Nothing I said ever requires that. All I said was that if the combat goes longer, many spells and effects (like rage) can have more value. You brought in waves, I don't care if it's waves or one big attack. You brought in "I wouldn't have cast it", in which case in my thing then you never cast it, and you've cast something else. And if it had a duration, it might be getting more.
You are trying to put caveats on this that don't exist.
No, I did not make that claim at all. Because I am not comparing the Commoner to the Revised Commoner. I am comparing something to the Actual_Class. So the Commoner vs. Actual_Class wasn't balanced. And perhaps the Revised Commoner vs. Actual_Class is.
Please note what I am comparing. It is very different than what your understanding is.
I put forth, and then you agreed, that a barbarian that could rage all the time played one way, and that one with 6-8 combats felt, as you put it lackluster.
Assign values of power to "always able to rage barbarian" and "lackluster barbarian". I'm going to make up 7 and 4, but it can be anything. Now compare these to an at-will like the rogue. Let's say the rogue is a 6. It can really be any number, it doesn't matter. In this case the lackluster barbarian is poorly balanced against the rogue. It could be the other way - the always raging barbarian might be the one poorly balanced compared to the rogue. Or rogue might be right in the middle and one is too high and one two low. It doesn't matter, except that the ratio between the barbarians and the rogue changes based on the number of encounters - as you move from "always able to rage" to "lack-luster".
I had already mentioned that too weak is also a balance point, and gave an example of the 2014 PHB Beastmaster Ranger. Lackluster Barbarian may be unbalanced as too weak.
You said it held no value. I showed the value in it continuing. YES, to compare it to not continuing but still not spending more actions and resources I needed to pick the frankly stupid value of just dropping it. How else would you have me compare it to it not continuing?
Again, how do I show an residual value without showing a "with" and a "without"? And you've agreed with me with the "obviously..." bit that it has residual value vs. it not continuing for no reason.
Keeping this apples to apples, no additional actions or resources spent, please show me how you would like me to present "continue" vs. "not continue" for it.
OH, but this is the wrong metric. If I prevented 12 actions (4 "doods" x 3 rounds) or prevented 20 actions (4 "doods" x 5 rounds), that's a big deal. If I broke the foes into waves of 4, 3, and 2 instead of waves of 4 and 5, so we had less of them to deal with at any one time, that absolutely is a big deal.
Please go back and reread the original presentation. Duration is only the last two paragraphs before the summation, it's a minor part of the whole thing. The majority is about the average effectiveness per action, with long-rest-recovery classes often having some that are well above the static value for an at-will class, so needing to balance with low-value action as well.
