The two minute burst

I brought this up originally in the tank forums when talking about DRK's gameplay but thought it was a topic that deserved its own thread. Someone linked a Reddit post which I think does a good job introducing the topic

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus..._buff_meta_of/

Meta probably isn't the right word since Square intentionally designed classes this way rather than players figuring it out on their own, but basically in Endwalker a lot of raid buffs got moved to two minute cooldowns along with other abilities getting their CD changed to a multiple of 60 seconds. This has the benefit of letting everyone line up raid buffs as long as they're hitting buttons on CD, but on the flipside if you're trying to perform well, a lot of your damage will come from how well you're pooling resources and fitting them under 2 minute burst windows. Or 1 minute if you have a NIN in your group, which I think at this point TA is the only 1 minute raid buff in the game. It basically pigeonholes every class into being a burst class even if it's not necessarily one, and a lot of your performance starts depending on others using their buffs at the right time rather than necessarily on how well you're doing personally.

I brought this up in relation to DRK because outside of your burst window, there's not much going on because a) all your abilities are on CD or b) you're not using attacks like Edge of Shadow or Bloodspiller as often because you want to save resources for bursts. This leads to the common complaint that once you do your opener, you spend 45 seconds doing 1-2-3 until your next burst. DRG got affected by this change because before in ShB, your buffs didn't line up as nicely, so part of its gameplay was keeping track of these buffs and entering or delaying Life of the Dragon depending on what was coming off CD. Now that all its buffs are all multiples of 60s, that aspect got removed and you always enter Life as soon as you can which is a downgrade for me.

Basically trying to see what other people's thoughts are on this topic, whether they think it's a good change, bad change, etc...

Personally, I do everything I can to avoid the two minute burst.

Total Noob Question: As a casual who at most does like 8 man normal raids, should I be casting my 120 Raid-Wides at the very beginning of the fight and then on Cooldown?

I doubt we are organized on buffs for this to matter that much, but if I can improve my gameplay on when to use these buffs I will. I've instead been building up my 'big attacks' before popping these buffs personally but I don't know if there is a general "best time" for the team I should use them.

What I find funny is the design of MNK in EW was purposefully made your Phantom Rush didn't align with the 2min burst windows, as Yoshi-P said in his interview with Drak, but the community just came up with the Double Solar opener so it aligned anyways. The "everyone is 2min" was designed to help more excluded jobs like MNK or WAR who could only partake in bursts every other time and would fall behind in damage(though WAR still doesn't benefit from any crit buffs), and unfortunately there isn't anyway round the "hold resources for sync'd burst" mentality. the closest you get is with a NIN where you can dump some resource on the 1min, while making sure you still have enough for the 2min.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

Total Noob Question: As a casual who at most does like 8 man normal raids, should I be casting my 120 Raid-Wides at the very beginning of the fight and then on Cooldown?

I doubt we are organized on buffs for this to matter that much, but if I can improve my gameplay on when to use these buffs I will. I've instead been building up my 'big attacks' before popping these buffs personally but I don't know if there is a general "best time" for the team I should use them.

---

This changes all the time, but you should be putting buffs up at about the 3rd GCD, then on cooldown unless there is a mechanic where the boss will be away or untargetable. You can look at the openers in the Balance, but most openers are made so you and your team get the most value, and if everyone is also doing the same, you should naturally line-up every 2min. Mis-alignment will happen all the time in normal content, so just use your stuff on time for you, and pray others do the same.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

Total Noob Question: As a casual who at most does like 8 man normal raids, should I be casting my 120 Raid-Wides at the very beginning of the fight and then on Cooldown?

I doubt we are organized on buffs for this to matter that much, but if I can improve my gameplay on when to use these buffs I will. I've instead been building up my 'big attacks' before popping these buffs personally but I don't know if there is a general "best time" for the team I should use them.

---

Yes, you want to use your stuff on cooldown. Rule of thumb: losing a use of a damage cooldown is more of a damage loss than not having it lined up with every other buff. Smart resource usage will naturally lead to you having your big attacks inside of your burst windows. I personally have trouble pooling resources exactly but dont be discouraged when you overcap or when you spend all your resources right before a buff window. Cooldowns on the other hand are already designed to be used with the regular buff schedule in mind so all you need to do to be in sync is to press stuff on cooldown.

Thank you both Ixon and Saraide! I could certainly be far more efficient with my Raidwides.

