Purpose of Mana For Most Jobs?

[Sjol]

Most jobs don't seem to really use mana or have a meaningful interaction with it. I'm wondering if we could replace MP meters with certain gauges (e.g., kenki). It seems that's the more meaningful value. Even a lot of casters aren't really limited by mana. It originally served as a limiting factor for the number of spells a character could cast in the mainline games, but FFXIV isn't like the mainline games, and it feels like we could have better meters.

[Boa-Noah]

It would just be relabeling what the bar is and then they'd have to go back and change the dialogue/help boxes to change mana to x or y, seems like a pointless change to me really.

[Jeeqbit]

It's a lot less relevant than it was, but it's still relevant. You can still end up needing to use Lucid on casters and healers. Especially if they need to resurrect or die or do their best firepower.

One of the issues with 1.0 was that no matter how much you casted, you never ran out of MP. That criticism was made by Yoshi-P himself. So if we get to a point where there is no situation in which you need Lucid or any other MP regen ability, then it's come full circle.

[Sjol]

It's a lot less relevant than it was, but it's still relevant. You can still end up needing to use Lucid on casters and healers. Especially if they need to resurrect or die or do their best firepower.

One of the issues with 1.0 was that no matter how much you casted, you never ran out of MP. That criticism was made by Yoshi-P himself. So if we get to a point where there is no situation in which you need Lucid or any other MP regen ability, then it's come full circle.

I guess I'm wondering if it's a meaningful constraint outside of certain jobs right after death. I would actually be okay with healers being more mana constrained as it would be a meaningful resource and make piety a worthwhile stat and not something to avoid. I'm not advocating for mana's removal. I'm advocating for mana either being made meaningful or removed on a job-by-job basis. As it stands, it's just something you mostly forget about unless you die or have to rez a lot (again, healer seems like a good place for it to stay)

[Vyrerus]

Mana, Jake Sooooolee?

FFXIV and all of Final Fantasy uses Magic Points. Not this... "mana." :P

Anyway, in prior entries physical jobs would have a bar for MP with 0 if they had no innate magic.

FFXIV takes the approach of just having the bar full all of the time, i.e. every class had the capacity to cast at some point via cross class skills prior to cross class lock ins from jobs. In older versions of the game, each class had a different maximum MP, with physical jobs generally having lower amounts. Example: Warrior used to be able to cross class Flash from Gladiator in order to have a GCD to use while Pacified after Berserk. It had enough MP to cast Flash 3 times.

Come Stormblood, if memory serves, everything was set to have 10k MP, since all spells were % based anyway, with the old MP values mainly being for fluff (though Piety used to increase total MP, and there were BLM rotational benefits to having a few points in piety).

In modern era it is mostly a limitation for raises, as raises take 24% of your total MP regardless of your job. This applies to all healers as well as RDM and SMN.

The physical jobs still have it as a hold over because I guess it's easier to leave it on them as part of the coding than it is to have the bar appear and disappear (It would have to disappear from party lists as well or just be empty). BRD and MCH used to spend theirs to play OG Ballad and uhh whatever the Bishop's MP regen field was called.

This leaves room for it to be used in things like Lost Actions or Mnemes in Bozja/Eureka or for them to use it as a resource for new WSes or other ideas in the future, since all jobs naturally regenerate it over time in and out of combat already as well. I'd love it if they made every job incorporate it in into an attack, since everything uses aether and that's what it represents as well.

But I guess that'd just lead to the call for its removal like with TP.

[Valence]

Come Stormblood, if memory serves, everything was set to have 10k MP, since all spells were % based anyway, with the old MP values mainly being for fluff (though Piety used to increase total MP, and there were BLM rotational benefits to having a few points in piety).

Shadowbringers, the one and only that butchered the whole battle system to smithereens.

[ty_taurus]

MP is just a UI decoration. Even for jobs that do use it, MP management is automated. There's no real reason it should still exist. I think the only reason it hasn't gone the way of TP is because it's tradition to Final Fantasy as a series.

[Rithy255]

MP is just a UI decoration. Even for jobs that do use it, MP management is automated. There's no real reason it should still exist. I think the only reason it hasn't gone the way of TP is because it's tradition to Final Fantasy as a series.

I mean it's functional to BLM/Drk's kit, without MP you'd have to have creative workarounds or another annoying gauge.
It's also good at Limiting Red mage rezzes.

I feel like from a healers perspective yeah it's become less important to healer jobs in general. But I do think MP can have some creative uses if they actually did more with it as a resource management gauge, A example like Clemency being ogcd but costing MP limiting spamming it with the result of damage loss (because you have attacks tied to MP) but also making it more "up to date" with tank kits would be interesting. (Obviously tone down general healing on like magic attacks, tank healing needs to be lowered esp warrior).

Healers could even have strong support actions tied to MP as a OGCD if they wanted to make healers a little more interesting, obviously they would need to warrant that with making fights more focused around healers actually having to consistently heal more often instead of just pressing 1 of your 10 ogcd's.

I'm really not in favour of removing MP as it is, honestly i think it's more of a hassle then it's worth, but it does need a lot of work. I think theirs actual reasons why it's stayed around and I rather they actually do something more with it then remove it, as removing it seems to generally be the SE solution to most things.

[ty_taurus]

I mean it's functional to BLM/Drk's kit, without MP you'd have to have creative workarounds or another annoying gauge.
It's also good at Limiting Red mage rezzes.

MP could effortlessly just be a gauge resource rather than MP as a system, because MP for those jobs isn't really about situational choices. The way you gain and spend MP is generally consistent regardless of the fight you're in, because there's not really any choice to make it with.

[Rithy255]

MP could effortlessly just be a gauge resource rather than MP as a system, because MP for those jobs isn't really about situational choices. The way you gain and spend MP is generally consistent regardless of the fight you're in, because there's not really any choice to make it with.

I don't really think we need another tacky gauge for certain jobs. Instead you can just make MP more useful and interesting on jobs which was my suggestion anyway.