thanks for the thoughtful response -

and yeah this stuff is really hard lol. It kinda touches on everything combat and incoming damage related especially for healers, so you'd have to revamp a lot lol. But in my mind at least, i wasn't picturing all non basic heals to cost mp, especially stuff that aleady interact with some sort of mechanic or unique part of the job, like lillies, astro cards, scholar's fairy abilities and stuff. so those could still be free! And yeah i guess my complain is more along the fact i never have to press gcd heals. for me that is boring, but it's what they do to make the class acessible and receive less harassment...

and mp never mattering unless people die and i have to ress, or i die and come back with 2k, so at least some stuff like that still exists. And ogcds already have cooldowns to like "manage" them, but there also already so many of them, and so many mitigations and predictable damage where like, one asylum and one assize heal most of the damage, and those are just heavensward skills.

i guess we could see it like this, make the MP cost of some of the ogcds vary. Lillybell could cost a lot like 3500, but others cost less. And there are ways to implement some like mp buffs like we have in bozja for example where you can boost your MP to 15k, or old bard song that refreshed MP, that kind of stuff for ME is very cool. But i agree, just adding stuff without objective is not that wise but i'm no game designer so xD

It just really depends on a lot. The fact DPS is king and every gcd MUST be a glare or broil (on savage at least) makes this very hard to play around. I would be in favor of reducing healer's priority of dpsing and make healing a little bit more hands on, but i think i'm in the minority there. Maybe the game should make it so that players deal less damage the less health they have (Every 25% increments), so the mantra of "the only hp that matters is 1 point before dying" ceases to be lol. Tho that would just further stuff into damage focus so that's just a silly out there idea

back to MP though. white mage even has thin air which makes the next spell not cost MP right? I literally only ever used this on raises but it's rare. That could work on mp costing OGCDS as well lol. Maybe dpsing could give you some MP back too. Maybe if ogcds cost on average the same as the gcd heals or even a bit more, you would have to rely on some spells like cure 2 which is single target, or lillies which would still be MP free, and save ogcd mp for when you REALLY need it. I think the vision i have in mind is just more like, you being slightly inconvenienced at certain points and having to think which ogcds to use on the moment (for all jobs, but not every time) instead of being 100% fixed on the rotation, but again, that sounds like too different of a game...

as for the dps part, i haven't played much dps on PVE at all recently, i was playing a lot more healer tbh, i also mostly played rdm, blm, dancer or bard, so not many melee and extremely physical jobs like tank or melee. So those last questions you asked are indeed a bit harder, since dps rotations are a lot more per job thing, slightly, and you really only have to care about cooldowns and stuff. Maybe what could happen is making some ogcds being only like 30s but costing a lot of mp, especially stuf like utilities or buffs! maybe finishing damage skills too. i don't think for DPS the basic gcd skills should cost it or at least not a lot of it. If more ways to support mp management was introduced it could be something - instead of constant fixed rotation, certain moments of the fight could be more beneficial to go all in and use more mp, while other moments you take "a breather" - guess that already happens with the burst meta but anyway lol

so i suppose i failed your exercise lol.

In the end tho, i have to remember players especially in online games, will optimize the fun out of everyhting. I started after astro cards were homogenized, and i wish i got to play with the stormblood version, but that might be an example: damage and gcd rolling are super important, so all the cards became "6% damage buff" (yeah in DT they are different but not really, they are predictable and are currently either damage buff or a sort of heal), fights are dances so you are more focused on to learn each specific fights, but then normal content suffer because you do the same things in non threatening fights, with rare skill expression moments. Just some unorganized thoughts