2-minute meta

Is this actually fun for literally anyone?

It's fine.

I feel like this is another troll thread, but you know what? I'll bite.


I dislike the 2 minute meta, mostly because of the changes to job flow from 5.x to 6.0.



For me, peak job flow was 5.0, but I was best at my job during 4.x. The reliance on job buffs and all made combat less fun. Especially since they force disengage mechanics in at the 2 min mark in most fights.

It just bothers me that it forces the game to be more orchestrated. when i play ffxiv i feel like i'm always watching a chess replay and memorizing it. I miss the old days of mmo like tera and cabal.

Troll thread or not, I'll comment.

The two minute meta is awful. It makes gameplay both incredibly rigid and boring at the same time because most jobs have practically nothing to do because they have to all funnel into exactly two minute intervals. The few 90s abilities now feel... hollow as they just can't of exist but don't often factor into your burst. Salt and Darkness, Bunshin and Riddle of Wind could all be deleted without changing a thing about each respective job. Hell, they had to change Bloodfest from 90 to 120 because it caused issues with Gunbreaker's damage in burst windows.

Worse then the above is every job feels too similar nowadays. Spacing out buffs allowed for some sense of individuality due to having to take into consideration what timers your comp played into. One minute Trick Attack meant Dark Knights could plan their Floods within those intervals instead of aimlessly dumping gauge to avoid overcap. Speaking of Ninja, it's been among the hardest hit. The job has virtually nothing to do outside of two minute bursts except spam 123 and the very occasional Bhavacakra.

The final insult to injury is this new shift didn't even accomplish the intended goal. Casual players still press their buffs on a whim because they don't really care to align everything. What's hilariously ironic is this actually made things worse for inexperienced players despite it supposedly being easier for them. A death nowadays is significantly worse than ever before. You have no way to mitigate your loses going into a two minute window. God forbid you die during said window. Now everything is completely misaligned and you've not only punished with weakness but have de-synced your buffs from the raid. So either you sit on them for potentially over a whole minute, losing even more damage, or you screw your team for the remainder of the fight.

If the dev team is set on making buffs easier to manage. The solution would be to make them almost entirely independent from the party (i.e. like Large Charge, Huton and etc). Yes, this heavily removes party synergy but that is a far better alternative than the mess they've come up with for Endwalker. My preference would be to revert the whole thing back to Shadowbringers or even Stormblood and let jobs run on different timers.

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Originally Posted by Kickwars

Is this actually fun for literally anyone?

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I don't like it. I want vastly different jobs.

Its stupid. I want classes to each have their own burst times and windows. I get the philosophy behind the 2 minute meta in order to encourage syncronized team play but its too detrimental to the combat experience because of how strict it is.

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Originally Posted by Kickwars

Is this actually fun for literally anyone?

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No, the two-minute meta is bori--

https://files.catbox.moe/po21gn.jpg

*gasp* It's him! Quick, defend the two-minute meta!

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Originally Posted by caffe_macchiato

No, the two-minute meta is bori--

https://files.catbox.moe/po21gn.jpg

*gasp* It's him! Quick, defend the two-minute meta!

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so handsome

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

The final insult to injury is this new shift didn't even accomplish the intended goal. Casual players still press their buffs on a whim because they don't really care to align everything. What's hilariously ironic is this actually made things worse for inexperienced players despite it supposedly being easier for them. A death nowadays is significantly worse than ever before. You have no way to mitigate your loses going into a two minute window. God forbid you die during said window. Now everything is completely misaligned and you've not only punished with weakness but have de-synced your buffs from the raid. So either you sit on them for potentially over a whole minute, losing even more damage, or you screw your team for the remainder of the fight.

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I was under the impression they did it moreso because JP players of certain jobs complained that their buffs didn't align with 2-min bursts. (MNK etc.)

Though the end result is the same anyways. I wish they developed in a direction to make 90s cycles just as viable as 2-min.

