2-minute meta

I think if they want to add a bit more variance to the 2 minute meta again while keeping the skill ceiling for hardcore players, they could change it back into the 6-minute meta. Buffs would be on 60s, 90s, 120s, or 180s CDs, and they would all line up perfectly once every six minutes. But if someone dies, or has to delay their burst a bit, then you can just use it late without waiting for the next big multiplicative spike of damage, or align it with whatever damage buff is coming next.
It would probably just feel better to have damage evenly spread around the encounter rather than completely bunched up every 2 minutes where everyone does twice as much damage for 15 seconds, and that one guy who died three seconds before the burst is just sitting there crying because he knows that if he died just 20 seconds later they'd be able to beat enrage.

I started in Endwalker, but even I can see the shell of what once was here not too long ago. I was pretty neutral on the concept until my old Tank main, Paladin got gutted to fit the new meta. Give us the damn DoT back, you cowards!

2 minute meta is really fun during that big burst when everything is off cooldown and you get to dump your entire kit on the boss.

And then there's the 1 minute and 40 seconds of downtime where you're bored out of your mind. I'd like them to spread some of that gameplay out a bit.
It'd make deaths less punishing for inexperienced players who die during the burst phase, and it'd make the 80% of the fight where you're not bursting less dull.

DRK is perhaps the most egregious example of this. It takes too long to build resources, and you're forced to dump everything at once when you finally get it. Real shame too because I LOVE the theme.

The most fun Jobs for me right now are those that spice things up along the way. GNB, BLM, MNK, PLD, BRD are fun to me because you're not just waiting until your pre-scripted 20 seconds of fun starts. AST is also enjoyable thanks to the card system. it's fun to have to think on your feet and react to what the game throws at you. Could use more DPS buttons though. There's still long stretches of time where you have nothing to do but spam Gravity/Malefic.

Things that are predictable and routine like the two minute meta are the total opposite of fun but I guess that depends on the person and their own preferences.

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Originally Posted by Grizzlpaw

2 minute meta is really fun during that big burst when everything is off cooldown and you get to dump your entire kit on the boss.

And then there's the 1 minute and 40 seconds of downtime where you're bored out of your mind. I'd like them to spread some of that gameplay out a bit.
It'd make deaths less punishing for inexperienced players who die during the burst phase, and it'd make the 80% of the fight where you're not bursting less dull.

DRK is perhaps the most egregious example of this. It takes too long to build resources, and you're forced to dump everything at once when you finally get it. Real shame too because I LOVE the theme.

The most fun Jobs for me right now are those that spice things up along the way. GNB, BLM, MNK, PLD, BRD are fun to me because you're not just waiting until your pre-scripted 20 seconds of fun starts. AST is also enjoyable thanks to the card system. it's fun to have to think on your feet and react to what the game throws at you. Could use more DPS buttons though. There's still long stretches of time where you have nothing to do but spam Gravity/Malefic.

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This is basically how I see the '2 minute problem' as well. I feel like so much of the discourse is focused on the actual burst window, and not on the rest of a job's rotation, and it's why I do think that standardized raid bursts, and interesting job rotations can coexist. If you are constantly interacting with what makes a job fun to play then the fact that raid buffs/burst have been standardized shouldn't matter. Improving the moment to moment gameplay of a job will solve two problems at once, it will pull complexity, and potency out of raid burst windows. But it's a tough, problem to solve because it needs to be done on a per job basis. There is no 'make jobs fun to play again' button. Solutions for improving WHM's filler rotation will not be appropriate for improving DRK's filler rotation.

I'm a big fan of job identity and rotation adjustment, but making healers fun to play (as an example) will not resolve the corrosive effect the Meta has on encounters imo.

I also think job identity is a pipe dream at this point and we have a better shot at fixing the meta and encounters than jobs. I think the team likes what they're doing with jobs and I fully expect DRG rework will nuke whatever hope people have left.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

This is basically how I see the '2 minute problem' as well. I feel like so much of the discourse is focused on the actual burst window, and not on the rest of a job's rotation, and it's why I do think that standardized raid bursts, and interesting job rotations can coexist. If you are constantly interacting with what makes a job fun to play then the fact that raid buffs/burst have been standardized shouldn't matter. Improving the moment to moment gameplay of a job will solve two problems at once, it will pull complexity, and potency out of raid burst windows. But it's a tough, problem to solve because it needs to be done on a per job basis. There is no 'make jobs fun to play again' button. Solutions for improving WHM's filler rotation will not be appropriate for improving DRK's filler rotation.

