2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

Then explain to me what the majority of people complaining about it thinks.
I understand what I dislike about it myself, no need to tell me what I think. That gas won't be lit my friend.

The majority of players aren't doing raid content, and are not affected by raid buff management to begin with. I can say that I've seen a lot of complaints about gameplay simplifications from people who actually participate in raid content, and removing raid buffs are a definite simplification.

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Originally Posted by vetch

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I understand that you're keen to play freestyle WAR, and you still can under the current conditions. Don't worry, the job intrinsically allows you to work on your personal expression/'build variety' however you choose to smash the keys together. You do you.

The point being made here is that the original complaint around the 'two-minute meta' was that it simplified gameplay. Your proposed solution to eliminate raid buffs altogether is an even bigger simplification.

You can try to alter raid buff window timings to an extent, but current raid content is designed to allow full uptime while doing mechanics, and there's always the risk of pushing an existing buff window into an intermission phase without targets. Just do the mechanics, it's not a big deal.

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Originally Posted by Rychu

Option 2 without a doubt.

I know it's already been said that "oh well the jobs will just be homogenized to do the same thing, deal enough damage to kill the boss" which is a pretty weak argument. Samurai and Black mage both have that exact same philosophy "no raid buffs, all damage", but they couldn't play any more differently from each other.

It is just frustrating knowing that every job has to fit into this 2 minute box, and especially when the said two minutes comes up during parts of fights that does not play well with said burst window. I have brought it up plenty of times in the forums but P12S is miserable on Red Mage because 2 of the burst windows happen when casters are forced to be away from the boss and cannot do their melee combo. And the damage of Red Mage isn't good enough to force a random pf party to adjust for you, but that's a separate issue.

I would prefer if they just got rid of all of the 2 minute burst abilities and move the damage to somewhere else in their kits. We can keep consistent buffs like bard's songs and maybe rework dancer's technical finish to do something similar instead of just being a burst window buff. This decision to have all jobs in a 2 minute window means that we will never ever get another job that is just sustained damage throughout a fight, because they won't fit into the burst window.

The 2 minute meta was made to make it easier for new players to understand how to play their jobs "right", but guess what? New players don't care about pressing their buttons immediately as they come off cooldown, meaning they won't fit into the burst phase regardless. All this does is force endgame players to play a specific way every raid tier.

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"giving atk up to the party" is as instrumental to Role playing games as "giving def buffs" or healing to the party, all these are part of the fantasy since its been derived from tabletop. removing them at all is a bland decision choice that limits the world feeling and vibes of the game, and overall more stale balancing decision.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I can say that I've seen a lot of complaints about gameplay simplifications from people who actually participate in raid content, and removing raid buffs are a definite simplification.

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Yes and no. Having a button to press every 2 minutes isn't that complicated.
Clearly if the meta remains what it is, you will practically lose just one button and it is still a simplification.

In my opinion, to modernize the gameplay we should move away from the burst phases every 60/120 seconds. Or rather, have classes that have different functions for damage and non-force output with 1000+ potency. This is above all to free ourselves from the homogenization and stagnation of classes.
At this point it would be better to have a few classes specialized in buffs and that their gameplay is highly influenced by this and that their buffs weigh heavily on both their own and the party's rdps, rewarding both those who buff (using them at the right time and/or on the right player) and team play.

Now everyone presses the single button every 2 minutes except for just a few classes (then okay there are fights that require you to delay the GCD but it's quite irrelevant since it's just 1 button).
There should be specializations to respect the fantasies also regarding the gameplay and not that everyone does everything but they do little.


This can very well be applied to mitigations etc.
Furthermore, it would be nice if some classes also had transversal utilities and not just buffs that directly increase damage. (Like mana regeneration or sch speed).

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

Yes and no. Having a button to press every 2 minutes isn't that complicated.
Clearly if the meta remains what it is, you will practically lose just one button and it is still a simplification.

In my opinion, to modernize the gameplay we should move away from the burst phases every 60/120 seconds. Or rather, have classes that have different functions for damage and non-force output with 1000+ potency. This is above all to free ourselves from the homogenization and stagnation of classes.
At this point it would be better to have a few classes specialized in buffs and that their gameplay is highly influenced by this and that their buffs weigh heavily on both their own and the party's rdps, rewarding both those who buff (using them at the right time and/or on the right player) and team play.

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Yeah see this guy gets it. People that choose option 2, don't choose it because "oh just get rid of it and let it be that". Option 2 is chosen under the assumption that getting rid of the 2 minute meta will free up the job designers to do different things with each job. I wouldn't want them to just remove the raid buffs, I would want it with reworks to job kits to be more varied. That is a huge ask to ask for such sweeping changes, but really where else can we go with our jobs as they currently are? Gunbreaker alone can barely fit their burst skills into the burst window, and we want to add more? For fucks sake those guys are drowning in gcds and ogcds while shirking or provoking the boss. Are we just going to extend the buff timers so that everyone can fit everything? I'm sorry but that is lame.

I've spent the last few days thinking my position through a bit more. As i've thought it through and read the discussion id like to add: By "remove every existing raid buff" I think it would work as a blank slate. Every current raidbuff is removed so the devs have 21 jobs with no party buffs so they can totally reevaluate how they want each job to function as it pertains to buffs/burst windows. For example, let's say they decide they want bard to be totally buff focused. 75% of bard's damage contribution to a party is done via its songs which it sustains over the span of a fight, not in short windows. This means a few things to start: 1. Bard no longer has any need to have a burst window as most of its contribution is via the party. 2. Bard can have a more sustained damage rotation similar to how it was in say, stormblood. 3. They can radically change how songs work. No longer would bard have to rotate between three songs to build up to radiant finale. Now one song can grant party members extra main stat for a few seconds and the bard can extend the song using its rotation. One song can be a flat crit increase. One song can have a tiny chance to decrease party member's personal cooldowns like bloodfest or manafication. Stuff like that.

