The Impact of the Two-Minute Meta on Balance & Job Diversity

[MagiusNecros]

They need to revert to ShB and kill the 2 minute meta. Balance was so much better in that xpac. The stat squish and the rigid 2 minute burst has done more harm then good. I dunno how they shifted from balanced across the board to making Tanks and Casters unbalanced to play whilst propping up Melee with large hitboxes guaranteeing nearly 100% uptime.

Encounter design also tends to be mechanic heavy at the 2 minute mark on purpose in some fights making it worse. Maybe players might have to adopt a 3 minute burst window instead to counteract this? Delay your burst by a minute to avoid the nonsense.

I mean if you want the 2 minute burst that's fine on a couple classes but other classes should have 1 minute or even half a minute bursts for some variety. Or even classes that have no burst but do sustained high damage all the time.

But what I'm seeing is they want every job class to conform or die to the 2 minute meta which leaves little room for error but also very little room for improvement.

From a fighting game perspective if players can't improve because the burst is all that matters the combat is gonna stagnate and die rather quickly. And if all the classes pretty much play the same that's equivalent to all your fighters having the same kit but other fighters have better or worse values then others so you just take the best one. And that's awful if you say love Class A but Class B outclasses you in every way. Such as your WAR/GNB example. Same can be said for Casters/Ranged.

Should there be burst jobs yes but there should be options to play a job that doesn't burst and just does damage also yes. Or even little damage spikes across a fight. Not everyone has to be a Dark Knight and throw it all out at once in 15 seconds.

There are raider arguments for why it's bad but making everything about burst and endgame content tends to make the leveling process another problem entirely. Which is also a concern. Taking a large amount of jobs through the level sync process is just awful. Like the jobs don't get fun until like 70 or mid 80. That's not good.

That's all I really have to say.

[pympcakes]

There are raider arguments for why it's bad but making everything about burst and endgame content tends to make the leveling process another problem entirely. Which is also a concern. Taking a large amount of jobs through the level sync process is just awful. Like the jobs don't get fun until like 70 or mid 80. That's not good.

This is often lost, but with lower level content such a big part of this game it's actually a pretty big deal to feel good (strict balance is less important). Level 50 ninja can't refresh without mudras (then getting two ways shortly after), bard missing songs, summoner feels incomplete until 86, paladin no charge until 74, healers are blah, etc...

[Mithron]

This is often lost, but with lower level content such a big part of this game it's actually a pretty big deal to feel good (strict balance is less important). Level 50 ninja can't refresh without mudras (then getting two ways shortly after), bard missing songs, summoner feels incomplete until 86, paladin no charge until 74, healers are blah, etc...

Actually since I started this game in 3.4, I got to experience NIN in level 50 synced content when they still played a lot more like they intended at level 50, and I really like how NIN feels and changes at 50 without Armor Crush. It's not like I prefer no Armor Crush or anything, but I just appreciate how much the way you play NIN changes at different levels. You essentially give up a Raiton to do another Huton, but you want to do Huton right before it expires without clipping Mudra cooldowns to maximize duration. It makes it really fun in a fight by fight basis, like synced ex trials, and forces you to look at NIN differently. I enjoy it!