I'm reminded of the interview Yoshi-P gave shortly before 6.0 released, where the interviewer asked about how most core job abilities/buffs had been changed to fit the 120s burst meta, but that Leylines was still at its original 90s. Yoshi-P answered that they still wanted jobs to have abilities where players would have to think "where would the best place be to use this ability?" and that Leylines was one of those abilities. Yoshi-P also said that he felt like if everything was on the same timer, it would feel very boring to play.
It's funny that Yoshi-P was correct about it being boring to play, and yet the developers still went ahead with shaving down everything to fit into it.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

I'm reminded of the interview Yoshi-P gave shortly before 6.0 released, where the interviewer asked about how most core job abilities/buffs had been changed to fit the 120s burst meta, but that Leylines was still at its original 90s. Yoshi-P answered that they still wanted jobs to have abilities where players would have to think "where would the best place be to use this ability?" and that Leylines was one of those abilities. Yoshi-P also said that he felt like if everything was on the same timer, it would feel very boring to play.
It's funny that Yoshi-P was correct about it being boring to play, and yet the developers still went ahead with shaving down everything to fit into it.

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I just dont get how this even happened. Did they all have some freak last minute change of mind or is there something we're all not being aware of with this system being somehow good because clearly the general public doesnt approve of it

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

I just dont get how this even happened. Did they all have some freak last minute change of mind or is there something we're all not being aware of with this system being somehow good because clearly the general public doesnt approve of it

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Probably the other devs all disagreed with him. He did say at some point he wanted Protect to stay way back in Heavensward IIRC, and yeah.

The 2 minute window on its own doesnt cause issues. It's other design choices that make it look bad.

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Originally Posted by Kickwars

I was under the impression they did it moreso because JP players of certain jobs complained that their buffs didn't align with 2-min bursts. (MNK etc.)

Though the end result is the same anyways. I wish they developed in a direction to make 90s cycles just as viable as 2-min.

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It could be a bit of both. However, in one of the LLs leading up to Endwalker, I recall Yoshida directly saying they wanted to make buff alignment easier and that was the reason for shifting everything to two minutes.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

I just dont get how this even happened. Did they all have some freak last minute change of mind or is there something we're all not being aware of with this system being somehow good because clearly the general public doesnt approve of it

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If I were to hazard a guess, they only realized after how difficult it was to actually balance everything with so many abilities being forced into this two minute meta and/or there were concerns with players forgetting to align 90s abilities. So they gradually started shaving more of them down as it became far too late in development to scrap the whole system. This is why we saw a few hold overs like Bloodfest and Leylines. Both those abilities add credence to the theory as they simply didn't work anymore, making it much harder to properly optimize. It wouldn't be the first time they made changes without rhythm or reason. Case in point, Bard. After years of begging and pleading for Bloodletter charges, Bard mains finally got them... only to remove the entire reason they wanted them in the first place. This disconnect meant people complained and the dev team threw up their hands, wrongly assuming the players don't know what they want.

Considering the woefully poor balance we've seen throughout Endwalker, it really does make one wonder how much testing they did or how exactly they test jobs.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

The 2 minute window on its own doesnt cause issues. It's other design choices that make it look bad.

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Chief among them being Direct Hit and the now abundance of ridiculously high potency skills which lead to absurd swings in damage. Having two layers of RNG is, frankly, dumb. Nevertheless, it's the high potency skills that are the real issue. A Ninja shouldn't see Hyosho flux between 80k and 170k because they just happened to roll lucky that pull. While that could happen in Shadowbringers, most jobs lacked the big hits and it wasn't nearly as impactful because buffs were more spaced out. A weak Hyosho at the two minute window could level itself out if you crit during the one or three minutes as you were likely running into buffs such as Litany or Battle Voice. Now you're wholly dependent on two minutes exactly. I've seen myself dip upwards of nearly 1,000 rDPS on Paladin simply because my blade combo and/or Goring Blade just didn't not to crit at all. Same exact rotation. Game said go fly a kite.

So while the two minute meta remains awful, I'd also like to see them abandon Direct Hit and stop with the fat potency skills. Sadly, I suspect come 7.0 they're just going to make them all auto DHC, which I guess solves the problem but kind of defeats the point of even having modifiers.

I like it...

I don't like it...