On that note, because now dedicated 2min burst windows aren't a thing they devs can give jobs passives that reset personal cooldowns. Say SAM: Every iaijutsu has a chance to reset ogi namikiri's cooldown. Something like that wouldn't work at all now because if it happened at an inopportune time then your rotation would be completely thrown off the rest of the fight. In a world where buff windows either didn't exist or weren't remotely as consequential that could work and would be fun.

For the record, I think the majority of the issue with 2min's isn't "oh waah i have to press battle litany every two minutes". It's just the raw number of buffs that are on two minute cooldowns. If you have a comp of SCH, AST, DRG, NIN, RDM, and BRD that's eight 2 minute buffs. 8. Thats an insane amount of compounding damage buffs every two minutes. If they took some and put them on one minute buffs or even 30sec's for a few, that would go a long way to help.

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

Yes and no. Having a button to press every 2 minutes isn't that complicated.
Clearly if the meta remains what it is, you will practically lose just one button and it is still a simplification.

In my opinion, to modernize the gameplay we should move away from the burst phases every 60/120 seconds.

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Originally Posted by Rychu

Yeah see this guy gets it. People that choose option 2, don't choose it because "oh just get rid of it and let it be that". Option 2 is chosen under the assumption that getting rid of the 2 minute meta will free up the job designers to do different things with each job.

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Those pace-making alternative additions aren't incompatible with at least having something to fall back onto (i.e., the pace-making caused by raid buffs) when those other elements aren't in place in the given fight, though?

You can have shorter DPS checks set pacing for CD usage. You can have new undermechanics set pacing for CD usage. You can have all of the above. And you could still have raidbuffs atop that. Net optimization is still a factor regardless; they are not mutually exclusive.

Remove.

The more I have looked into it the more I have realized that all of the job changes people hate and the two minute meta are driven by raiders and these concerns:

- FFlogs need to be "balanced" or roles risk not being taken to raids. Oh no. It's not like the participation rates are balanced for prog anyway even though we have achieved this alleged balance. Players are always going to decide a meta party based on the current Job design regardless of classes being balanced.

- Job X gets envious of job Y when they have utility, mitigation, healing etc that job X lacks. Job X says they need what Y has bc without it there is no way for their class to be viable or fun. Class x gets what Y has. This is why jobs have become homogenized outside perhaps BLM. Once again it is in the name of making classes preferred for group play.

-Raiders complained that managing buffs for bursts was too hard so devs have made it easy mode with the two minute burst with no regard for how it affects easier content.

Option 1 works too but Option 2 imo gives devs the breathing room to get more creative with classes and focus on their roles and how they feel. If a class has a buff it should be relevant to their role as a utility centric class.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Those pace-making alternative additions aren't incompatible with at least having something to fall back onto (i.e., the pace-making caused by raid buffs) when those other elements aren't in place in the given fight, though?

You can have shorter DPS checks set pacing for CD usage. You can have new undermechanics set pacing for CD usage. You can have all of the above. And you could still have raidbuffs atop that. Net optimization is still a factor regardless; they are not mutually exclusive.

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Imposing a rhythm in itself requires that all classes are similar to each other in order to all be synergistically compatible.
This is exacerbated when out of 19 classes 10 "buff" (aka press the button every 120 seconds). among these 9 without buff of which 5 are all tanks.

My comment actually introduces several points:
1) the 2 minute rhythm is limiting and forces all jobs to have synchronized burst phases, force all jobs to work with burst GCD with 1000+ potency. (Don't get me wrong, it forces the designer to force the job into a very routed rotation where everything has to coincide perfectly with the 2 minute cycles.)

2) the buff should be part of the fantasy of the job and that it heavily influences the gameplay and way of thinking. If I choose MNK it's certainly not because I intend to buff my party mates.

3) Nowadays everyone does everything and there are no longer certain peculiarities that influence gameplay. Everyone mitigates, everyone buff. And they all (in general) do it at the push of a single button. (Because actually they are tools purely disconnected from the core or introduced rather forcibly)

4) There shouldnt be almost exclusively utilities that directly influence damage (inflicted -> buffs, received -> mitigations) but there should also be utilities that influence gameplay in some way.

I'm curious if anyone that wants raid buffs completely removed even raids. I mean completely removed, asking for a raid buff rework is perfectly understandable, worth discussing and high IQ, but wanting them completely removed is just about the biggest smooth brain behavior I can think of, I can't fathom why anyone that actively raids wanting to go down this exit route.

Removing the damage raid buffs, yeah. Replace them by other buffs, outside of a few like bard songs or dancer's maybe.
And yes I do raid.

I think removing the raid buffs would completely homonogize jobs even more. However I do want them removed and replaced with something else. The biggest problem is if you die or do anything wrong in the 2 minute meta we have right now you are completely thrown out of line with rotation and your damage tanks tremendously.

I hope they remove it. But unless they have been working on it since 6.0 we can expect the same.

Without the need to align so many things it would leave room for more varied rotations that don't rely on bursting all at the same time to capitalize on common buffs.
Though of course fight design has to account for that too.

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Originally Posted by Derio

I think removing the raid buffs would completely homonogize jobs even more. However I do want them removed and replaced with something else. The biggest problem is if you die or do anything wrong in the 2 minute meta we have right now you are completely thrown out of line with rotation and your damage tanks tremendously.

I hope they remove it. But unless they have been working on it since 6.0 we can expect the same.

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What kind of magical system will allow dying to not completely destroy your rotation?
It was the same with 3mins, it will be the same with any system that doesn't turn combat into lvl 50 levels of complexity which I guess is what some people want from this thread? 3 buttons and a 1 min CD, repeat?


Can I get an in-depth and real example of these magical varied rotations that will fix everything?

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

Without the need to align so many things it would leave room for more varied rotations that don't rely on bursting all at the same time to capitalize on common buffs.
Though of course fight design has to account for that too.

