External cooldowns/buffs on other players in group settings

Community WoW Community Council
21

I don’t think they need to not exist, I think they need to be extended to other classes as well. I think every class should have a reason to be brought to the raid.
Right now there are 5 buffs
Stamina, Intellect, Attack Power, Magic Damage Increase, Physical Damage increase.

I think we could change Attack Power to strength and add agility as another buff, for a total of 6 buffs, with each being provided by 2 different classes.

Yes, this does add a “mandatory slot”, but, its able to be filled by two different classes. This will help classes like rogue who famously lack raid utility but have good damage be able to provide more for the raid and we may see more of them around.

2 Likes
22

Adding those buffs to more classes just makes them less original, and you end-up with the same mandatory slots, you just have a new reason not to bring underperforming classes: ff another class would have provided the AP buff, warriors would probably have been absent from the big guild rosters (except maybe for the Rallying Cry) during almost all of SL. Monks would probably have disapeared too except for Dormazain, etc.

Even more than that, the buffs are just passive increase to numbers. They don’t bring any flavor, they aren’t even worth being called utility. Same as most consumable, they aren’t a choice, they’re just a requirement to optimize the numbers.

I would very much prefer the buffs to be group-wide CDs for example. That would be an active, feels-good button than would bring some dynamic into the parties. It’s impact on raids would be lessened, making it less mandatory, and it would be something we can play with.

7 Likes
23

I just want having X class cuz they have X buff to mean something besides make number bigger for whole raid/party

1 Like
24

I do wish the negative feeling outside of rankings were looked at.

Buffs are awesome, but there’s no denying negatives exist outside of parsing or an external site. Shadow priest in CN, Healing priest every tier, a specific covenant(Kyrian Druid/Necro Warrior) to buff others but forced into a Legendary(Druid, but won’t matter next tier), Innervate being so disruptive to healer gameplay pertaining to disc priest/MW, for instance try playing disc without innervate at a competitive level.

I wonder if there are plans to address the negative feelings the buffs can provide so it can be a positive experience for everyone? There’s been many suggestions on ways to reduce this feeling both in this thread and throughout the forums/podcast.

Maybe the tuning of the buffs is out of control as well? Kyrian Empowerment for druids is giving some classes upwards of 10-15% damage increases and some <2.5%, PI for demo warlocks, boomkins, fire mages, spriest are not even comparable to other classes. Lowering the value of these buffs could do in solving both issues, if the buffs aren’t such an egregious amount. I’d love to see the buffs and how they effect certain classes be looked at, perhaps?

6 Likes
25

Def agree with this. I remember season one PvP people would not take or even look at druids who were not night fae. I chose necrolord for my brewmaster as I knew how strong bonedust brew and fleshcraft were but was forced to switch due to everyone constantly harping on me about how kyrian was the right choice and how wrong I was and look how that turned out.

26

Are you misremembering that fleshcraft was significantly buffed in 9.0.5 and bonedust brew was significantly buffed in 9.1? They weren’t that great before these buffs.

1 Like
27

Fleshcraft stun immune was so good and it was obviously going to get buffed for how barebones it was.

28

Even though we’re very late in the expansion and most likely all talent/class designs is final I want to add to this subject.

These buffs are ridiculous to a point where when most likely Blizzard will look at numbers they’ll not be able to tune classes accordingly. I’ll use Demonology warlocks as an example as the Power Infusion for them is roughly 2000~ dps. They’re currently topping all meters in raids and it’s likely there is nerfs coming to the spec because of this aswell.

