The endangered DPS MP gauge

[Valence]

Wouldn't be against WAR, GNB, and the physical DPS jobs getting to spend their MP in some capacity instead of just having that gauge awkwardly sit there. Stuff like Aurora/Equilibrium/Earth's Reply could be given MP costs instead of long cooldowns. Or they could swap it out and bring TP back just for those jobs, though that would require repurposing it in some manner.

I like the idea actually for support abilities that aren't even damage raid buffs, with obvious adjustment and constraints not to make them completely broken and spammable. I'm a definite proponent of putting back raid buffs (especially on buffer jobs aka DNC/BRD/MCH) behind MP for flexibility of use, adaptability to teams needs, and encounter downtime. So why not for some support abilities as well?

It's not necessary to utilize a MP gauge if it's not thematically appropriate for the job. Some jobs just don't manipulate aether. This is not a new development in the series. In FFIV, as an example, your party's Dragoon, Monk, Bard, and Engineer permanently have 0 MP.

What would be more useful is if there was a setting to toggle off your MP gauge on jobs that don't use it, and a setting to have the simplified job gauge elements automatically snap into position next to your HP/MP bars. I also think that the Skill Speed/Spell Speed system should be merged into a singular Haste stat such that the design is more fair for gish jobs. It's nice thematically to have a few Spells instead of Weaponskills and vice versa, but your stats should benefit all of your GCDs. If that's not feasible due to technical issues, they should just change both stats to have the same effect.

Technically in XIV lore every job makes full use of aether, even for non casters, but I get what you mean. Obviously axing the MP gauge off the physical jobs is a solution and I'm not totally opposed to it because it would remove something that isn't used anyway. I'm just sad that it's not used anymore for certain jobs, notably rphys, because it could actually be again, and for good reason imo. You can remove it for melee DPS, I don't care, they don't need it and never used it.