Hot Take Inside: Remove raidwide buffs (2m) to explore new job design

[aloneatsea]

snip

I think you make a lot of great points here. I think it's important to be very careful about things like buffs in a game with FF14, when aligning buffs is, actually, more important than how well you play your job.

I do think you're underestimating, though, how much moving to this forced two-minute cooldown buff window has already ruined job identity. Ninja lost Trick Attack, its most iconic ability, as its party buff. We get fucking Mug now. What a joke. You don't see as many people complaining about it relative to Samurai because Ninja is, currently, absurdly overtuned, and Ninja has had a rough run all through 6.0, which has nuked the number of overall Ninja players. Sure, Trick is still a personal buff - who cares - and sure, Mug is still a party buff, but now it's the same as Embolden, or Divination.

Trick lined up perfectly with two-minute cooldowns, and added variety for other classes to play around inbetween big burst windows. It raised the skill ceiling for the whole party in a not-insubstantial way.

The thing about two-minute windows is that two minutes is, in terms of a fight a very long time! You might only get three, maybe four burst windows a fight. That's a whole lot of doing nothing before you do the exciting part.

Someone above mentioned bringing in raid buffs that aligned at the minute or two-minute marks, and I'm inclined to agree. Keep Trick on the one-minute cooldown. Maybe another, weaker buff has a 40s cooldown. Maybe a very small buff (single-target?) is up every thirty seconds for a short time, something similar in functionality to Astro cards. Let them all align for that big two-minute burst, but allow skill expression inbetween those buff windows! Maybe a party with a Ninja and Monk has very strong odd minute windows, with slightly weaker two minutes. Maybe a party with Dragoon and Scholar bursts hard at two-minute and three-minute windows. Maybe a party with Astrologian and Bard bursts a little every thirty seconds. I'm throwing out imaginary scenarios here, but the point I'm trying to get across is that I want to live in a world where my rotation might change depending on who I'm grouped with! I love that concept, I do. It doesn't even have to be in a big way -- it could just change the way I pool gauge. Even something like that would be enough -- a bit of spice to add something to doing the same fights over and over.

Jobs can and should align, you're right! But it doesn't have to be like this. We shouldn't have to put a gun to Ninja and myriad other jobs's heads just so that every buff can be on two minutes.



Side note, but a few people now have suggested "just add personal buffs!" for a solution to the downtime issue... is that really something people enjoy? I actively avoid jobs with personal buff because I find they just don't feel exciting...

At the end of the day, I dunno. I think I'd rather take a bit of imbalance for a much more exciting game. I know the playerbase tends to overreact to balance (see: people still locking MCH out of parties...); but we've also had jobs like MCH which are terminally undertuned (and NIN, which was incredibly weak until 6.08) which are still able to clear the content just fine. Does it make it right that these jobs are weak? No, of course not. They can and should be buffed. But I'd take Ninja being bottom of the pack for another patch or two if we got Trick back, and a few patches more if some of the other buffs went on more interesting timers, too.

Hell, even if it's just one-minute and two-minute cooldowns, that's still an improvement over right now.

[RaevusAstra]

I think the ship's already sailed on giving every raid buff a different timer, otherwise we'd still have various raid buffs and abilities still on 90 seconds like in ShB. I'd guess it's a balancing issue and it'd end up in the same spot as it is now if they tried that route. Agree that the jobs feel very restrictive with 2 minutes though.

My argument is to not even worry about strange buff alignment for raidbuffs specifically by having them on different timers. Buffs imo should be individual or targeted for the most part (Dragon Sight, Trick Attack).

[RaevusAstra]

I'd like to mention a couple points you made:

In regards to MNK and an odd window being stronger than an even window... This actually happens somewhat. If you did the rotation "properly", you'd always have Rising Phoenix and Elixir Field in your even minute windows and Phantom Rush (the highest potency blitz) in the odd minute windows. The optimal strategy to align properly with buffs then, is to "waste" a Nadi by doing the same Nadi twice (Rising Phoenix + Rising Phoenix) so you can align your Phantom Rush in 2m buffs.