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Except you can't pull potency out of the burst window. The constraint of the 2-min meta is that every 2-minutes you need to put all of your major potency skills into the 15 second window or you fall massively behind.
Just look at old Paladin, in a vacuum there was actually no problem with it, it was one of the highest dps tanks. But it didn't matter, it's sustained damage playstyle couldn't put enough potency into the buff windows so as soon as you stepped into a group environment it completely fell off a cliff.

This consequently requires everything else to revolve around said window as well, your cooldowns, your resource generation, even your rotational loop in most cases.There are just too many stacking damage modifiers in that current burst window that any job not designed around it can't compete.
There is no interesting rotational variety because every job needs to be able to burst at exactly those windows and fit it all in a comparatively small time frame.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

This is basically how I see the '2 minute problem' as well. I feel like so much of the discourse is focused on the actual burst window, and not on the rest of a job's rotation, and it's why I do think that standardized raid bursts, and interesting job rotations can coexist. If you are constantly interacting with what makes a job fun to play then the fact that raid buffs/burst have been standardized shouldn't matter. Improving the moment to moment gameplay of a job will solve two problems at once, it will pull complexity, and potency out of raid burst windows. But it's a tough, problem to solve because it needs to be done on a per job basis. There is no 'make jobs fun to play again' button. Solutions for improving WHM's filler rotation will not be appropriate for improving DRK's filler rotation.

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It's already been proven that the 2 minute burst meta cannot coexist with interesting job rotations, the proof is in pre and post 6.3 PLD, PLD was by far the most unique tank with a burst profile that doesn't follow the 2 minutes timeline. So what did they do with PLD? They reworked it to mash it into the 2 minute framework.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Except you can't pull potency out of the burst window. The constraint of the 2-min meta is that every 2-minutes you need to put all of your major potency skills into the 15 second window or you fall massively behind.
Just look at old Paladin, in a vacuum there was actually no problem with it, it was one of the highest dps tanks. But it didn't matter, it's sustained damage playstyle couldn't put enough potency into the buff windows so as soon as you stepped into a group environment it completely fell off a cliff.

This consequently requires everything else to revolve around said window as well, your cooldowns, your resource generation, even your rotational loop in most cases.There are just too many stacking damage modifiers in that current burst window that any job not designed around it can't compete.
There is no interesting rotational variety because every job needs to be able to burst at exactly those windows and fit it all in a comparatively small time frame.

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A perfect example of this would be the aforementioned Dark Knight where you actually put 1-2 Floods into the minute Trick Attacks as a "resource dump." While hardly revolutionary, it at least added some measure of thought over mindlessly spamming it every two minutes. Dragoon is another example. They specifically talked about adding charges to Spineshatter Dive in response to player feedback about not having a gapcloser. Except due to how the burst meta works, you're always incentivized to hold both charges for the two minute window unless you know for certain it'll cost you a GCD to disengage.

It's fine, IMO, but base classes and early game content gives kind of more individuality.
ACN, feels a jack-of -all-trades mage, for example. Can DPS, heal, and do an emergency raise if needed.
Plus abilities that are deemed "worthless", have much more use.

The 2min meta is not future-proof-able.

Let me put on the job I mained for most of EW: Dancer - 2min meta forces you to accumulate your resources at near capacity to dump in ~15s. Dancers do that and sometimes, depending on RNG, can even leave the burst window without spending all of the resources or procs, because on top of the 2min meta, the stacked buffs still have a similar duration.

With that being said, I ask: What Dancer can even get from the 90-100 level range? There's absolutely no room for new tools inside the 2min meta burst windows - and it's unrealistic to think that a job will not get at least 1 'new toy' to play with.

The only way I can see the job growing towards is adding more interesting stuff outside the 2min meta that can't be optimized into that burst window.