Two Minute Raid Buffs - The Bane of Endwalker Job Design

[aloneatsea]

When was your first clear of any fight ever a genuinely flawless run? A lucky run will get you that clear sooner due to damage variance, sure. But there are always a lot of other controllable factors that you're executing incorrectly, and you clear comfortably when those are fixed. That's why being able to clear and farm are still two different things, and why a lot of week 1 strats get replaced with better ones that offer better uptime. They design the checks with a margin knowing full well that your first clear will be sloppy and luck driven, and nerf the check when players don't live up to the expected clear rates.

You can do whatever you like to the multiplier, but players will still complain about damage variance. Oh, if only I crit all my attacks in a ten minute run. There's nowhere to draw the line.

A Week 1 clear should, by definition, be a "flawless" run. If you are accusing players who have spent 18+ hours optimising a fight in the first week specifically to overcome a DPS check of having poor play, then... I'm not sure what to say to that! I only get the feeling you wish to deny a problem exists in the first place in the face of a fair swathe of evidence, none of which you have refuted beyond waving your hand and saying "people always complain", which while a true statement, does not dismiss the fact that there is a problem.



I was not even speaking to critting a specific number of attacks, you'll note. Only that critting during a certain timeframe is immensely more valuable than critting at any other point. To the point where having a 50% crit rate where you only crit outside of raid buffs will generally deal less damage than a 30% crit rate wherein you crit through your entire buff window. That seems a little strange, does it not?

[Kabooa]

I was not even speaking to critting a specific number of attacks, you'll note. Only that critting during a certain timeframe is immensely more valuable than critting at any other point. To the point where having a 50% crit rate where you only crit outside of raid buffs will generally deal less damage than a 30% crit rate wherein you crit through your entire buff window. That seems a little strange, does it not?

Nah.

You keep waving around 47%, but that's only for the person getting tethered and card'ed.

Everyone else is mostly getting what they've always been getting over the years.

5-10 from Ninja (60s-120s)
3/5 from Caster (120s)
3/5 from Bard/Dancer (120s)
5 from Astro (varies - but for all intents and purposes, 60-120s)
Nothing from tanks
An indeterminable amount of DPS from Chain strategem (120s)
Potentially something from the second melee, assuming it isn't Samurai.

Putting this into perspective, were this Shadowbringers, this means the dance partner (Samurai) is getting approximately 1.05^4 x 1.06 (card) x 1.1 (Partner) = 1.41 multiplier. If it was a Monk, the extra Brotherhood would put them at 1.47

If this were Stormblood, there is no dance partner, so the (Samurai) would be getting 1.1(Trick) x 1.05^2 (Replacing Dance with Hypercharge for ease of math, no Div) x 1.15 (Enhanced Balance) = 1.39 multiplier. If Monk, Brotherhood didn't provide the party with a damage bonus, but would still put the monk at 1.45 since it still buffed them.

Though if we're being honest, if this WAS Stormblood, the actual dps comp was Ninja, Dragoon, Bard, and then a Mach / Caster, because dragoon and ninja were basically autolocked for Piercing and Trick respectively, Bard was autolocked because it was a god damned monster, and everyone else fought for the last slot.

You were still a slave to crit in Stb and Shb. If you didn't crit during the big ole buff windows you lost out. That's how criticals work. Every ability you don't crit is damage you lost.

The one thing that has changed is now everyone has a big dick 1200 potency dump that just so happens to naturally align at 120s, which is where the majority of all buffs were aligned beforehand, as most buffs were 60, 90, or 120s, with select few being 180. The 90s fell into can/can't delay dichotomy.

As a fun bonus experiment, if we put Dancer into Stormblood, then at 2 minutes, the (Likely Black Mage) would have

1.1 (Trick)
1.15 (Enhanced Balance)
1.05 (Tech)
1.1 (Partner)
1.05 (Foe + Bardsong)

x1.46

x.1.53 if it were a Machinist, Summoner.

x1.6 if it were a Red Mage (1.75 technically as its self boost was 20%, but we'll use its "Party boost" instead to illustrate the point)

Of course all of these selections would be a massive rDPS loss, so the actual 4th DPS in this set up would be Dragoon, which means whoever the dance partner is will get the Dragon's Eye for another 5% for x1.53.

Edit: As a bonus round, a Heavensward buff stack looked like:

Nin: Trick 1.1 60s

Astro: at least 60s
EBalance: 1.3
SBalance: 1.1

Sum: 1.1 Magic Garuda cooldown
Bard: 1.1 Magic Foe's Req (MP)

We're not including debuff resistances because while they were the most impactful, they can mostly be considered baseline.

I don't recall if Machinist has Hypercharge in heavensward, so I won't include that possibility.

Again, your party composition in HW probably looked like two tanks, a dragoon, a ninja, astrologian, scholar, and then two DPS depending on what the current gamestate was.

