2min Cooldowns: The Dungeon Experience

6.0's universal change to 2-minute cooldowns for raid buffs has negatively impacted FFXIV's overall combat experience in dungeons.


DUNGEON LENGTH
Dungeon pulls typically take 1min/pack and 2min/boss, or ~5 minutes per checkpoint. With 2 minute CDs, every other pack now feels like a slog since all major cooldowns are still unavailable (2 usages/chkpt). In 5.x, there was usually always something up for each pack, either your buff or another's.

Bosses taking a bit over 2:00 does not feel good. Wasting your 2min CDs—now everyone's only real utility!—on a boss that will die halfway through Arcane Circle makes it feel that much worse. Jobs like RPR or DRG, which require time to properly get all their fun high-potency moves out every 2min, are now in a pickle since the boss will die before they can press everything. In 5.x, you knew Brotherhood would be back up in 90s, in time for the next mob pack. Now, it is simply wasted as that extra 30s means you will have to wait a full mob pack before you can press it again.

As another example, Trick Attack/Mug feels even worse with 2min CDs. If your dungeon run is taking on the longer side, every other pull you'll have to sit with Mug on cooldown waiting for a satisfying time to press it. This isn't about optimizing damage—it's about what feels good. Mug, Ley Lines, Blood Weapon—Universal 2min CDs forces more and more of these "not fun" buff usages onto the player.


TANKS
If you are a Tank, pressing your 1min buffs when there is nothing going on is not fun. The positive feedback telling you you're playing in sync with your party is now only every 2min, whereas before buffs were always rolling, with interactions that increased your damage—1min Trick, 90s Brotherhood, 2min Tech Step, 3min Litany—constantly rolling in and out.

Now, every other 1min window feels gutted. Not only are your own 2min CDs not up for these, but there is not even any compelling reason to do them, other than "It'll align things for the 2 minutes". This impacts high-end raiders looking for more dps, but also the casual player: it feels good to press buttons to get more damage. A 100k Hyosho Ranryu is more exciting than a 90k Hyosho Ranryu. Aligning with a buff makes you feel better at the game, with tangible feedback your party is actually a synergizing team. People like feeling powerful, and more buffs at different times more often makes each self-buff window feel better than a few 2min buffs.

There's no need to look at party composition anymore. Every DPS job has basically the same buff. Every Tank has the same rotation. Everything is same-y, and since we're running dungeons every week for tomes, helping this be the least monotonous as possible ought to be high on a dev's priority.


In short: not as fun! Things misalign and are less exciting with universal 2min buffs. Square please consider changing for 7.0 :(

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Originally Posted by Hana_Monogatari

Things misalign and are less exciting with universal 2min buffs.

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Things misalign more without them.

Less exciting? That depends on whether you want only to be aligned with the whole party or with just some third to two-thirds of it.

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If you are a Tank, pressing your 1min buffs when there is nothing going on is not fun.

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Welcome to how each person having a different buff cycle template (60s, 90s, 120s, etc.) feels. That said, it shouldn't be hard to tell that if you don't hit your 60s per 60s, it's not going to sync up at 120s.

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Trick Attack/Mug feels even worse with 2min CDs. If your dungeon run is taking on the longer side, every other pull you'll have to sit with Mug on cooldown waiting for a satisfying time to press it. This isn't about optimizing damage—it's about what feels good. Mug, Ley Lines, Blood Weapon—Universal 2min CDs forces more and more of these "not fun" buff usages onto the player.

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I'll agree, though, that less frequent bursts usually feel worse than more frequent ones, as long as they're still long enough (e.g., 45s+) to actually feel like "burst" and one still has multiple levels of said burst (some CDs, all CDs; or, some CDs, different set of CDs, all CDs together; etc.).

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Bosses taking a bit over 2:00 does not feel good. Wasting your 2min CDs—now everyone's only real utility!

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Agreed, but unless they start off tuned to take the likes of an extra half-cycle over mod(2 minutes), gear acquisition and the deviations in player skill will inevitably push you to just over or under a cycle. And being just under the time required for another cycle can feel even worse, as you've then wasted the up to 40-some seconds of would-be cooling before the next trash gather.

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Dungeon pulls typically take 1min/pack and 2min/boss, or ~5 minutes per checkpoint.