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Exactly the game is literally better without raid buffs design wise it would be way more free and have actually way more possibilities.
Some buffs can stay like the ones you mentioned but in general I don't think 120 raidwide buffs add anything to the game they just take away from the game at this point.

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

Can I get an in-depth and real example of these magical varied rotations that will fix everything?

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^

"Literal nothingness would taste more flavorful than having this burger for the umpteenth time. Just imagine what new flavors could fill our mouths instead."

/until_an_actual_substitution_is_given_I'd_imagine_nothing_would_taste_like_nothing

Removing raid buffs is an all or nothing solution that does not actually fix this problem. Let's take NIN for example. Ninja's rotation would barely change if Mug were to be reworked be a generic attack, and that any potential potency that it would provide as a raid buff were to be converted into raw potency, and spread out across the rest of its attacks. Ninja's rotation will still revolve around building gauge, and saving cooldowns for Trick Attack windows. A complaint that I hear often about Ninja is that its rotation is kinda boring until Trick Attack windows. Jobs like GNB, and DRK have the same rotational goals as NIN, and they don't have raid buffs, and they receive similar complaints as well. So if we want to completely remove the playstyle of 'do nothing until a buff window' then all damage increasing buffs would have to be removed including self buffs like Trick Attack, and No Mercy, and single target buffs like AST cards or DNC's Closed Position. This playstyle would persist even if bursts, and buffs were varied because it just moves the goal, and not the process to get there.

I don't hate the standardization of buffs, and bursts, even as someone who tackles high end duties, but I agree that burst focused damage profiles, and unsatisfactory jobfeel are problems that are intertwined, and need to be resolved. I think most of the solution actually lies in improving filler damage of most jobs. Filler damage takes up the majority of the moment to moment gameplay of a job's rotation. I think jobs will feel a lot better if complexity, and potency were more evenly distributed instead of being confined to burst phases. Jobs need fun valleys, and not just fun peaks. I think such changes would be possible even with homogenized raid buffs. To quote Doom composer Mick Gordon "Change the process to change the outcome." I guess this puts me on team rework. lol

Love how when someone points out a problem you guys just expect them to just be full on professional game designers, and not propose anything or entertain the idea. You just want to say "no".

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Originally Posted by Kalaam

Love how when someone points out a problem you guys just expect them to just be full on professional game designers, and not propose anything or entertain the idea. You just want to say "no".

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Yes I for sure will say no to ANYTHING that revolves around removing something blindly just to be replaced by IOU magical "FIXES everything I swear"™ systems
All you've said so far is "raid buff man bad!" "raid buff man bad!" "raid buff man bad!" on repeat

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

Imposing a rhythm in itself requires that all classes are similar to each other in order to all be synergistically compatible.
This is exacerbated when out of 19 classes 10 "buff" (aka press the button every 120 seconds). among these 9 without buff of which 5 are all tanks.

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Yes and no. It's required for balancing them across highly varied contexts, since you cannot have balance both across different jobs and different contexts if both significantly differ.

• If only jobs' ability to exploit those buffs significantly differ, not the contexts, you can just increase the less synergetic job's outputs so their total contribution is still as competitive as that of anyone else.
• If only contexts differ, then every job is equally helped or hurt in each context and thus job choice is not restricted.
• If both differ, then some jobs become slightly preferred for certain contexts.

Though, that begs the question of whether that's even such a bad thing, especially when homogeneity would otherwise be a requirement and we are comparatively free to swap jobs around.

At present, our only differing serious context is a one-off content form (Savage Criterion dungeons), so we're far from being unable to simply compensate less bursty jobs for their being less bursty if we so wanted.

While I'd be happy to see future-proofing for more content forms in the future, for now it's more likely that jobs tend to be more bursty primarily because the devs see the average players as preferring to having that dynamism in their output over, well, not having it.

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1) the 2 minute rhythm is limiting and forces all jobs to have synchronized burst phases, force all jobs to work with burst GCD with 1000+ potency. (Don't get me wrong, it forces the designer to force the job into a very routed rotation where everything has to coincide perfectly with the 2 minute cycles.)

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It doesn't, though. The design goal remains the same as ever: jobs should be competitive. If they all needed to have the same raw damage, then those with the best exploitable damage density would produce the most output, but not even every jobs without raidbuffs needs to all have the same raw damage. There can be a range between higher exploitability/burst and higher overall raw damage.

Consistent targetable buffers like Dancer would optimally swap Closed Position between the two, while non-targetable consistent buffers would faintly prefer the latter group and low-uptime buffers would prefer the former group, but they'd still be held in decent parity with each other, just like buffers and non-buffers have tended to be when one looks at more than half the picture (e.g., more than just their rDPS metric, for which exploitation gets no credit).

(SAMs having equal rDPS to a DRG, for instance, would signal an inequality in in-practice output, given SAMs they also produce more rDPS for the buffers they exploit through more potency dealt under those buffs, thereby producing more party dps for the same amount of rDPS -- just in a way that's hidden from the jobs' individual single metric.)

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2) the buff should be part of the fantasy of the job and that it heavily influences the gameplay and way of thinking. If I choose MNK it's certainly not because I intend to buff my party mates.

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While I'm tempted to agree, since that sounds more fun than just %dmg buffs, I have to ask: in what way? Even a rough example would be appreciated.

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3) Nowadays everyone does everything and there are no longer certain peculiarities that influence gameplay. Everyone mitigates, everyone buff. And they all (in general) do it at the push of a single button. (Because actually they are tools purely disconnected from the core or introduced rather forcibly)

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I'd agree that is a problem, but because of that last part: Most of those additional tools do not come out of the prior kits interestingly, but are instead obviously just tacked on (isolated and un-interactive).

