Increasing Protect/Shell Duration

I found this subject being discussed within the Japanese conjurer forum and I thought that a panel here in English would be appropriate as well. As the title of this thread suggests, the subject is on the duration of the spells Protect and Shell.

I, too, believe that 5:00 minutes is an insufficient amount of time for these spells to last. The ability Roaming Soul allows the effects to extend to 7:30, but it is still too short.

While these spells are manageable during solo play, a frequently mobile party roaming the battlefield completing levequests or fighting notorious monsters would require many breaks in order for a conjurer to keep the effect on the team and him or herself. With a 1:00 minute recast time, it is important that Protect and Shell is distributed to the entire team all at once, lest either the close-range or long-range players miss out on some crucial protection.

I can foresee adjustments in the following manner:
- Increasing the effect duration of Protect and Shell
- Lowering the recast time of Protect and Shell
- Progressively raising the effect duration of higher tier Protect and Shell spells as they are included
- Increasing the amount of time extended to spells cast with the ability Roaming Soul in effect

Please share your thoughts with moderation.

I'm on the fence whether the timers on protect and shell reward mindful gameplay from meleers and mages alike, or if it should be considered monotony for tradition sake to always gave to plan your party buffs and have them wear off.

This game doesn't reward a lot of mindful playstyles right now with the easy mp regen and mob agro blobs. I hate to admit on this board that I think 30 minute tranquility timers are more appropriate.

I also hate to admit that I take a little pride in managing my protect and shells so that they never go down, and also in herding cats together to make sure all the pugs have their protects on before we head in.

Archers though, I'm done lol. They need to bring their own I can never find them.

Agree that we need longer duration for Protect/Shell and larger AoE when casting these spells.

I'm not a fan of short party buff durations either. Self buffs I don't care since it's much easier to take care of yourself than a group of people. You spend most of your time eyeballing the buff timers on yourself and your party members so they don't wear off, then trying to manoeuvre around so that you can then rebuff everyone. It's a rather tedious dance to do every 5 minutes.

I say bring back the 30 min duration from XI and call it a day. I died 4 times today due to it wearing mid fight. I know I fail at buff management :(

I'm on the fence about this, On the one hand, yeah changing the timers would mean i can spend less time trying to time when to buff in between fights (when party members seem to have some kinda issue with staying still to RECEIVE buffs) or casting buffs on the tail end of a fight to overlap the last so i have them all together in one place. So that i'd have more time to i dunno, help debuff, actually get to cast more then one spell before everyone kills everything?

But on the other hand.... Im with Peregrine - its feels kinda nice when you can always get your party members buffed and squared away so rarely anyone is missing anything.

And yes... the archers... are maddening XD - on Thau i don't miss them as i stand right behind them when i cast, but on conj, always miss them .

I for one am for longer durations. Now I do not mean like 30 minute buffs, but something simple like 10 minutes total could make a huge difference. Or rather if CON could just get THM range of AoE that would be easy enough buffing everyone, even archers at once. I am sure it happens to all of you, but people never wait for buffs once ya start going, they all just do their own thing. The only exception is NM fights really where people are placed with BR to incap them.