Basically, your optimal rotation works AROUND your buff windows instead of the other way around. You have to "lose" DPS to gain DPS during your next even burst windows, because the even burst is the most powerful window in the game. This won't change if you continue to add one minute buffs or 30 second buffs, the rotation will always work for making sure 2m has the most jam packed abilities.

With no raid buffs (or very limited raid buffing), there's more skill expression and uniqueness based off a job working on their own timer. When they have their own personal buffs, they work on their own clock. When a suppoet job like DNC that has the ability to buff one job is paired with those jobs, the DNC has to be aware of each of the other jobs' internal clocks to shift their buff and maximize damage. Both of these cases, imo, is a greater measure of skill mastery than simply pressing all the big buttons that naturally align within a 2 minute window.

[RaevusAstra]

I guess some further questions I was thinking about in the time that this post was up.

1) What if we just had differing raidbuff timers instead of deleting em all?
Well, we'd just be in Shadowbringers then. The greatest buff window is always gonna work around the multiples of the longest timers. If we had 90sec raidbuffs, like Shadowbringers, the best burst would be 6m which is quite a long time to hold out for resources. The team saw this issue which is why they normalized raidbuffs to 2m (with old trick at 1m because that didn't change the fact that the 2m window is still the strongest). Same would happen if we had 3m raidbuff windows, the best raidbuff alignment would still be 6m. When we get higher than that, things become obnoxious and buffs probably start simply not fitting properly into fights.

2) What do I mean when I say support jobs are more engaging?

I personally think this way when I think specifically about buffs like Dance Partner, Dragon Sight, and Astro's cards. Instead of popping these buffs on your local samurai and calling it a day, you have the ability to increase everyone's DPS depending on when their burst is individually. In the case that their bursts align, you'll have to figure out who bursts the highest in that specific moment. The fun is knowing when everyone would be bursting and juggling your support buffs to each player accordingly - if everyone's strongest burst is 2m the only thinking is that the buff goes to the player with the strongest 2m burst (the most selfish DPS). However, with no raidbuff alignment, you'll have to weigh when people have downtime and when they're in their burst phase, and plan to distribute your buff accordingly.

The point I guess I'm trying to make is that all this complexity can be attained alone simply by removing raidbuffs.

[Rika007]

The point I guess I'm trying to make is that all this complexity can be attained alone simply by removing raidbuffs.

You're missing a pretty big problem with this though. Many players would outright quit their jobs if you do this. Do you actually think Dancers would keep playing Dancer if you just outright removed the party buffing support of Technical step? Or Bards would stay Bards if you removed the songs, Battle Voice and Radiant Finale? You would keep a few hardcore diehards sure, but the allure of these jobs is their support kits. All you have to do is look at Shadowbringers Bard and all the players who pitched a massive fit over the loss of Foe's Requiem and Refresh. It's the identity of the job. You are looking to create rotational complexity at the cost of cutting out years of job identity that many players have fell in love with. It would piss off far more players then it would actually make happy. Again not even touching that players of other jobs who aren't that support oriented but still have raid buffs would also not be happy either...

Don't touch our raid buffs. There are far more interesting ways to deal with downtime and stale rotations in this game. We shouldnt be removing team interplay and organized burst windows. As a follow up aside the idea of a class based game that doesn't have a class that empower all of it's comrades just sounds weird to me. There should always be a few classes that full fill the fantasy of that role. If you think maybe the amount of them should be cut down, then sure by all means maybe that can be pursued (but then you have to find out which jobs to remove them from), but the idea of removing all raidwide buffs just feels like the biggest overcorrection ever.

Side note, but a few people now have suggested "just add personal buffs!" for a solution to the downtime issue... is that really something people enjoy? I actively avoid jobs with personal buff because I find they just don't feel exciting...