To me, it's not a problem that Monk has self-mitigation. It literally started the game with the only instant and complete threat generator, counter-attacks, and multiple mitigation effects allowing it to snap-tank (just long enough to take the edge off the 'real' tank) or even off-tank (usually after ramping up and just for large dodgeable attacks or against adds, but still). All that is fine. But that shouldn't be done in the same way on Monk as it is on NIN as it is on BLM as it is on RPR, etc.

While interactions that give a pretense of depth on paper can often actually reduce the nuance available to a given skill, and there's plenty that can go wrong... we haven't even seen any real attempt to integrate them thus far...

Instead, a capacity is added to one job and then the creativity-vacuum sucks that up to spit out, sometimes cleaner, sometimes more muddled, into each kit the first job's competed with. It's yet more templating, rather than an attempt at role identity.

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4) There shouldnt be almost exclusively utilities that directly influence damage (inflicted -> buffs, received -> mitigations) but there should also be utilities that influence gameplay in some way.

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Agreed. That's far harder to design for, but I feel it'd be worth the attempt.

If there's one thing XIV seems to have in excess, it's complacency.

There does need to be something to allow more breathing room outside of that 120s cycle, options are plentiful but none will satisfy everyone. I just hope something is done because this is making things very stale.

It would be pretty fun if we had all sustained damage jobs with a relentless torrent of mechanics to keep you occupied while maintaining perfect uptime. For practical purposes, though, most players need a bit of ebb and flow in intensity order to handle fights, which is why you have periods of higher activity (burst) followed by downtime. These have to synchronize with fight mechanics, or else you just have free damage by bursting when no mechanics are up.

Burst is only meaningful if there are constraints placed on it. Raid buffs represent an external constraint by forcing you to commit your resources once you press the button. The alternative to this is if you script the damage windows directly into the fight itself (P8S Everburn), but this makes for an even more rigid system than the one we have.

Historically, there were fewer buff providing jobs, and the buffs they provided were more powerful (i.e. higher % damage increase over a shorter time interval). This meant that you saw jobs like NIN in virtually every comp. The current system replaces this with weaker, more diluted buffs, but spread across multiple party members to result in a comp independent setup.

I think it's reasonable to discuss alternative ways of solving these problems, but you do need to provide an alternative if you want the system to change. I'm not in favor of anything that blindly simplifies mechanics, however. There is plenty of content that caters to mindless play already.

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Originally Posted by Derio

The biggest problem is if you die or do anything wrong in the 2 minute meta we have right now you are completely thrown out of line with rotation and your damage tanks tremendously.

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Honestly, I don't find this a problem.
I don't consider it a significant problem, just don't die (ez lol).
The 2 minute meta (leaving aside the buffs) killed all those jobs that previously did damage in the long run. The 2 minute meta with bursts pretty much killed the stats to be distributed. But above all the 2-minute meta killed hypothetical ideas to keep the jobs very different from each other, even distributing the damage in different time windows: perhaps with jobs that work with micro burst windows following certain requirements, or jobs that would could work by keeping various dots up on the boss (taking poles apart examples). By the 2 minute mark they have put themselves in the position that all jobs are structured the same way.



For the buffs, however, I would remove them, or rather, redistribute them because as they exist now they are superfluous for the depth of the game due to how trivial they are: press the button every 120 seconds and the party will have x% more damage (or another way to say that it will have x% more damage). wow. currently everyone has buffs but most aren't
truly an integral part of the core of the work, they add nothing effective, especially because we are fed by the designers.
There should be some buffing-based classes emphasizing buffing and its optimal use. The others simply should not have this task because it is not in their essence. Their job is to vomit damage/do the things of their role that they cover and to put those who buff in the most optimal situation possible to do more global rdps for the clear.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

The system that we had previously meant that not all jobs synchronized with buff timings equally well, resulting in rDPS disparities. Some jobs like NIN were perennial picks, because a 1 minute buff aligns with pretty much everything. It also meant that your buff windows could be just free dps if they didn't align with mechanic checks.

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This is important. Clamoring for the return of 90 and 180 second buffs disregards the fact that during ShB, the jobs that were the strongest and had good synergy were precisely those based around 60-120s windows: SAM, NIN and DNC with SAM in particular staying at the top of the rDPS charts too, creating an imbalance, just like BLM right now topping the rDPS, nDPS and aDPS rankings.

This doesn't mean that the idea cannot be explored, but blindly going back to how it was without further thought would be a terrible move.

On the other hand, removing buffs from all jobs would have the exact effect. And there's also to consider that, if most jobs (let's say melee and caster) had no buffs anymore, then they will all be "selfish" DPS but that won't mean that they will all be equal because bursts will still exist and the damage of a NIN burst is not the same as a MNK's.

I think that we should have jobs with different DPS patterns (some with strong burst and weaker filler, some with strong filler and alright burst, some in between, etc...), as well as various burst timings (some having strong 60s, some being the strongest at 120s).

We already kind of have this with SMN, whose Phoenix phase is quite good, MNK's 60s having their strongest attack in normal encounters with full uptime, or WAR's 60s being mostly the same to their 120s. The idea would then be to expand on this so that not everyone relied on the 120s burst, as well as to provide different timers within each job and to make the filler phase not feel like a mindless 1-2-3 spam in some cases (e. g. NIN between bursts).

Why can't we have more jobs like BLM with less burst but continuous damage yet with the ability to pool resources to dump into party/single target buffs? Why is SAM's burst stronger than NIN's considering the former has a good filler while the latter lives or dies by their burst?

I think our arguments for or against the removal also hasn't factored in that not all of the current jobs will need to be reworked to be more sustained damage over the course of a fight. There should be jobs that are burst focused, that build up gauge to spend all at once on some big attacks. HOWEVER, the current raid buff system does not allow for both types of archetypes to exist, and I think that that blows. Let me give an example. Personally I would like to keep Ninja the way it is or close at least. Maybe their burst can be signified with keeping trick attack but having it be a debuff that only affects the ninja's damage and let them burst how they currently do. That's a very rough example, but you get the idea. And at the same time, you have a paladin behaving the way it did before the rework. Both players like different rotations, both get to have their fun.

