FFXIV Healer Strike and the 'How would you fix it?' line

[Kaurhz]

If ever there was a phrase to describe this thread, this one is it.

You don't need two open threads (or three, at time of writing) for your subject. You just *want* them. You want to log in and see fifty million "yeah I agree!" notifications in your inbox, and you dont want to experience the downer of your super awesome completely unique and game changing original thoughts (do not steal) being washed away in the megathread.

So you crap up the forums. Like everyone else does, when they open new threads on already existing topics, or topics that have RUN THEIR COURSE.
(Or, both as it so happens)

And no, the forum mods didn't pop in here, note the offending post and cc it quickly to square. They zapped the worthless post, and then got to the next item in their infinite backlog.


Please stop crapping up the forums, use the existing megathread. Thank you.

Bold of you to assume what feedback they're passing on, and arguably bolder so to assume it is passed on at all... Literally people could just stick to one megathread, creating no alternatives, and literally nothing will change.. They will turn around once again and indirectly let you know they're still factoring for the lowest possible denominator, and that if you ever want to do anything fractionally engaging then you should be doing Ultimate content, and that the core content of the game doesn't matter at all.

Please stop policing the forums. Let people engage with the forums how they so wish. Thank you.

[Qyoon]

By this logic people shouldn't be complaining about ANYTHING anymore because Square-Enix never addresses any of those problems either.

Exactly, when something sucks the most efficient way to show it is to stop interacting with it.
So the tools show "this is not good i don't want this"

If you go and start selling sandwich, those sandwich sells very well and a very vocal minority of people keeps saying it's bad while they keep on buying and eating them why would you change the way you make my sandiwch ? It's a buisness and those damn things are selling well.

Why would you invest time and ressources on improving that sandwich ?
While you can use thoses ressources to make new ones.
The most efficient way of letting you know your sandwich are bad is to stop buying them.
Then you will be forced to change or you lose money and customers.
It may be absurd to you, but this is how it works, as simple as that.

You can keep complaining for the next 5 years, if the numbers shows it's okay, then it is okay.

[Supersnow845]

Exactly, when something sucks the most efficient way to show it is to stop interacting with it.
So the tools show "this is not good i don't want this"

If you go and start selling sandwich, those sandwich sells very well and a very vocal minority of people keeps saying it's bad while they keep on buying and eating them why would you change the way you make my sandiwch ? It's a buisness and those damn things are selling well.

Why would you invest time and ressources on improving that sandwich ?
While you can use thoses ressources to make new ones.
The most efficient way of letting you know your sandwich are bad is to stop buying them.
Then you will be forced to change or you lose money and customers.
It may be absurd to you, but this is how it works, as simple as that.

You can keep complaining for the next 5 years, if the numbers shows it's okay, then it is okay.

But the numbers aren’t okay. It’s widely known that 14’s population has cratered to the point MMO sites are listing “be aware if you plan to start this game now its population is shrinking” (not that much can be directly derived from that because they don’t ask people why they are leaving anyway) and healer is the least popular role in the game relative to its peers (a position that got the tanks their wealth of inbuilt perks when they were in this position in SB) yet people dismiss this as “well healers just aren’t popular in any game”

So the least popular role in a game who's population is going down because people aren’t happy and is well known to be widely complained about AND THEY STILL WONT DO ANYTHING.

Like genuinely how much more data does square need that the healers simply are not well received. There is literally not a single shred of evidence healers are healthy other than “well if they weren’t square would fix them” which is just circular logic to explain all changes that don’t get changed

And I’m not saying “stop subscribing if you want real change” is cop out advice but let’s say I did unsubscribe because of healers……HOW WOULD SQUARE ENIX EVEN KNOW? They don’t ask, they don’t send out surveys, they don’t do anything. For all they know I’m annoyed cosmic progression is too slow or I don’t like scammingway. If general “population is going massively down this content cycle isn’t working anymore” isn’t causing them to change course on class design then how will doing it more help? All doing it more will do is just make them go “oh game is dying better get ready for maintenance mode”

[Qyoon]

The numbers aren't okay but the healer state isn't the main reason why the game is in trouble.
This role is by default less popular so it's not a priority.
As you said you can keep complaining about it, they are not doing anything about it.

The data surely shows the opposit, vast minority complain, but finding a healers to do content isn't hard.
so it's less popular ( as intended) but still enought ( in their metric) to let it go this way. (check 7.2 patchnote).
The fact their main priority is clearly the japanese playerbase doesn't help.