When Balance(the card) was stupid, it was Bard and Machinist, ironically pumping up the Dragoon's RDPS metric so high it would have been the undisputed highest relative DPS in the game bar none considering any state the game has been in.

And with just two buffs in Heavensward, the you either had the party buff at 1.21, or the feed at 1.43

[Valence]

Crit variance comes directly from sqenix shooting themselves in the foot by introducing big potency nukes that literally triple or quadruple in comparison of the baseline potencies. When you have 1k or 1,2k potencies running around, of course that a cdhit on them or not is going to net insane variances.

[Maltothoris]

.
I don't recall if Machinist has Hypercharge in heavensward, so I won't include that possibility.

MCH did have hypercharge but it was divided between the rook and the bishop turrets. Took was physical while bishop was magical. Both effects were a 10 percent increase for about 30 seconds.

[Lyth]

?

The hard work that you put in to your first clear of anything has literally nothing to do with this conversation. You will always get better with more practice. If you don't think that your actual technical performance outside of gear improves from week 1 to week 8 from repeated exposure and fine tuning, I really don't know what to say to you.

Also, you seem to not understand how expected value in probability works, because you're relying on your emotional response to where crits happen. You can distribute your burst however you like. If you have a constant crit rate it just factors out because of the distributive property. Your average performance remains the same regardless of distribution.

[Takamorisan]

Regarding the 2 minute buff meta, personally it feels something artificial during gameplay and a way to streamline the "burst moment" something that particularly should be a reward for organizing your team and working together, so instead of adapting to a comp you just follow the same rule everywhere. Problem it brings that every class will have to have the same similar pattern to follow those 2 min peak moments not allowing much room to introduce particular skills to the classes in general.

But thats part of the SE stance of no room for player mistake, thats why we will never see talent trees, new weapons sets for classes and so on.

[Lyth]

Hm, I don't know about that. I think a lot of the objection to talent trees comes from the playerbase and perceptions on how the game 'ought' to be played, and it's certainly been proposed a few times before. Branching options can co-exist with optimization. You just can't have a clear means of comparing the two.

As an example, take a look at the tank 30% DR cooldowns. Vengeance is still the best of them all, just because it does everything the others do and has an added thorns effect. You could say that there's a 'mathematically correct' answer on which is best. Warcraft has min-maxing too, but its talent trees don't always have such obvious 'right answers'. Let's say that you have a gap closer that moves you forward a fixed distance (Roll). Do you want another charge of it? Do you want an upgraded version of the base action that gives you a temporary speed burst after (Chi Tornado)? Do you want a completely new action added in that lets you grant a movement speed boost to a single party member? You could argue for and against each of these in a fight-specific fashion, but you're not going to get a clear consensus on it.

There are other applications for this approach as well. The development team started to look into ways to simplify jobs starting from around Midas, and one of the first targets were maintenance effects. And rightfully so, because there were a lot of complaints coming in around upkeep buffs. But what if your choice is between maintaining an upkeep buff for slightly more damage versus having a passive that does the work for you for slightly less damage (but more than if you were inconsistent with the maintenance effect)? The latter is more consistent, and if you know that you struggle with that it may actually be the better choice. It lets you keep jobs accessible without having to compromise the more interesting design elements for players who like them.

I'm not arguing for or against this approach, but the reason why it is believed to 'not work' here is not because of the limitations associated with two minute buffs or even because it's actually been tested and failed. It doesn't work here because the community itself has very strict notions on what works and doesn't work, and that's a much bigger constraint than anything else the developers are faced with. If we were all a little more open-minded and a bit less resistant to change, there'd be a lot more room for creativity.

[Shurrikhan]

Hm, I don't know about that. I think a lot of the objection to talent trees comes from the playerbase and perceptions on how the game 'ought' to be played, and it's certainly been proposed a few times before. Branching options can co-exist with optimization. You just can't have a clear means of comparing the two.

As an example, take a look at the tank 30% DR cooldowns. Vengeance is still the best of them all, just because it does everything the others do and has an added thorns effect.

Sure, but even when using talent trees, different classes don't have one-to-one analogs with each other. Unless the point would be to make tanks even more homogenous at their core, anything one skill has "extra" would, in balance, cost its class some feature on something else (like bonus frequency or best-case eHP on yet another defensive).

The only way for a talent to be a pick-em between various "+X" features on a skill-by-skill basis that'd draw such direct comparisons across each job... would be if everything prior to the 'talents' were even more akin to solely Role Actions. And that seems opposite the direction the community wants to go in (even if disingenuously narrow comparisons will often push for such myopic parities).

But what if your choice is between maintaining an upkeep buff for slightly more damage versus having a passive that does the work for you for less damage. The latter is more consistent, and if you know that you struggle with that it may actually be the better choice. But it also lets you keep jobs accessible without having to compromise the more interesting design elements for players who like them.

