well even on some of the boss fights in XIII you could A) debuff and finish the fight in about 10 minutes or less or B) not debuff and take twice as long or longer to kill it.

Anywho, besides the debuffs, what about buffs? Did we lose Shell or did I just misread the information? I remember reading about a spell like Stoneskin and a spell like Protect (or is it going to be flat out "Wall" spell and combine the two, if so that's lame :/ )