For exemple, when people were not happy with the way their characters looked after 7.0, they communicated about it and fixed it next patch or so, they listened and acted. If people keep complaining for years about how bad the healers are, this means they know and don't care.

And yes it's like that for everything, and not only in the videogame industry.
Companies sticks to their data analysis and monitoring tools.

The fact is some games, when you uninstall them or unsub offers a poll, trying to understand why you leave.
Said companies care and are willing to listen and try to improve, if they don't ask, it means they don't care.

When numbers shows something isn't going well theres two logicial answers. :
- Well, we have to work on improving our game because players don't like it and we need that money.
- Well we are not making enought on that product and don't care, let's close it.

If their decision is the second one, they don't deserve your time and money, because they are not willing to put on the effort to improve your experience as a customer.
If it was the case, they would be talking about it during those hours long stream talking about the future of this game.

Doesn't cost money to say : "Hey look, we are aware healers aren't fine as they are , but trust me we are working on this and that to make it way better in XYZ, because we listened and understand your complains with them right now."

For now it's more like : "Hey we plan this, look here is the next big thing, thank you for playing , you are awesome see you in 6 months."

So as it is right now : Complaining is useless since they don't seem to care about our opinion.
If you are okay with it, pay your sub, play the game, have fun, obviously feel free to complain.
But please stop making people believe it's usefull and will make a change.
It just keep on feeding them with false hope leading to frustration years later.

[Supersnow845]

Exactly, it’s not just healers it’s the fact that the population is crashing and square isn’t doing anything and won’t ask us what they are doing wrong

Sure shrug off healers as a less popular role whatever, but the population is going down and square is still rigidly locked into a schedule people are leaving over with no sign they care

[Qyoon]

Except people HAVE been leaving, in growing numbers, and Square-Enix still isn't scrambling to resolve anything. Hell, it's not like they would even know WHY people are leaving because they don't bloody ask, and we know they don't read the damn forum no matter how many times a GM advises people to use it for "feedback".

And even IF the game's population dipped into the lower 6-digit mark or even 5-digit? There's no guarantee that SE won't just shrug and not care, or maybe they DO but it ends up not being in the way people want them to. They already turned one other MMO into an NPC-powered nigh-single player game when there weren't enough people, and they're currently working on a mobile game that we can rightly assume will have all the same trappings of free-to-play mobile MMOs.

Square-Enix effectively has two outs if they want to send the PC game into maintenance mode; Turn it into a single-player online experience, or turn it into F2P slop, neither of which requires much effort on their part compared to addressing even just one of the many complaints that have been piling up for years now.

Personally I don't plan in renewing in June, I don't see the point, I'm paying them for less than when I get in frickin' gacha games. I've done character pulls that felt less scummy then my subscription.

We don't know what they consider enought players for the game to be viable.
Maybe they don't scramble because in their opinion they don't need to and are prepared for lower numbers.
The golden age of they game as passed since major influencers have left the game and people followed.
Competition litterally did put way more effort into their game, offering new gameplays and features.

You have no guarantee SE would care, but you know for a fact, for the past years they did not.
They have already turned FF XIV into mostly a singleplayer game running on substricption.
They are indeed investing time and money ( with a different studio) into a mobile.

So guess what, beside your monthly subscription, you have no power other SE decisions.

Yoshi P said it himself, if you like the game play it, if you don't take a break and play something else.
Maybe you will have more fun with another game and be happy, maybe you'll be back because it wasn't that bad afterall.

Personally i stopped caring, i love sage, it could be so much better with at least a 1-2-3 rotation, but this is what it is...
I am here for the RP community and having fun, if another game appears to offer me a better experience, i might go there.

SE doesn't seem to care, why would i more than they do ? Ain't gonna buy a plane ticket to visit SE HQ and fix the game for them.

As a customer my duty is to pay and give feedback about my experience.
Turns out they don't care about our feedback but are willing to take our money.
Only leverage we have on them is money, someone else will gladly take it if they offer a better product.

[Shurrikhan]

This [healer] role is by default less popular so it's not a priority.

The game launched with higher relative popularity among its healers than we see now; most of the drop-off is quite recent. So how is low popularity the "default"?

The numbers aren't okay but the healer state isn't the main reason why the game is in trouble.

No, but it's also one of the areas that'd take the least work to see likely substantial improvement.

