What does FFXIV lack?

[Valence]

We could ask the same thing of some of the playerbase too, given how many of them just want to skip over the MSQ and leveling and go right to hardcore raiding all day. One might think a lot of players WANT "just a boss gauntlet".

It would also explain why they keep demanding that even normal content becomes increasingly harder, because they literally can't stand doing anything that isn't at least Savage tier and up.

I really don't see what the people you describe, wanting to have harder baseline difficulty and removing trash and whatnot, have to do with people that don't like the MSQ and would like to skip it to access the parts of the game that interests them though. I mean maybe there is a venn diagram somewhere, but that's still a huge stretch as a comparison to make.

Even if they aren't asking for Savage-tier specifically, they're still nonetheless asking for everything to be made harder and want everything to be a boss gauntlet.

Take the repeated cries for no walls in dungeons for example, what is that if not people wanting to boss rush even faster? Hell, there's only a handful of people that want the mobs to be dangerous themselves (I can only name me and Valence off the bat), but there's other people who don't want to deal with trash mobs AT ALL to the point that there's been very little mumbling about removing them from the new Variant that's coming up, or how people seemed howling mad about that one Savage tier that involved mobs and seemed relieved when things when back to normal for the rest. I think Deep Dungeons is the only time people seemingly "tolerate" non-boss enemies, but only because most of them are mini-bosses themselves with how quickly they can destroy you, and people probably still treat the actual bosses as the highlights of their runs, not the stuff they had to "put up with" in-between. I wouldn't be surprised to hear if people dislike mob pack FATEs/CEs in Occult Crescent and prefer the boss types, and I know people miss doing Duels from Bozja which were 1-on-1 boss fights too I believe.

Not to say people can't have their harder content/boss-only modes, it just gets a bit tiresome when some people (including the developers it seems) act like that's how the whole game should play, with little to no breathing room for variation whether its opponent type or challenge setting.

The reason a lot of people don't want to deal with trash mobs at all is because the devs have given up on trash in SHB and beyond where most party resource and scarcity mechanics, as well as aggro mechanics, got scrapped for good. Even in SB raids turned into just boss gauntlets. Is it such a wonder that a lot of players, especially the ones that never actually experienced what it was before, think trash gameplay is... trash, and want a focus on bosses, which is where the developers are actually putting in all of their efforts?

It's exactly like any service, if you want to get rid of it, just stop funding it until people complain and ask to get rid of it in favor of other things. It's a clear design direction. They do not know what to do with trash beyond the basic AoEs to dodge because that's what they made the game all about: dodging crap. If they increased the difficulty trash would become like what we have in higher floors of Orthos and Pilgrim (aka no telegraph AoEs that oneshot). So the difficulty has never been a solution. The solution has always been the re addition of actual engaging gameplay battle systems and mechanics to build something solid upon.

Agreed, I think? but only if you mean general battle mechanics (typical vulnerabilities, mobs just not being outright immune to heavy/bind/pacify etc.) rather than anything specific to those trash in particular.

I've been playing since 1.x, and even as far back as ARR, the only thing allowing for interesting trash was hyper-optimizing among Enmity, compositional variance across earlier levels* (especially, say, levels 30 to 40), party DoTs, and sequenced oGCD stuns, scarcely anything to do with the trash itself (all of which remain unchanged). Even by the time Doomspike could be acquired, most was negligible outside of tank-less runs.

* This included things like mass-DoTing, a BLM AoE Sleep (which didn't break from anything other than direct damage back then), and then nuking enemies one at a time in order so that neither heals, tank stance, nor any further uses of Sleep were necessary, for a gain in total kill-speed on fewer than 4 targets, or fewer than 5 if a member lacked AoE (say, DRG before level 40); having Bards kite the melee units in circles while tank dealt with the ranged mobs; using SCH as DPS for the Cleric Stance and greater Maim and Mend trait while a SMN healed and tanked through/via Titan and/or all party members kited melee enemies via Miasma 2; etc.

What few other things existed were almost solely to activate short casts (such as crocs' caudal swipe) to offer some extra indirect mitigation to the tank or just briefly holding an oGCD stun to use it on a mob instead when they'd attempt a special attack or, lacking any such opportunity, an AoE attack that'd otherwise deny safe access to uptime.

