
Originally Posted by
Telford
Giving the automaton buffs (under the current AI) while it sounds good in theory would be almost as bad as a brd automaton.
NPC's can cast outside of battle, so its not as detrimental to your health when they spam protect, shell, blink, stoneskin, auqaveil, haste while running around. If we were to give Soulsoother a similar spellset (single target spells) it would take 5 minutes and 50 seconds standing around deployed on a mob, keeping up the appropriate maneuvers to buff a party with protect and shell (six plus automaton).
If soulsoother cast nothing but haste it could barely keep up a haste cycle (2:55 for party+auto) but it would have to be constantly deployed and it would be casting haste on those that don't strictly need it (like itself).
Erase under the current AI would cripple soulsoother, -na's before cures is bad enough, adding the 20+ status effects that erase can remove we'd never see a cure again.
While Bar-element spells can be useful, what happens when a mob favours two or more elements, and which of the useless bar-status spells will it waste time casting when the mob uses sleep, silence, and paralyze.
For enspells we have volt gun if you really want it, but not being able to cast enspells is the least of stormwakers problems. Until it gets spells past lv 75 (tire IV nukes and maybe cure V) it will continue to keep harl company collecting dust.
Automatons are not (and should not be) total replacements for their player counter part but instead are meant to do the primary function of the jobs role. It's best not to think of them as a WHM, BLM, RNG, PLD, and RDM but instead as a healer, nuker, melee, tank*, and general mage.
* Tank as in takes a lickin' but keeps on tickin', not a hate generating machine.