The data surely shows the opposit, vast minority complain, but finding a healers to do content isn't hard.

The problem is that this doesn't account at all for the number of players who, say, already swapped off healers and then quit outright because their favorite role being gutted increasingly proved itself not to be temporary.

Yes, whichever role has the least popularity inherently self-corrects its participation somewhat, since it then offers instant queues (even if rarely Adventurer-in-Need bonuses, the role selection for which favors tank even when tanks remains a 2 to 5-minute queue and healers instant), but that does nothing for whether a given existing player will continue to have their reason to play -- that thing that 'hits the spot' for them enough to warrant continue playing XIV over other games, be that between patches or at all.

Focusing solely on queue ratios/times (which, even then, generally shows that things are worse than they used to be) while ignoring dwindling between-patch or even on-patch player numbers (even more obvious of warning signs) in not a good idea.

[Qyoon]

The game launched with higher relative popularity among its healers than we see now; most of the drop-off is quite recent. So how is low popularity the "default"?


No, but it's also one of the areas that'd take the least work to see likely substantial improvement.


The problem is that this doesn't account at all for the number of players who, say, already swapped off healers and then quit outright because their favorite role being gutted increasingly proved itself not to be temporary.

Yes, whichever role has the least popularity inherently self-corrects its participation somewhat, since it then offers instant queues (even if rarely Adventurer-in-Need bonuses, the role selection for which favors tank even when tanks remains a 2 to 5-minute queue and healers instant), but that does nothing for whether a given existing player will continue to have their reason to play -- that thing that 'hits the spot' for them enough to warrant continue playing XIV over other games, be that between patches or at all.

Focusing solely on queue ratios/times (which, even then, generally shows that things are worse than they used to be) while ignoring dwindling between-patch or even on-patch player numbers (even more obvious of warning signs) in not a good idea.

Not saying you are lying, i personally don't know those numbers.
I don't know how low it has to be for SE to decide to do something about it.

To me i don't know if revamping the healers would be as easy as you say, but in my opinion the game definitly needs it.

I don't see massive complains about the healers on the japanese side of the forum, wich is the most likely for the devs to read.
I never had any issue to find healers to do dungeons, while tanks are. (talking about europe on Chaos DC, dunno about the rest.)

The game has a lot of incentives for people to play tanks, while those are also clearly overpowered.
I don't see any of those about the healers, they also rework and balance other jobs a lot.
And again, they are not reworking the healers at all.

[MetaBoi]

Finally digested the other three, superb job with them all.

For Scholar, the only thing I find some issue is the button limit. It is reaching the upper limit of what a controller player can reasonably place on the hotbars. The strength of the Scholar is that they can mix and match their mitigations to the exact scenario at hand, so I don't know how to cut buttons there. The other thing is it is a bit wordy but that much is given as you're writing for every possible situation. Secondly, I believe Scholar is strong enough as it is, making them stronger doesn't sit well with me... For the Strategies, how do you plan to show them? Through a gauge or having it as a buff on Scholar itself? The fairy somewhat gives away so maybe having 3 forms (Lily/Eos/Selene) could also work

For Astrologian, I am mixed on the card system. I like that it is more unique, but I don't like that it is random. If this type of system is to be implemented, high potency attacks on other jobs needs to change. Maybe a way to "save" a card would be good. I would change redraw so that it switches the positions of the front and back slots so that you can save a card you want like Bole for a repeated TB or get rid of Arrow on the back first as you might have Spire with Empower planned for 20 seconds later becuase your summoner is getting back to their Bahamut again.

Now for Sage, my main. The job I used to prog last tier. And it is a really interesting design. But not a design I wish to see on a healer. I like the idea of consuming MP to augment your most important ability, but I think having that sort of MP management would be better for a non-caster job. If multiple non-caster jobs used MP like that MP regeneration buffs can be given to more supportive jobs. Anyways, back to the Sage. This version is even better at keeping things under control at the expense of having lesser "I need big healing, NOW". I'm not a huge fan of the Zoe you proposed. Because how current Zoe interacts with Pneuma and your shields it is a really great panic button or a way to replenish the party's HP/Shields quickly in repeated big hits. Second Opinion + Pepsis handles the healing part but shielding suffers greatly from it. And with Neuralgia and Myasthenia added players wouldn't need to worry about double weaving that much. I think making Zoe stay as it is (maybe even add a guaranteed Crit on top of it to match recitation) and make Krasis' functionality change to Zoe's would be a nice change or making Soma consume all Zoe charges to apply the Zoe shields with it as well would be nice too if you want to keep it as an augment. And finally for the gauge. Because of how you put the other augments Toxicon also looks like it augments your Kardia like others. Maybe putting the Toxicon stakcs below the Addersting could work?