Vulnerabilities yes, but it also goes hand in hand with what they allow us to do with job crowd control abilities, that have been weeded out immensely for most classes beyond some role actions (stun, and rphys useless binds that get removed as soon as damage is done, lolwut). They still have some room left to design around this if the devs were even remotely creative, by bringing back ranged mobs for tanks to manage, perhaps even introduce AIs behind that try to stay at range, or to just have situations like Voidmage expose above with healer mobs (that would stop healing if they get attacked), some mobs with no aggro table, introducing some targeting priorities and mob triaging, etc. Although I do feel that the devs seem to think that even this is too hard for the baseline (as seen in deep dungeons as well, just check story floors, they're no different from regular dungeons). It's sad in a way because I do think you can still have all of those mechanics regardless of difficulty if they don't really wipe the party anyway.

But, we still have lost a lot of other mechanics, notably:
- Enmity management for tanks
- Mob positioning (hits in the back doing crits was removed in SB, ranged mobs and patrols stopped being a thing after ARR)
- General party resource management, because MP behaved differently which introduced different constraints on healers and a balance to reach between damage and healing, and this also meant running out of cooldowns and resources was more likely to happen if the DPS slacked off (no I'm not saying bring back running dry of MP/TP and be left with nothing to do type of gameplay though, not everything was perfect and nobody is saying it was)

I only started in HW so kiting mobs was really not a thing anymore unfortunately. At best we still had casters sleeping a mob in low level dungeons at times although it wasn't really mandatory to do and I suspect was a remnant of older days. Still, could help sprouts back then.

[Shurrikhan]

Sorry if these seem nit-picks, but just trying to balance out any nostalgia-farts others might otherwise trigger for themselves:

But, we still have lost a lot of other mechanics, notably:

Mob positioning (hits in the back doing crits was removed in SB, ranged mobs and patrols stopped being a thing after ARR)

This was only on Raw Intuition, which guaranteed parries to the front and crits received from behind (and originally also heals from behind because... XIV and sensible coding have never gone together, apparently). All enemy autos could, at the time, critically strike (and crits couldn't, again because of bizarre coding decisions making them mutually exclusive to RNG mit categories, be blocked or parried), with that chance increasingly mostly just with level disparity, iirc. What was significant was just that you couldn't block or parry attacks from behind altogether.

Enmity management for tanks

True, but this was frankly a pretty awful mechanic except when treated as a party-wide consideration. Unless optimized for, it was 6 buttons of bloat for tanks and 1-2 more for all other roles for, at best, a game of The Price is Right based upon the combination of your DPSs' output and --especially once in Stormblood-- their refusal to use their party tools (among which Diversion was decently important). In early ARR, the choice offered different approaches to small-but-threatening pulls, but... nothing else. Large pulls and very small pulls (so, some 80% of ARR and HW leveling dungeon pulls and then 99% of everything else) offered no real choice and therefore no strategic variance.

General party resource management, because MP behaved differently which introduced different constraints on healers and a balance to reach between damage and healing, and this also meant running out of cooldowns and resources was more likely to happen if the DPS slacked off

The only "balance" it struck was in very rarely preferring Cure over Cure II (and the SCH/AST equivalents of each), since the first healed for 60% as much for just 40% the MP [or effectively 25% for Cure if including Freecure averaged RNG]) and made Regen far more valuable. You still spent no time idling unless oomed by necessary rezzes, and that cost would still be more favorably taken up by the Bard, whose raid buff song at the time only affected elemental magic and whose MP song was a smaller penalty to their own damage than a damage benefit to even just one healer. Apart from that, they simply each further penalized Spell Speed and Skill Speed, since they alone did not increase output-per-resources-spent and meant that a pull could be lost within its first 25s or so even if it took 70s or so to die, simply because lackluster physical DPS meant that they could run out of the ability to hit any weaponskills except every third GCD or so before the mobs died, extending the fight into so late a time that the tank and healer run out of CDs and are inevitably overwhelmed.

On which note, unless it's used as a way to skip ahead on combos and make the GCD more flexible (e.g., by having a GCD of 2s but only being able to sustain an average of 2.25s) AND we start to see reasons to want to stay in or get out as deliberate choices with melee being rewarded commensurately to that increased risk (while casters/rangers get their own due added complexity and variable reward in turn), I really do not at all care to see TP reintroduced. As for MP, I have zero attachment to it, either, and would almost prefer it be used primarily as a shared resource system for special actions (the rest being mostly negligible) instead, akin to HW Ruin III or being used mostly be abilities if we wanted to reduce the frequency of their use without reducing their in-a-given-moment's availability.

