Two Minute Raid Buffs - The Bane of Endwalker Job Design

[Alpheus]

Yes, there will always be a burst window, the difference here is how often the strong burst window happens.

In ShB, you effectively got the big strong burst every 6 minutes as that is when all the cooldowns line back up again. You then had mini bursts at 60 seconds, 90 seconds, 120 seconds and 180 seconds. However, with EW, you now do those 6 minute bursts every 2 minutes, effectively tripling the amount of damage spikes you have in a fight. This is the whole reason why every job has become a burst job that lines up all the raidwides every 120 seconds and have personal buffs that line up every 60 seconds.

The issue was never the fact burst windows existed, the issue was the frequency of the big burst windows happening which has driven all jobs to the same playstyle and make the windows much much more punishing to miss.

Yup the smaller windows has the benefit of also keeping the player engaged in more of the moment to moment game-play outside of AoE dancing. Which itself is some rigid form of line-dancing but adding a 2min Bus you gotta make sure you aren't ever late for makes it feel even more rigid and dull if you've been playing the game for a good number of years. Especially since for those players their frame of reference goes back even longer and has more to compare it to within XIV itself.

[FireMage]

Yes, there will always be a burst window, the difference here is how often the strong burst window happens.

In ShB, you effectively got the big strong burst every 6 minutes as that is when all the cooldowns line back up again. You then had mini bursts at 60 seconds, 90 seconds, 120 seconds and 180 seconds. However, with EW, you now do those 6 minute bursts every 2 minutes, effectively tripling the amount of damage spikes you have in a fight. This is the whole reason why every job has become a burst job that lines up all the raidwides every 120 seconds and have personal buffs that line up every 60 seconds.

The issue was never the fact burst windows existed, the issue was the frequency of the big burst windows happening which has driven all jobs to the same playstyle and make the windows much much more punishing to miss.

Git gud?

/10chars

[aloneatsea]

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-Job-Diversity


I made a similar thread a few months ago. TLDR; most westerners who frequent the forums and care enough to post are unhappy with the two-minute meta, and wish to see either a reversion to the Shadowbringers raid buff timers (variable 60s, 90s, 120s, 180s buffs) or something completely fresh. A few people also voiced the opinion that they'd like to see raid buffs removed entirely -- though I don't know how this would be achieved without completely butchering jobs such as Dancer. On the JP side, I only frequented the Ninja thread, but players there were unhappy about the changes to Trick and Mug, expressing that they felt it diminished synergy between jobs.

From my perspective, the issues we've seen with balancing re: crit variance and specific jobs being under/overpowered are a direct result of the shift to a strict burst meta. The fact that almost every job in the game received either a minor or major rework in order to conform to this job design paradigm speaks to how unnatural an evolution it is from where we were just an expansion ago. I can't even fathom what benefits Square Enix expected to see out of it; the argument that it's easier for weaker players to play "optimally" falls apart when you realise that a single mistake will cause a player to be completely misaligned buff-wise for the rest of a fight -- which now does matter enough to affect whether or not the group clears! On the higher skill end, it removes optimisation and as a result, gameplay becomes stale due to lack of varied playstyles, and on the lower skill end it makes making rotational mistakes significantly more punishing. You can't even argue it makes things easier for Square Enix as evidently crit variance is making balance pretty hard to achieve -- the debacle with P8S is clear cut evidence of that. Whether or not you had the DPS to clear was based on two things: a meta composition and RNG. In the "play any job" game XIV likes to push itself as, you would require neither of these things to clear.

[Raikai]

Honestly the biggest downside of the 2min meta for me is the fact that job design now needs to operate exclusively around it. Everything has a recast time of either 60 or 120 seconds. Every job with a cummulative resource system needs to hold it almost at capacity for the 2min meta downtime to unleash everything in a hectic window.

Like, what's even the point of 4 charges of Fourfold Feathers as a DNC resource if the uses are pigeonholed? You're not supposed to spend them on anything else other than the 2min meta, might as well change Flourish to just proc 4 feathers, since to obtain them you don't have to do anything other than go through your normal rotation.

You can bet that if the 2min meta stays in the next expansion, the new job(s) are going to be just one or two gimmicks and then everything else aligned with the 120s timer.

[Raikai]

though I don't know how this would be achieved without completely butchering jobs such as Dancer.

Thinking in a vacuum, it would probably, but I presume a rework would mean that Dancers' TS/Devilment could turn into something to enforce your dance partner even more at different intervals. Much like Bard keeps also a continuous support buff, but to the whole party for less than the Dancer. Is not like those jobs (and AST) only assume their 'support +dps% functions' during the 2min meta, unlike the other bearers of dmg party buffs, like Monk, Summoner, etc...

[Videra]

Yes, there will always be a burst window, the difference here is how often the strong burst window happens.

