Two Minute Raid Buffs - The Bane of Endwalker Job Design

[Curisu]

This strict 2min Buff windows lowers the skill ceiling but also increase the skill floor.

It is also just not fun because you mostly rely on big GCD crits in a short period of time.
Like, yes, big number's are nice and all, but not having this big number's multiple times in a row due to bad RNG feels just terrible and demotivating.
It is so bad that you not critting the potion burst can lead to a 0.1% wipe.

Terrible game design and I think the should get rid of most groupwide buffs.

[FireMage]

This strict 2min Buff windows lowers the skill ceiling but also the skill floor.

Ah look, a bad take

[Ggwppino]

I'm not sure the Dev intent, but this is something people (generally high end raiders) have cited as a reason. Something about it being easier than correctly aligning the various different CDs in optimal ways.

yes, in fact, it took them 5 months to understand that using buff at odd minutes in p5s optimized everyone's rdps. Same thing in p2s. Maybe maybe they even get there for p7s, but I highly doubt they get there xD.

[Sparkthor]

This strict 2min Buff windows lowers the skill ceiling but also increase the skill floor.

It is also just not fun because you mostly rely on big GCD crits in a short period of time.
Like, yes, big number's are nice and all, but not having this big number's multiple times in a row due to bad RNG feels just terrible and demotivating.
It is so bad that you not critting the potion burst can lead to a 0.1% wipe.

Terrible game design and I think the should get rid of most groupwide buffs.

I really think outside week 1 last savage floor clear or the first successfull attempts on ultimates a 0.1% miss is probably due to mistakes or rotation fails than a specific skill that not DC. On a raid, there is 8 people who got around 25% crit rate and some DH (depending on DPS or support). And, on top of that, all dommage went to a 5% variance. All theses things cannot be anticipated, and can lead to a 0.1% kill miss, but it's not common. Also we could stop taking on comparaison P8S because the fight was slightly overturned because reasons. I highly doubt even this topic would ever appear if this mistake wasn't done.

Because maths, and maths tells EW job balance is no worst or better than ShB one. However, boss balance seems overall more tight.

[Valence]

Ahahahahahahaha

I'm sorry but you must have barely started playing if you genuinely believe this. Endwalker has seen the worst balance since Heavensward. They had to nerf a damn Savage fight because so many jobs were laughably underperforming.

While I agree on the sentiment, I disagree with this. Using DSR or P8S as example is disingenuous because those dps checks were insanely stricter than what we usually have. What we usually have is able to hide balance issues better, but here, it put them all into the spotlight for all to see.

But yes, I do agree that viability doesn't equate balance.

[Lyth]

I'm not really sure why players would ever cite the P8S adjustment in job balance discussions. They nerfed the check because they likely anticipated higher week 1 clear numbers irrespective of job choice. If it was purely a balance discrepancy, they'd just hotfix in specific potency buffs for those jobs rather than giving everyone an equivalent boost. I'm not saying that there wasn't a discrepancy that needed to be addressed, but this really is not evidence for that argument.

Also, anyone who thinks that Heavensward or Stormblood had a better job balance than Endwalker was likely just a WAR one-trick. Heavensward and Stormblood job balance made raid compositions absolutely stagnant. Previously the devs weren't even trying to achieve balance, and you had jobs that were viewed as both worthless and low skill across an entire expansion with next to no communication or feedback offered in return. This is the first time you can look at the numbers and say that they're actually making some effort to achieve numerical parity within role groups. Now they just need to work on achieving numerical parity irrespective of subrole (melee/ranged/caster), but I have a feeling that we'll have to convince them that this is the sensible thing to do first.

[Rithy255]

This strict 2min Buff windows lowers the skill ceiling but also increase the skill floor.

It is also just not fun because you mostly rely on big GCD crits in a short period of time.
Like, yes, big number's are nice and all, but not having this big number's multiple times in a row due to bad RNG feels just terrible and demotivating.
It is so bad that you not critting the potion burst can lead to a 0.1% wipe.

Terrible game design and I think the should get rid of most groupwide buffs.

Ah look, a good take
I agree, I think some Raid buffs generally need to be reworked into Sustained buffs like (bard songs) that last forever or Partner buffs / Single target buffs, Theirs nothing Interesting about pressing a 120 Second buff at the same time, it's just not interesting to any job design, having more buffs that either are consistent or partner/single buffs where your choice actually matters, it doesn't really effected every job in your raid either so it allows of more jobs that could be sustained.

[aloneatsea]

I'm not really sure why players would ever cite the P8S adjustment in job balance discussions. They nerfed the check because they likely anticipated higher week 1 clear numbers irrespective of job choice. If it was purely a balance discrepancy, they'd just hotfix in specific potency buffs for those jobs rather than giving everyone an equivalent boost. I'm not saying that there wasn't a discrepancy that needed to be addressed, but this really is not evidence for that argument.

The reason I cite it, and forgive me for repeating myself, is that 75% of jobs were able to clear P8S's check consistently, and 25% of jobs were not. I'm not sure how to make it clearer that this is a job balance problem, not a fight balance problem. The fight was cleared by many, many people Week 1 -- but only on specific jobs. Your statement assumes that the developers made the correct choice regarding the P8S nerf -- myself, and many other players disagreed, having looked at the numbers and experienced the fight that first week for ourselves. There's many videos and Reddits threads out there discussing how players felt the P8S nerf was missing the point.



