Evolved Ranged Physical needs Foe Requiem back

[Valence]

This is the prime opportunity for CBU3 to break the 2min meta and promote their newer, more freeform evolved mode by reintroducing raid buffs that do not rely on any fixed recast or cooldown.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because players are extremely attached to party wide raid buffs that are part of the core identity of ranged physical jobs and have always been (even in spite of MCH being severed from those for no reason). Just remember the outcry when ShB decided to remove the passive damage buffs behind bard songs?

I do think this would be a huge mistake for the role to lose that part of its identity, which it has already been struggling with since the massive battle system changes in ShB.

On top of it, players still yearn for manners of skill expression, and being able with one's team to decide when to use raid buffs effectively and when to play within them is arguably good for the game.

We do not need raid buffs on every role, but having those on range physical jobs would help.

Therefore I propose to bring back Foe Requiem or similar damage buffs that are based on the user's MP pool, dropping over time while the "song" is active. This allows people to use it whenever they want, based on their own resources and not on any arbitrary timer constraining battle design.

One thing one would have to pay attention to however, is to have guardrails against an obvious meta that would form in just stacking rphys jobs and each of their raid damage buffs, but I do believe it's relatively trivial to do.

[mallleable]

Damage buffs ain't comin' back.

[Carighan]

That wouldn't work, we'd just be coordinating buffs again. It could only be sensible if it were personal-only buffs, since then there's no forced interaction.

[Valence]

Of course we could be coordinating buffs again, but without any fixed meta on arbitrary timers, that's the whole point??

[Carighan]

Of course we could be coordinating buffs again, but without any fixed meta on arbitrary timers, that's the whole point??

To maximize damage output? All classes will still have high DPS points in their cycle and low DPS points, so naturally any external buff will be optimized to maximize impact on high DPS portions.

So say someone will math out that for combination of DPS A+B+C+D, every ~2:45 all those classes will "match up" and have optional or near-optional DPC in their rotation for the next 15-30 seconds. Assuming you could have a variable-length buff based on available mana, that'd just mean that you are now meta'd to pool your mana and every 2:45, enable the buff and have it run as long as possible. Because that's just faster kills than just using it randomly whenever you're capping mana or something.

[Valence]

And so...?

That's exactly what Foe Requiem was doing in HW/SB. It could further be manipulated with additions like manashift, or a second rphys, but it didn't make those options meta either. Like I seriously fail to see the problem here. Or are you against skill expression and team coordination agency at all whatsoever?

[Karuya]

Gonna be real, I don't think there is a single chance that damage buffs are getting entirely removed. Not a chance that bard, dancer and astro don't have a damage buff anymore. You people clearly misunderstood the "synergy actions" that devs talked about, they talked about damage buffs that were 2 minutes timer fixed, and we had way too many of them to the point it was at some point impossible to have a regular team without a single raidbuff since the only melee that didn't have one was samourai(now we can with viper + samourai). You people completely forgot the time where ninja had trick attack, dragoon had litany, astro had cards, ranged had their buffs and that was it, those buffs were absolutely not central to the game, people were happy to benefit from them but nothing was built around it, it might have been meta for min-maxxers but "regular" players didn't care about them.

I'm 99% sure that radiant finale will be a damage buff, it will very likely be a 5% damage buff but it could be something else, and it will be absolutely fine. Having a 60 sec flexible timer raid buff, and having only a small number of them will absolutely not keep the game in the same boring state that what we currently have. This buff will serve as a replacement for bard's "burst phase", since every job will probably have a powerful combo between 5 and 10 seconds long, bard has to have a skill that replaces this burst phase, and I don't think the wanderer minuet combo will be as powerful as other jobs' special combos.

To respond to the subject, like I said radiant finale will be a damage buff, I think it is easier for devs to balance a raidbuff by giving it the exact duration they want every minute than giving us a weird buff that would be mana dependant, so no I don't think we will get foe requiem back. Managing mana as a ranged would be too bizarre nowadays, we could get some shenanigans where people would use mana potions to optimize their damage buff, that would be way too weird, devs won't allow it.

[Valence]

Gonna be real, I don't think there is a single chance that damage buffs are getting entirely removed. Not a chance that bard, dancer and astro don't have a damage buff anymore.

[...]

I'm 99% sure that radiant finale will be a damage buff, it will very likely be a 5% damage buff but it could be something else, and it will be absolutely fine. Having a 60 sec flexible timer raid buff, and having only a small number of them will absolutely not keep the game in the same boring state that what we currently have. This buff will serve as a replacement for bard's "burst phase", since every job will probably have a powerful combo between 5 and 10 seconds long, bard has to have a skill that replaces this burst phase, and I don't think the wanderer minuet combo will be as powerful as other jobs' special combos.

Well, I hope most people are wrong or misinterpreted, and you're actually right.

You people completely forgot the time where ninja had trick attack, dragoon had litany, astro had cards, ranged had their buffs and that was it, those buffs were absolutely not central to the game, people were happy to benefit from them but nothing was built around it, it might have been meta for min-maxxers but "regular" players didn't care about them.

Trick Attack used to be the most meta centric and defining raid buff that ever graced this game. Everything revolved around it in the HW/SB era, so much that NIN, in combination with Shadewalker and the slashing debuff, was considered a must pick. It went far beyond than min maxers.
But like today, no casual or even extreme trial party gives a crap about lining up raid buffs. It's something that's always been savage+.

I think it is easier for devs to balance a raidbuff by giving it the exact duration they want every minute than giving us a weird buff that would be mana dependant, so no I don't think we will get foe requiem back. Managing mana as a ranged would be too bizarre nowadays, we could get some shenanigans where people would use mana potions to optimize their damage buff, that would be way too weird, devs won't allow it.

Definitely easier to do, and I also don't think we'll get something based on MP or resources back either, but I'm still asking anyway.

Why would managing mana be weird today when it wasn't before?
What's the problem with mana potions? That's literally what makes the game fun. That's what makes pulling out more flares fun on BLM as well, although they have unfortunately diluted the nuke aspect of flare on BLM those days.
Like what do you people have against fun? SE has an really bad tendency of removing anything that's fun like that, because it doesn't enter their design parameters. It's been the exact same story expansion after another.

SE should have the guts to bring back some of the fun in this game, actually, Foe Requiem or other things.

[Azurarok]

they actually do clarify there will be damage buffs but supposedly in a way that won't force a burst meta like before, which afaik only really works with sustained buffs.

If there's any job that does some damage buff in some limited window of time I'm sure the spreadsheeting folks would figure out the best timing to maximize damage of the most jobs and rotations would start pooling resources around that window, while anyone that has trouble fitting in that window could end up being pushed out of the meta.

[Carighan]

they actually do clarify there will be damage buffs but supposedly in a way that won't force a burst meta like before, which afaik only really works with sustained buffs.

Yes, that's how I understood that, too. And that's easy to budget for, if as a Dancer you give someone else +5% damage, that just means the Dancer class must deal ~4.8% less damage and it's a wash, and so long as it's sustained it cannot create and meta issues.