In ShB, you effectively got the big strong burst every 6 minutes as that is when all the cooldowns line back up again. You then had mini bursts at 60 seconds, 90 seconds, 120 seconds and 180 seconds. However, with EW, you now do those 6 minute bursts every 2 minutes, effectively tripling the amount of damage spikes you have in a fight. This is the whole reason why every job has become a burst job that lines up all the raidwides every 120 seconds and have personal buffs that line up every 60 seconds.

The issue was never the fact burst windows existed, the issue was the frequency of the big burst windows happening which has driven all jobs to the same playstyle and make the windows much much more punishing to miss.

Don't feed the troll, Mikey.

[Valence]

MCH has been neglected and as such is the last "sustainy" job left.

Oh sweet summer child. As an avid fan of the old MCH identity and design, it was actually the biggest burst dps in the game with an actual 'play piano' segment inside. The fact that they literally butchered the job to make it the exact opposite is already infuriating on its own. And the current model we have had since ShB exactly follows the 2min burst to the letter anyway. It CANNOT be compared to jobs like BLM that can float around. Current MCH is the epitome of the 2min burst paradigm, if anything.

[Valence]

I made a similar thread a few months ago. TLDR; most westerners who frequent the forums and care enough to post are unhappy with the two-minute meta, and wish to see either a reversion to the Shadowbringers raid buff timers (variable 60s, 90s, 120s, 180s buffs) or something completely fresh. A few people also voiced the opinion that they'd like to see raid buffs removed entirely -- though I don't know how this would be achieved without completely butchering jobs such as Dancer. On the JP side, I only frequented the Ninja thread, but players there were unhappy about the changes to Trick and Mug, expressing that they felt it diminished synergy between jobs.

...

On the higher skill end, it removes optimisation and as a result, gameplay becomes stale due to lack of varied playstyles, and on the lower skill end it makes making rotational mistakes significantly more punishing. You can't even argue it makes things easier for Square Enix as evidently crit variance is making balance pretty hard to achieve -- the debacle with P8S is clear cut evidence of that.

I want to touch upon the crit variance issue that has become the de facto justification to cut skills like kaiten and whatnot out of the game. I understand why the devs do it, because yes, there is a disproportionate amount of damage variance that results from this... But what is the true root of the problem?

Potency powercreep and overbloat, which is something that a lot if not most people seem to forget. Before ShB, no job had realistically big potency nukes going over 400 or 500. In HW actually, 300+ potency was already considered big and nasty. In SB, the very first nuke they introduced into the game was Midare at a whooping 700 potency, and it was still physical damage so a lot less in effect than a current potency (since all have been adjusted to match the magic ones this expansion). Now look at all jobs, and tell me how many are above 1k potency.

Then obviously you mix that up with raid buffs, raid buffs that have always been a thing anyway, imagine those nukes back in the Trick Attack meta (yeah raid buff synergy used to be nastier and has been regularly dampened over expansions, not increased, except here with the 2min meta compared to shb), and add crit variance, then yeah, you get that problem.


On removing all raid buffs, I'd be inclined to do it to only keep it on certain roles that currently lack true identity (*cough* rPhys). That's what a bard, a dancer and a machinist are for originally. They would also need to bring more interesting gameplay than just "press it on CD every 120s". Radiant Finale is better, Foe's Requiem used to be a lot better even, since it also made used of MP. Anything that's just a button you press on CD isn't worth keeping into the gameplay loop imo.

[Akava]

I do hope we move away from 2-minute burst design next expansion. Mistiming your buffs basically means everyone either needs to hold for you to realign (screwing up their rotations) or you have to skip a usage to get back in-line and no-one's going to purposely miss a usage. Then there's a topic of the job design itself. So many designs simply don't work with 2-minute bursts and are either actively being removed or most likely not bring greenlit by the dev team.

[Rithy255]

As my first post on this thread, I went around the "idea" of raid buffs and how they currently don't allow for sustained damage and create burst meta, these are just examples of what kind of buffs should stay
Here's like a Idea I want for raid buffs:

Single target & Partner Buffs: Astro Cards, Dance partner, Dragon Sight I'd possibly rework some certain aspects about Astro cards maybe increase how much they buff the target (maybe even more specific card types like Tank, Melee, Ranged, Caster, Healer and having a stronger effects on tank/healer so they're viable buff targets. Dance partner and DNC crit buff should generally be increased, Dragon Sight should be likely Increased.

Sustained buffs: Buffs I can think of mainly would be Bard songs, but you could possibly turn things like trick attack into a 2% consistent damage buff you reapply, you could make summoners buff a consistent one (as it seems long currently), The issue is with "party buffs" is when you make them this certain duration like (15-20 seconds) so they only really work towards a big massive burst, it creates a restrictive raid buff that forces job design to only be about burst.