~Poll~ Longer fights <Do you want it?>

[Soukyuu]

Not really. It just means their methods of dealing damage would be less direct. It's what differentiates a straight out nuker like BLM from a guy that stacks dots on the mob and has abilities with damage modifiers based on those dots to do similar overall damage.

This is assuming debuff design doesn't change. As far as I understood their plans, the current debuffs being additions to normal spells is "temporary" until they introduce a real debuff class. Even if said class would have some damage skills, they would have to balance them to deal less damage to offset the future use of debuffs in raids.

The problem with leveling would then be, why bother casting a debuff that takes 1% of mob's hp if the mob will die in less than 10 seconds anyway? Why not take a class that can push that to 7 seconds instead of the debuffer that makes way too little difference?

What you are saying would be true if we had longer battle times - then debuffs would be able to make some real difference. The longer the fight, the higher the impact of debuffs.

[Duelle]

This is assuming debuff design doesn't change.

Actually, I'm assuming debuff design changes. Just more in the direction of bosses being balanced around the expectation of the raid having stuff like +spell damage taken, Defense Down, Attack Down, and so on. Some can even double as part of a damage rotation (like with my Necromancer suggestion), giving the raid a benefit while adding to the job's gameplay.

As far as I understood their plans, the current debuffs being additions to normal spells is "temporary" until they introduce a real debuff class. Even if said class would have some damage skills, they would have to balance them to deal less damage to offset the future use of debuffs in raids.

This depends on where they want to go with debuffs. If they want to go back to garbage system we had in FFXI then we're going to have that circus all over again. You won't be able to avoid the fact that if the masses figure out how to make due without the debuff class, you're back at square one.

The problem with leveling would then be, why bother casting a debuff that takes 1% of mob's hp if the mob will die in less than 10 seconds anyway? Why not take a class that can push that to 7 seconds instead of the debuffer that makes way too little difference?

Why are you limiting yourself to the XP party thing? I prefer to look at game balance from something that can be controlled like dungeon mobs, bosses, world bosses and even stuff like hamlet defense. None of that dies in 10 seconds.

This is really where the balancing part comes into play. to ensure the numbers are the same while making utility nice to have, especially in 24-mans.