The end of Raidbuff - A solution for futur job Design

[Shadyshawty]

hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

[Komaru_Tatoro]

quickly scanned the discussion here. dont think anyone suggested this and i dont know how well it would fare but i thought this change might give more flexibility to the strict 2min buff usage atleast.

- give us 2 charge of raid buff and increase the cd from 2 min to 4min.

one thing I liked about charge system the dev start implementing for certain ability gives leeway to use the 2nd charge anytime before overcap.
with 2 charge and 4min cd. the party have choice to blow their 2 raid buff in the opener or use 2nd raid buff anywhere before they overcap (4min window after opener raid buff) or 8min if they blow all 2 at the begining.

this can help allevaite the restrictive must use raidbuff at 2min window or lose usage due to kill time and also provide party to optimize on their own.

[Shurrikhan]

quickly scanned the discussion here. dont think anyone suggested this and i dont know how well it would fare but i thought this change might give more flexibility to the strict 2min buff usage atleast.

- give us 2 charge of raid buff and increase the cd from 2 min to 4min.

one thing I liked about charge system the dev start implementing for certain ability gives leeway to use the 2nd charge anytime before overcap.
with 2 charge and 4min cd. the party have choice to blow their 2 raid buff in the opener or use 2nd raid buff anywhere before they overcap (4min window after opener raid buff) or 8min if they blow all 2 at the begining.

this can help allevaite the restrictive must use raidbuff at 2min window or lose usage due to kill time and also provide party to optimize on their own.

It wouldn't help much at all. You'd still hold the second raidbuff for when everyone's 2-minute attacks come off CDs, at which point the timing is identical... until you get to minute 6, where you'd still have another 2 minutes until your second charge finishes cooling.

First charge asap - 4 minutes to cool
Second charge at 2 minutes - 2 minutes left on charge 1, an extra 4 minutes for charge 2. C1 cools at 4 min, C2 at 8 min.
6 minutes? No charge.
8 minutes? Charge up.
10 minutes? Nothing again.
12 minutes? Charge up.
Repeats.

This would be because you doubled the recast time and multiple charges don't cool simultaneously (and if they did, you'd want to use each asap, same as with 1 charge).

So you'd ultimately just have less going on while remaining identically constrained, and now needing to imbalance buff parties and buffless parties specifically around short (favoring raidbuff) and long (favoring raidbuff-less) fights.

[Komaru_Tatoro]

well the charge system give you flexibility. for example m7s' 8min buff window is during DD. that one not everyone can receive the buff because party is spread and delaying it means the 10min buff window is scuff and might not be availiable if kill time is fast too.

so with charge system, you can afford to delay it for x amount before overcap and does not affect the next charge comes available (unless overcap)

of course ppl can still use it on strict 2min due to how their job rotation works to burst like you mention.

[Carighan]

Wouldn't that just make the raid window alignment worse though. Since right now, one of the few ways it can still be an active problem players need to actively handle is if it butts up against fight mechanics when it comes up. And your idea with charges would freeform allow players to pick the idea "empty" spots in a fight for burst, meaning the relative percentage of damage affected by buffs - and hence the importance of buff alignment - gets even worse.

[Shurrikhan]

No, you can't use a 4-minute CD every 2 minutes, even if there are two charges (at least after minute 6).

And as Carighan said, the only possible benefit of two charges is to use them off the normal timing, but that means even more importance of one person hitting the first buff at the ideal time, the rest instantly throwing out theirs, and then everyone releasing their banked damage, which --if annoyed by the importance of CDs in windows-- just makes the monkey-bank-monkey-burst all the more crucial, as you can't necessarily know the new schedule without comms. And if that's only every 4 min instead of 2, you'd presumably have to double the modifiers to maintain the same strength, so...

More importantly, if you do have fully flexible raidbuff timings... that timing will still be synced to whenever the greatest amount of raid effective-potency (pre-raidbuffs) can be dumped. If those skills remain the same, then the raidbuff timings will remain the same. If they become more varied, then the optimal time is determined by raid comp, with some jobs matching better with each other than others and therefore being further preferred (with no counterbalance possible for that variance until you make some novel concern to compete with optimal overall-damage synergy).


______________

Last note: With buffless jobs (minus MCH) as strong as they are at present, you could essentially just drop raidbuffs off a couple jobs or buff BLM by half a percent, MCH by ~4%, and non-AST healer damage by ~3% (so, merely up to parity with BRD/DNC, at least in ST) and go for a buffless comp. Heck, of late, VPR/SAM/BLM/WHM tend to outperform the overall damage contribution of raidbuffing competitors until deep farm status anyways.

Given that, I'm not really sure that raidbuffs are... that much of an issue, let alone one that can at all be addressed separately.

If we wanted to make more potency bankable, we certainly could, and perhaps even change raidbuffs over to spenders for a revamped Limit Break system, with LB generation and LB starting point increased per raidbuffer present (perhaps varying job to job) or whatever, but of late I'm just having trouble seeing where the big reward would lie for doing so. Maybe I just need more time to stew on it, though.