Purpose of Mana For Most Jobs?

[Lyth]

I'm wondering if we could replace MP meters with certain gauges (e.g., kenki).

That would be fantastic. I personally like the simplified gauges over traditional, but I wish that there was a way to integrate it with the main HP/MP bar so that the job-specific gauges were automatically aligned correctly in simplified mode. It would be nice if there were some job specific HUD options that let you do that, as well as giving the option to hide MP. The simplified/traditional choice is saved on a job by job basis anyways.

[ty_taurus]

That would be fantastic. I personally like the simplified gauges over traditional, but I wish that there was a way to integrate it with the main HP/MP bar so that the job-specific gauges were automatically aligned correctly in simple mode. It would be nice if there were some job specific HUD options that let you do that, as well as giving the option to hide MP. The simplified/traditional choice is saved on a job by job basis anyways.

I do that on my UI manually. The gauge goes right next to MP. Depending on the job I'll go for simplified or the stylized version.

[Lyth]

I do that on my UI manually. The gauge goes right next to MP. Depending on the job I'll go for simplified or the stylized version.

I do that too, it just ends up being a painstaking process where you have to try and manually align everything up on each job. It's worse when there are two gauge elements.

I think the ideal would be if HP, MP, and the job gauges were all individual elements that could be hidden individually and assigned to a 'resources' group with snap alignment options, and once positioned and locked could be moved en bloc around the HUD.

It could also make for some interesting self-imposed challenges, like a no HP bar Deep Dungeon run.

[Eraden]

Mao is BLMs. Mao doesn't even thinks about Mana. If Mao doings rotation properly for max dps, Mao never ever runs out of Mana. Even if Mao dies, Mao has two buttons to tops Mao off at max Mana within seconds. Mao thinkings that at least for BLMs, Mana is just training wheels to teach young BLMs how to do proper rotations.

[Gemina]

Mao is BLMs. Mao doesn't even thinks about Mana. If Mao doings rotation properly for max dps, Mao never ever runs out of Mana. Even if Mao dies, Mao has two buttons to tops Mao off at max Mana within seconds. Mao thinkings that at least for BLMs, Mana is just training wheels to teach young BLMs how to do proper rotations.

Whether it is second nature or not, few, if any jobs integrate mana management as heavily as BLM. It has much less to do with your ability to restore your mana than it does remaining in Astral fire phase as long as possible. And because BLM is so niche, this management is not a transferable skill to other mana users in the game.

[Supersnow845]

BLM is arguably the only job that mana actually does have a meaning as high level optimisation of the rotation actually involves playing with mana ticks to maximise uptime (such as a very simple example of transpose fire 3 procs needing good umbral ice ticks)

The standard line never cares about mana (outside of when to use manafont but 999/1000 times you just use it for a second fire 4/despair) but a lot of optimisation does care

Every other job it’s either self regulating or really only regulating excessive rezzing

[Sjol]

BLM is arguably the only job that mana actually does have a meaning as high level optimisation of the rotation actually involves playing with mana ticks to maximise uptime (such as a very simple example of transpose fire 3 procs needing good umbral ice ticks)

The standard line never cares about mana (outside of when to use manafont but 999/1000 times you just use it for a second fire 4/despair) but a lot of optimisation does care

Every other job it’s either self regulating or really only regulating excessive rezzing

Interestingly the way they managed to do that is making mana regeneration different from all other classes while completely ignoring how the basic system works. And that's okay, but it doesn't give credence to how BLM is an example of mana being necessary. You could call it anything else and make it work the same way as it does now. Or even just make it it's own meter.

[Oizen]

Shoutouts to Dark Knight for having a more engaging use of MP than Summoner

[Eastwall]

All job needs to use mana to use recuperate in pvp.

[Sjol]

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.

I'm happy for the SE art and UX department to take another crack at making good artwork for the gauges, but I didn't think you can it should shoehorn mana into jobs that don't really need them. Job design seems to work best when they can play with meters and counters that match that specific job. It certainly introduces a lot more potential variation and is one of the few sources of class identity. In fact I would love to see a lot of the 0 to 100 meters reworked into something other than 100.