Again, superb ideas. The parts are I'm criticizing are more or less nitpicking compared to everything that I liked about it.

[ForsakenRoe]

Finally digested the other three, superb job with them all.

For Scholar, the only thing I find some issue is the button limit. It is reaching the upper limit of what a controller player can reasonably place on the hotbars. The strength of the Scholar is that they can mix and match their mitigations to the exact scenario at hand, so I don't know how to cut buttons there. The other thing is it is a bit wordy but that much is given as you're writing for every possible situation. Secondly, I believe Scholar is strong enough as it is, making them stronger doesn't sit well with me... For the Strategies, how do you plan to show them? Through a gauge or having it as a buff on Scholar itself? The fairy somewhat gives away so maybe having 3 forms (Lily/Eos/Selene) could also work

For Astrologian, I am mixed on the card system. I like that it is more unique, but I don't like that it is random. If this type of system is to be implemented, high potency attacks on other jobs needs to change. Maybe a way to "save" a card would be good. I would change redraw so that it switches the positions of the front and back slots so that you can save a card you want like Bole for a repeated TB or get rid of Arrow on the back first as you might have Spire with Empower planned for 20 seconds later becuase your summoner is getting back to their Bahamut again.

Now for Sage, my main. The job I used to prog last tier. And it is a really interesting design. But not a design I wish to see on a healer. I like the idea of consuming MP to augment your most important ability, but I think having that sort of MP management would be better for a non-caster job. If multiple non-caster jobs used MP like that MP regeneration buffs can be given to more supportive jobs. Anyways, back to the Sage. This version is even better at keeping things under control at the expense of having lesser "I need big healing, NOW". I'm not a huge fan of the Zoe you proposed. Because how current Zoe interacts with Pneuma and your shields it is a really great panic button or a way to replenish the party's HP/Shields quickly in repeated big hits. Second Opinion + Pepsis handles the healing part but shielding suffers greatly from it. And with Neuralgia and Myasthenia added players wouldn't need to worry about double weaving that much. I think making Zoe stay as it is (maybe even add a guaranteed Crit on top of it to match recitation) and make Krasis' functionality change to Zoe's would be a nice change or making Soma consume all Zoe charges to apply the Zoe shields with it as well would be nice too if you want to keep it as an augment. And finally for the gauge. Because of how you put the other augments Toxicon also looks like it augments your Kardia like others. Maybe putting the Toxicon stakcs below the Addersting could work?

Again, superb ideas. The parts are I'm criticizing are more or less nitpicking compared to everything that I liked about it.

Thank you for reading, glad you enjoyed (again)

Scholar:

The ideas posted would, by my count, increase the button count of the job by just one keybind. Thanks to Miasma effectively co-opting the usecase of Ruin2 (high on-cast potency allows it to be used for movement) and Physick upgrading into Adloquium instead of being seperate actions, that's 2 hotbar spaces saved, compared to the 3 that would be added (Strategy: Defensive, Strategy: Emergency, Shadowflare). If another hotbar slot is required to make it a flat +-0 spaces, perhaps Summon Faerie could be made an automatic thing as a Level 1 trait, similar to how Gatherer jobs have Auto-Sneak (after all, why would you want to have the Faerie not-summoned as a SCH?).

If by 'wordy' you mean 'how long each tooltip is because of all the Strategy interactions', yeh it's unfortunate. But, none of my tooltips are as long as SE's managed with Starry Sky Muse for PCT, and so as long as I don't get that bad, I think I'm doing something right (that tooltip is an abomination). SCH is strong yes, and this would make it even stronger on healing by a hefty amount (assuming a very skilled player, taking advantage of Strategies to the fullest). But A: that's partially the point, and B: I didn't try to balance the healing potencies of the job versus the others (mostly just taking the current design's potencies for things and working off of that), so I would expect that there is some crazy HPS differences between the four of them. For example, SCH having access to Tabula Rasa/Seraphism's effect on a 2min CD (as I intended it to be at some point), probably a bit OP so I left it at 3min. The only actions in the game with a CD longer than 3min are the Invulns, literal 'ignore death' buttons, and while Tabula Rasa is strong, I don't think it's 'literally cannot die' strong per se