/shrug

[Valence]

This was only on Raw Intuition, which guaranteed parries to the front and crits received from behind (and originally also heals from behind because... XIV and sensible coding have never gone together, apparently). All enemy autos could, at the time, critically strike (and crits couldn't, again because of bizarre coding decisions making them mutually exclusive to RNG mit categories, be blocked or parried), with that chance increasingly mostly just with level disparity, iirc. What was significant was just that you couldn't block or parry attacks from behind altogether.

Yes, thank you, I was trying to recall the exact details. It was parry/block that stopped working when struck behind. I liked this a lot. It asked tanks and parties to be mindful of positioning and orientation.

True, but this was frankly a pretty awful mechanic except when treated as a party-wide consideration. Unless optimized for, it was 6 buttons of bloat for tanks and 1-2 more for all other roles for, at best, a game of The Price is Right based upon the combination of your DPSs' output and --especially once in Stormblood-- their refusal to use their party tools (among which Diversion was decently important). In early ARR, the choice offered different approaches to small-but-threatening pulls, but... nothing else. Large pulls and very small pulls (so, some 80% of ARR and HW leveling dungeon pulls and then 99% of everything else) offered no real choice and therefore no strategic variance.

I disagree, I liked having to adjust my aggro <-> damage output balance depending on the situation. It promoted skill play for those who wanted it. And it left people that didn't care or didn't know about it just use tank stance with full aggro combos and be done with it. That is, for single target, because AoE was... a mess. It had little meaning with WAR/DRK, and PLD was just a disaster before Total Eclipse in SB. But Total Eclipse having no aggro modifier was actually nice, and I wished back then all tanks had one like this, and another like Flash or something in the vein.

The only "balance" it struck was in very rarely preferring Cure over Cure II (and the SCH/AST equivalents of each), since the first healed for 60% as much for just 40% the MP [or effectively 25% for Cure if including Freecure averaged RNG]) and made Regen far more valuable. You still spent no time idling unless oomed by necessary rezzes, and that cost would still be more favorably taken up by the Bard, whose raid buff song at the time only affected elemental magic and whose MP song was a smaller penalty to their own damage than a damage benefit to even just one healer. Apart from that, they simply each further penalized Spell Speed and Skill Speed, since they alone did not increase output-per-resources-spent and meant that a pull could be lost within its first 25s or so even if it took 70s or so to die, simply because lackluster physical DPS meant that they could run out of the ability to hit any weaponskills except every third GCD or so before the mobs died, extending the fight into so late a time that the tank and healer run out of CDs and are inevitably overwhelmed.

On which note, unless it's used as a way to skip ahead on combos and make the GCD more flexible (e.g., by having a GCD of 2s but only being able to sustain an average of 2.25s) AND we start to see reasons to want to stay in or get out as deliberate choices with melee being rewarded commensurately to that increased risk (while casters/rangers get their own due added complexity and variable reward in turn), I really do not at all care to see TP reintroduced. As for MP, I have zero attachment to it, either, and would almost prefer it be used primarily as a shared resource system for special actions (the rest being mostly negligible) instead, akin to HW Ruin III or being used mostly be abilities if we wanted to reduce the frequency of their use without reducing their in-a-given-moment's availability.

/shrug

I'm not speaking about Cure I / Cure II and freecure or whatever. I did enjoy the resource scarcity in single target and bosses though. Most classes had to manage it. Dying literally drained this, overhealing drained healer and party resources, and a lot of the time when parties crashed back then especially in casual content, it was because of people running on fumes and unable to properly recover, and not just enough people failing to dodge a mechanic.

I'm also talking about healer dungeon experience once you got AoE tools, and this has been taken away entirely from the game — and also what made me abandon healing completely after. That was the whole point, like tanks could balance damage and aggro, healers also had to balance damage and healing in accordance to their finite resources, and this meant adjusting to a lot of variables, like the tank's own skill, their gear, but also your DPS gear and skill at burning down mob packs as you described it. The less efficient it was, the more it drained into resources, and I really, really enjoyed this. I didn't exactly enjoy being left unable to do anything once out of TP for DPS classes though, which was one of the bad parts of the design.