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The same applies here. Without controlling both ilvl and having only very small deviations in player performance, you're never going to get a perfect sync between a frequency of events and the time required to complete a wing of an instance.

The only difference if some were running, say, a 90s template of CDs instead is that some half of the party would be screwed and the other not, instead of being able to potentially compensate slightly to ensure no one is if the content is synced closely enough (or the party otherwise being fine or being screwed-but-together-and-in-sync-to-lesser-total-loss).



Tl;dr:
I've no horse in the race either way, but I really doubt 2-minute CDs, specifically, are the core issue you're facing.

I know it's popular to shit on 2-minutes these days, but one need only have played in prior expansions to know that, apart from fewer jobs unfortunately having fewer externally-sourced minor burst windows (making a NIN-assisted DRK less engaging now that before TA was replaced by Mug as the raid buff), those aspects were identical back then, too.

In my experience dungeons take 12-20m regardless of optimization. There are a few groups here and there where a wipe will happen but its pretty rare. I don't see any need to micro manage what I am doing in the dungeon. I press buttons. Things die. I move on.

Overhauling PLD shows a certain commitment to this. It's a big decision to overhaul a job that has never been overhauled on this scaled just because they want 2min buff windows and giant hitboxes.

I haven't particularly noticed a difference. In dungeons, everything dies fast anyway because of gear. You could start potting if you really want another cd.

I always blow cds on the first pack, and one in the boss. Then save for the next first pack.

If we really be struggling and the boss is 20% or so I’ll pop them.

Idk just use them on cooldown and you should be fine.

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Originally Posted by Reap00

In my experience dungeons take 12-20m regardless of optimization. There are a few groups here and there where a wipe will happen but its pretty rare. I don't see any need to micro manage what I am doing in the dungeon. I press buttons. Things die. I move on.

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This times 1000. Are we seriously writing a paragraphs-long rant about burst windows in regular dungeons? I rarely like the phrase "first-world problems", but wow...

The two-minute meta murdered my puppy.

Man next we'll hear that they kicked someone for not potting and eating food in a dungeon run or something. Like yes practice your rotation but unless you're running with a pre-made who the eff cares if your 2mins line up or not in a damn dungeon run. At least you don't have to wait for things to come off of CD just because you died and I mean everything not the few things this still applies to.

From my own anecdotal daily roulette experiences, each wall pulls and boss will last longer than 2m if one of the party member are semi-afk or just not playing decently in general (i.e. pure healers, single targeting DPS, spend more time chatting/dying than playing). I noticed this because I'm particularly aggressive when running as a healer whereas random healers tend to play too carefully, hence as soon as I queued anything but one, the slower pace becomes immediately apparent.

...Not sure about the 'fun' part though, considering they are relative. I just watch how many % the boss have left by the time the buff comes back up. Anything below 10% means I'll just hold it and rejoice in knowing the party I'm matched with are kickin' and alive. Otherwise, no biggie.

As a tank, I've always found the 2nd, 4th and 6th pulls take a little longer, but nothing serious. I don't know what solution a player would want. We already have 2 minute burst windows for most jobs. Shorten them to 1 minute? Make them variable with the dungeon length? Reset all abilities every time no one has hate (a pull is over)?

Idk in my experience, I always have 2min cds or at least one burst option for each mob pull. Im also smart enough to hold some skills and not burst down the boss at 15 to 20% HP, which will usually drain in 10 to 15 ish seconds. If you wall to wall pull (which should be happening), this is not a problem worth mentioning.

If you are struggling with damage in casual dungeon content then its not the game.

Dungeon mobs have such low HP that you barely get off a full rotation before they die, and if they are taking forever, then either one or both of the DPS are terrible and need to learn their job a bit better.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

This times 1000. Are we seriously writing a paragraphs-long rant about burst windows in regular dungeons? I rarely like the phrase "first-world problems", but wow...

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Dw, it eventually runs the gamut all the way to "world-first problems" somehow exported to casual content.



That said...

...the OP isn't talking about lacking the tools to deal with content or things taking longer now. She's talking about the game now appearing less interconnected, less varied, and (at least relative to the prior CD timings on what she'd typically run) less well-suited to the spans of continuous combat than it used to be.