I couldn't care less. Before the change, players complained about using their burst windows whenever and would not coordinate them with the group. Now it's, "OMG! so boring, reeee!!" They're always spitting in someone's soup, and it's made me very indifferent over the years.

its one point more limiting job designs...

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

So while the two minute meta remains awful, I'd also like to see them abandon Direct Hit and stop with the fat potency skills. Sadly, I suspect come 7.0 they're just going to make them all auto DHC, which I guess solves the problem but kind of defeats the point of even having modifiers.

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An alternative could be to reduce the impact of DH and crits by reducing the damage bonus they give, for example, making DH be a 5% increase and crit being a 10% increase as an example. Of course, if your normal 100K hit crits for 110K, it probably won't feel impactful.

The only other concern is, if you do remove DH, what could they do to replace it?

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

An alternative could be to reduce the impact of DH and crits by reducing the damage bonus they give, for example, making DH be a 5% increase and crit being a 10% increase as an example. Of course, if your normal 100K hit crits for 110K, it probably won't feel impactful.

The only other concern is, if you do remove DH, what could they do to replace it?

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It will probably never happen, because the job team quite obviously doesn't have the manpower to balance it, but I'd like to see some sort of mastery stat that interacts with job specific mechanics.

Buff stacking is super boring, just give few generic buffs to healer and remove most of non-personal ones.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

An alternative could be to reduce the impact of DH and crits by reducing the damage bonus they give, for example, making DH be a 5% increase and crit being a 10% increase as an example. Of course, if your normal 100K hit crits for 110K, it probably won't feel impactful.

The only other concern is, if you do remove DH, what could they do to replace it?

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Just like any other game. Remove DH and split crit into critical damage and critical chance. Much easier to understand than crit hit which affects both it's multiplier and rate, and DH which affects only rate and then the CDH. Not like it matters what they do with stats anyways, you only need to know meld priority + desired GCD and that's as far as stats go in this game.

Now you're left with 2 random variables, and you can fine tune them to make anything balanced. If variance is too high, make critical damage lower and critical chance higher and so on. There is reason why so many games use this simple system, it just works.

The two-minute burst window meta is quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen to PvE in this game. In fact, not just in this game. They got the idea from other MMOs that've done the same thing, and just like in those others, it resulted in oversimplification of just about everything. They're trying to make up for the loss of job complexity with increased fight complexity, but it just doesn't work in a game that revolves around memorization as opposed to reaction. If they really want to stay the course, then they badly need to update the netcode and game engine to make the fights less clunky. The two-minute meta won't be any less lame, but at least we'd have fast-paced, reactive fights to partially compensate.

As an aside, putting everything on a two-minute window only to then design the bosses to go absolutely apesh**t when you're supposed to burst them is not increased difficulty - it is an annoyance, designed to drag the fights out a bit longer. It doesn't make the boss any more dangerous.

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

The two-minute burst window meta is quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen to PvE in this game. In fact, not just in this game. They got the idea from other MMOs that've done the same thing, and just like in those others, it resulted in oversimplification of just about everything. They're trying to make up for the loss of job complexity with increased fight complexity, but it just doesn't work in a game that revolves around memorization as opposed to reaction. If they really want to stay the course, then they badly need to update the netcode and game engine to make the fights less clunky. The two-minute meta won't be any less lame, but at least we'd have fast-paced, reactive fights to partially compensate.

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I'd argue that still wouldn't work simply because they absolutely do not want to make the core content (MSQ, dungeons, alliance and normal raids) any harder and you really shouldn't have to do savage to get a satisfying gameplay experience.

Maybe I'm overestimating casual players but I like to imagine that even people who don't do extreme, savage or ultimate want to have fun gameplay...and currently there just isn't any in those core activities.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

An alternative could be to reduce the impact of DH and crits by reducing the damage bonus they give, for example, making DH be a 5% increase and crit being a 10% increase as an example. Of course, if your normal 100K hit crits for 110K, it probably won't feel impactful.

The only other concern is, if you do remove DH, what could they do to replace it?

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That could also work but as you noted, it would make both stats feel largely irrelevant. The whole idea behind Direct Hit being implemented is the dev team wants players to see "big numba!!!" They outright said it during Shadowbringers' media tour.

