I want to have a discussion about external cooldowns/buffs cast on other players. I’m talking about:
- Kindred Empowerment/Spirits (Kryian Druid ability): “Energize your bonded partner, granting them 20% of your damage as additional Arcane damage, healing, or absorption.”
- Power Infusion (Priest ability): “Infuses the target with power for 20 sec, increasing haste by 25%.”
- Fae Guardians/Benevolent Faerie (Night Fae Priest ability): “Increases the cooldown recovery rate of your target’s major ability by 100%”
- Focus Magic (Mage ability): “Increases the target’s chance to critically hit with spells by 5% for 30 min. When the target critically hits your Intellect and chance to critically hit with spells is increased by 5% for 10 sec. Cannot be cast on self. Limit 1 target.”
Past abilities include Tricks of the Trade/Thick as Thieves from rogues that would buff the %damage of the rogue’s tricks target, Dark Intent from Warlocks when it was cast on oneself and another player, and allowed that other player %spell damage and healing bonus (and then was a raid/party buff before being removed). I know there’s been others in the past, but these two stand out the most in memory from raiding in Cata/MoP.
What are your thoughts on these types of external player buffs and their role in the game with regards to raiding?
I think they’re interesting - but they can also be problematic. If someone’s counterpart in raid is the one getting all the druid beams and PI’s and they’re getting zilch, it’s not fun. Makes it hard for others in the raid to keep up, or on the flipside the person who gets all the buffs and is able to parse just gets hassled. Competition makes farm/re-clear interesting for a lot of folks, but external CDs/buffs that target just one player on week 20 of re-clear like this can increase salt intake.
What could be something that helps this but also keeps things interesting? Making druid beam or PI a short (5-10 second) raid/party buff instead of targetable on a specific player? Making it so those abilities are self-cast only?