Elements of what she liked to do before (such as in reacting to longer raid CDs with her shorter ones -- even if that was probably typically poor practice) and/or holding CDs of different rhythms for their sync (again, typically poor practice, but /shrug), or just being able to get two major burst cycles out on a given boss so that the same boss fight duration nonetheless feels less trivial... are now lost to or diminished for her.

No amount of "It's 12-20 minutes anyways" is going to be relevant to the complaint that was being made. It's a comment on fun, even if we may disagree with the poster on how to value those elements or even on how much they've really changed.
The duration of or "need" around the problem affecting that perceived fun is irrelevant. That something one used to enjoy is now less fun, it'd be no boon for it to be short(er) anyways; that'd be like a favorite TV show getting both worse writing and longer commercial breaks.

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

[...]Dungeon mobs have such low HP that you barely get off a full rotation before they die, and if they are taking forever, then either one or both of the DPS are terrible and need to learn their job a bit better.

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Now that you mention this, I remembered that time when I was meme'ing with a full premade with my friends by running as a CNJ into 4-man dungeons roulettes. Funnily enough I do vaguely remembering they mentioned about their 2m cooldowns lines up just perfectly as opposed to our regular premade runs where there's usually about 30s gap time before it comes back up again after each wall pulls finishes. It makes me think that devs (for the most part) do take account of most participant's dps except healer's into consideration. Because as a CNJ I was limited to just a weak Cure II (missing lv85 trait) with no AoE to throw and hilariously weak Stone II fillers, whereas if I queued in as any other full fledged healers I would've gone ham on dpsing.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Now that you mention this, I remembered that time when I was meme'ing with a full premade with my friends by running as a CNJ into 4-man dungeons roulettes. Funnily enough I do vaguely remembering they mentioned about their 2m cooldowns lines up just perfectly as opposed to our regular premade runs where there's usually about 30s gap time before it comes back up again after each wall pulls finishes. It makes me think that devs (for the most part) do take account of most participant's dps except healer's into consideration. Because as a CNJ I was limited to just a weak Cure II (missing lv85 trait) with no AoE to throw and hilariously weak Stone II fillers, whereas if I queued in as any other full fledged healers I would've gone ham on dpsing.

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I've been playing prominently healers this patch, and for Endgame dungeons i can almost guarantee i do more damage than the DPS themselves during Trash Pulls.
The amount of people that don't know they have AOE or don't understand how their AOE cone attacks work, is very worrying.

So many people missing ops point lol

It all depends on the party dps really.

As RMD, back in 6.0 I used to blow Embolden and Manafication on the first pull, then Magic Barrier on the second pull, and I would have my Embolden and Manafication back for the boss. Then in 6.1 kill speeds sped up and I would start seeing parties where Embolden and Manafication only come up after the boss fight started, and the boss would die so fast that if I used the cooldowns in the boss fight, they'd not be up for the next trash pull, etc.

So now in 6.3 I have changed to Magic Barrier on the first pull, then Embolden and Manafication on the second pull.

But when I go down into the Lv.90 roulette (as opposed to Ex Roulette) then every now and then I run into groups that kill slower (e.g. the rest of the group are all just starting to gear up at Lv.90) and I would see more use of my burst cooldowns.

There's just no point thinking so much into cooldowns. You naturally get into a rhythm for the current content and it would slowly change up as everyone gear up. Then you settle into the new rhythem. I think it's fine. Unless they refresh our cooldowns when we leave combat, giving us a clean slate after each fight, there's just no way to always have consistent results between parties.

I think this "variety" actually makes the grind on the same dungeons over and over throughout each patch to be more bearable. I wouldn't want all my dungeon runs to feel exactly the same no matter who I party with. That would really bore me to death...

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Originally Posted by Reap00

In my experience dungeons take 12-20m regardless of optimization. There are a few groups here and there where a wipe will happen but its pretty rare. I don't see any need to micro manage what I am doing in the dungeon. I press buttons. Things die. I move on.

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EW's levelling dungeons only really get up to 20 minutes long because the majority of them split the packs of mobs awkwardly. Every one of them has one or two parts where you can't really wall to wall because the story portion of the dungeon forces you to wait at different points.