I think it's funny that their idea of a buff to AoE is on the part of AoE you generally don't want to be using in a raid setting.

Like no one wants to Scatter the Putrid Passenger adds during o5s, you want to preset your mana to 100 with Embolden and Manafaction ready.

I suppose it will be mildly helpful for dungeoning? The Contre buff is nice at least. Now as we're farming Shinryu I will probably one-shot the little adds.

Overall the more I think about and review how many times I use these skills over the course of a normal fight proportional to their potency increases the more I feel underwhelmed.

On my best Shinryu run which is pretty decent I would gain 610 potency from the Verthunder and Veraero buffs. 550 from the Contre buff (though I get two off on multiple targets during add phase and some others hit heart and main boss I think). 450 from Verfinishers. In a vacuum that's 1,510 potency over the course of a run.

By comparison the BLM in that same run who had an equally decent go of things gains 2,088 potency from the Fire IV buff when you factor in Astral Fire gains.

This is not in some kind of hyper-optimized raid setting, either. I would link the log if not for fear of getting banned for it. This means that a BLM (who already did the most dps of the casters) is gaining more from these buffs than a RDM (who already did the least damage of any job) which just feels kinda odd.

I am totally willing to wait and see how it all turns out on Tuesday and I'm sure I'll be too distracted by the pretty new primal and scary new raid tier to care much about any of this at that point but right now it feels like SE is just floundering with caster balance.

Don't get me started on the radiant shield thing. Now it's just another reason for SMN to use Garuda and buff their own damage even more with contagion. Again, thanks SE.