Quote Originally Posted by VydarrTyr View Post
The reason buffs only last 5 minutes is to make you recast. When you're doing difficult fights that last longer than 5 minutes -- like NMs -- the mage has to pay attention to when the buffs wear off and re-buff mid-fight. If you make the buffs last 30 minutes, mages will never have to worry about re-buffing mid-fight. They'll just be spamming heal and occasionally throwing up DoTs. This at least forces them to pay attention.
In other words, rebuffing = maintenance, and maintenance DOES NOT BELONG IN MMOS.

I have a better idea. Instead of being forced to pay attention for routine maintenance, why not be forced to pay attention because the NM could, at any time, start charging a powerful TP attack that only the CON has a spell to counter?

There's also an element of strategy to it. Casting buffs generates hate, which threatens to pull aggro away from your tanks. Making it so mages don't have to re-buff mid-fight takes that element of strategy away. And one of the big complaints posted all over the boards is that people think the fights don't have enough strategy.
That's a terrible way of adding strategy to the game. Aggro management is the polar opposite of fun, as it's basically saying "How many fun things can I do before the game will punish me for it?". A better idea would be strategically using cooldowns on attacks that stun, knockback, etc. to maximize your effectiveness between trying to heal. That would add meaningful strategy to the game that's blatantly apparent instead of adding strategy to the metagame of aggro management which is a cancer on the buttocks of MMOs to start with.

If they auto-refresh in the middle of a fight, then that could potentially auto-grab aggro. Which you don't want.
It's not like they're asking you to balance your checkbook. It's two button presses every five minutes. It takes like 15 seconds, max, to cast all the buffs. I don't think it's too big a deal.
Then turn off stoneskin auto-refresh or do it manually.

A few minor inconveniences are not reason enough to not liberate casters from the tedium of rebuffing.