Paladin doesn't suck, 2 minute rotations just ruined combat

[Mithron]

I'm not really sure why people have jumped on this bandwagon only now, but a focus on party based burst has existed for as long as Trick Attack was added to the game (i.e. October 2014). The only thing that has changed over time is that both the developers and the general playerbase at large have become more conscious of how important those buffs actually are. So individual buffs are less dominant and mandatory, and they line up in a more consistent way. You're no longer forced to bring the same privileged jobs expansion after expansion. And you're less punished for teammates' mistakes.

This is incorrect.

In EW, they made every job (sans PLD, sort of) to be forced into two minute timers. In the past, some had burst phases more around 80s, or 70s, or 90s, not every job was fully optimized at 120s. So if you tried to force everything into Trick Attack on every job, you'd actually lose significant DPS, so you would follow your own individual rotation more instead for optimizing damage. So no, "the only thing that has changed is player perception" is not correct. So many cooldowns were shifted into 60s and 120s, meaning you are conformed into this specific playstyle on all jobs now which causes each job to feel the same in many ways, and creates more punishment when there's drift than when there was before. Some jobs barely had to deal with drift, now every job is punished heavily for it. Calling it more "consistent" a misnomer because many jobs did not rely on Trick as much as they do now, meaning any mistakes from your party causes much more DPS loss for you that wasn't present before.

[Sqwall]

This is incorrect.

In EW, they made every job (sans PLD, sort of) to be forced into two minute timers. In the past, some had burst phases more around 80s, or 70s, or 90s, not every job was fully optimized at 120s. So if you tried to force everything into Trick Attack on every job, you'd actually lose significant DPS, so you would follow your own individual rotation more instead for optimizing damage. So no, "the only thing that has changed is player perception" is not correct. So many cooldowns were shifted into 60s and 120s, meaning you are conformed into this specific playstyle on all jobs now which causes each job to feel the same in many ways, and creates more punishment when there's drift than when there was before. Some jobs barely had to deal with drift, now every job is punished heavily for it. Calling it more "consistent" a misnomer because many jobs did not rely on Trick as much as they do now, meaning any mistakes from your party causes much more DPS loss for you that wasn't present before.

This pretty much sums up the issue we have with the 2 min burst. SE is just playing catch up to get all the jobs into a much more smooth transition into the raid buffs. The drift is an after thought of the implementation of the 2 min raid buffs and having everything align just right. They SHOULD have fixed all the jobs around this BEFORE implementing the 2 min burst or announcing it. 7.0 is is going to have a HUGE amount of work to get done with getting all the jobs to just function properly since this is the new direction. They have their work cut out for them. Which is why we are seeing some reworks done now...or some that were announced for 6.0 and pushed back to 7.0. SE knows they opened Pandora's box with all this 2 min burst...and it's the gamers that constantly remind them it's not done yet. They know. I'm pretty sure they are just closing their eyes with their arms crossed across their chest, and shaking their heads. Frustrating. Game development is NOT easy...and gamers take that for granted constantly. Changing something that we think is "simple", can be incredibly frustrating for a developer as you play whack-a-mole with issues. Not to mention the spaghetti code you have to navigate through...

I have always dreaded going back to code I have written, and shaking my head at the work arounds I came up with. To the user they are unaware of the coding shenanigans you have to go through to just appease them. A lot of times...a blank slate is the simplest way to fix something...your code beings more "elegant" and efficient.

I feel the pain the devs are going through.

[Lyth]

There's actually nothing incorrect about what I stated, but thanks for quoting it on to the next page. Nor does your statement clash with mine.

The bit about burst 'lining' up is important, but what really matters is the LCM of when that occurs. It doesn't really matter if you're following a 30 second, 60 second, or 120 second cycle, because all of these will sync up, and there were plenty of privileged jobs that followed this principle in previous expansions. You still have jobs with odd cooldowns - Salted Earth/Salt and Darkness is deliberately set at 90 seconds to make DRK's weaving a bit more forgiving, but it's going to still sync up in the opener and every 6 minutes. You're just going to have a smaller set of players who are actually aware about this and optimize around it.

What always amuses me about this is that players often care more about the dps that they couldn't have than the dps that they could. You'll spend two years bickering on the forums about a few second drift on an ability and then lose several GCDs worth of raw uptime on every encounter you do that expansion. And when you finally get what you want, the rdps gain for doing it is rebalanced to account for the fact that everyone and their chocobo can now do it. Penny wise and pound foolish.

[Mithron]

There's actually nothing incorrect about what I stated, but thanks for quoting it on to the next page. Nor does your statement clash with mine.

The bit about burst 'lining' up is important, but what really matters is the LCM of when that occurs. It doesn't really matter if you're following a 30 second, 60 second, or 120 second cycle, because all of these will sync up, and there were plenty of privileged jobs that followed this principle in previous expansions. You still have jobs with odd cooldowns - Salted Earth/Salt and Darkness is deliberately set at 90 seconds to make DRK's weaving a bit more forgiving, but it's going to still sync up in the opener and every 6 minutes. You're just going to have a smaller set of players who are actually aware about this and optimize around it.

What always amuses me about this is that players often care more about the dps that they couldn't have than the dps that they could. You'll spend two years bickering on the forums about a few second drift on an ability and then lose several GCDs worth of raw uptime on every encounter you do that expansion. And when you finally get what you want, the rdps gain for doing it is rebalanced to account for the fact that everyone and their chocobo can now do it. Penny wise and pound foolish.

