Duration of Blue Mage Buffs

[Saenomo]

Firstly, there are already traits that hurt you in one way or another. Look at Dual Wield, clearly a boon, but due to the bonus of a reduction in delay, it reduces your TP gain (Until of course, you counter balance it with a low enough weapon delay).

The simply truth is that our buffs just don't last long enough to justify even bothering to set most of them. They're are cheap to cast for the most part, but are typically self only spells (sans Diamondhide) and tend to waste spell slots for an effect you almost never have up when you do set it.

How about a job ability that acts as Perpetuance does for a scholar? Maybe an increase in duration at a cost of more MP to cast. Double duration of the effect, but it costs 2-3x as much MP to cast? Though I'd really rather it just be built into the spells by default. I know I'd be willing to increase MP cost by 2-2.5x on any blue magic buff (except stoneskins and blinks because they'll never stay up beyond their other limit anyway) to double the duration of the effect.

[Cabalabob]

Dual wield doesn't hurt you unless you choose to dual wield. You can't choose to not use the trait your suggesting. Again if I wanted to set battery charge and cocoon purely because they are good spells I'm then forced to have increased recasts that I don't want. Unlike dual wield where you can simply not dual wield and avoid the tp loss. And don't say something like increased durations will make up for the increased recasts, cause first off you made the recasts double that of the duration when some of our spells already have a longer recast than duration. Second off with spells such as occulation that already have a hefty recast and aren't solely based on duration will suffer from a trait I didn't even want to set.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Not sure if that statement about dual wield is serious.

EDIT: yes I do recognize your per hit tp gain goes down but in no way is dual wielding a negative.

[Metaking]

well actually dw and martial arts can be detrimental in high haste set ups (caped haste [gear], embrava, haste [spell], yada yada), well unless se has changed something in the formula recently.

[Briarb19]

Of the list that was given, there was an impression that Feather Barrier being a passive skill is difficult to really utilize within the short effect duration of 30 seconds, but for the rest of the spells the development team feels that they are not extremely difficult to utilize within their effect durations.

I was reading this over again and I had another thought that I wanted to mention. You say here that the development team feels the other spells "are not extremely difficult to utilize within their effect durations", but let me ask - have they given any consideration to the "fun factor", or lack thereof, of having to focus on constantly recasting buffs in order to keep them up and actually get use out of them? Would they want to have to spam these buffs over and over?

The duration is so short on these buffs, that in order to keep them up consistently, we need to constantly be re-focusing our attention on when they're going to wear, thus taking time and attention away from fighting mobs. I think it's fair to say we'd rather be focusing the bulk of our attention and efforts on fighting mobs and just enjoying the effects of these buffs. As we've emphasized in this thread, we're willing to pay more in MP to simply not have to recast these spells so much in order to utilize them. I don't see how that's not perfectly reasonable.

Most groups spend more time buffing than these spells actually last and by the time the fight actually begins, they need to be recast again. If SE is such a fan of balance, then they need to acknowledge the lack of it here from more than just the "ability to utilize" standpoint. The lack of balance here is directly reflected in how little use (if any) a lot of these buffs get in the game.

Please take that back to the development team and make sure they understand that, quite frankly, it just stinks having to recast these so much from even just a simple gaming experience perspective. This is on top of the fact that it negatively impacts our DD capabilities in varying degrees having to stop to recast one or even, God forbid, more than one of the super short duration buffs. And lastly, at the end of the day, most of them really are ineffective in most scenarios because they're simply too underwhelming from an execution standpoint relative to the maintenance they require.

In other words, I think more than Feather Barrier needs a fix and the update to Diffusion isn't going to cut it.

We've proposed a simple solution, which is the increase cost in return for increased duration. I'd like to hear their feedback on that.

[Neisan_Quetz]

well actually dw and martial arts can be detrimental in high haste set ups (caped haste [gear], embrava, haste [spell], yada yada), well unless se has changed something in the formula recently.

For Nin (martial arts is limited to Mnk and Pup main/sub anyway) and I believe thf depending on other gear, for Blu I couldn't get a dual wield setup behind singlewielding in damage even with x2 march. Haven't fully checked under embrava but unless I overlooked something it appears to be the same.

[Prothscar]

With Embrava, Haste, capped gear haste, and 30% DW (DWIII + Suppa) you're sitting at 22.07%~ delay remaining, 2.07% more than cap. That's the highest that a BLU will ever be in optimal gear. So there's still room for delay reduction, and until that reduction is capped, Dual Wield is superior to single wielding.

The offhand weapon adds additional stats and 1 fTP to your weaponskills. Until single wielding does this, Dual Wield is superior to single wielding.

The offhand weapon will still be adding more TP/s than dropping the second weapon and only having one, as the increased delay between single and dual wield at any reasonable haste level is negligible.

As far as when you're dual wielding, and its reduction of TP/hit, it is a minute difference, especially when compared to the immense gain in attack speed.



Dual Wield is never detrimental to a BLU.

[Metaking]

I was actually focusing that at Cabalabob who said a passive trait cant hurt you, but for nin mnk and possibly dnc it can. on 1 handed note tho, its to bad fencer dosnt have enough..... something to make it worth using over dw sometimes, o well. on the topic of are buffs i think the target time for all blu buffs should be about 5mins, but if something has to have a shitty duration at least give it an almost instant casting time. I would also like o see a drop in diffusion time with this change so a blu could keep one of its buffs up close to full time on a party.

[Cabalabob]

I dunno about martial arts I don't have mnk, but for dual wield it doesn't force you to hold two weapons, if you hold 2 weapons then there is a delay reduction but just having the trait does nothing if you don't use the off hand

[Tennotsukai]

Whoa! I remember this. They never did anything about feather barrier did they? I guess these new spells will fix these bad duration spells. Hoping.

Hi everyone

Thanks for the easy to read list and your suggestions.

We ran the feedback by the development team and they mentioned that since blue magic spells have such high stats, they would like to proceed with adjustments carefully. Basically, if we were to extend the effect durations right now, the MP cost for the time granted would be lower, causing blue mages to be in a superior position, so thought needs to given to this when making adjustments.

Of the list that was given, there was an impression that Feather Barrier being a passive skill is difficult to really utilize within the short effect duration of 30 seconds, but for the rest of the spells the development team feels that they are not extremely difficult to utilize within their effect durations.

We will be adjusting Diffusion in the next version update and this will enhance the usability of these blue magic spells further, so we would like to see the effects from this and determine the necessity for adjustments.