So with all this talk of buff bots and instant-cast beneficial spells I got to thinking....what if a new spell line was introduced which allowed buffing classes to cast buff "auras" that stay in place. Like the shaman heal aura. These auras would have benefits similar to buff bots without the stigma of them. Tune the aura duration and range accordingly. Thinking like a 20-minute duration with a range of 300, and the buff fires once a minute, maybe. This would also benefit raids significantly as buffing classes wouldn't necessarily need to split focus between rebuffs and the raid encounter. Lock the aura behind progression and make it have a significant mana cost. Good idea? Bad idea?
EQ2 does this. There is no out-of-group buffing in that game. If you have buffs, you cast them on yourself, and they are permanent until death. Anyone in your group gets the buff as soon as they join the group, and loses the buff when they leave the group.
If people are dying enough that players need to focus on rebuffing I think there are other issues that need to be addressed.
This is a little too anti social though.. placing classes in an area of baz... run up to a shaman and get shaman buffs for your level, move to the cleric get cleric buffs.. meh.
If there's talk, theres an existing place. No need to start a new thread. This suggestion basically turns all buffs into bard songs with a longer range. That would pretty significantly change gameplay. I also think that if buffs are not on demand, it wouldn't fix the issue that brought this up. People would AFK in the buff location so that they would have the buff when they got back from AFK. It would be better to have a hail2buff solution and kick inactive players from the server.
Bad idea. Auras currently work by placing an invisible NPC between your legs. The other thread is an extension of what is already available in game to decrease lag from POK buffers and hundreds of afk players.