For Strategies, I'd show them on the Gauge in some manner. For example, a Codex on the right end (where there is already a sharp corner) of the Fey Gauge that changes colour/has some indicator showing whether you're in Defensive, Offensive or Emergency. For example:

Paint doesn't have good tools for this kinda thing (I can't even rotate things by a non90 degree amount), but here is a quick and dirty 5min example. The symbol on the Codex would be both shape and colour-coded to each Strategy. For example:
A Shield for Defensive (to indicate the additional protective capabilities)
A Sword, or the depicted Thunderbolt for Offensive ('... and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt' - Sun Tzu, The Art of War)
A green Cross for Emergency (to indicate the increased healing it provides)

I'm sure SE could do a better job at making it look good

Lily (the faerie) having two forms, Eos and Selene, was talked about in the lore/job quests (until SE removed the line because they had reduced Eos/Selene to 'recolour' status), so there being 2 forms instead of 3 is a nod to that. Seraph is a seperate thing and I don't really like it being included, but it's been in the kit for 5 years now so rather than remove it, I'd prefer to find a way to work around it (my method for that being, unlockable Seraph Glamours such as Feo Ul, Statice and her gun, etc)

AST:

Full honesty, AST is the design of the four that I'm least confident in. I mainly wanted to see if I could come up with a way to solve the problem SE faced at the end of SB (AOE Balance is too strong compared to other options) with a different trajectory. Ideally, all 6 of the cards, while having different effects, have roughly equal damage contribution (When played on their 'ideal role'). But, this requires many factors to have assumed values too, and adapting to unknowns would be part of the skill cap of the job. For example, if a Tank were to join the PF for the final fight of the tier, who had somehow won a ton of loot in all the other fights, their extra HP from that gear might push Bole ahead of the other cards. Similarly, if the co-Healer were geared to the teeth, then Ewer would take priority. The over-saturation of 'big hit in 2min window' is annoying, but ultimately, not a massive issue I think, as the ideal burst for the AST would probably see them throwing out 2 Major Arcana in that 2min window anyway, where those big hits are (and the other 2 Major Arcana at the 1min mark for mini-bursts like Riddle of Fire/Trick Attack).

The 're-order cards in hand' button would probably be a good idea to include, and luckily, this design actually has one button less than the current AST, so there's space to add it without blowing anyone's hotbar up. Not sure what it'd be called though. Maybe we could bring back Shuffle and have it be functionally distinct from Redraw. 'Spread' already exists as the passive effect of the gauge being able to hold a second of each card, so that's probably out. Unless we called it like... 'Spread Swap' or something?

Sage:

The first desire I had for SGE, that everything else stemmed from, was 'I think it'd be cool if SGE were able to heal allies by dealing damage, like Disc Priest in WOW. But, Disc Priest has a big barrier to entry, where if you mess up your 'ramp', your setup phase, it doesn't have great ways to recover and get back into the flow. So, the challenge to myself is, 'can I make that style of gameplay for SGE while still making it super-easy to recover if you misplay?'' It might be obvious (or not, I'm not sure) but, if I could get one, and only one, of these designs into the game, I'd very likely choose this SGE, just because of how 'different' a healing style it'd provide. Though the DMC-esque style-switching SCH is a pretty tough contender too

The potency of Zoe-Pneuma (900 total) is the baseline healing potency of the new Soma action. I figured that'd cover the lost healing output from losing the current Zoe effect. Being an OGCD means that Soma would also be pretty reactive for 'panic button' situations (compared to needing to doubleweave Swiftcast/Zoe into Pneuma currently). Personally I find that Zoe being used on Eukrasian Prognosis iis much more of a 'planned' thing, and ideally with this, you'd be 'planning' in the form of applying Kardia-based shielding (with the new Zoe). I see what you mean about the lost barrier potency (base E.Prog being 360p, Zoe-boosted being 540p), but it might just be a case of us seeing it differently because neither of us can playtest it to see if that missing 180p of barrier actually affects things. Philosophia also would be a pretty good 'panic button' I think, as it'd instantly give you 4 stacks of everything, including Toxikon (so you could immediately start blasting out the Kardia procs to set up).