To be honest, I am glad the developers made the 2 minute meta. Because it shows how much the jobs have to be homogenized to all fit into the box. The old system was not great, the jobs that had similar cooldown timers, naturally had the advantage in raids. But this system limits all jobs, both current and future.

Jobs may be homogenized further if we remove the raid buffs, they may not. What I do know is that all jobs currently are being homogenized right now with this system.

Honestly, i don't adhere to either of these options, I'd like to go back to the heavensward style. Away from the 2 minute meta, where you may not be able to align every single buff properly, I feel it allows them more fight creativity and more job creativity, I think this 2 minute meta has reached the limit of it's effectiveness and the cost is too high. Make good unique jobs and good unique fights and let us figure out how to best combine them.

Yes make sure all party makeups can clear the fights, but i never saw the problem with there being a "meta" it's like some fighting games. Yes there are characters that are not as innately strong as others but if you love your job you'll get good enough to make sure it clears all content and overcome meta.

Doing away with the 2 minute meta lets us get back to more creative fight designs like we had in Alexander, interesting and different style jobs like we had in heavensward. Allowing us to combat the homogenization that we have been seeing by the people who were once clamoring for the synchronized meta.

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Originally Posted by Aco505

I think that we should have jobs with different DPS patterns (some with strong burst and weaker filler, some with strong filler and alright burst, some in between, etc...), as well as various burst timings (some having strong 60s, some being the strongest at 120s).

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We kind of see that in other games, where depth of flexibly timeable burst is considered a powerful utility but is still just that -- utility; that is to say, its value is context-dependent, rather than something you can easily and/or pretty directly calculate.

Give us things within our encounters that would allow burst to be useful but variably so, and, as part of job selection, you'd be determining whether you want to be the kind of player who likes to take priority on this or that sort of responsibility --to have your value depend more on your ability to deal with this or that sort of mechanic-- atop the particular way in which you meet those and other responsibilities (by adjusting your rotation to hit its highest turns right as the need begins, and/or by banking gauge, and/or by adjusting the order of cooldowns, and/or by outright delaying cooldowns when you have to or for greater total damage, etc.).

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

It doesn't, though. The design goal remains the same as ever: jobs should be competitive. If they all needed to have the same raw damage, then those with the best exploitable damage density would produce the most output, but not even every jobs without raidbuffs needs to all have the same raw damage. There can be a range between higher exploitability/burst and higher overall raw damage.

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Take pld as an example.
The old pld could not exist with the new 2 minute meta and was reworked to be in the image and likeness of practically all rotations.
All the classes that were designed to have a sustained damage output over time have been transformed like all the others into burst classes. There is no other way out with this system.

Clearly, if we take shB as an example, leaving the 2 minute goal leads to another problem: some comps will perform better than others. Bad. But the point is another: why did it happen? why were some better than others? For raid buffs.
So we always return to the same point.
If you remove the raid buffs, or rather, you really skim them considerably, and these buffs become the main characteristic of the job that has them, these are used not when it is convenient for the user because he manages to take his hypothetically damage windo, but they would be used much more expertly, since they are the considerable source of their rdps.

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While I'm tempted to agree, since that sounds more fun than just %dmg buffs, I have to ask: in what way? Even a rough example would be appreciated.

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I think I wasn't clear here and you might have misunderstood, but in any case what you mean is a point that I would like them to valorise.
What I meant here is that a buff shouldn't be a measly button press every 120 seconds, but should be an integral part of the rotation.

Take for example the ast and the sch: they are 2 classes that buff (ok, the sch debuffs the boss but that's the story), the importance of these 2 buffs in the core of the rotation are completely different. The one for the sch is a button that you press every 120 seconds which is separate from everything else, the one for the ast is an active component of its rotation, it is its gameplay which is based a lot on its buffs and which rewards it by also unlocking some damage .

The fact is that if I take the brd, I know that I take it because they are a class that is based on support, its gameplay makes me understand it and I'm happy, it's part of its fantasy. If I take the rpr I take it because I want to hit Athena in the gums with my scythe not because it has a sad buff to use every 120 seconds. So I don't find the reason why all these classes should have raid buffs (that compromise the concrete and feasible possibility of get out of the 2 minute meta).

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As for what you mean and what I would like to see anyway, they are the buffs that do not directly affect the damage, and they could be mana regeneration for example, it could be the speed up, it could be the skill-speed. These buffs could change the considerations that are made during the content, also changing the way of approaching the fight.

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

Yes, it's another 2 minute raid buff thread. This horse has been beaten to death but I got a new whacking stick so why not. Someone brought this up on the xivdiscussion subreddit and it got my noggin joggin'. Let's say the devs leave this to a community vote. In 7.0 we get two options:
1. Raid buffs are put back on the cooldowns they had before EW.
2. Raid buffs are entirely removed. Anything that increases how much damage your party members deal, be it a buff on them or a debuff on the enemy, is gone.

Which would you pick and why?

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First option. Second option would actually hurt more than it would mend, unless it's made in a sensible way that the jobs considered support at their cores could find a way to retain the role. Like Bard buffing the entire party for the whole fight, Dancer buffing a single person for the whole fight, or Astrologian jumping buffs through different people for the whole fight.

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

Take pld as an example.
The old pld could not exist with the new 2 minute meta and was reworked to be in the image and likeness of practically all rotations.
All the classes that were designed to have a sustained damage output over time have been transformed like all the others into burst classes. There is no other way out with this system.

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Again, though, Paladin could at the time literally could have been made fully competitive... by just being slightly buffed.

Heck, it still needed to be buffed twice more after its rehaul (6.4 and 6.5), so clearly just shuffling around when that damage was dealt was not enough.

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Clearly, if we take shB as an example, leaving the 2 minute goal leads to another problem: some comps will perform better than others. Bad. But the point is another: why did it happen? why were some better than others? For raid buffs.