If you’re playing Night Fae as a priest you’re highly likely to giveaway Fae Guardians aswell. To do this you’ll wanna use your Fae Guardians on the target you want to give the buff and then you can no longer use your Flash Heal on anyone but them for those 20 seconds. The primary holy priest build currently also requires you to Flash Heal once every 20s for your Flash Concentration stacks. One of the weird situations I’m finding myself is that I can no longer heal players that require healing because then I’ll move the buff to the wrong player. This means that every 1.5minutes I’m giving away a buff to make myself unable to Flash Heal anyone in the raid but them for 20 seconds. Obviously arguments such as “well you don’t need to do it this way” is true to some point but wasting a 40 second cooldown reduction is not optimal nor fun. With Fae Guardian giving a 40 second cooldown reduction on classes like enhancement shamans, fire mages, demonology warlocks etc it is just insane and will be the most logical choice for almost all types of content you’re doing as a party or raid.

It has come across in this thread (by previous posts) as it being a choice to wether if you want to use it for personal gain or use it as a external buff. I would argue for it not being a choice. The community perception of these abilities is that they’re considered external buffs and nothing else. It’s frowned upon in almost all contexts to use these abilities on yourself.

My suggestion is to make all external buffs abilities suffer great effectiveness if given to someone else or simply do not let them be cast on party members. Restoration druids innervate is one cool way of handling it that could also be considered for these type of abillities where you can give it away but they still get to keep some of the effectiveness.

Speaking from a holy priests perspective I’ll conclude what these buffs do to my gameplay and how they negatively impact my own fun:

  1. I can not use Power Infusion on myself. I need a WeakAura and have another player whisper me “PI me” every 2 minutes.

  2. I’m going to assign my Fae Guardian to a target for the fight which will wanna whisper me “Fae me” so that my WeakAura let’s me know to give them Fae every 1.5mins.
    When I give them the ability I’m now only able to use Flash Heal on them for the next 20s even if other targets may require healing.

  3. Since I’m always giving away my Fae Guardians my Unity (2nd legendary) is useless and has no impact at all on my gameplay. I could unequip it and I wouldn’t know if it was on or not.

  4. One of my cooldowns and my covenant ability is no longer mine. They only make me change my gameplay (e.g, forcing me to move to the player I need to buff and no longer Flash Heal anyone but the player with the Fae Guardian buff for 20s).

It’s definietly not fun playing this way as a holy priest atleast and it’s very likely I’m going to reroll instantly after our mythic progression is done to not have to do this every raid and Mythic+ keystone I play.

To add to how this may negatively impact others gameplay outside of the players having to give all buffs away - imagine yourself playing in a raid with two warlocks with one power infusion and fae guardian available.
The other warlock will passively be buffed with 2500+ dps and it’s impossible for you to even compete because you’re simply not being buffed. I’ve been using warlocks alot as an example in this post but this is true for almost every spec that even slightly gains damage from the haste secondary (Power Infusion) aswell as those specs with cooldowns that doesn’t necessarily need to line up with other buffs or trinkets (Fae Guardians).

12 Likes
29

I believe Hals provided perfect summary of the issue at hand. I would like to further elaborate on your final comment regarding two Warlocks with one receiving Power Infusion and Fae. If you are NOT the Warlock receiving those buffs, it also makes you “feel bad” as if you are inferior. It’s also a shame that recruiters and individuals simply looking at Warcraft logs or damage meters will also perceive the unbuffed Warlock as an inferior player compared to the buffed one. It creates an unhealthy perception.

8 Likes
30

The latest demonology nerf I predicted in my previous post is definietly a consequence of Power Infusion. Prievously in Shadowlands there has been similar nerfs which had been related to PI. In reality nerfs such as these must specifically target the effectiveness of PI to not ruin the spec for those who are playing demonology without PI. Without PI it’s definitely not needing nerfs.

Hopefully PI - amongst all other external buffs is reconsidered for 10.0 at the very least.