Hmm, though this does get me thinking: What if E.Prognosis and E.Diagnosis were able to consume stacks to apply those Kardia Augment effects? If they had bonus effects that said things like 'Consumes a stack of Zoe, if available, to increase Barrier % conversion rate by X' and 'Consumes a stack of Soteria, if available, to increase Healing Potency by Y', then the 'panic button' could be E.Prognosis itself? Since you can get one weave in between each E.Prognosis cast (between the E.Prognosis and the next Eukrasia cast), you'd be able to get a Zoe in there. Then, with the barrier being (presumably) so much stronger, that'd buy time to skip shielding the second hit to use the Phlegmatic proc you'd be getting, recouping some of the damage, and even helping to heal/barrier somewhat. For example:

Your augments are Soteria, Zoe, Toxikon, Krasis, Pankardia, in that order on the gauge.
Say you start at 4 of every Augment. You hit the boss with whatever attack, let's say a Dosis, it hits you and breaks the shields that were applied. You're now at 3/3/4/3/3.
You weave Pepsis to heal, then E.Prognosis, taking you to 2/2/4/3/3. The boss hits you, breaks the shield, and gives you a Phlegmatic charge.
You spend Phlegmatic, taking you to 1/1/4/3/2. This also heals the party, and sets up a barrier to protect you again. Boss hits you, breaking the shield.
You press Soteria and Zoe as a doubleweave after the Phlegma from last time. You're now back up at 4/4/4/3/2. You then press E.Prog, boss hits you.
You press Pepsis after the hit, and are at 3/3/4/3/2. You then spend Phlegmatic again. You're now at 2/2/4/3/1.

This all repeats for as long as is required, until the boss stops hitting you (or you run out of MP). In this example, you'd have spent a total of 5000MP on all of this, which sounds like a lot, but that's because we're used to spending 400MP each time we want to hit the boss with Dosis.

We'd also be able to use Dosis as a metric for how much of a boost that Soteria and Zoe would provide to E.Prognosis. If Dosis is 310p in this design, and Soteria boosts Kardia's healing by '50% of the damage dealt by the attack', that's 155p. For Zoe, it's '25% of the healing dealt'. Presumably we'd be using Soteria to boost the Shield potency, so we'd use the 200p of Kardia healing, plus that 155p from Soteria, and take 25% of that, which is 88.75 (let's call it 90p with rounding). So, we can use that 155p and 90p boost to guide how much of a boost that E.Prognosis should receive. Bearing in mind that any boost to the base healing of E.Prog also increases the Barrier effect it provides already, I'd put forth the quick maths of 'Soteria boosts the base heal by 100p (and therefore even alone it'd increase the barrier by 120p)' and 'Zoe boosts the barrier conversion percentage from 120% to 140%', (doesn't sound like much but it'd be an increase of 60p). I think these would both be fair, as together, both boosts would be multiplicative and create a total boost that takes the barrier strength from 360p, all the way up to 560p, 20p more than the current Zoe effect grants (but this version would let you make use of those boosts, 4 times in a row, if you wanted)

The mention of Neuralgia and Myasthenia reminds me of a recent funny thing. I checked the 'ideal rotation' a couple of times recently (to make sure that 'press E.Prog for barriers, then recoup damage using E.Phlegma (thereby enabling skipping pressing E.Dosis at all for the DOT)') was not accidentally 'optimal'. What I found was that (assuming 3 Toxikon windows per 2min), not only was the intended optimal rotation optimal, the goofy 'press 5 Barriers in 2min, recoup with a total of 8 E.Phlegmas' rotation was only 600p per 2min behind! And, 'Maintain DOT via E.Dosis as normal, refund the 5 Barrier casts using regular Phlegma' was also 600p per 2min behind the optimal rotation. So that was cool to see. But for N&M specifically, because of both using them via their charges, and within the Toxikon window, they actually surpass Dosis as the 'most casted action per 2min loop'. The 'filler' would be dethroned

The gauge example doesn't show it (it's a static image) but I'd imagine that the goop in each of the beakers/vials would be bubbling and animated to some extent. So, if Toxikon were below the gauge, the goop would fall out! Jokes aside, I get where you're coming from, but at the same time, I think it does make a bit of sense to be at the top too, because the way you're consuming the Toxikon charges is the same way as the other four (by attacking the enemy). Maybe the container would need to be a different shape, or size, to indicate that it is a bit different from the other four?

Also, if the gameplay of this SGE is to 'mix' these effects to make something greater than the sum of their parts, to assist you in healing the party... have I accidentally made Chemist?