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Not really, no. The majority of Shadowbringers' raid balance woes was from non-buffers overperforming, not underperforming.

It just happened that jobs with no business looking at rDPS for their measure of balance complained that their rDPS was fell below other jobs' (as it should, because it's still missing a good 3-5% of their additional value over other jobs with lesser ability to exploit buffs, which is only accounted for within the aDPS metric, with neither side alone telling the whole story of the value buffers bring).

BLM generally remained on top in rDPS and SAM near the top in rDPS despite their offering more value than anyone else from constant and finite-duration raid buffs, respectively, outside of the usual issues of minor outliers (SMN just wiping everyone else off the table in Ifrit/Garuda and Shiva, and later OoD, etc.).

And even before Shadowbringers, the problem was less that there was a meta comp or better performing jobs on the basis of raid buffs... as that there were set comps (outside of NIN being able to glide between whatever).

By late Stormblood, the best comp for a RDM could have damn near equal party dps to the best comp for SAM as the best comp for BRD as the best comp for DRG, etc., etc.; the issue was just that once you had jobs A, B, and C you wanted jobs D, E, and F, not jobs G, H, I, J, K, L, or M.

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What I meant here is that a buff shouldn't be a measly button press every 120 seconds, but should be an integral part of the rotation.

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Yours? Theirs?

If it's a vital part of your rotation, then you'd have to keep your rotation synced to the time others could most benefit from it, likely meaning you must follow a specific GCD tier and/or rotation, which would be less flexible even than what we have now (though obviously some jobs, like DRG, will be less flexible than others, like MNK/SAM).

If it's a vital part of their rotation or otherwise affects their gameplay in some pace-setting way, too, then they doubly have to keep synced to your actions, too. Again, not an increase in flexibility. Quite the opposite.

It comes down to the details for any of these implementations. What flexibility are you willing to give up? What is the threshold for something being "integral"?

Arcane Circle, for instance, is already useful to RPR's rotation, and Brotherhood to Monk's, regardless of their 3% and 5% buffs, respectively. Does that count, or is it something entirely separate?

Let's say we made it Chain Stratagem would cause each Crit landed on an enemy to increase their chance to be critically struck.

Does that change behaviors or otherwise make it any more integral to gameplay than the mere more direct damage increase of +10% crit? In itself, no.

There'd need to be available compromises between total damage and more opportunities to crit, so that before and after reaching a certain Chain Strategem stacks threshold given one's crit chance, you'd prioritize A and then prioritize B.

Maybe we go further, and make it so every job had some sort on-Crit proc, and many had ways to force a crit (revised Kaiten, certain procced arrows, Berserk, Life Surge, what have you), and Battle Voice would increase all proc chances by 25% (of their existing chances, so Repertoire becomes guaranteed), while Battle Litany stays as a crit.

Now they would all have gameplay effect, of some sort, that makes their value that bit more contextual. But would that at all redeem them in your eyes? What are you looking for here?

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The one for the sch is a button that you press every 120 seconds which is separate from everything else, the one for the ast is an active component of its rotation, it is its gameplay which is based a lot on its buffs and which rewards it by also unlocking some damage .

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...When Divination was actually linked to the grade, I'd agree, but... they are quite functionally identical now in single-target combat. It's just that SCH has and rDPS buff and a utility buff (Expedient), while AST has two purely rDPS buffs.

Now, thematically, if I were to make just one of them a buff job, and knowing what I do of their history in this game (had I known nothing of how XIV planned to implement each or seen only their ability names across the multiple languages, I would likely have gone with making SCH the buffer instead, but w/e), yeah, I'd make AST the buffer over SCH. But...

At the same time... does Chain Stratagem harm SCH's identity through its inclusion? Is it mutually exclusive with some other, more "XIV SCH-like" action that SCH would/likely could otherwise have had? Does it harm AST's, WHM's, and SGE's by association? I am not convinced it does any of those things.

As such, I don't see an issue in SCH's one-off raidbuff except in that could at least be more interesting for the SCH itself (and, per my preference for more staggered timers, perhaps could have been more engaging for the party as a whole if introduced in some other way).

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As for what you mean and what I would like to see anyway, they are the buffs that do not directly affect the damage, and they could be mana regeneration for example, it could be the speed up, it could be the skill-speed. These buffs could change the considerations that are made during the content, also changing the way of approaching the fight.

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Agreed. As long as there's sufficient context for them without also obliging them.

If a job can give MP with no alternatives (nothing else that cooldown or their MP-draining effect can be spent on) but no one has any way to favorably spend excess MP, then there needs to be a context in which that extra MP almost certainly cannot be excessive. But if you do that, then gameplay now depends on that MP-granting class being present, else the MP-receiving jobs end up with dead GCDs for reasons entirely outside their control, which will probably be far more unfun than uniquely granting MP will be to the MP-granter. (And what of the jobs that have no use for MP? Do we just avoid bringing them if bringing the MP-granter?)

If you give a job that grants Attack Speed, cool, you can hit new rotational/GCD breakpoints. Except, now you have to carry two sets of materia-ed gear, one for with that job and one without, in order not to be caught awkwardly between rotational/GCD tiers. Is that likely to carry a net improvement to enjoyment, in the current context?

Now, don't get me wrong: I absolutely think you could create a context in which those things are net gains or perhaps even have little to no downsides. But it's going to take a lot of very careful consideration and likely even some pretty drastic shifts in undermechanics.

• Games built around Stamina/Energy bars (with at least the length of a full rotational string before being depleted), for instance, can far better absorb differences in attack rate, because they take on a small amount of flexibly timed downtime in place of a lower base GCD, allowing them to overclock or underclock).
• If all jobs used MP, then we'd have a far better signal of readiness to burst at a glance from our party frames and %max, flat, or % of missing MP restoration or %MP cost reductions could be useful to each role without necessarily being identically useful to each role (may still favor emergency situations).
• Etc., etc.

