The end of Raidbuff - A solution for futur job Design

[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).


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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.