FC Buff's reworked

After playing Final Fantasy XIV for several years one detail that tends to stand out to me is the buffs that free companies have access to and their benefits.

Most FC's lean towards the use of Tier 2 buffs as the gain and ease of access are easily the best 'bang for your buck' as the saying goes. While I can't deny this I feel like the old system should be modified to a degree to make the process of procuring tier 3 FC buffs worth while.

As someone who actually enjoys crafting and the process of building and charging the Aether wheels for Tier 3 buffs, as well as the look of a fully decked out aether stand in a house. The waiting time of 70 hours for a Tier 3 FC buff that only give a minuscule 5% boost over the tier 2 FC buff makes the process entirely moot. I am referring mainly to the most commonly used FC buff 'The heat of battle' which gives players a boost to EXP gained by all battled classes.

I believe that the benefit to making the Tier 3 FC buff should be rewarded for taking the time to not only craft it but also the wait for the aether wheel to charge and become a buff itself. For this example I will be using the Heat of Battle FC buff to explain the changes I believe would be most beneficial and make Tier 3 buffs worth while, so players would actively seek them out and want to utilize them.

Tier 1: +5% EXP
Tier 2: +15% EXP
Tier 3: +50% EXP

I have reviewed most Tier 1 and Tier 2 FC buffs and most tend to follow the standard setup of 5% growth with Tier 1 and 10% growth in Tier 2 with a few exceptions like: Man's Best Friend, Brave new world, Proper Care, and Reduced Rates. While Fleet-Footed also has different growth to it as an FC buff, it does not have a Tier 3 equivalent so I do not believe it would make much difference in this.

As it stands no one cares for Tier 3 FC buffs and they have fallen to the wayside of lost tools that, with slight alteration, can be made into something worth while for groups and FC's to strive after. I realize that some of the gains from certain FC buffs could provide large benefits, such as the FC buffs that focus on crafting and gathering skills such as: Live off the Land, What you see, Eat from your Hand, and In Control, but these changes would almost be akin to growth gained by materia slotted in gear, furthermore the buffs only lasting 24 hours as normal would make many FC's choose carefully about which buffs to use and when for maximum benefit.

I personally think that keeping Tier 3 FC buffs under a timer of 70 hours to make one while vastly increasing the benefit will truly make them worth while and cause several groups to really take a look at which buffs are best suited for what they want to do at any given time or even to collect them so an entire FC can benefit when a new expansion is released.

50% is an insane boost—way too much in my opinion, considering it is not very difficult to get a hold of charged wheels, if time-consuming. Even 30% is a lot compared to just 15%, but 50% is just way too much and the process of obtaining and hoarding them could become harder to justify it. Considering you can get personal equivalents of Tier III buffs from your squadron, it'd be nice to have some sort of differentiation, though!

While you're right in that 50% is an absolutely gigantic growth I personally think it is justified. Nearly all FC buffs grant growth in personalized gain, such as EXP gain, MGP gain, or slowing degradation of gear, only four specific FC buffs provide actual stat gain and those four are specific to the crafting and gathering classes. Because of this I believe that the increase to 50% wouldn't be game breaking but would definitely make tier 3 buffs worth while. It is true that crafting and making the tier 3 buffs is insanely easy, I've not met anyone who actively hoards the items in their inventory as once they are charged they can't be moved from a players inventory except to change them into an FC buff. Some players don't want the hassle of having them in their inventory while others might not mind.

Don't get me wrong, more boost is always good, it's just that if 20% buff is barely worth the effort considering you can't even consistently maintain Tier III buffs running no matter how hard you try (unless you have multiple FCs feeding a single one, which to that I say, insanity...) then I can only imagine how much harder they'd make it if the buffs were significantly better than Tier II.


I'd honestly love to see them allowing us to consistently run Tier III if you are consistent with it, nowadays you have to hoard them in preparation for expansions or such and even then you run out super quickly. A bump in boost would be good too, in order to encourage people to bother with it.

