Let's Make a Deal, SE!

[Tennotsukai]

Greetings,

When it comes to adjustments that extend the effect duration of buffs, we need to look into this very carefully because blue mages have access to Diffusion, and there is a concern that the support capability may become too powerful for short battles.

However, as blue mages need to auto-attack and perform other physical attacks, we understand that they are losing out on damage when they need to reapply buffs, especially in the current times where the pace of battle is speeding up. As such, we would like to make improvements.

For example, we’d like to make it so buffs can be reapplied in a shorter amount of time by adding a fast cast job trait that can be acquired through blue magic sets and we would also like to add more equipment for blue mages that has fast cast.

Thanks for the reply, Camate! Though, on to what you were saying about Blue Mages getting a fast cast job trait, we already have one. It's horrible to say the least. Just to obtain tier 1 normal fast cast we need to equip 15 points of blue magic points into our already completely filled spell slots. I know what you're thinking...that's a tier 2 fast cast for us. Unfortunately, our fast cast is equivalent to half of a rdm fast cast so we're only getting red mage's fast cast 1 by setting 15 points worth of spells.

Next, maybe we could strike a different deal on top of the previous deal. Change Diffusion back to what it was before. Every merit reducing recast time on Diffusion. That way if you guys do decide to let us merit that more it will be so much better than putting more merits into it now.

Also, it is true casting times are rather poor for most of our buff spells. Nature's Meditation is the only one exception to this, but when we are in the pace of an expedient battle and receiving buffs from bards/cors the duration of Nature's Meditation becomes an issue then.

Fast cast has not and will never fix our poor durations of our spells. Please, ask the Dev team to simply make adjustments where they absolutely have to in order for these spells to have better durations and maybe even casting times. Durations are more important to us though.

[Ravenmore]

Greetings,

When it comes to adjustments that extend the effect duration of buffs, we need to look into this very carefully because blue mages have access to Diffusion, and there is a concern that the support capability may become too powerful for short battles.

However, as blue mages need to auto-attack and perform other physical attacks, we understand that they are losing out on damage when they need to reapply buffs, especially in the current times where the pace of battle is speeding up. As such, we would like to make improvements.

For example, we’d like to make it so buffs can be reapplied in a shorter amount of time by adding a fast cast job trait that can be acquired through blue magic sets and we would also like to add more equipment for blue mages that has fast cast.

OMG wouldn't want blu to be wanted for anything now would we. It is total BS when schs and brds can already do this for short fights and be more effective then most blu buffs. You know and we know excuses when we hear them.

[Sasaraixx]

Does Diffusion work with UL spells? Perhaps that is what they are afraid of. It still seems like a non-issue to me and apparently everyone else.

It's also baffling because if they are worried about BLU's support side becoming too powerful (let's pretend for argument sake that this is a valid concern), there are so many ways they could counter this. They could add a duration penalty to diffusion, create a trait that extends duration for self cast blue magic, or add a piece of gear that doubles duration of blue enhancing magic received (reforged Mavi anyone?). There are so many options.

Adding more tiers of fast cast or more fast cast gear is definitely NOT the way to go. Some of the spells already cast very quickly and the job already can't equip all of the traits and spells it needs to.

I don't think a corresponding post was made in the JP forum (I'll check), but I have a feeling no one would be I favor of this adjustment over longer duration.

[Olor]

I don't think a corresponding post was made in the JP forum (I'll check), but I have a feeling no one would be I favor of this adjustment over longer duration.

JP BLU forum is deader than dead. No wonder this job gets so little love.

[Draylo]

Derp Hope there are more improvements than that. Some of the spells in question are practically instant cast as is.

[Mefuki]

Diffusion is the reason buffs don't have longer durations? Well then, make the appropriate duration changes to buffs (Orcish Counterstance: Duration increased to 3 minutes, Nature's Meditation: Duration increased from 90 seconds to 3 minutes., etc, etc.) but have only half that duration effect other players hit by a Diffused buff. Seems simple to me. I can't understand how that can be the issue. I mean, it's your game, you can make any adjustments to effects, magic, JA, etc you want so to say, "We have to consider Diffusion so we're not doing this." when it's your code and you can make any adjustment you want, to make something balanced, isn't making much sense to me.

[HimuraKenshyn]

Wait wait wait how long is the recast on diffusion???? Ya'll can do better than that please....

[Olor]

Wait wait wait how long is the recast on diffusion???? Ya'll can do better than that please....

OMG BLU might be able to apply an okay buff every 10 minutes PANIC. PANIC.

Seriously - worst excuse ever. None of our buffs are gamebreaking even if they lasted the full 10 minutes. Making us set EVEN MORE SPELLS to get another tier of fast cast when that's not the main problem is not a solution. Stuff like Nature's Meditation casts pretty fast already - the JA delay still kills us.

[Mefuki]

Making us set EVEN MORE SPELLS to get another tier of fast cast when that's not the main problem is not a solution.

And, again, fat lot of good that does for us when our traits gained by spells set starts at Fast Cast .5 AND the spells we DO have to set to try(and I DO mean, try) to over come it are mostly useless. Which, according to the other BLU thread, SE seems OK with and they'd rather scrounge around for new spells to make up for the large amount of potentially useful spells already present in the game but are just broken or not "high level spells"...

[Rwolf]

I agree with Mefuki, that's a lame reason not to give Blue Mage decent duration on buffs as Mefuki stated you can just impose a duration penalty on Diffusion to balance it out. And can they stop trying to fix Blue Mage through new spells and traits. New spells and traits are awesome and all but they should be supplemental and interchangeable. Not to mention there's no space for all of this currently. They need to focus on fixing things like spell damage, MP cost, set cost, magic accuracy, and buff duration. Then it frees them up to think about what supplemental additions could be added through things like job points and new traits/spells.

I feel like this is just piling stuff on top of a rug with stuff swept under. It isn't making anything better, all it's going to do is eventually cause more issues as the game expands.