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

[Shurrikhan]

@Eisi

Probably not, seeing as burst optimization is half the gameplay of most jobs vs. that theoretical unfeasible job being just one job.

Granted, if fights were designed more deliberately in polyrhythm, every job timing template would be feasible anyways. All that would be unfeasible would be the dynamics that also tend to be unfun -- something with zero banking, zero burst, and a horribly brittle rotation.

[Lyth]

...

You're all over the shop. The existence of raid buffs weren't responsible for any of these. Players have been complaining about job homogenization since Shadowbringers at the very minimum, and it comes down to the fact that unique advantages usually result in job imbalances. That and the fact that everyone wants what they don't have. The P8S nerf was because the dps check was just tighter than it was intended to be. Savage nerfs were actually fairly commonplace up until around Creator. If anything, I think we'll see a trend towards global mid-tier job buffs from here out as a soft nerf to help people clear fights more comfortably after some time has passed.

Before you start throwing out every complaint about the game that you've seen in General Discussion as of late ('two minute meta' is responsible for the player housing crisis, healer ennui, the G'raha burger scene, and the lack of Island Sanctuary customization, no doubt), stop and ask yourself if what you're putting out here is actually relevant to the existence of timed raid buffs in this game which have been a staple since 2014.

[Oizen]

*laughs in Asphodelos Savage*

The 2m bursts tended to line up with big mechanics. The tiles in P1S, P2S limit cut, P3S cross-hatch AoE into Wing (that one was hell on your fingers), P4S Pinax. The devs seemed to have purposefully timed things to happen right when the burst windows were starting up. Kinda wish they had done the same this tier, would have loved to experience the hell that would be Cachexia during a burst window.

I really don't view this as an intentional decision. I think SE just does random shit then tries to justify it later.

[Shurrikhan]

Just to play devil's advocate here, but the 60/120s bursts also restrict boss design.

Sure, but job design should be built around the timings available to jobs, be that in playing to them (major dps check) or against them (alt/minor dps check). Interaction should always be intentional (which is why these relatively rapid shifts to and from multi-rhythm to single-rhythm, or synced to "hah, **** your 120s CDs -- burbbombs!" can feel so problematic in that they are muddying those interactions between kit and content). Else, any significant DPS check forces that awkwardness of stalling the fight just to avoid shifting phases too soon or otherwise desyncing from preferred timings, etc., a trend we've otherwise moved away from due to typical players' negative perceptions of those events. (Personally, I both like them in very particular contexts, but those would take a while to explain.)

Say you want to have an add that comes out at 20 seconds, or 40 seconds past the minute and it is designed that you need to burst it down. With the 60/120 second design, you cannot do that, this type of add has to come at the 60 second intervals so that the group can kill it, then you have to make it stronger to compensate. If group bursts were different, you only need 1 or 2 to use their burst, which isn't an issue as they line up anyway.

But if everything was 60/120, why would you want to do that in the first place? In that state, it would be a (initially quite unintuitive) mechanic for highly expensive CD holding only.

Again, the idea proposed for returning minor or off-/alt-rhythm dps checks was specifically for a multi-rhythm state of the game (30, 40, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 150s CDs alike) as a means not to lock out whichever compositions aren't quite so easily fit into the most narrowly synergetic rhythm (especially since that's no longer so complicated by damage types or mag/phys raid buff splits).

[Mithron]

The P8S nerf was because the dps check was just tighter than it was intended to be.

Then why were less than 10 PLDs/WARs able to clear P8s week 1 pre-nerf? Yes, it was tighter than it needed to be, because of how unbalanced the game is plus that fight's design so poor meant the 15%~ DPS difference between the worst jobs and the best jobs literally gated many comps from actually being able to clear it even with nigh-perfect plays, simply because the 120 meta failed. Then you also need to address crit variance with the high potency skills most jobs have now like Double Down which is only further made worse due to 120 meta.

Savage nerfs were actually fairly commonplace up until around Creator. If anything, I think we'll see a trend towards global mid-tier job buffs from here out as a soft nerf to help people clear fights more comfortably after some time has passed.

