Musings over raid buffs: MP, gauges, and roles

[Valence]

There's an odd fixation of having Machinist in the rphys job type being a selfish dps which blocks the entire role from being a support role instead, and so we get what we have today. Bards and Dancers that do about as much raid buffing as your friendly neighbourhood punchy monk.

I totally agree that rphys as a role and identity would benefit immensely from being focused on raid buffing, and that's why DNC and BRD still somewhat work, in spite of being ranged taxed, because while in rDPS they'll show in the second rate dps group at the bottom with SMN/RDM, and perhaps a bit above MCH, they still enable a lot of selfish or melee jobs that play into their buffs which isn't represented in that metric. MCH on the other hand... Well it's not a melee, let's just say that.

But, let's not push it either, a good BRD or DNC will output thrice or four times more raid buff damage than a monk easy. This is already good mind you, but it tends to drown a little into the huge noise of other smaller buffs like said monk's brotherhood, and others.

Agreed with everything about Bard; it’s definitely one of the jobs to have suffered the most from the rigidity and passivity of ‘party support’. I will never not be salty that they think ‘Esuna’ aka Warden’s Paean needs a bloody 45 second cool-down instead of an MP cost and/or cast time. Imagine if healers had to deal with the same thing. ‘Sorry about the Doom but I used Esuna on the tank, bye dps!’. I mean, I’m sure 80% of Bards literally don’t know what the song actually is/does lol.

Uhm, Esuna is not an oGCD and has a small cast time as well. I do agree that Warden could probably benefit from adjustments or a rework, but I'm not gonna spit on their latest attempts to make it useful, notable this tier in P10S and especially P12S.