DRK Delirium used to be 90s. It rarely synced with Trick Attack, meaning DRK's burst windows and perceived playstyle felt very different than it does now. If every job bursts on 60s and 120s windows, then they all feel the same and are much less interesting or fun to play. It also means when a NIN drifts Mug now, or a DNC Technical Step, or a BRD's Radiant Finale, or whatever else, my DRK will suffer much more than it used to. And if I drift my Delirium or Carve and Spit or Blood Weapon, then I will suffer much more than I used to. And now this doesn't only apply to only DRK, but every single job in the game. Every job is doing the same burst at the same time in every fight and it's boring. I've come to learn that playstyle and job identity is more than just aesthetics and sound effects and how much you double weave or stand still, it's also the timings of your buffs and learning each individual fight's optimization for those timings. Now every fight optimizes nearly the same for every single job, whereas before you had vastly different optimizations with nearly every job.

[Lyth]

A couple of issues with this.

First, unlike early Stormblood where players simply looked at raw dps numbers when evaluating jobs, rdps attributes damage to the job that provides the buff. So if a NIN drifts a raid buff because they died and messed up their resource counts and would rather hold buffs and scupper the raid as a result, that's just their own suboptimal play (and it hurts them too). You can't cross-compensate for that any more than you can a NIN who isn't pressing their buttons correctly (or at all). Second, it's not that setting some burst windows at 90s last expansion meant that players were oblivious to when buffs went out. Good players were still aware. But by standardizing the design it becomes obvious even to the average player. The design hasn't changed. The way you optimize hasn't changed. More people are aware of it, that's all. Which is a good thing.

I look forward to the day when players discover the 'uptime meta', where players that stay on the boss and press buttons do significantly more damage than those who don't.

[Sqwall]

A couple of issues with this.

First, unlike early Stormblood where players simply looked at raw dps numbers when evaluating jobs, rdps attributes damage to the job that provides the buff. So if a NIN drifts a raid buff because they died and messed up their resource counts and would rather hold buffs and scupper the raid as a result, that's just their own suboptimal play (and it hurts them too). You can't cross-compensate for that any more than you can a NIN who isn't pressing their buttons correctly (or at all). Second, it's not that setting some burst windows at 90s last expansion meant that players were oblivious to when buffs went out. Good players were still aware. But by standardizing the design it becomes obvious even to the average player. The design hasn't changed. The way you optimize hasn't changed. More people are aware of it, that's all. Which is a good thing.

I look forward to the day when players discover the 'uptime meta', where players that stay on the boss and press buttons do significantly more damage than those who don't.

and those that understand proper positioning is just as important as a well executed rotation. or being greedy dps can result in a wipe. and max melee is a real thing. or when to save an onslaught charge P6S when I'm forced to a corner to rush back in and doge the aoe, maybe 1-2 tomahawks....still better then 0.

[FireMage]

There. Will. Always. Be. Burst. Windows.

[Mithron]

Second, it's not that setting some burst windows at 90s last expansion meant that players were oblivious to when buffs went out. Good players were still aware. But by standardizing the design it becomes obvious even to the average player. The design hasn't changed. The way you optimize hasn't changed. More people are aware of it, that's all. Which is a good thing.

The argument doesn't hold here because it was a massive DPS loss to hold many of your resources/CDs specifically for 60s/120s burst windows for many jobs in the past. Some resources you would, like DRK's Dark Arts in HW/SB or Edge of Shadows in SHB, but you certainly wouldn't hold Delirium for that long. Yes, you would sync up every what, 6 minutes or so in a fight, and that felt great, but missing that 6 minute window wasn't nearly as punishing as missing every single 60s/120s window due to a drift. The design has changed, the optimize has changed. Failing a 6 minute is much less significant than failing every 2 minutes without being able to recover and by that very definition, has changed everything. It means everyone's rotation is far more static and rigid than ever before. Sure, some jobs were always pretty rigid like PLD, but other jobs were about as flexible if not more than current MNK and it made optimization per fight and comp way more fun than currently.

[FireMage]

The argument doesn't hold here because it was a massive DPS loss to hold many of your resources/CDs specifically for 60s/120s burst windows for many jobs in the past. Some resources you would, like DRK's Dark Arts in HW/SB or Edge of Shadows in SHB, but you certainly wouldn't hold Delirium for that long. Yes, you would sync up every what, 6 minutes or so in a fight, and that felt great, but missing that 6 minute window wasn't nearly as punishing as missing every single 60s/120s window due to a drift. The design has changed, the optimize has changed. Failing a 6 minute is much less significant than failing every 2 minutes without being able to recover and by that very definition, has changed everything. It means everyone's rotation is far more static and rigid than ever before. Sure, some jobs were always pretty rigid like PLD, but other jobs were about as flexible if not more than current MNK and it made optimization per fight and comp way more fun than currently.

Oh noes the game is more punishing (Good)

[Sqwall]

The argument doesn't hold here because it was a massive DPS loss to hold many of your resources/CDs specifically for 60s/120s burst windows for many jobs in the past. Some resources you would, like DRK's Dark Arts in HW/SB or Edge of Shadows in SHB, but you certainly wouldn't hold Delirium for that long. Yes, you would sync up every what, 6 minutes or so in a fight, and that felt great, but missing that 6 minute window wasn't nearly as punishing as missing every single 60s/120s window due to a drift. The design has changed, the optimize has changed. Failing a 6 minute is much less significant than failing every 2 minutes without being able to recover and by that very definition, has changed everything. It means everyone's rotation is far more static and rigid than ever before. Sure, some jobs were always pretty rigid like PLD, but other jobs were about as flexible if not more than current MNK and it made optimization per fight and comp way more fun than currently.

Yeah I don't know if I just get behind this anymore. The 2 min burst isn't that hard, and again only applies to savage and ultimate where maybe less then 5% of the community engage in. Nobody lines up burst in EX or dungeon.....nobody. I don't waste my pots in EX or dungeon....that's just a waste of gil.