That's why I have felt so alienated by the game's direction since ShB, because it literally changed the whole paradigm of everything and that's not what I signed for nor what I liked about the game. People constantly telling me the game has always been the same are full of s*** (not aimed at you there, no offense intended).

[Shouko]

This game lacks a lot of focus, it's like the ADHD of games, implement something, don't finish it, implement another thing and don't finish it or just do it poorly in general.

[Shurrikhan]

Yes, thank you, I was trying to recall the exact details. It was parry/block that stopped working when struck behind. I liked this a lot. It asked tanks and parties to be mindful of positioning and orientation.

Same. (Aside, but... it was also far more caster-friendly, as tanks were then forced to stop spreading out mob groups by placing themselves in the center, haha.)

I disagree, I liked having to adjust my aggro <-> damage output balance depending on the situation.

Fair, and in that regard, I agree. I just think it was executed upon pretty horribly, to the point that 90% of the minutial optimizations were actually traps while only the overarching 10% to remain were actually indicative of good play in any situation not born of someone griefing, ignoring their kit, or ****ing up terribly.

Even accounting for those screw-ups, though, it's strategic depth was still just dropping into tank stance, say, after Goring Blade has been used and swapping back out just before the next or next-next one, give-or-take a Royal Authority actually being used as such instead of replaced with a redundant (Strength Down already applied) Rage of Halone to exploit the multiplicative Enmity modifiers based on how much you think your Dragoon will refuse to use Elusive, your StB Samurai Diversion, your BLM Lucid Dreaming, etc. and whether your co-tank overused their defensives and therefore one of your might die over a 20% difference in DR or adds were about to spawn (though then you'd be looking at Flash anyways, so... then it's more a matter of Goring drift, though the stances each cost a GCD themselves so a single Flash actually realigned rotation /shrug).

It had little meaning with WAR/DRK

I mean, it had meaning on DRK, in that it cost MP atop a GCD and that MP was much more relevant for DRK than for PLD (for whom it was only used for Clemency, itself often cancelled just to guarantee that Shelltron was consumed by the tankbuster instead of an auto-attack going off just before it).

I'm not speaking about Cure I / Cure II and freecure or whatever.

Okay, but then... nothing else came from resource scarcity. You just had a lower portion of incoming damage counterable by oGCDs, so that healing spells were a frequent part of casts (instead of just at-offensive-cost backup actions all sharing a common pseudo-CD, MP). (Yes, Flash cost a bit of MP, too, but you rarely wanted to rely on RNG misses for boss-fights, and it was your only AoE Enmity source, so... that was mostly just rote outside per the basic type of pull.)

That resource scarcity in turn gave varied priority to things like Cure I / Cure II because you could use Cure II to get enough healing out immediately to then reapply your DoTs on time (with, due to Cleric Stance, every offensive cast, at the time, requiring 2 GCDs if fed off of a heal [2s] or instant-cast, or just barely more if fed off a filler attack [2.5s] without Swiftcast), but in itself it merely made viable losing some offensive throughput now (or, in the next few GCDs) in favor of uptime later (by not going oom) by using a Cure I and maintaining Regen, etc., where they wouldn't interfere or force panic-heals out of your cohealer.

All else was just a matter of damage intake relative to "free" healing output. If you gave a boss an Amnesia aura, locking us out of our abilities, or just increased the number of damage events beyond what we could safely deal with via abilities alone, and you'd see the same results minus the ability for Bards to sacrifice their own damage to bail out healers' bad decisions or excessive rezzes (that instead indirectly falling to Paladins).

Most classes had to manage it.

That management was (A) avoid Skill/Spell Speed (a bit more SkS permissible if receiving Goad), (B) hit your Invigorate/Shroud/Luminous/Aetherflow on CD, and (C) bring a Bard and/or caster for Manashift. Out of that, only Manashift, Goad, and... hitting the CD on CD... were remotely "gameplay", especially once we reached Stormblood (wherein Bard/MCH just hit their MP/TP songs on CD in order to maintain raidbuffs and avoid pulling off the tank).

Dying literally drained this

It still does, and via job gauge elements, in a far more variably punishing manner.

a lot of the time when parties crashed back then especially in casual content, it was because of people running on fumes and unable to properly recover, and not just enough people failing to dodge a mechanic.

A party can still run itself out of the ability to rez just as much now as then, at least in terms of resources.

