Job balance vs the 2 minute burst window and full uptime

[Aco505]

Here's a hot take: The problem is the existence of raid buffs.

In a world without raid buffs, you can design the outgoing damage profile of each job in isolation from all other jobs, and you can make that damage profile whatever you want, from a relatively constant stream of damage to high/low phases. As long as each job within a role does roughly the same damage over N minutes -- where N can be as long as the expected time to enrage, for example -- then each job is "viable" from a damage standpoint. As long as each job within a role has roughly the same freedom of movement and action ranges, you can wave your hand and assume that they'll all be able to resolve mechanics to maintain uptime, either by moving around any "bursts" in their rotation or by coordinating with the rest of the party. There's room for variety between jobs, individual creativity, and group creativity.

Yes and no. Most jobs (especially DPS) had 120s buffs in ShB with MNK being the main outlier since it mostly worked on 90s timers. MNK was still strong, but it was completely un-synchronized from the whole party except in 6-min windows (and 3-min windows if you happened to have more of those).

So while it's true that removing or minimizing the effect of party buffs would allow design to be more free and less restricted to "everyone must burst a little every 60s and more every 120s" it can also bring back issues that already existed before. The balance is hard to strike, but it affected specific jobs more than others and that can easily come back.

Also, kill and enrage times can harm jobs with 180s cooldowns unless these are properly balanced, since you can lose uses compared to 45/60/120s ones. Of course, this also allows optimization such as holding a 180 for the last 120 or so if a use is not lost for instance, but it's still something to consider.

It does seem they are making jobs similar so that they can balance them easier. Seeing how MNK has got a system similar to SAM now, I could anticipate DRG being made even closer to RPR with the planned changes. I can understand this because we are going to reach double the amount of jobs we had in ARR and it will only get harder to juggle them all, but it's a bit of a shift from the philosophy of every job being unique.

They're not homogenizing the jobs because of 60/120s bursts or any other specific reason, they're doing so because they want to. They could easily keep most if not all jobs unique by tweaking what's necessary. Just to point an example, people in the forums already ask for DRG to lose its unique 5-step combo and to have less oGCDs to be exactly like the other melees or turn LotD into Enshroud 2.0 when that can be easily avoided with other formulas.

[Petite]

They're not homogenizing the jobs because of 60/120s bursts or any other specific reason, they're doing so because they want to.

They definitely do. It's much simpler to design fights around fewer burst windows.

Ever noticed how we get a sort of 30s mechanic break every two minutes now? As long as they don't mess with you too much during those windows, that leaves them free to throw whatever they want at you for the next 90s.

[SieyaM]

Idk man, I think week 1 balancing matters when people take time off of work to raid specifically on that first week. It's as problematic as when we got the delay for last tier and it meant a lot of people got their scheduling screwed over. This affects their real lives. This time it's not an understandable scheduling issue it's an avoidable numbers issue which now means that a large portion of players took time off for something that was either straight up impossible on week one or was reliant on rng.

I'm probably going to draw the fury of raiders, but taking time off work is a problem you make for yourself and is not a developer concern. There is nothing in this game that requires you or asks you to take time off from a career or job, that is you as an individual choosing to prioritize a game. Developers are not responsible for your decisions.

[Aco505]

They definitely do. It's much simpler to design fights around fewer burst windows.

Ever noticed how we get a sort of 30s mechanic break every two minutes now? As long as they don't mess with you too much during those windows, that leaves them free to throw whatever they want at you for the next 90s.

Then they're failing at it, because the past and current tier had several fights where a hard or annoying mechanic happens during your 2-min, and it became difficult precisely because you have to burst during it or delay it after.

[Saraide]

They definitely do. It's much simpler to design fights around fewer burst windows.

Ever noticed how we get a sort of 30s mechanic break every two minutes now? As long as they don't mess with you too much during those windows, that leaves them free to throw whatever they want at you for the next 90s.

That's not universally true. There are a lot of savage fights this expansion where stuff is happening exactly when the 2 minute buff window is coming up.

[Rolder50]

They definitely do. It's much simpler to design fights around fewer burst windows.

Ever noticed how we get a sort of 30s mechanic break every two minutes now? As long as they don't mess with you too much during those windows, that leaves them free to throw whatever they want at you for the next 90s.

Personally, I'd rather them throw MORE stuff at people around burst windows, since that would make it an actual challenge to perform your rotation. Catering to people who whine about every millisecond of lost uptime or lost cooldown use is why it's gotten stale.

[Petite]

That's not universally true. There are a lot of savage fights this expansion where stuff is happening exactly when the 2 minute buff window is coming up.

I mean if your example is Devour, it's not exactly disrupting it, more like asking you to hold it until Proto is done jumping around. I haven't entered P8S yet though.

[Saraide]

I mean if your example is Devour, it's not exactly disrupting it, more like asking you to hold it until Proto is done jumping around. I haven't entered P8S yet though.

Both intemperances happen at burst windows, p2s has one during dissociation and during arrows 3, P3S has one during devouring brand 1, one during fountains of fire and one right as firestorms end, P4S phase 1 has both pinax on burst windows and one under towers, phase 2 has one during act 4, p5s has one during ruby glow 3 and another one during squal/surge, p6s only has the tankbuster + raidwide combos on burst windows so you're right on that fight, p7 has one during invoilate bonds. I havent finished p7 or entered p8 yet.

[Aco505]

Both intemperances happen at burst windows, p2s has one during dissociation and during arrows 3, P3S has one during devouring brand 1, one during fountains of fire and one right as firestorms end, P4S phase 1 has both pinax on burst windows and one under towers, phase 2 has one during act 4, p5s has one during ruby glow 3 and another one during squal/surge, p6s only has the tankbuster + raidwide combos on burst windows so you're right on that fight, p7 has one during invoilate bonds. I havent finished p7 or entered p8 yet.

Most of these had a workaround and made the fights interesting.

The downtime ones (Kampeos Harma and now Devour) make the fights different optimization-wise.

Pinax 1 was the biggest offender though. The mechanic was really annoying only because you had to burst there, otherwise it'd have been fine. Compare that with Act 4, where the mechanic can be annoying but fine despite it happening during burst (except for some healers I suppose).

I'm all for mechs to happen during burst to make it interesting, just not to the level of randomness and annoyance that Pinax 1 brought, particularly to melee DPS. And then you had Pinax 2 which was quite comfy.

[Midareyukki]

What about jobs whose rotation gets majorly screwed over if downtime happens at inconvenient times, such as Bard or Summoner? Where optimization has to be harsher and done more in advance, netting in a large loss just so everything lines up perfectly later. You're basically forced to rely on Ruin 3 and Burst Shot. If downtime is sufficiently large, then it can interfere with Coda, for example. Or worse, Hydaelyn EX where the add phase now goes by too quickly, messing up gems and demi-summon timings.