Casting Sneak / Invisible Outside of Party?

[Llana_Virren]

Arcon I am one of those decked-out WHMs, and I can tell you, party-wide spells should not be alliance-wide.

Additionally, SE's design for alliances is "groups of parties," not a hodgepodge of players who can superbuff all 18 people with one fell swoop. We don't need 2 BRDs insta-buffing 18 people with 3-4 songs each instantly, while 2 CORs put 4 rolls on each person instantly, 1 SCH Emprava-ra'ing everyone with a single cast, and 1 (or 2) WHMs spamming Infinite Heal Curaga IIIs. That's not a zerg, that's a Ba-Ba-Ba-Balance Breaker on crack.

Now, for single-target spells, sure, extend party-wide to alliance wide. But -not- for any multi-targetting spell. In other MMOs it might work, but FFXI's system would be totally thrown into sh!t by allowing that.

[Arcon]

Arcon I am one of those decked-out WHMs, and I can tell you, party-wide spells should not be alliance-wide.

I never said they should. I said that every party spell should be able to be cast on the alliance. I was just bringing an argument for why your argument was invalid. The BRD one does hold more water, but honestly, I don't think it's "overpowered" in an absolute sense. We're just used to thinking that you need 2~3 BRD to be fully efficient as an alliance. And even if this was changed, having 2~3 BRD would still be useful to get different buffs on. Especially in battles where AoE dispels are as common as in pretty much any new content this means even less of an impact on regular playstyle.

Additionally, SE's design for alliances is "groups of parties," not a hodgepodge of players who can superbuff all 18 people with one fell swoop.

Again, that's no argument for anything, as SE's design is precisely what I'm criticizing. Saying it's meant to be like that carries no weight if I'm questioning SE's competence or foresight on this matter. And to be honest, I don't even believe that they intended it to be this way for game mechanic purposes but for ease of implementation.

We don't need 2 BRDs insta-buffing 18 people with 3-4 songs each instantly, while 2 CORs put 4 rolls on each person instantly, 1 SCH Emprava-ra'ing everyone with a single cast, and 1 (or 2) WHMs spamming Infinite Heal Curaga IIIs.

Why not? SCH and WHM can already do what you're saying (and for WHM it's not a very smart thing to do, neither now nor if they changed it). 2 BRD and 2 COR? That's more of a support than any alliance has even now. And don't think it would be an easy job for them, because there's no way they'd get everyone in the cast anyway. Weak people staying back, mages spread out, mages and melee standing too close, etc. And also don't think that it would be twice as good, even if (for whatever reason) you'd have 2 of each. The best songs/rolls would already be applied by 1 BRD or COR, the extras do less efficient ones.

Also, what does your normal setup look like? Do you have 18 melee that can even benefit from a BRD? No, at best you have ~8 active melee (Voidwatch zerg situation), some of which may miss songs/rolls or not profit as much from certain songs as others. The biggest advantage from this would be that one BRD could buff mages and melee seperately, even if in different parties, as long as they stand close by. And again, you'd only consider that overpowered from a relative perspective, because up until now that was impossible. As you said yourself, it's no big deal in other MMOGs and there they do it all the time. We just suffer from a skewed perception of the situation.

[Llana_Virren]

You missed a key detail: I pointed out that by making party-wide AOE spells alliance wide, these spells and effects could be applied with a single cast. And with DDs capping Enmity, a few would have to die before the Infinite Heal WHM drew hate, and if he's capable of spamming Curaga III+ on an alliance and getting 100% MP back, none of them should be dying anyway.

Sorry, but if we're talking party-only spells that are single target, I can understand. But AOE buffs need to remain party-wide only.

The argument of "it is supposed to be that way" is perfectly valid: you're arguing about competency when competency is irrelevent. There's no benefit with the suggestion except to further break game balance for the sake of feeling leet.