The difference is simply that we basically don't use healing spells anymore outside of the rare cast in Savage, and therefore rezzes are the only real MP costs beyond the net-positive churn of DoTs and filler attack spam. Granted, we also now don't have any real Mage's Ballad, Promoted Bishop Turret, Ewer, or Mana Shift to make up for party mistakes (all atop vuln stacks going from almost never seen to a part of virtually every mechanic, all to better ensure death and prevent healers from compensating significantly via ST healing spells instead of just rezzes).

The less efficient it was, the more it drained into resources, and I really, really enjoyed this.

...Again, though, this was only a thing at a party level.

Like, if you used a NIN, WHM, PLD, +1, and the Paladin took Ultimatum as one of their Role Actions, they could run into Bartam first pull with Shield Oath, Total Eclipse as not to burn Blind duration early, and then drop stance for extra damage as they have the WHM Swiftcast Holy, pop a Cure II and Benison via the Lily generated, prep another Holy timed to stun just as the previous one's elapses, then Ultimatum, Smokescreen, and Shadewalker together to let the Paladin hold threat as it Hallowed Grounds through 10s more, then cycle defensives (including Flash itself, worth a little over 20% DR against attacks capable of missing) and reapply Shield Oath if necessary to maintain threat until the end or a GCD or two away from it.

But even in that, while all the extra damage at the onset allowed the party not to run out of resources, it was still an optimal strategy regardless just for kill speed. You'd still do the exact same thing even if TP or MP hadn't existed simply because of how huge the relative value of CDs (damage multipliers, %DRs, and things like Divine Seal) were, favoring throughput right now over later sustain.

That's my issue with it. Whenever you played well, the other parts of the game made resources irrelevant anyways. It felt either vestigial or just a strange and very dull Speed-punishing tax... from inception.

I'm also talking about healer dungeon experience once you got AoE tools, and this has been taken away entirely from the game — and also what made me abandon healing completely after.

...I'm confused. Healers got their first AoE heal at level 10 (WHM/AST) or 35 (SCH), and their first AoE attacks at 50 (WHM), 52 (AST) or 30/35 (SCH). And what's been taken away among them? That, before level 30/50/52, a healer 'dealt AoE damage' (in a manner of speaking) only through increased healing onto a tank forgoing tank stance while having access to an AoE attack (i.e., until Stormblood, only if one had a non-PLD)? That sort of 'you and me and I am you' instinctive party coordination, since watered down by everyone having basically the same direct tools anyways?

That was the whole point, like tanks could balance damage and aggro

Again, because of the way tank stances worked (having tremendous cost to and very few viable transfer point for swapping until 4.1 Warrior), not really a tight balance there.

After level 40, a tank ideally opened in tank stance, swapped out early on, and never looked back. And in ARR, Paladins had no reason to leave Shield Oath in AoE, being better off instead just tab-targeting Rage of Halone itself (since only the potency, not the Enmity modifier, required combo progress) or the combo (whoever got Rage before gets Fast next) between Flashes as able to still keep up with AoE threat (as not to waste Blind duration and its mitigation).

Until HW, PLD effectively didn't even have any non-aggro skills [as, lacking Goring or Royal, Riot Blade was just a refill for Flash].

healers also had to balance damage and healing in accordance to their finite resources

Almost never according to finite resources unless they sacrificed the stat and LB bonus of bringing a Ranger or there were a lot of rezzes required. Outside of proximity to DoT replacement, priorities were stable; you just sometimes didn't have the MP to filler-attack and instead just idled.

People constantly telling me the game has always been the same are full of s***

It's definitely different now, aye... but a lot of what we had before ended up having an illusion of impact while actually changing the game not at all relative to what you'd optimally do even if those systems hadn't existed, outside of the aforementioned idling.

Now, if we could replace those pretenses with depth and make the kinds of coordination-requiring optimizations (beyond just "hit your 'Helps Party' button whenever it's available, cus that is just bloat) that early gameplay seemingly wanted us to leverage more prominent and noticeable to players, I'd be all for that. I'm just pointing out what all actually had impact.