At the end of the day, I dunno. I think I'd rather take a bit of imbalance for a much more exciting game. I know the playerbase tends to overreact to balance (see: people still locking MCH out of parties...); but we've also had jobs like MCH which are terminally undertuned (and NIN, which was incredibly weak until 6.08) which are still able to clear the content just fine. Does it make it right that these jobs are weak? No, of course not. They can and should be buffed. But I'd take Ninja being bottom of the pack for another patch or two if we got Trick back, and a few patches more if some of the other buffs went on more interesting timers, too.

Hell, even if it's just one-minute and two-minute cooldowns, that's still an improvement over right now.

Personally speaking? Heck yes I love personal buffs. Monk is currently one of my favorite jobs to play because I love the way that the interplay of Riddle of fire and Perfect balance cooldown timer creates a sort of 'mini' burst at the 1 minute mark. I was really excited when Endwalker media tour showed Bard having raging strikes still on a cooldown of 60 seconds, it made me think of some fun options for stacking bloodletters and Apex/Blasting to really get a good hit out during a moment the job kinda slows down. I was very let down when they moved Raging to the 2 minute zone. Personal buffs being the only thing a job brings is very boring, but when they are used as an addition to the full kit, it becomes a fun way to augment the rotation.

As for your question on balance, I can agree, but we already know the player base in itself will not. FF14 as a game may have the best balance of any class based game I've ever seen but players are never happy. Keeping at least a more consistent burst timing for at least the most major cooldowns allows the dev team to keep a pretty good balance area. That being said though, it is no excuse for rotations degrading to the lowest common denominator. These things are not mutually exclusive. We can have fun rotations across the board and still line up with burst windows for the jobs.

Retro edit follow up: I also don't in anyway disagree with you though. I dont disagree that enforcing a 2 minute rotation has had some unintended hits as well, and I would like to see the devs correct them, my point is more that you can still keep identity of jobs without abandoning the 2 minute time cycle. Trick Attack/Mug (cause lets face it, in the end they do the same thing, just now less often and with a different ability) could have remained on the 1 minute cycle and still also lined up. I'd prefer to see individual buffs, buffs that improve singular party, and a few shorter party wides thrown here and there, and keep the heavy hitting ones all at the 2 min.

I also don't want to abandon the positives of some of these changes though. Getting Battle Voice in line, Dragon Sight, Presence of Mind, Bard and Warrior's entire burst cycle... The problem when you have only a few things outside the cycle that everything else aligns with, they aren't creative exceptions, they become undertuned outliers unless the power of said abilities are made so obscene that they just become busted (like Battle Litany due to the power of crit in this game. Even though Bards Battle voice was also a 3 minute and added more DH then BL added CH, the power of crit made Litany so strong that even off the cycle it made the job meta). 2 minutes is just a very solid base line to keep jobs tuned properly.

[cjbeagle]

Do you actually think Dancers would keep playing Dancer if you just outright removed the party buffing support of Technical step?

Speaking only for myself, but what I like about dancer is that its gameplay is proc-based instead of relying heavily on babysitting cooldowns, buffs, or debuffs. The fact that it's a support dps is actually something I dislike about it.

[Rika007]

Speaking only for myself, but what I like about dancer is that its gameplay is proc-based instead of relying heavily on babysitting cooldowns, buffs, or debuffs. The fact that it's a support dps is actually something I dislike about it.

I mean by that thought then you really would want to be playing Monk, pretty much everything lines up similar with how dancer works. One singular buff to track (Devilment = Riddle of Fire), procs to track (fan feathers vs chakra), resource based spenders (Forbidden Chakra vs Sabre Dance), a singular ability to use on cooldown to unlock burst abilities (Perfect Balance vs Flourish), primarily combo based GCD's, along with only a singular party based buff that fuels your procs (Technical Step vs Brotherhood). The difference between the two is that ones identity is very much in it's lore and its whole shtick is that it is a support and buffing job, another is much more selfish.

