Low duration buffs

Why are low duration buffs in WoW? I'm talking about the paladin 5 minute blessings which drive so many of them nuts, and the magic amplify/dampen magic spells which for some reason last only 3 minutes among other class spells liek it. this is horrible implimentation. anyone trying to keep these buffs on has a big element of tedium added to the game.

there needs to be long duration versions of these spells. give a 15 minute version of dampen magic, and increase its mana cost by 5 times- there can be nothing wrong with that. same thing for paladin blessings. or, a "long duration" buff ability would also be nice for these spells- anything to increase their duration to wipe out the tedium required by these spells.

I'm also somewhat curious as to why gizzard gum just flattens alchemist potions. A quest at 48-50 gives you 50 of any stat, except intellect, for an hour. O.o

My "main" is a paladin, accidentally, and I don't mind his short duration buffs. They cost less mana than long duration buffs, and that's a good thing in this case, because anytime I have to Blessing of Protection someone (or myself) I have to redo the Blessing that was on them previously afterwards.

Yeah, it's a touch annoying to have to cast on a whole group every 5 minutes, but it's not that bad, and their mana cost is negligible.

Maybe I'm the only Paladin with this opinion, though. /shrug.

The only thing I can think of is they were trying to avoid the "buffbot" type behavior of previous games. But there are other ways to do this. And furthermore, you could severely limit "buffbots" even with a 15-30 minute duration.

Having to buff myself every three minutes with inner fire is driving me insane. There is no reason for it.

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I'm also somewhat curious as to why gizzard gum just flattens alchemist potions. A quest at 48-50 gives you 50 of any stat, except intellect, for an hour. O.o

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It's unique, its a boring quest, and you can only have one of the +50 stats active at a time. I agree 50 is a lot, but it hardly makes alchemy less useful. I'd have made them purchaseable after you completed the quest and made it +20.

A paladin I group with has a macro set up to put blessings on everyone. Not sure whats involved; but it takes him about 2 mins to set up at the start of the instance and then its really easy for him. Though as a priest I *hated* casting innerfire every 3 mins. It wasn't the mana, I just often forgot - I'd gladly have paid 2k mana for that buff if it lasted 30 minutes.

I think the Intention was these were supposed to be "Situational" buffs -

Especially Amplify/Dampen Magic. Not to Have up all the Time.

As a Matter of Fact - From http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage.html

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Arcane Intellect (Buff) - Increases the target's Intellect by X for Y min. Always have this ability active on yourself and cast it on other players that need it as well.

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Always have it Active on yourself.


From the Paladin Page

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A Blessing is a short buff. The Paladin can only have one Blessing active on a player at a time. The intention is for players to decide what Blessing is best for the situation and change Blessings depending on what is happening.

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Makes sense to me - They didn't want everybody to be running around with Every single buff available at all times.
Probably the same reason Multiple Blessings from the Same Paladin don't Stack.

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Originally Posted by Agent-Jesus

Having to buff myself every three minutes with inner fire is driving me insane. There is no reason for it.

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Same here...

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I'm also somewhat curious as to why gizzard gum just flattens alchemist potions. A quest at 48-50 gives you 50 of any stat, except intellect, for an hour. O.o

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It's a unique one-shot you have to keep farming for over and over. It's not like it's a permanent +50

I gotta look into making a macro for group buffing of blessings .. would make my life so much easier.

Gizzard gum takes some effort to get, as well as the others like R.O.I.D.S. and people just never farmed it. +50 to a stat is great, but it's also 1-hour and to get that 1 buff, you need to spend about 2 hours farming mobs (or the AH), and after that buff is gone, you need to spend another 2 hours to get it back.

Seems kinda balanced to me. It's cool, but is it really worth the trouble to try to have that on you constantly? Or is it to be used in specific instances? Would you use Gizzard Gum while soloing, or would you wait till you were towards the end of the dungeon and you knew the boss was coming up soon?

As far as the casted buffs, they are short duration to offset their potency. You get a short duration highly effective buff, instead of a long duration weakly effective buff. What is the cost of high potency? Maintenance. Mana cost is fairly irrelevant for the most part, it's the time it takes to cast the buff.