[Valence]

I can't get into an ever expanding quote spree

I'm frankly too lazy to write an essay about this, but what you're completely missing is the MP changes literally mean that currently MP song is baked into base MP regen (much like Tank stances are now baked into Tank Mastery). MP used to regen incredibly more slowly. This is also when I say this made resource scarcity actually meaningful back then because raising was not only punished with hefty MP costs like today, but it wasn't magically fixed after a couple of GCD once your MP restabilizes by itself. Today it's just a raise amount cap to prevent people to keep raising forever. Back then, it literally played into MP management, and running low could be ugly because the resource was a lot more valuable. But what you said about GCD heals being used a lot more (less and less as we got new expansions with new free OGCD heals sadly), also played directly into that MP management gameplay.

Also perhaps I should have been more precise on what situation was being talked about: single target boss gameplay was dramatically different from AoE trash gameplay. I do believe the discussion arose from trash that used to be more interesting though, so my argument was fully centered around this. Every AoE move was extremely expensive to use — Holy costed 1600 MP for instance, on a total pool lof 15-16k MP with almost zero regen outside of Shroud of Saints (Lucid) and of course, out of combat, which was still slow. This by definition introduced a lot of considerations and management depending on the team, the skill of every player (tanks tanking well or not, and dps doing good damage or not), their gear, etc. No run was identical to another, especially on healers, because of this very reason. This is why the removal of all of this turned me off healing completely (at least from healing past the levels where healers get their main MP draining AoE damage tools).

Every single job had to deal with this to some extent. Some with more control over it than others, granted. BLM excepted I guess. Back in HW where AoE dungeon balance was completely out of whack (because the devs didn't care at all), you had jobs like DRG that could dish out an incredible burst of AoE damage but completely peter out after 20s. Some others like MCH notably in SB had an incredibly strong sustain in the form of Tactician and Flamethrower (11s of free resource damage). A lot of different profiles in fact.

The only thing I didn't like was how running out of TP or MP was extremely frustrating to play with especially on non healer jobs, and I wish the devs back then had thought a little more about how to address this state of demi failure on the party's behalf.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm frankly too lazy to write an essay about this, but what you're completely missing is the MP changes literally mean that currently MP song is baked into base MP regen (much like Tank stances are now baked into Tank Mastery).

They're not. The passive MP generation is the same, even in its impact from Piety. Our personal sum of MP-gen & MP-savings were also nigh-identical.

Spells retained the same % cost of at-level base (i.e., pre-Piety) MP cost. Piety was changed to % increase to MP gen only because max MP was standardized; when it increased max MP, its effect on MP gen was identical atop increasing you total 'battery capacity', so to speak. Lucid Dreaming's Refresh potency is the same as what it replaced. The difference is solely from the decrease in high-MP-cost GCDs. MP regened at 2% per 3 seconds. It now regens at... 2% per 3 seconds.

MP still isn't "magically fixed after a couple of GCDs" unless under Lucid Dreaming, just as it wasn't before unless having just received a Mana Shift or a whole Ewer, under Sacred Shroud, Luminiferous Aether, or having just hit Aetherflow, after using Energy Drains, etc.

Meanwhile, Shroud of Saints being 60p for 18s (360p total) at a time when Thin Air was considered a unique MP-saving perk (all casts free for 12s). Lucid Dreaming is now a 55p refresh for 21s (385p total) while only supplying 1 free cast per minute, down from potentially 6 per 2 minutes.

Again, the main change there... was truly just that an AoE heal had some 250%+ the cost of a filler attack while even a Cure/Physick still had 100%+ the cost of a filler attack. By reducing healing required relative to healing freely available, MP was made far less relevant.

Meanwhile, half the "benefit" of Tank Mastery just went into making all enemy attacks hit harder (fitting nearer to DPS stance than tank stance in terms of damage intake before the level 82 upgrades), increasing the gap between tank and non-tank damage taken far more so than actually increasing tank passive eHP relative to before Tank Mastery.

Holy costed 1600 MP for instance, on a total pool of 15-16k MP with almost zero regen

Passive Regen was identical to now, 2% per 3s. And Holy cost a ton because it did an absolute ton, allowing for the highest Burst in the game after triple-Flare.

Holy was 10% of your MP, but was also originally an effective 343 potency at a time when Doom Spike, for instance, which used 16% of total resource per cast, was just 130 potency (or 143, later 150, with Heavy Thrust), and even pre-nerf Flare was just 432 and would leave one waiting idle for their next MP tick to the point of being barely net-neutral unless having Transpose and a Firestarter and/or tick-syncing. And it had a 4s AoE stun at a time when tank oGCD stuns were only 3s (WAR) or nonexistent (PLD).