As for what to replace it with. Damage and Variance. Critical Hit does far too much, which is why it's been the runaway best substat from day one. Splitting it up would allow for easier balancing and maybe make Determination or god forbid Tenacity more relevant. The latter is pretty much a dead substat now that Warrior can meld Direct Hit. On the whole, I'd prefer something more interesting like what Absurdity suggested but the dev team seems determined to keep everything as basic as possible. So splitting up Crit works well enough.

What is a 2 minute meta?

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Originally Posted by Deo14

Just like any other game. Remove DH and split crit into critical damage and critical chance.

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You know, I've had this thought in the past, surprised I didn't remember this when I made my previous post >_>

Something else that irks me is the fact tanks have their own stat, Tenacity, healers have Piety, however, DH is not a DPS exclusive stat. If it was changed where we split crit into the 2 stats, which one would be the better one to be exclusive for DPS? or if it is even a good idea to begin with. I think personally, crit damage should be on the DPS with the rate being the stat everyone can have. It just feels right that the DPS, the ones who are designed to do more damage, does more with each crit.

Remove DH. Fix Tenacity. Improve Piety. Remove the 2 minute meta

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

If the dev team is set on making buffs easier to manage. The solution would be to make them almost entirely independent from the party (i.e. like Large Charge, Huton and etc). Yes, this heavily removes party synergy but that is a far better alternative than the mess they've come up with for Endwalker.

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I agree completely except with the part above. We shouldn't encourage the devs to have even less synergy.

The whole synergy thing is why certain jobs have historically been gimped for having group utility, while others were allowed to excel due to having none. Oft times the gap between jobs held back by their utility and those with none is larger than the sum total of the extra DPS theoretically gain via buffing the rest of the group.

Gut the synergy. I won't miss it one bit so long as we're given greater job complexity and proper balance.

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Originally Posted by AngelCheese77

What is a 2 minute meta?

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A series of changes to jobs that homogenizes all of their cooldowns to come up every 2 minutes.
Basically, almost every offensive skill/buff has a cooldown of 30s,60s, or 120s or has specifically been changed to have that to have a cooldown that lines up with coming up at the 2 minute mark. This results in the optimal strategy for every single job to pool all of their resources during a fight and barf them out all together when everything comes off cooldown, especially raidwide buffs, which increase the damage output of everyones strongest skills.

Then in 2 minutes, you do the exact same thing again, then again at the 6 minute mark, and so on. It results in a lot of jobs feeling incredibly samey, removes a lot of job complexity and simplifies things to a point of where the skill ceiling of almost any job is "Dont let your skills drift, pool resources for the next 2 minute mark".

FFXIV already struggles with its gameplay being Trial and Error, but turning offensive options into this basically makes an entire fight 100% scripted.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

I agree completely except with the part above. We shouldn't encourage the devs to have even less synergy.

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It's not that I'm encouraging them but choosing a lesser of two evils. Like I said in my response, I'd prefer they revert back to Shadowbringers or, ideally, Stormblood and build off from there. If it's a choice between the two minute meta and removing party synergy entirely, I'd take the latter in the hopes it would allow them to create better individuality as now they're only balancing raw numbers and not comp variances.

Thanks for the info!

Yeah this seems kind of dumb. Is this supposed to be something for savage raids? Like a burst window? (Sorry I don’t heavy raid so curious).

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Originally Posted by Oizen

A series of changes to jobs that homogenizes all of their cooldowns to come up every 2 minutes.
Basically, almost every offensive skill/buff has a cooldown of 30s,60s, or 120s or has specifically been changed to have that to have a cooldown that lines up with coming up at the 2 minute mark. This results in the optimal strategy for every single job to pool all of their resources during a fight and barf them out all together when everything comes off cooldown, especially raidwide buffs, which increase the damage output of everyones strongest skills.

Then in 2 minutes, you do the exact same thing again, then again at the 6 minute mark, and so on. It results in a lot of jobs feeling incredibly samey, removes a lot of job complexity and simplifies things to a point of where the skill ceiling of almost any job is "Dont let your skills drift, pool resources for the next 2 minute mark".