Unless you're dying to enrage with no apparent problems such as deaths, worrying about these things is only going to make the game stressful to play when you can just do your rotation on cooldown, have fun and kill the boss.

I hear a lot of guys have this problem, it's nothing to be ashamed of.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Unless you're dying to enrage with no apparent problems such as deaths, worrying about these things is only going to make the game stressful to play when you can just do your rotation on cooldown, have fun and kill the boss.

---

My bigger point, maybe I didn't explain it well, is that classes are moving to a similar design of bursting every 1 to 2 minutes and then the rest of the time is spent building back up for the next one. Hence why I brought up DRG because the weird timing of its cooldowns back in ShB added another layer of gameplay if you wanted to optimize, now that's gone in EW and you're just automatically entering LotD every minute. My friend has a similar complaint with NIN, it's all about how much you can fit in TA but outside of that there's not much to do other than 1-2-3 and occasionally 4 (which was true even in ShB iirc). You can't even use Raiton because ideally you're saving it for the next TA window. The devs aren't really leaving any room for classes that do sustained damage and it just makes classes less diverse if they all start following this same gameplay rhythm. Hence why I bring up 2 minutes as well because this only solidifies it.

This seems to be related to the common complaints of homogenization of classes that people have been having since StB. maybe even sooner. There definitely seems to be a standardization of jobs and that does erase a measure of job identity, as well as making play styles very similar for all of them. That seems to be the sacrifice the dev team wants to make for having the jobs all be balanced.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by baklava151

and a lot of your performance starts depending on others using their buffs at the right time rather than necessarily on how well you're doing personally.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by baklava151

Basically trying to see what other people's thoughts are on this topic, whether they think it's a good change, bad change, etc...

---

Yes, we call this "teamwork."

As a NIN main, I love the one-minute burst windows (some bigger, some smaller) of NIN in a two-minute burst window world. I hope that that one-to-two resonance remain in future iterations of the game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

Yes, we call this "teamwork."

As a NIN main, I love the one-minute burst windows (some bigger, some smaller) of NIN in a two-minute burst window world. I hope that that one-to-two resonance remain in future iterations of the game.

---

Yeah but it doesn't feel as good when it's all so standardized and the devs basically hand it to you rather than you working with your group to make it happen.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by baklava151

Yeah but it doesn't feel as good when it's all so standardized and the devs basically hand it to you rather than you working with your group to make it happen.

---

If I recall correctly, most classes already were on 1 or 2 minute cycles in general anyway, so they'd naturally line up before Endwalker as well, just not always as cleanly. Now it's just universally 2 minutes to make it cleaner. I don't believe you were ever encouraged to hold your buffs previously even if everyone didn't line up. So not much has really changed aside from a few classes having cooldowns that didn't fit to 1 or 2 minutes being adjusted to be less awkward.

I can see it as a problem from the perspective of homogenization, because it's not good if everything is made less fun and diverse to play just to make the "optimization" players happy that everything fits into their raid buffs. I don't know how I feel about whether things are less fun or not yet.

But maybe it's a good sign that I don't know yet, because if it was that much less fun it would be immediately obvious.

Saw the title came here for the comments- I was not disappointed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stepjam

If I recall correctly, most classes already were on 1 or 2 minute cycles in general anyway, so they'd naturally line up before Endwalker as well, just not always as cleanly. Now it's just universally 2 minutes to make it cleaner. I don't believe you were ever encouraged to hold your buffs previously even if everyone didn't line up. So not much has really changed aside from a few classes having cooldowns that didn't fit to 1 or 2 minutes being adjusted to be less awkward.

---

Holding buffs honestly depends on the type of encounter and kill time, if you approach this from an optimization standpoint. For groups that like to optimize, they would (and still do) delay/hold buffs depending on things like add phases or boss kill time. But this is a group decision, and not an individual opting to hold for better alignment, usually.

Currently, groups that care to optimize will hold 2-minutes in P3S until after the add phase. In P4S’s door boss, there are 0-3-5 buff alignments for groups that have a 6-minute or 6-minute and some change kill time, since the 6-minute window will be clipped and you don’t gain the full benefit of it. Or missed entirely if you are killing right at 6-minutes or a few seconds after. My group does both of the above.