Holy had the highest ~20s Burst in the game, with only triple Flare (which required an MP pot and 3-minute CD) coming close (better at 12). It was not meant to be spammed. By the time it fell to mediocre, its MP cost also fell to 600 (same as Gravity, with which it shared potency in Diurnal) and once its damage was standardized entirely, its MP cost was likewise standardized, with the AoE stun being a free perk.

Altogether, the point better made would just be that healers could originally dump a ton more value into fewer AoE GCDs, more so than they were less efficient. I'd rather have 343 potency for 1000 MP than 182 for 600 a la Stormblood, and honestly even over for 400 as per Shadowbringers. It'd give more room for DoTs (which WHM had at 12, 18, and 24s back in HW, for instance), Regen, etc., which in turn better encouraged not wasting its stun duration.

This by definition introduced a lot of considerations and management depending on the team, the skill of every player (tanks tanking well or not, and dps doing good damage or not), their gear, etc. No run was identical to another, especially on healers, because of this very reason. This is why the removal of all of this turned me off healing completely.

Healer rotations in Alexander Savage were chartable down to the GCD unless there were major f-ups, largely the same as now. The change was just that, given greater dynamism via GCDs over one's total effective outputs, MP was still a bit more of a shared resource instead of just a number of remaining rez charges.

Now, I'll agree fully that the ability of healers to be able to contribute more meaningfully beyond just healing (real AoE damage, often above tanks and nearing that of DPS, for instance), even if in shorter spurts only, was preferable to the dull tread we have now. I even would agree that it was better when Cure/Physick could situationally play a real part (as much from needing to top off a tank already at 80% because stuff could actually hurt as from MP costs, but still). But I think you overestimate certain sources of those differences -- something that tends make people nostalgize over what would result in mostly the same gameplay instead of focusing in one what would actually lead to the results they desire.

BLM excepted I guess.

I mean, tick-sync was absolutely crucial, so if you count that as part of mana-management...

A lot of different profiles in fact.

True, and I do miss that, even if it did mean that dungeon balance went from one-pump-Chucks being useless (apart from SMNs, with both, why care about Burst if the overall is crap after 30s) to being one-and-done-Chads (Burst is everything).

The only thing I didn't like was how running out of TP or MP was extremely frustrating to play with especially on non healer jobs, and I wish the devs back then had thought a little more about how to address this state of demi failure on the party's behalf.

A somewhat frequent suggestion since ARR: Apportion spenders' potency and cost to %resource remaining. No actual starvation/lockouts, just gradual potency lost leading one to take a lower APM for a rotation or two before damage-amp-windows come back. Weakness then takes care of itself, even if more salvageable by ASTs, Rangers, and Mana Shift.

[Valence]

They're not. The passive MP generation is the same, even in its impact from Piety. Our personal sum of MP-gen & MP-savings were also nigh-identical.

I had to recheck old footage but it seems I had a memory bleedover from the experience. You're right, the regen was similar. But in essence, on top of having a lot less free ogcd heals and more hardcast healing to do, there was definitely a combination of factors that made resource scarcity be a real deal. I've seen countless parties, either dungeons or trials/raids, just keel over because they ran on fumes. I haven't seen this happen in ages since SHB/EW (especially EW+, and I suspect it has to do that they really alleviated how MP neutral or negative some rotations used to be even in ShB).

Healer rotations in Alexander Savage were chartable down to the GCD unless there were major f-ups, largely the same as now. The change was just that, given greater dynamism via GCDs over one's total effective outputs, MP was still a bit more of a shared resource instead of just a number of remaining rez charges.

Now, I'll agree fully that the ability of healers to be able to contribute more meaningfully beyond just healing (real AoE damage, often above tanks and nearing that of DPS, for instance), even if in shorter spurts only, was preferable to the dull tread we have now. I even would agree that it was better when Cure/Physick could situationally play a real part (as much from needing to top off a tank already at 80% because stuff could actually hurt as from MP costs, but still). But I think you overestimate certain sources of those differences -- something that tends make people nostalgize over what would result in mostly the same gameplay instead of focusing in one what would actually lead to the results they desire.

Again, I was speaking about trash dungeon gameplay. Adjusting was a BIG healer deal back then. That's what I enjoyed about starting as a healer, and why I've stopped playing one since then. There is no more management of anything left to do. No balancing act, no seeing how far you can go, nothing.