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Originally Posted by Ggwppino

The old pld could not exist with the new 2 minute meta and was reworked to be in the image and likeness of practically all rotations.
All the classes that were designed to have a sustained damage output over time have been transformed like all the others into burst classes. There is no other way out with this system.

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What you're describing isn't a raid buff issue. It's an issue of sustained damage output vs. burst, and it occurs even if you only have access to personal damage buffs.

Sustain and burst exist on a continuum. No job is truly 'sustain-only', because that means that all GCDs are equally weighted to deal the same amount of damage. Such a system would have no decision-making, because all actions have the same effect. It's better to think of each job as having a 'burst profile' that weights more of the total damage output on fewer GCDs. You haven't really changed the area under the dps curve, just the distribution. Some jobs just have more burst than others.

The problem with having large variations in burst profiles is that it becomes harder to tune job performance on a fight-specific basis in a way that's fair. If the jobs are balanced for a target dummy fight with full uptime, then a timer-driven burst job will pull ahead the instant that you have intermission phases where you can't hit the boss. Your timer still ticks down while you're in intermission, so a greater proportion of the 'active' fight is spent in burst. This sustain disadvantage was a big complaint about DRK during Stormblood, which is why it's moved to the other extreme over two expansions. The PLD changes this expansion boil down to the same issue, but it was likely exacerbated by how intermission-focused P8S P2 was.

The bottom line is that large discrepancies in burst profiles can result in performance differences within individual fights, especially if they have intermission phases. This creates a selection pressure for all jobs to become more burst-focused over time. Resource-based burst can be a mitigating factor in this, because you're not gaining resources if you can't hit the boss. But resource-based jobs also have an edge if there's an external buff that you can pool into (i.e. Everburn). It's actually quite difficult to balance fairly under different conditions unless you impose some constraints, either to the fight design or job design. Some variety is good, but when there are large differences you start to run into problems.

In my Opinion the 2minute meta is not the Problem, but it's important that what you do within those 2 minutes is fun:
For Example 6.05 to 6.08 was the most Fun Samurai Gameplay, I've ever experienced since Kaiten also interacted with the 2 minute Buster. But without Kaiten, there is no flow state anymore, no Kenki and Weaponskill Interaction, just dull burst and no that isn't fun since Iaijutsu never changes and Ogi never changes, in fact no Weaponskill changes without Kaiten and that sucks!
Other Example would be Ninja, though I hate the Mug is now Trickattack rework (they should've switched Mug to boost personal damage and Trickattack unchanged) but even with that change they manage to make me able to play NIN without Macros, which is at least one Good Point and unlike Samurai, Ninja at least had no skill removed, just changed for the 2 minute meta.. but still playable and able to have fun.

The 2 Minute Meta works on some Jobs better than on other and they have to Bring Back Kaiten.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

What you're describing isn't a raid buff issue. It's an issue of sustained damage output vs. burst, and it occurs even if you only have access to personal damage buffs.

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I think what he was referring to is that burstier jobs naturally take more advantage of finite-duration raid buffs (so, almost all of them), and those difference in performance increase as the degree of overlap of those raid buffs increases.

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The bottom line is that large discrepancies in burst profiles can result in performance differences within individual fights, especially if they have intermission phases. This creates a selection pressure for all jobs to become more burst-focused over time.

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Yes, but to an extent, that'd be mitigatable by just letting the less bursty jobs also have faintly higher raw overall damage (and therefore roughly the same damage under a typical comp, even if still just faintly, faintly behind the burstier jobs' performance in the most stacked 15s raid buffs comp possible).

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...a timer-driven burst job will pull ahead the instant that you have intermission phases where you can't hit the boss...
...Resource-based burst can be a mitigating factor in this, because you're not gaining resources if you can't hit the boss.

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Aye.

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Some variety is good, but when there are large differences you start to run into problems.

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Pretty much this, though I suspect we could have a larger range than we currently do if there was at least some compensation for being less bursty.

Just a reminder that this 2 min meta is what people asked for.

People who hardcore raided in previous expansions wanted this, they gave them what they asked for and people are still whining.

FF14 has it's flaws, but goddamn does it have to be tiring to be a dev and see people react like this to things they said they wanted.

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Originally Posted by Llynethil

People who hardcore raided in previous expansions wanted this, they gave them what they asked for and people are still whining.

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Find me the hardcore raiders who asked for this? Even Yoshida's interview frames the complaints as a matter of being "too hard" for more casual players, not for the actually "hardcore", to whom such was already customary.

Let's be real a second: Square has their own vision for the game, their own plans. Especially for stuff as big as how it's balanced and the overall fight/job design.
Apparently it is to make it the most balanced (and easy to balance) system that is the smoothest possible so anyone can go in and do decently.
The homogenization toward the 2 minute burst window goes toward that goal.
If just a few people asked stuff such as "make it easier to align for buffs" or "X mechanic is a bit too present" they can just use that as a justification: "The community asked for it" but "the community" can be 3 posts that got something way different to what they asked (DRKs wanted Dark Arts to be less spammed, not removed entirely) or a genuine demand that happened to align with their vision.

I wouldn't remove buffs, but I'd try to intentionally desync buffs, or create odd pairs like 90s party buffs, 2m party buffs, 3m party buffs. People will always try to optimize, but fight design was a hell of a lot better in stormblood than it is now, and part of it was not having these godawful DPS checks in a burst meta where most of the party's damage happens during a 20s window every 2 minutes.

Hell, as much as I hated PLD's old design, I know some people liked it, clunky bloated jank and all. Aligning it to the 1/2m meta was positive for the class in general, but in specific is bad. Its rotation feels a lot less full of life than it was before despite the issues it had.

Likewise, classes like BLM or SAM, true over-time damage classes, waned heavily compared to classes that can burst. I want bursty classes like NIN, but I also want sustained damage classes.