FFXIV already struggles with its gameplay being Trial and Error, but turning offensive options into this basically makes an entire fight 100% scripted.

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Originally Posted by AngelCheese77

Thanks for the info!

Yeah this seems kind of dumb. Is this supposed to be something for savage raids? Like a burst window? (Sorry I don’t heavy raid so curious).

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It's pretty much for all content, almost all jobs are designed in a way where simply pressing all of your big buttons on cooldown is already 90% of playing optimally, since doing that automatically makes everything line up with party-wide buffs every 2 minutes.

A moment of silence for our PLD brothers and sisters, whose job was one of the more recent casualties of the two-minute burst meta.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I feel like this is another troll thread, but you know what? I'll bite.

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Its one of several of OP's alts.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Troll thread or not, I'll comment.

The two minute meta is awful. It makes gameplay both incredibly rigid and boring at the same time because most jobs have practically nothing to do because they have to all funnel into exactly two minute intervals. The few 90s abilities now feel... hollow as they just can't of exist but don't often factor into your burst. Salt and Darkness, Bunshin and Riddle of Wind could all be deleted without changing a thing about each respective job. Hell, they had to change Bloodfest from 90 to 120 because it caused issues with Gunbreaker's damage in burst windows.

Worse then the above is every job feels too similar nowadays. Spacing out buffs allowed for some sense of individuality due to having to take into consideration what timers your comp played into. One minute Trick Attack meant Dark Knights could plan their Floods within those intervals instead of aimlessly dumping gauge to avoid overcap. Speaking of Ninja, it's been among the hardest hit. The job has virtually nothing to do outside of two minute bursts except spam 123 and the very occasional Bhavacakra.

The final insult to injury is this new shift didn't even accomplish the intended goal. Casual players still press their buffs on a whim because they don't really care to align everything. What's hilariously ironic is this actually made things worse for inexperienced players despite it supposedly being easier for them. A death nowadays is significantly worse than ever before. You have no way to mitigate your loses going into a two minute window. God forbid you die during said window. Now everything is completely misaligned and you've not only punished with weakness but have de-synced your buffs from the raid. So either you sit on them for potentially over a whole minute, losing even more damage, or you screw your team for the remainder of the fight.

If the dev team is set on making buffs easier to manage. The solution would be to make them almost entirely independent from the party (i.e. like Large Charge, Huton and etc). Yes, this heavily removes party synergy but that is a far better alternative than the mess they've come up with for Endwalker. My preference would be to revert the whole thing back to Shadowbringers or even Stormblood and let jobs run on different timers.

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Well said.

I don't do content where this is a concern but it's always sounded dreadfully constrained to me to have to line up buffs perfectly and as you mentioned, what do you do outside them? It seems like it would allow a lot more flexibility and ability to respond to mechanics if buffs were independent of the party.

+2 to dislike the 2min meta, my friend overwhelmingly despises it. it makes it harder to recover from mistakes and makes "drifting" your skills more punishing? it also feels like all the classes are kind of re-skins of each other instead of having a unique mechanic or way of performing, which is definitely not what at least a lot of NA players want it seems like, and i get that too. i don't mind some similarities for familiarity's sake when things change or it's been a while but things could be more unique and weird. as long as one class doesn't do significantly less dps than another i dont think people will care if it's weird but fun. be weird. try new things. it's ok if people don't like it overwhelmingly and you have to change it, but you won't know until you try

anyway 2min meta sucks

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Originally Posted by Absimiliard

The whole synergy thing is why certain jobs have historically been gimped for having group utility, while others were allowed to excel due to having none. Oft times the gap between jobs held back by their utility and those with none is larger than the sum total of the extra DPS theoretically gain via buffing the rest of the group.

Gut the synergy. I won't miss it one bit so long as we're given greater job complexity and proper balance.

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Real talk: If DPS lost a LOT of their utility they'd be a lot easier to balance because the Dev's wouldn't have to be concerned so much about meta comps. If every DPS was selfish they could be normalized.

Give all that utility to Healers so they have something to do. THEY should be the buffers / debuffers.