The Umpteenth Proposal to "Fix Healer" (at least a little bit): Involve MP More

[Shore]

Hello. I'm assuming you've read the title of the thread.

To give some background, I am a mediocre one-trick healer main since (late, late) Eden's Promise whose accomplishments include an off-patch DSR clear last expansion and a week two clear of the most recent savage tier (made less impressive by the fact that I was between jobs and playing 12 hours a day for the first week of it). Most of my progression last expansion was done on AST, I dipped my toes into WHM for reclears or to help people who were progressing after me, and this expansion I've been playing SCH. I also have SGE at level 100, I guess (not my cup of tea sorry y'all). I've done both prog and reclears of savage and ultimate in both static and PF environments. All this to say I know each healer's kit reasonably well, I think, and can pinpoint what I like and dislike about each of them.

And what I like? Cure III. Neutral Sect. Seraphism. What do these abilities have in common? Immense amounts of healing (and for the latter two shielding) at high MP costs. I've liked saving a bad run on WHM by using one stack of Thin Air to rez and the next to Cure III. I've liked spamming Neutral Sect heals during p10s's Harrowing Hell or DSR's Wroth Flames. And I've like spamming Seraphism heals in m3s's Fusefield or m4s's Ion Cannon. They feel strong and impactful and I am able to access that strength by managing my MP correctly in prog.

So here's my proposal: Reduce the MP costs of GCD heals to that of filler damage - 400MP. Have oGCD heals cost MP - starting at 500MP for single targets and 700 for AoE, depending on the length of the CD and the potency. Casual players can keep doing what they're doing...progressing through most content mostly GCD healing and casual raiders can keep waiting on gear to compensate for lesser healer damage. More skilled players will have a new mechanic to consider when playing the puzzle game that's piecing together a heal plan for optimal damage. As a bonus, piety becomes a relevant stat when bringing enough of it saves you and your coheal enough GCDs that its a gain over pure damaging substats like crit.

tl;dr I've found myself enjoying MP management and would like to see more of it by adding MP costs to oGCD heals.

What do you guys think?

[AmiableApkallu]

In theory, I like the idea of managing MP. In practice, I've never been convinced it won't have the same problem as ye olde DPS check: The point at which you can definitively see that you've failed is so far in the future that it's borderline impossible to look back and decide what you did wrong.

From my very limited experience, what makes MP management on BLM and PLD interesting is that MP gets used up in such large chunks that it's blindingly obvious what went wrong if I don't have enough MP for an action.

(Yes, I did say PLD. Imagine spamming Clemency to save other party members. Not a common occurrence, but it's there as a possibility.)

Seraphism hurts my MP bar because it empowers spammable actions with a high MP cost. oGCDs are effectively gated by cooldowns, so increasing their MP cost doesn't quite have the same effect -- at least, not by itself.

[Aedwyn]

I'm new enough that I shouldn't be commenting deeply on balance issues probably...

But what I can say is that not once have I ever had to manage or worry about my MP as a Scholar main running the new DT content. In fact, most of the time, I can completely ignore my MP gauge because it's simply a nonfactor. This makes me a little sad; A lot of the fun of the faerie gauge and aetherflow is that I have to actually think about when to use those abilities and when to save them. It'd be a lot more interesting if MP-cast skills were the same.

[NobleWinter]

I would love to see adjustments made to our MP cost to make management engaging again. I don't think giving the oGCD's a cost is the way I would go about it tho. I like them being free skills because after a death abilities are precious resources to fall back on. If everything has a cost a healer would be severely disadvantaged after being revived and I think Healers should excel at healing (go figure) at even their weakest moments. I wanna see native MP Regen increased to compensate for Lucid Dreaming being removed as a maintenance tool. I want Lucid Dreaming to be an emergency button you press when you desperately need MP instead of being used on cooldown because Healers can't function without it. I would like to see basic heals like Cure, Physick, Benefic, etc be MP positive. So that the choice to use them could be impactful. I would like Healer damage contribution to be costly on MP and healing/buffing/debuffing the way to regenerate MP. Scholar was a great example of this in Stormblood. Using Energy Drain to gain MP was part of the class design and encouraged being aggressive with Aetherflow. Astro getting MP from drawing cards is also great design to me. I would love to see better systems on every healer to make MP mean something.

[Carighan]

MP would automatically fix itself if they just dealt more damage to the tank and the groups.

Because if I have to devote a significant portion of my time to using Benefic 2 and Helios, I will have to start managing my mana. It's the absence of damage to heal that makes mana not be an issue.

[Aravell]

If we want MP management while also making sure the new system isn't entirely unfriendly to new players, it should come with the caveat that all basic GCD heals should cost 0 MP, only the OGCD tools and damage kit should cost MP.

With that, you'd have a system where messing up your MP management means you cannot do good damage, but it will never affect your primary objective of keeping the party's HP from hitting 0. New players would also be able to continue spamming GCD heals until they're comfortable enough to learn how to use their other tools.