The biggest change I want to see though, truly, is the removal of multiplicative buff stacking if nothing else, as well as, if it can be managed, the removal of snapshotting. This entire debacle is almost entirely caused by the insanity that is multiplicative buff stacking combined with snapshotting. It's what broke Summoner in HW, it's part of what made Bard/MCH/DRG/Nin? broken in SB, it's completely shattering the enjoyment of the game now when you have DPS variance high enough to fail a DPS check because you didn't stack buffs correctly.

Easier content with looser DPS checks, but with classes with more personality to them was vastly more fun than what we have now. I miss stormblood, even if I didn't like some classes like DRK because they were too busy in an annoying way.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Again, though, Paladin could at the time literally could have been made fully competitive... by just being slightly buffed.

Heck, it still needed to be buffed twice more after its rehaul (6.4 and 6.5), so clearly just shuffling around when that damage was dealt was not enough.

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Not when in the party you have 5 classes that buff ~4% of damage in which they go in stack where the more potency you vomit in that window and the more damage you do to the boss even reaching 20+% additional damage. without gcd potency 1000+ plus crit (statistic now too more significant than the others), you are not competitive. You really produce too much more damage during the phases where the buffs are activated, but because there are too many of them and therefore they become too significant for the dps check. And this in itself penalized him, then throw in the downtime phases where the boss is untargetable and the omelette is done.
It should have been heavily buffed.

If you remove the raid buffs from practically all the classes and give them to only a few and these are responsible due to their functioning to always keep up all the various buffs (raid and single target), the old pld can be always competitive, as can be all the classes that instead of having a mega burst every 2 minutes have a smaller one every 30 seconds, or perhaps others that work with dots, or others where the autoattack is a significant component of the damage, or for the classes that do incremental damage, or classes that do combo damage, or classes that do I don't know, other infinite possibilities. But no, everyone must respect the 2 minute meta. all jobs same with 15 seconds to vomit the big damage and then have all the rest filler.

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Now, thematically, if I were to make just one of them a buff job, and knowing what I do of their history in this game (had I known nothing of how XIV planned to implement each or seen only their ability names across the multiple languages, I would likely have gone with making SCH the buffer instead, but w/e), yeah, I'd make AST the buffer over SCH. But...

At the same time... does Chain Stratagem harm SCH's identity through its inclusion? Is it mutually exclusive with some other, more "XIV SCH-like" action that SCH would/likely could otherwise have had? Does it harm AST's, WHM's, and SGE's by association? I am not convinced it does any of those things.

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Well one has its core based on managing damage/healing with aetherflow, the other has a core based on buffing teammates. Who should be the buffer?
The fact Is that there are too many selfish classes that have given a buff to the entire party that, if it doesn't exist, literally changes nothing because the core absolutely doesn't take it into account.

Why would the mnk have a buff that buffs damage to everyone? Why doesn't he buff himself but the entire party? Given that its core doesn't suggest at all that the mnk is a class that provides support, but more of an ace to carry? But the same can be said for the rpr, the drg, the nin. But also to the rdm, the smn (since they introduced it as a personal raid buff and not the pet's) and the sch. They are all classes that buffing is not part of their core, it is not their essence, and I don't see why they should have it, especially if it limits the design of new jobs and reworks.

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Agreed. As long as there's sufficient context for them without also obliging them.

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Absolutely agree.
Take the sch with "Expedient": it is a skill that buffs the speed of other players. If this skill is not used it does not change anyone's life, if it is used it can simplify the movement of the players by giving them a little breathing room, perhaps even making them extremely optimize some GCDs for the casters.

A mana regen example: how many times does it happen that someone dies in a raid, the healer ress him and then maybe has difficulty keeping someone alive because has no longer mana. Mana regen it's a skill that helps the party, in this precisely case helps the healer not to drown. Its to be avoided, however, to design jobs in such a way that everyone at some point can't continue without this mana regen being used.

BRD and MCH have never been broken in SB, DRG was. BRD and MCH without its piercing debuff were subpar, and even with it they still had that ranged tax already, and were not competitive with melees already (except perhaps bard when it got out of hand from crit itemization in alphascape). HW was a different story due to cast times, but it was counterbalanced by losing damage when MP/TP supporting the party, which could be mandatory.

I do agree that the battle system was better and more intricate and flavorful in SB, but let's not fall into the rose tinted glasses syndrome either.

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Originally Posted by Valence

BRD and MCH have never been broken in SB, DRG was. BRD and MCH without its piercing debuff were subpar, and even with it they still had that ranged tax already, and were not competitive with melees already (except perhaps bard when it got out of hand from crit itemization in alphascape). HW was a different story due to cast times, but it was counterbalanced by losing damage when MP/TP supporting the party, which could be mandatory.

I do agree that the battle system was better and more intricate and flavorful in SB, but let's not fall into the rose tinted glasses syndrome either.

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To be fair, Machinist was literally completely broken, or do we not remember the fiasco that was the heat bar and its extremely technical, extremely limited burst rotation that required a 10ms ping and a ton of finger walking to execute correctly? The joke for MCH was that there were dozens of MCHs playing. DOZENS! It is one of only 3 examples of truly broken classes. AST from HW was also broken (couldn't heal content, literally dead on launch,) and SMN (hw and SB, buff stacking and buff snapshotting let it do so much more damage than intended combined with a rotation so hard for most people to merely approach made it impossible to balance. Esp. since so many skills were shared with Scholar at the time. For SB+, using oGCDs to get more wyrmwaves out of bahamut.)

Also, if I remember correctly, the meta comp for much of stormblood was, actually, drg+mch+brd+smn with war/drk and AST/SCH as the final picks. The buff stacking was actually bonkers, ranged tax or no. And with the buff gods aligned, MCH could put out absolutely ridiculous wildfires due to just how, exactly, it was broken in that expansion.