[cjbeagle]

I mean by that thought then you really would want to be playing Monk, pretty much everything lines up similar with how dancer works. One singular buff to track (Devilment = Riddle of Fire), procs to track (fan feathers vs chakra), resource based spenders (Forbidden Chakra vs Sabre Dance), a singular ability to use on cooldown to unlock burst abilities (Perfect Balance vs Flourish), primarily combo based GCD's, along with only a singular party based buff that fuels your procs (Technical Step vs Brotherhood). The difference between the two is that ones identity is very much in it's lore and its whole shtick is that it is a support and buffing job, another is much more selfish.

Monk is actually my least favorite dps in the entire game - imo they're about as far from dancer as you can get despite a couple similarities.

- Minimal cooldown tracking: true, comparable.
- The only proc monks have is chakra, whereas dancers' base combo GCDs proc upgraded combo GCDs, those upgraded combo GCDs proc Fan Dance I/II, and Fan Dance I/II proc Fan Dance III.
- Monks' proc enables an OGCD that doesn't affect their rotation - it's just something extra to do while doing the same rotation in parallel, whereas dancers regularly get procs that change their rotation in addition to also getting OGCD procs.
- Monks have to proc chakra 5 times to use 1 OGCD, whereas dancers have a 1:1 proc-to-use ratio.
- Monks can't bank their procs because they cap at the same amount they require for a use, whereas dancers can bank 3 uses without overcapping.

Ultimately monks are almost entirely a GCD job with basically no variation on what they use or when - their rotation is extremely rigid, whereas dancers use OGCDs extremely frequently with a rotation that is not only variable, but unpredictable.

Their gameplay is wildly different without even needing to take their support or lack thereof into consideration.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd rather keep a majority of raid-wide buffs but vary up their timings (60, 90, 120). Each buff after the first that creates a given damage window does, gameplay-wise, absolutely nothing. (They just shift numbers one way to be shifted back upon rDPS calculations.) Ideally, have Trick Attack and perhaps one other one-minute or flexible buff be the mainstay, with every other TA or every other other buff syncing to one another about every other time.

Consolidate some of those raid buffs, though, for more impact and control. Merge the effect of Battle Voice into the more flexible Radiant Finale design. Drop Battle Litany and revamp Dragon Sight, again at 90 seconds, to be more thematic, interesting, and capable of utility. Revert the 6.1 changes to NIN to give us back it's one-minute window. Give Brotherhood some proximity-based interplay and have it affect potency, rather than solely damage. Etc., etc.

[ExcogEnjoyer]

You're missing a pretty big problem with this though. Many players would outright quit their jobs if you do this. Do you actually think Dancers would keep playing Dancer if you just outright removed the party buffing support of Technical step? Or Bards would stay Bards if you removed the songs, Battle Voice and Radiant Finale? You would keep a few hardcore diehards sure, but the allure of these jobs is their support kits. All you have to do is look at Shadowbringers Bard and all the players who pitched a massive fit over the loss of Foe's Requiem and Refresh. It's the identity of the job. You are looking to create rotational complexity at the cost of cutting out years of job identity that many players have fell in love with. It would piss off far more players then it would actually make happy. Again not even touching that players of other jobs who aren't that support oriented but still have raid buffs would also not be happy either...

Battle Voice and Radiant Finale are 2 of the most boring buff skills in the game, Battle Voice and Radiant Finale have 0 interaction with the rest of the kit, indistinguishable from other raid buffs like Searing Light or Battle Litany. And before you protest, no, Minstrel's Codas are not "interaction" they're vestigial organs to a functionality that square deleted from the game before we could even get to play with it. If you deleted BV and RF from the game and replaced them with Foe Requiem, Bard would be a more fun class to play almost instantly.

You're also missing a rather large part of the story in 5.X. When Foe Requiem got carved out of Bard's kit, it wasn't a simple "Ok we're taking this and giving you something else similar because we think Foe Requiem is a bit weird and we want to standardize it a bit." It was "We're taking this skill that was core to Bard's identity through ARR, HW and SB and replacing it with FUCKING NOTHING."