I concede that it was a difficult check, but to my knowledge we've had such checks before (E8S I believe had a similarly brutal check) and yet no nerf came. Nerfing the boss (the symptom) as opposed to buffing weak jobs (the problem) is an easier, one-step solution with much less finicky nuance involved in terms of getting players from A to B. We did get some buffs for said weaker jobs some 6 whole weeks later, but it definitely felt like too little too late, and the damage had been done. Despite this, WAR and PLD still lag dramatically behind DRK and GNB. RDM is still the weakest caster by a margin. The RPR and MCH buffs have definitely made an impact, which has been excellent to see -- it's much more realistic for these two jobs to be played in the upcoming Ultimate now, especially with MCH's new mitigation tool.


Outside of that, I strongly agree that the devs should work towards completely parity within each role and subrole. There's no reason we need to have two melees in a composition; there's no reason the two strongest tanks need to be DRK and GNB every single patch. It's ridiculous that running two physical ranged or two casters is discouraged. Hell, Black Mages sometimes prefer being able to occupy a melee slot for Black Mage-related reasons.

[Lyth]

Players are more likely to obsess over variations in job performance when you make checks tighter. This is always more obvious in PF than in an established static, where you can't always personally vet the people that you're playing with. The instant you start hitting sub 1% enrages, it's natural to start scrutinizing where you can pick up slack. Unsurprisingly, if that means locking out jobs that are viewed by the community as 'underperformers', then that's what ends up happening.

It really doesn't matter if the dps discrepancy is 5 dps or 500 dps. It doesn't matter that you could clear with your current composition if you just collectively tighten up your game, let's disband and run SAM/NIN/DNC/BLM. Doesn't matter if you have the best RDM in the history of the game asking to join in tells, and they could blow your current freestyle SAM out of the water despite having dance partner because your SAM dies on every mechanic and your DNC can't seem to pick up on this. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because this community at large lacks analytical skill and only can follow the herd. That's why I don't think that even minor dps discrepancies can be allowed to exist, because this community just can't handle them.

We've seen larger job dps discrepancies, tighter dps checks (by which I mean numerically not WF clearable on the first week), and bigger nerfs (by which I mean actual mechanics nerfs). I feel like I saw more people dedicated to running PLD on Gordias than I did PLD this tier, and Heavensward's idea of job balance was shockingly abysmal. Our perceptions have changed.

On the subject of double melee, everyone and their chocobo is going to run double ranged/double caster if you give them the opportunity to. It's just mechanically easier to run. Your melee has more room, and your extra ranged can set up wherever they like. More players play ranged jobs because it's less intimidating. You are pushed to take double melee because they specifically want to make you work harder for your clear.

I don't think the dps discrepancy should exist between subroles. I don't think that positionals or casts warrant any special treatment, and if you don't like doing those things then just stay away from jobs that require them - pick a subrole that you actually enjoy. But if you give players the chance to run four ranged without penalty, every single group ever will run four ranged. This is obvious.

[ForteNightshade]

While I agree on the sentiment, I disagree with this. Using DSR or P8S as example is disingenuous because those dps checks were insanely stricter than what we usually have. What we usually have is able to hide balance issues better, but here, it put them all into the spotlight for all to see.

But yes, I do agree that viability doesn't equate balance.

For the precise reason I cited in my subsequent response: Dark Knight pulled upwards of 11% higher DPS than Warrior even if both players were of equal skill. Nerfing Hephaistos' HP doesn't change a tank comp of Dark Knight and Gunbreaker allowed for significantly more leeway in performance. We saw that when Xeno swapped to Gunbreaker and his group cleared with two damage downs and a death, albeit the death came near the end of the fight. Reducing the boss' HP doesn't remove this overwhelming advantage. It simply allows that same comp to have even further wiggle room. Had P8S released at its current threshold, groups running DRK/GNB could afford DPS deaths week 1 whereas a WAR/PLD couldn't. In a prog setting, that is absolutely massive.

Any comp which included DRK, GNB, WHM, AST, SCH, SGE, DRG, MNK, NIN, SAM, BLM, DNC and BRD had zero issues with the tighter DPS check provided they performed well. Only groups running WAR, PLD, RPR, RDM, SMN or MCH had issues, especially if they ran more than one of the aforementioned jobs. What's disingenuous is blaming this wholly on a stricter DPS check when thirteen of the nineteen jobs available could meet that check. Especially when every single one of these underperforming jobs have been buffed since—some several times.

As for Dragonsong. None of the Ultimates have an overly strict DPS check even on release. In fact, you could push certain phases with enough DPS such as skipping Nid-stinien before his enrage started casting, killing eyes before their final AoE or pushing either phase of Thordan well before he finished his end sequence. Double Dragons is downright free in terms of DPS, provided everyone is pushing buttons. None of this changes Dark Knight being hilariously stronger than every other tank by a mile. Not only did the phases line up almost perfectly with its burst but the fight being so heavy on mitigation favored Dark Knight immensely. The only advantage Warrior brought was it being easier to do 6-1-1 in Dragon King.