10 Likes
31

This has also been brought to discussion on the community in general in the past, and a developer response back then basically said “oh, it’s okay because it’s a community problem”. (reference: https://www.wowhead.com/news/blizzard-on-external-dps-buffs-power-infusion-kindred-affinity-325318)

Now we see an entire spec being effectively punished because they happened to scale far too well with PI. I’m a Warlock that doesn’t have access to PI in raid because we don’t have enough priests in our roster. Our other Warlock, who is a better Demonology player than me, is receiving PI and effectively further crushing me. On an optional raid night where we had no priests and no one was receiving PI, our damage was neck and neck (within 500 DPS of each other), but on normal raid nights with his PI he does 2-3k more DPS than I do.

And now, with this nerf, we both suffer - But he won’t suffer so much because guess what, Demo will still scale very well with PI. Me and other Warlocks who raid without access to PI will look even worse. As a matter of fact, I’m likely swapping to Destro once I get my 4p (hopefully my Vault delivers the last piece finally!) because of the nerf.

I heavily urge the developers to reconsider the stance they’ve taken on external buffs for 10.0. It does not feel great to be labeled as a not so good player because of circumstances that are completely out of our control. Yes, it is a community problem, but this community problem has now transcended into an actual problem in the game. Now Fire Mage will become the best target for PI, what are you going to do once they shoot ahead on the meters? Are you gonna nerf them as well and keep PI untouched, and create a vicious cycle where every class that scales too well with PI ends up getting nerfed?

DPS players don’t like PI.
Priest players don’t like giving PI away.

This really needs to be reconsidered.

15 Likes
32

I’m not going to lie, I get annoyed if I get Power Infused when I am not informed it’s happening. And not for the reasons you think.

It throws my entire brain off whack, because the GCD gets faster, so my hands, which are shaky, tend to press things more than once, and it causes me to overlap spells that I shouldn’t, etc. Like, the amount of times I end up hard casting Demonbolt because I got Power Infused is embarrassing, to be frank.

On the topic of the Tyrant Nerf - As I posted in the hotfix thread, they nerfed Tyrant when the problem isn’t Tyrant - it’s Power Infusion. This is an unjust nerf because warlocks who don’t have infusion will now be doing a decent chunk less. If you look at the logs - Demo Lock is top, but only because of PI. If you look at logs without PI, demo locks are middle of the pack.

Instead of nerfing Tyrant, they should have made it so, since Demonology is an outlier with PI, that Demonology benefits less from PI than others. And if other outliers show up, do the same. Like, instead of 25% haste, make it 20% or 15% if cast on a Demo Lock.

External Buffs are, to be honest, annoying.

They should be only castable on the caster. So priests can only infuse themselves, etc. Or, make it class-specific - so priests can cast it only on other priests. That way the class itself is still balanced around PI, but if your healer doesn’t need it - they can give it to a shadow priest that is balanced around it.

Heroism/Bloodlust is another thing that honestly needs looking at just because how easy it is for a group to be trolled in LFR or even a PuG, and as some fights, like Vigilant and Halondrus, are tuned around making sure you use hero/lust at a specific time, it can cost repair bills and wipes. I think it’s good to have that as class flavor in dungeons, pvp, and outdoors, but in raids, I feel a different approach should be taken.

3 Likes
33

PI just needs to be self-cast only.

It has been said before that these issues are caused only due to how the community acts but like… that’s the game, lol. If you give people an option to do something like that, they’re going to do it.

4 Likes
34

Its basically symbiosis for damage

35

I had a thought about PI this morning and wanted to get some opinions on how it might work in practice.
What if applying to PI to anyone other than yourself applied a debuff, preventing it from being applied to you again within that timeframe? I think part of the pain point of PI is when it is consistently funneled into one character. A debuff of this type (similar to Forbearance for Paladins which prevented Lay on Hands and other such spells) would make PI get shared around more and not just applied to X person 5 times in a pull because they’re the best mathematical choice or whatever.

What do you all think of this if it were implemented in Dragonflight?

9 Likes
36

I’d prefer it was just removed or self-casted only lol

14 Likes
37

Is it intended for Blessing of Summer not to be attributed to the paladins damage in the combat log as it is in Shadowlands?