Lets talk about Buff Spells

I hoped .... Hoped that buffs would find their way back on my bar this build. Buffs in general need to have their duration increased to 10 min or so. Now i am talking about long term buffs like dex / str / int. Short term buffs seem to be in a decent place for duration.

As is Certain buffs start at 40s and other at 60s .... i am sure this is a bug as the intelligence buff seems to be at max value with 1 pt in it. These buffs hardly last long enough for combat. This gets to be very tedious and annoying to have to constantly recast these buffs. Starting duration of 10 min and increasing the duration up to 15min at 60 and 20 min at 100 would be acceptable curves for these spells.

Hopefully i am not alone .... If you are wanting to keep these spells on these supper short durations then the effect needs to be tripled almost. as is very few of them are worth while. Int buff is apart of your rotation if your a mage. that's about it since mages have almost no source of damage.

 

I think buffs should last a combat, two if they're short. If there's some duration to be changed, i'd go for shorten combats through progressive iteration of the combat system better than make buffs something i use and forget about.

If they are deemed weak i'd go for the power increase... maybe changing them so they enhance your stats by increasing them a % of your base stats instead of a fixed number?

 

I would like if you at least could see on the glyph if a buff or a debuff is currently active.
So to prevent using it to early wasting focus

 

I somewhat agree with you on this ....

Buffs in their current state need to last longer..... The end design for buffs I agree you should have 3 types

Short term (action buffs) Forced actions like dodge / Tumble which are combat modifiers
Mid term ( Buffs lasting 20-30s ) Powerful buffs that take effort to maintain
Long term ( Buffs Lasting 10+min) These are buffs you cast on your self to improve your game session. +10 int for 15 min ... ect ect

Short Term buffs need to have their focus requirements removed.... I do not see why they even have them in the first place... the use of a GCD seems cost enough.

Mid term Buffs are actually in a great place. These are buffs like Flurry / Sprint

Long Term Buffs. These buffs can't make up their mind .... right now either they need to be mid range buffs and their effects magnified 5x .... or stay in their current form and the durration increased by 10x. I see that we could have a play style of a bard esc buffer in a group... so keeping the Duration down to 5 min seems reasonable.

Possible fixes.... Focus Tree in strategy needs a lot of work. Mind wipe for instance seems not worth the spot on the toolbar. I would impliment a Buff Durration increase passive and a Buff Effect increase passive. This would be a great place for this. Make it double the durration of buffs casted and or something like that.

 

You see, i don't see the point in any buff to last 10 to 15 minutes. I think about them as a temporal amplifier of your character output via increasing your main stat; if you want to keep them active during all the combat, renew it or make the combat short. Long lasting buffs tend to become mandatory on partys, and then all the content needs to be created taking in consideration that everybody is going into combat with increased strength, increased dexterity, increased intelligence. I don't want that.

It's my understanding that even when we changed the progression system, combat experience should be similar to the previous one, so i'd say that damage and performance issues will be addressed in some releases. If deemed as weak they can increase/decrease the stats they give... but i don't see a fair reason to give them such power increase or such duration increase.

 

Kuba ... while i agree with you ... i really do ... and i am ok with that ... but they need to make them worth the GCD then .... this means they need to be quite a bit stronger.... if not 2.5x stronger at a min. A great balance is the Mid range buffs like Flurry ... that buff is great as is.

 

I would have hoped to see some 'area of effect' type of buff preferably quite a bit down in a tree
oh and totally agree with OP

 

I could see AE buffs coming in the form of combo's to be honest..... some Chaos ability to cause that but doubles the focus cost.... Would be really cool IMHO.... i love the combo system and it would be a great addition.

 

the ability to buff someone else is needed.

 

How about the longer term buffs (inner focus, etc.) drain some focus after used but stay active until your focus runs out?

 

Yes, they did good allowing the "Enlightenment" and "Strength of Earth" spells to buff party members.

They need to allow more though.

 

I would go along with this if there was a proper means of targeting your focus regeneration. Focus in general is in a very bad place right now. The reliance on everyone in the game using Soul Tap is by nature bad design. Not to mention it's kind of a RP killer. If i want to play a druid esc type charicter why am i forced to dabble in the death magics to be a capable player.

 

Another friendly bump to fish for some dev response.

 

Yes, i very much like this ... It would be awesome if they rolled this into a "bard" esc style play where you could have one person in your party focusing purely on support with some heals and buffs. It feels like there would be much investment into the game for this to happen. All we would need is that the short term buffs be cast-able on others while making the long term buffs a bit more meaningful.