And why do you think we haven't needed Savage nerfs since Creator? Because the game hasn't been so unbalanced since Gordias/Midas. Can we balance the game to 1% rDPS within each other on a two minute meta? Yes, we can. Would it be fun and healthy for the game? Absolutely not.

Before you start throwing out every complaint about the game that you've seen in General Discussion as of late ('two minute meta' is responsible for the player housing crisis, healer ennui, the G'raha burger scene, and the lack of Island Sanctuary customization, no doubt), stop and ask yourself if what you're putting out here is actually relevant to the existence of timed raid buffs in this game which have been a staple since 2014.

I hardly read General, I have two houses on Gilgamesh, I don't know what healer ennui means, I thought the burger scene was funny, and I don't use Island Sanctuary, so all your strawmen failed. Timed raid buffs should be varied and balanced so that more jobs feel unique and fight design can be far less constricted. Some jobs can fully burst on 120s. Other jobs can slightly burst on 120s but burst more on 70s, 80s and 90s, while all jobs are still balanced. It's not hard to comprehend.

[Lyth]

You still seem to be stuck on this one point. Nothing that you are talking about here is a consequence of buff timings.

The comp choices on the first few weeks were a reflection of dps inequities, not due to the timing of raid buffs. RPR's Double Enshroud lines up very naturally with 120 second windows, but also offered the least dps out of all melee jobs by a fairly significant margin. Players who are determined to get an early clear are going to naturally migrate towards meta picks when there are gross inequalities. That in turn gets reinforced by groups with clear potential selecting for jobs that are going to get them that clear. But your point remains irrelevant to the discussion around buff timings. The solution was and always has been to achieve dps parity within individual roles. Has nothing to do with your 'two minute meta'.

The reason why nerfs were required for Heavensward Savage tiers was because people found them to be too difficult. Difficulty has nothing to do with the timing of raid buffs.

You can complain about whatever you like, be it balance, difficulty, or what not, and I'm sure that they're all important issues. But your entire post has no relevance to the timing of raid buffs.

[Kalaam]

Aren't raid buffs part of the DPS discrepency though ? They make it bigger since big burst attacks benefit from it way more.

[Lyth]

This is a complex question, but it's only tangentially related.

The simple answer is that if you supply a raid dps buff, the net gain to your party from that buff counts towards your rdps total and nobody else's. If you don't supply a raid buff, then what you do under raid buffs does not influence your own rdps any more than it ordinarily would. It affects your NIN, DRG, MNK, RPR, and so on. So if you're comparing two jobs which don't supply raid buffs (i.e. tanks) on the basis of rdps, discrepancies are unambiguously bad and represent clear cut balance issues.

There's then the question of how your alignment of buffs benefits jobs that actually supply them (i.e. adjusted dps). Should players who supply buffs (i.e. RPR, DRG, NIN, MNK, SCH, AST, and so on) be pushing for other jobs to have big two minute burst windows? Should those players be preferentially selecting for jobs that offer more personal dps in place of raid buffs? The simple answer is that you're looking at 1/8 of a 3-5% raid buff with 17% uptime (0.06%) that is completely outside of your control (and the player in question could be dead for the entirety of it). (As an aside, RPR suffers for this more than most, because a death also counts as a lost stack for PH, which is a personal buff and not a raidwide). Which is why it all comes out in the wash as just another confounding variable across many many groups and many many clears.

This is also why raid buffs don't individually count for as much as they used to, and why we've moved away from a 10% Trick every minute to a 5% Mug every two minutes.

[Mithron]

Nothing that you are talking about here is a consequence of buff timings.

The entire point of this thread is that we don't want PLD to change just to conform to the two minute meta, because PLD's main problem right now is that it doesn't, and what, only 4 PLDs cleared week one P8s? It was so bad the fight had to be nerfed and PLDs buffed at the same time. It has everything to do with the 'two minute meta.'

If you can't see that problem, you're delusional.

[Kalaam]

Lyth I think you miss my point, I am not talking about how a class with a raid buff is classified has having higher rDPS. That part I don't care.
I just mean that by having a % damage buff so prevalent, attacks with high value are even more valuable, which tends to be on the minute/2min mark. So jobs with no "big" burst on that window benefit from aligned buffs way less, and that is what gets criticized.