Two Minute Raid Buffs - The Bane of Endwalker Job Design

[CKNovel]

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.

That was the point of shifting all buffs to 2 minutes.
It's much easier to press everything on cooldown, especially when content forces you to delay.
But on the opposite, it allows much less skill expression to groups.

And you point the problem of stacking all buffs in a single window.
Even if you have 1 Pure DPS, you can stack cumulative buffs that can ramp up pretty high.
Your highest potency can nearly double if you crit/dh.

Those raid buffs could be lowered and personal potency up but it could throw a wrench in job balance.

Your DPS can have a major discrepancy if you crit or not.
It's also demotivating to think you've done a good performance to only see you've been getting carried by luck.

Because of this, we don't have a clear view of our performance, as if it wasn't already the case before.

[Lyth]

Job balance team taking notes:

• Remove Critical and Direct Hits from the game.
• Replace all raid damage buffs with self-only buffs.

[Connor]

Job balance team taking notes:

• Remove Critical and Direct Hits from the game.
• Replace all raid damage buffs with self-only buffs.

Chillingly plausible.


‘We know it’s very stressful when an attack has damage variation so we’ve deleted all substats, potencies and replaced them with fixed damage values’

‘We know players are having issues with the two-min meta so we deleted all buffs and made them passives that automatically activate every 120 seconds’.

Tune in next expansion when they remove all combos, proc-based abilities, and all oGCDs, and replace them with a button that does your entire rotation ( it even lights up!!! )

[MagiusNecros]

Job balance team taking notes:

• Remove Critical and Direct Hits from the game.
• Replace all raid damage buffs with self-only buffs.

They are probably going to do the opposite and just add more auto crit.

Game would be more interesting if it was actually bring the player and not bring the raid buff.

I really hope 7.0 breathes life into PvE combat instead of how can we simplify the game further?

[Sparkthor]

They are probably going to do the opposite and just add more auto crit.

Game would be more interesting if it was actually bring the player and not bring the raid buff.

I really hope 7.0 breathes life into PvE combat instead of how can we simplify the game further?

Can you explain what you mean by "breathes life" ? I really don't get.

[Lyth]

Auto-Crit/Auto-DH effects are functionally the same as removing Crit/DH, because you no longer get to roll for buffed damage. Let's just say that it's the less controversial way of removing Crit/DH.

If you want to make PVE more interesting, then we need more creative movement actions and movement intensive fights that make it harder for players to achieve target dummy conditions. The rotational/buff design is just fluff that you can largely do on autopilot once you get comfortable with a given fight and its timings because of how predictable and consistent everything is.

[MagiusNecros]

Can you explain what you mean by "breathes life" ? I really don't get.

To make exciting and fresh again because the 2 minute meta makes everything play the same. It's all flash and no substance.

I'd much rather have different classes that either specialize in 30 second, 1 min, 2 min, or 3 min bursts. Cramming every job into 2 minutes feels awful.

And for healers I'd rather if raid buffs have to be a thing it should be something the healers provide and become a full support unit. Instead of heal maybe and then spam 1 button every 2.5 seconds.

I think I agree with Lyth that there needs to be more intensive mechanic driven fights instead of a slightly different version of a target dummy every time a new boss comes out.

Doesn't help a LOT of these fights have ridiculous hit box that the Melee have to actually try to miss a GCD while Casters are trying to figure out where they should stand to get a cast off.

[Valence]

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.

What I've been saying is that tank discrepancies, healer discrepancies, and DPS discrepancies in balance, aren't new. They've been here since forever. 11% is one of the biggest peaks, but not the first one I've seen. I don't disagree with the sentiment though.

At least they hotfix the tank gaps pretty fast. Meanwhile we're still sitting with a literal institutional apartheid between 2 categories of DPS and it's been ongoing since forever. This is the real sadness.

[Lyth]

The problem is that Physical Ranged has long since grown out of its traditional roots as a MP/TP supplying 'support' subrole yet it still gets treated that way for rDPS purposes in contrast to the so called Magical Ranged jobs. The solution is to merge the two subroles into a single Ranged category, and then players will stop defending the discrepancy.

[ForteNightshade]

Job balance team taking notes:

• Remove Critical and Direct Hits from the game.
• Replace all raid damage buffs with self-only buffs.

Can't say I would miss Direct Hit. Both it and Critical Hit scaling so ridiculously high are partly why we're seeing such massive discrepancies. Of course, I'm not really a fan of how boring substats are to begin with but that's another topic.

What I've been saying is that tank discrepancies, healer discrepancies, and DPS discrepancies in balance, aren't new. They've been here since forever. 11% is one of the biggest peaks, but not the first one I've seen. I don't disagree with the sentiment though.

At least they hotfix the tank gaps pretty fast. Meanwhile we're still sitting with a literal institutional apartheid between 2 categories of DPS and it's been ongoing since forever. This is the real sadness.

Oh, I don't disagree. What prompted my initial response is the person citing Endwalker as being "the most balance I've seen". Hence why I said they must have just started playing because Endwalker is nearly at Heavensward levels of misbalance.

The irony is that hotfix still didn't fix the tank balance. It's getting a bit silly just how many times they keep having to buff Warrior and Paladin because they're too afraid to make either overpowered, especially Warrior. Hell, the Paladin rework is a net loss of roughly 3%. So this is one more Ultimate Paladin just gets to feel sad about.

Nevertheless, I will say at least Warrior and Paladin are getting acknowledged. Red Mage has been drowning all expansion and the Prange role as a whole just doesn't make sense anymore. The fact it took them this long to finally give up on Machinist being selfish speaks to just how... complacent they've been.