I'm not seeing the "horrible implementation". This isn't a game based on Time vs. Mana like EQ was, this is a time vs. potency thing.

You know, I know it limits me but i have almost completely forgotten about inner fire. Even when i did use it often i would forget to recast it and not have the buff for the majority of the fights i was fighting anyway.

At the moment it is just a worthless spell to me. Until they extend the duration. 3 minutes is insanely short, anything less than 10 minutes is too short.

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Originally Posted by Viixxiin

You know, I know it limits me but i have almost completely forgotten about inner fire. Even when i did use it often i would forget to recast it and not have the buff for the majority of the fights i was fighting anyway.

At the moment it is just a worthless spell to me. Until they extend the duration. 3 minutes is insanely short, anything less than 10 minutes is too short.

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I only use it for fights I know will last long. IE named or when I see a bunch of mobs that will hurt or have chances of hitting me. Also keep it up during soloing as I hate using sheild 24/7 since its a waste of mana imo.

I *HATE* the timer on my paladin buffs. God knows how many I time I cast them on a party during an instance -- I also can't think of any situation when I cast a different blessing on someone other than Blessing of Protection. Otherwise everyone remains with the same blessings from the beginning of the instance until the end.

I really wish that every buff would have the same duration, and the mana cost for them adjusted accordingly.

I think Blizzard's view on buffs is different than what we are used to from EQ. Are we supposed to have all buffs on us at all times? I don't believe so. Cast them when you need them, and they're gone again soon, making you decide if/when you need it again. As was stated, some priests don't even use Inner Fire because they don't like the cast time. That's obviously their choice and seem to have gotten by without it. If they up the cast time, then everyone will walk around with it at all times and there isn't the choice anymore.

Tedium should not be a big factor in a game. Constant rebuffing = tedium. I played a shaman in EQ for 5 years, so I know all about the tedium of rebuffing short-duration buffs for hours on end. I also played AC a while, and tedious rebuffing was one of that game's big downfalls. As a warrior in WoW, I only have to maintain one usually, which is a step up. It's still pointless, tedious and unnecessary button clicking every 2 minutes.

It's not an interesting tradeoff. Every two minutes, I hit the button. It could me macroed trivially. If something can be trivially macroed, it is too degradingly tedious for any actual human being to have fun doing, and should not be in the game.

It's horrible implementation, and one of the few things EQ2 does better than WoW.

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Originally Posted by Agent-Jesus

Having to buff myself every three minutes with inner fire is driving me insane. There is no reason for it.

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Yes, this is very annoying to me too and it is because I forget to refresh it, so in a group a lot times I don't cast it until I get aggro or right before I know I will get aggro. Refreshing PW:F is annoying enough and that is a 30 minute buff! It is the same with the shaman weapons buffs. I don't understand why self buffs are short duration. I understand buffs that are castable on others being short, so you don't have folks selling buffs and people who won't go out and fight without buffs, all that nonsense, but I really don't get it for self buffs, especially since some self buffs are 30 minute duration (warlock and mage at least, not sure about anyone else). The only thing I can think of is they want to encourage you to use the buff situationally instead of all the time.

I agree, buffs in WoW are highly annoying. One of the few things I think they really messed up on.

I think part of the issue with the paladin buff timers is to make the mechanic of judgement on fading seals slightly more interesting & active.

In general it seems the buffs in wow are terribly short though, even the 'long' 30 min ones tend to be annoying to have to recast all the time. I really wish blizzard had taken a page from DAoC & EQ2 and had group concentration based perm buffs & then still kept the targetedable shorter duration mana-cost buffs so that you could still drive-by buff people.

Shamans have the same problem as paladins, with the 5-minute self buffs. (On shamans, it's weapon buffs.) I don't usually bother with it if I'm running around, but they're far too useful not to use in serious combat. I never really thought about it before, but it is pretty irritating; there's no reason this can't be a 10- or 15-minute buff at minimum. I can only cast it on myself anyway, there's no buff-bot capability here.