges) could allow for far more party-saving utility from non-healers than just Rez. (Of course, in BLM's case, something like a returned and not CD-limited Apocatastasis would likely have to cost maximum MP instead, and there's a ton more to consider in the case of jobs that haven't traditionally had any kind of significant party-support utility beyond number-shuffling / rDPS.)

Of course, I'd be totally up for even, say, all rezzes having some manner of granular charge system by which to reduce relative uptime costs -- cast time increased by 8 seconds after use, decreasing by 1 second's cast time for every 10 seconds since last use, with obvious polish for the remainder value, etc., for instance.

I don't agree with this. MP costs were already a % of maximum MP, the 10,000 cap just formalizes it for easy reading.

If there weren't additional opportunities thereby barred by having one value shared across every role, I'd agree, but...

Remove the MP cost from GCD actions for Healers (other than raise)

Should all GCD actions be considered the same, though? A Cure III's potentially 4800 potency of healing to be no more costly than Cure II's 800? I'd rather most be net-positive, but if we remove their costs altogether despite passive MP gen (likely increased in the wake of losing Lucid) then we end up leaving that much more currency to oGCD casts. I'd rather oGCDs have an apparent resource cost beyond merely each other (in how close to their hard cooldown each may be cast), even if that difference might not amount to much outside of emergencies.

[Kabooa]

Should all GCD actions be considered the same, though? A Cure III's potentially 4800 potency of healing to be no more costly than Cure II's 800? I'd rather most be net-positive, but if we remove their costs altogether despite passive MP gen (likely increased in the wake of losing Lucid) then we end up leaving that much more currency to oGCD casts. I'd rather oGCDs have an apparent resource cost beyond merely each other (in how close to their hard cooldown each may be cast), even if that difference might not amount to much outside of emergencies.

There are other ways to assign 'cost' to them that aren't related to MP, such as longer cast times, actions that build the "MP" gauge for the OGCDs, etc.

It's pretty hard to summarize what would be a long and complex endeavor, but the short answer is that you have, even now, 2 other costs you can adjust (Cast time and Recast time) along with a potential third (The "OGCD" resource.)

Cure 3 might be a 2.5 high potency AoE, but throw it on a 60 second cooldown and the use becomes more strategic. Likewise if you set Medica 2 to a 5.0 cast no cooldown, Medica 1 to a 1.5 cast, 30 second cooldown, +10 "MP" that you bank later to fire off Tetra during high single intake on the tank, etc etc.

[Shurrikhan]

There are other ways to assign 'cost' to them that aren't related to MP, such as longer cast times, actions that build the "MP" gauge for the OGCDs, etc.

Put longer cast times on, say, Cure III to make it more punishing than Cure II and you might not get the cast off at all. Similarly, if we just certain have actions build MP with no healing GCDs having MP costs... what's the difference between that and some actions having higher MP costs than others, save that one is now punished for downtime?

you have, even now, 2 other costs you can adjust (Cast time and Recast time) along with a potential third (The "OGCD" resource.)

Both are badly constraining, though, in real content. Put a cooldown on Cure III, even with a second charge, and many of what few places in which its niche could shine would no longer provide it with unique opportunities.

Cure 3 might be a 2.5 high potency AoE, but throw it on a 60 second cooldown and the use becomes more strategic.

Its use, sure, but it therefore becomes that much less unique a tool, ready to just be another filed under "like AST's, but worse."

if you set Medica 2 to a 5.0 cast no cooldown

Then you get very few new healers willing to use it in prog for the simple fact that they won't know if they'll be able to keep casting that mere primarily-a-HoT for 5 whole seconds (with no emergencies or required movement interrupting it).

+10 "MP" that you bank later to fire off Tetra during high single intake on the tank, etc etc.

I'd rather not turn MP into another NinKenBloodBeastSoul gauge. I don't see any issue with is having some slight benefit to/from full downtime and having more than a single category of spenders.