You know, I didn't think it through when I wrote the first post.
What I should have written is, "self only on buffs is bad."
Now that we have a 20% OE cap, there's absolutely no reason why the new profession self-only buffs can't be cast on others. It's a poor choice to buff into a weapon that is OE for you without continually getting outside buffs, since you can't count on those buffs not to run out when you need them most.
In the meantime, being able to get buffs from teammates for a wide variety of weapons will increase the value of our teammates and at the same time make a much larger variety of weapons viable at the high end for professions with poor weaponry choices based on their own profession buffs and skill colors.
Even if FC feels it's absolutely necessary to force us into molds... it would help for the professions being orphaned by these 'self-only' buffs and 'profession-specific' new weapons - in essence, all the nanocaster professions - if you created our molds and implemented them at the same time.
The designers are leaving doctors, crats, engineers, NTs, MPs, and traders in the lurch here. Our options for dealing damage are being taken away - first with the removal of the LLTS from drop tables, then with the LLTS/critical hit nerf that's upcoming, now with new buffs being self-only. And nothing is being added to replace or compensate for it, and no plans for adding anything to us are being announced.
I know things take time to code, test, debug, retest, debug again, and so on. I know the developers can't do it right away. But at least tell us, the unloved orphan professions, what's coming up.