(I personally really like the 0-3-5 in P4S door boss, since it takes the burst window out of first Pinax, and ensures everyone is actually hit with buffs like Tech Finish and Brotherhood. While the latter can be easily rectified with movement coordination, my group personally greeds less during first Pinax when they aren’t trying to squeeze everything into a 2-minute window for damage. The add phase of P3S does not count on The Website That Shall Not Be Named, so holding buffs until after benefits the group in terms of logged damage.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by baklava151

Yeah but it doesn't feel as good when it's all so standardized and the devs basically hand it to you rather than you working with your group to make it happen.

---

There were some buffs last expansion that could have used the “standardization”. For example, WHM’s Presence of Mind was 150s until this expansion, so it would only line up with the opener in most encounters, since buff windows were in 60-second, 120-second, and 180-second windows before EW. Weird buffs like that benefit from cooldown timer adjustments, since there’s very little reason to have 1 150-second buff in a sea of others that line up with 1-, 2-, and 3-minute markers.

BRD’s burst window was also every 80s. So it was a bit awkward for them to align with major buff windows as well. It was rare to ever not clip Army’s Paeon at 10s remaining and do 90s windows unless the encounter called for it (e.g., an add phase or something like that). You’d end up losing usages of major cooldowns like Raging Strikes and Barrage.


Buff alignment isn’t difficult in principle, but this playerbase is not the best in terms of execution. It’s extremely common for buff alignments to be sloppy in non-optimized settings, or with players who do not care to optimize. There is still an element of group cooperation when it comes to aligning these windows. Even with the standardization.

I appreciate trick still being on a 1 minute CD, it gives me one thing to take into consideration when I do melee combos. 2 minutes is a bit long to be honest, especially since this tier, as someone in the reddit thread pointed out, the most hectic mechanics happen during burst windows.
In my opinion, no mechanics and the "filler" part of the rotation happening at the same time is boring.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Stepjam

If I recall correctly, most classes already were on 1 or 2 minute cycles in general anyway, so they'd naturally line up before Endwalker as well, just not always as cleanly. Now it's just universally 2 minutes to make it cleaner. I don't believe you were ever encouraged to hold your buffs previously even if everyone didn't line up. So not much has really changed aside from a few classes having cooldowns that didn't fit to 1 or 2 minutes being adjusted to be less awkward.

---

I look at it as a nice quality of life change. Like scholar got better cause of 120s, previously you'd have DRG litany up for every other chain when it was 180s, and now every chain window can be ham on critical hit contribution. It's just better overall damage but also increases likely hood of party success with the buffs together.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Unless you're dying to enrage with no apparent problems such as deaths, worrying about these things is only going to make the game stressful to play when you can just do your rotation on cooldown, have fun and kill the boss.

---

I disagree.

If someone is wanting to learn how to improve their gameplay, they should be encouraged to do so. Even if they won't necessarily reap the benefits of it at the time.

Now should they stress if they forget to do it while playing in normal mode content that they previously had no issues with? No.

You're just now starting to recognize a big issue I have with XIV's gameplay: the lack of player expression. They've long since hitched their hat on the idea of coordinated raid buff alignment, as this became a thing ever since it was discovered that buffs were multiplicative. While some people enjoy the thrill of the entire team blowing their load every 2 minutes, I personally find it boring to have to follow a very strict rotation throughout an entire encounter that, ideally, never changes. Between scripted fights and scripted rotations, it often makes repeat runs of content very boring for me. However, I think that's just a overall negative on tab-target games as a whole rather than being strictly XIV exclusive. I don't think it's going to change at all, but you just asked for people's opinion on the matter so there's mine -- I don't like it.

You are free to push things on CD and will do just fine.

But i don't think it is the right way, to grief players who have raid buffs just for personal damage. You lose nothing, but are able to provide so much more to the group.

Buffs stack multiplicatively, this means 2 min bursts are huge damage gains for the whole group.

A simple example:
Majority of mediocre RDM will get around 400 rdps from embolden on a party that plays randomly or not decently optimal.

A good group will feed an RDM atleast 750+ rdps from embolden alone.

Now when you count other raid buffs. You are looking at around 2k + raid dps gains. 2k rdps is massive right now with the stat squish.

Other than that, this is a crucial skill to acquire when you are aiming for day1-3/week 1 to month 1 clear, especially first 2 weeks. It is not only use in parsing/optimization. Because once you learn how to play well in muscle memory. You will be able to replicate that in prog without having to worry about parsing. It becomes natural play.