I don't think that even with multiple FC's it's possible to have a consistent flow of Tier 3 FC buffs because you would need to have at minimum three FC's dedicated to it, and be able to swap a character between all three FC's. While I could be wrong I don't know if there some kind of wait time between leaving an FC and joining a new one, if there is then that one factor makes the process entirely impossible.

That being said hoarding tier 3 buffs isn't a bad thing at all, at least I think so and keeping a large stock for expansions or the like isn't bad either, not to mention the usage of some buffs over big events such as crafting or even trying to keep daily teleport up is impossible, but to me that also means players will be more inclined to try and get them up as often as possible and settle with tier 2 fc buffs until they can once again activate the preferred tier 3.

The wait time between leaving and joining a new FC is 24hrs. You would be able to, but to feed a single FC a constant supply of Tier III buffs would be an insane amount of effort for a mere +5% compared to Tier II. While possible, the amount of coordination and consistency needed between members is crazy, considering someone needs to be inviting these travelling members back into one FC or the other as needed while they carry charged wheels back to the main FC. If these "delivery" members were real people, you'd be essentially forbidding them from being able to have a room and enjoy most normal functionality features of an FC.


If you want to make the best use out of your Tier IIIs then the only way is to hoard them and wait for a good time such as specific seasonal events, expansion drops, etc. But simply enabling the possibility to be able to charge wheels at a reasonable speed to be able to cycle them consistently. Even if it means you can't always have the same wheel every time or something, I'd love to be able to have Tier IIIs running all the time in my company.

I don't particularly care about buffing the exp gain in it's current form, it only applies to enemy kills and we're not doing much of that to level nowadays.

But they absolutely need to take a look at a lot of the other buffs, like "In Control" "What You See" "Live off the Land" and "Eat from the Hand".
A flat 5-15 stat to either control, perception, gathering or craftsmanship might have been big in ARR but certainly not 50 levels later. When was the last time you even considered those buffs?

I completely agree, the buffs themselves need to be re-examined heavily to make due for the current state of the game. Another reason I think a 50% boost is appropriate is due to the sheer scale of the game now. We have the base game ARR and five expansions, scaling up to level 100 for each class, and that class list grows with each new expansion so the amount of classes to bring up to max level increases greatly. The Heart of Battle should apply to EXP gained from dungeons and roulettes, kind of like the AFK exp does, or whatever that is called.

For context I am referring to the EXP gained when you are not actively leveling up for a period of time, it grows slowly over time and provides I think 10-25% of an EXP boost.

They need to overhaul FC buffs in general. There's like, only 1 I ever get any use out of anymore, and I don't even need an FC to get the most out of it.

The Heat of Battle? Farming XP through mobs is terribly ineffective.
Earth and Water or Helping Hand? Gatherers and crafters don't take long to level at all between society quests/custom deliveries/levequests.
A Man's Best Friend? Maxed the rank on my chocobo well over a year ago, not that it's very useful anyway.
Mark Up? Nothing left for me to spend Wolf Marks on.
Seal Sweetener? I actually do benefit from this occasionally, but... my squadron brings me back 5 a week so no point in wasting FC credits.
Jackpot? Been capped on MGP forever, and it doesn't take that long to grind anyway.
Brave New World? This is worthless even before you reach level 25 on all jobs.
Live off the Land, What You See, Eat from the Hand, and In Control? Completely negligible stat gain.
That Which Binds Us? So many other ways to get materia with redundant currencies and tokens, I'm surprised anyone even bothers to make their own.
Meat and Mead? Never got much personal use out of food so I don't use it.
Proper Care? Maybe it has a use if you gather & craft or die a lot, but I don't do the former and try to avoid the latter.
Fleet-footed? Jog exists now.
Reduced Rates? I stay capped on Allied/Centurio Seals so often, I'll never run out of Aetheryte Tickets.

At that's with all of them at Tier 2, where I can't imagine the effort to make them Tier 3 makes much difference.

Looking at the information you've provided, I realize that my initial thoughts to change just Tier 3 FC buffs is too small. I completely agree, FC buffs need a massive change to make them viable and useful, right now none of them serve much purpose so I hope that the entire system gets an overhaul and when that happens they make all the Tiers useful and worth while to get/craft.