I'm not arguing for or against this approach, but the reason why it is believed to 'not work' here is not because of the limitations associated with two minute buffs or even because it's actually been tested and failed. It doesn't work here because the community itself has very strict notions on what works and doesn't work, and that's a much bigger constraint than anything else the developers are faced with. If we were all a little more open-minded and a bit less resistant to change, there'd be a lot more room for creativity.

On this, wholly agreed.

[Rilifane]

Hm, I don't know about that. I think a lot of the objection to talent trees comes from the playerbase and perceptions on how the game 'ought' to be played, and it's certainly been proposed a few times before. Branching options can co-exist with optimization. You just can't have a clear means of comparing the two.

As an example, take a look at the tank 30% DR cooldowns. Vengeance is still the best of them all, just because it does everything the others do and has an added thorns effect. You could say that there's a 'mathematically correct' answer on which is best. Warcraft has min-maxing too, but its talent trees don't always have such obvious 'right answers'. Let's say that you have a gap closer that moves you forward a fixed distance (Roll). Do you want another charge of it? Do you want an upgraded version of the base action that gives you a temporary speed burst after (Chi Tornado)? Do you want a completely new action added in that lets you grant a movement speed boost to a single party member? You could argue for and against each of these in a fight-specific fashion, but you're not going to get a clear consensus on it.

There are other applications for this approach as well. The development team started to look into ways to simplify jobs starting from around Midas, and one of the first targets were maintenance effects. And rightfully so, because there were a lot of complaints coming in around upkeep buffs. But what if your choice is between maintaining an upkeep buff for slightly more damage versus having a passive that does the work for you for slightly less damage (but more than if you were inconsistent with the maintenance effect)? The latter is more consistent, and if you know that you struggle with that it may actually be the better choice. It lets you keep jobs accessible without having to compromise the more interesting design elements for players who like them.

I'm not arguing for or against this approach, but the reason why it is believed to 'not work' here is not because of the limitations associated with two minute buffs or even because it's actually been tested and failed. It doesn't work here because the community itself has very strict notions on what works and doesn't work, and that's a much bigger constraint than anything else the developers are faced with. If we were all a little more open-minded and a bit less resistant to change, there'd be a lot more room for creativity.

Interestingly enough, a lot of this "There's only one correct way to spec anyway, talent trees won't work" talk comes from people that are often at a fairly average gameplay level and wouldn't even get the most benefit from the "mathematically best option".
Sure, there generally is one mathematically best option with talent trees in a vacuum and ideal situation - but that is the appeal, isn't it? Not all players are in the same situation; your party, individual strengths and weaknesses change a lot and talent trees or similar features give people that divert from that ideal vacuum situation for whatever reason a choice. The people that say there's always one best option need to realize that there isn't one best option that is always the answer to all situations for all people and that this one has to picked and no other option is viable.

And as you said, someone struggling with maintaining a buff is in a situation where the mathematically best option would be to pick a talent that does the work for them for less dps than the alternative in a vacuum under ideal circumstances. The fact that they struggle already puts them outside this ideal vacuum situation.
It's a matter or thinking past the ideal circumstances and look at reality.

Few players would be able to pick the option that provides the best gain under ideal circumstances and consistently pull it off. Most people don't play at that level. Other talents are not a crutch, 2nd choice, noob badge or anything like that; they exist to give a valid choice and alternative paths to make the gameplay suit your invididual strengths and weaknesses better.
There will always exist cookie cutter builds where you can't really go wrong with and plenty of people that will simply copy it and call it a day and that's fine. But for people that want to take a closer look at their situation and what they could use most, there would exist a choice. Having cookie cutter builds that can be copied isn't an inherently bad thing, on the contrary. It means something is approachable in the sense of having a low skill floor while still having a higher skill ceiling if you want to think about how to make the most of your class based on your indivudual strengths, weaknesses and party.

If I hop into PF on healer, I'll choose a talent that sacrifices some dps for MP because I know it's probably going to be a shitfest with plenty of deaths and risky MP economy would most likely result in a bigger loss than just taking some MP tools upfront. If I go into PF on a DPS, I'll make sure to take some extra survivability for the same reason because raw DPS generally isn't the problem this late into the tier. If I play healer in my static, I can go balls to the wall on full DPS and risky MP economy will not result in a net loss.
Then there's also the option of taking talents for e.g. better solo survivability on DPS when farming fates or unsyncing old content or the option for taking the whole DPS stuff when doing MSQ on healer or tank.

[Kabooa]

The other side of the talent argument is just having access to those skills as a baseline, but their use has a resource confliction that you can't use them all at the same time.

An example of this being the old Sneak Attack vs Trick Attack - One of them was the solo high potency attack, one of them was the debuff applying attack. Of course, Sneak attack never had the potency to really make an argument for using it, but that sort of exclusionary use means you don't have to deal with talent trees - you just have to know when to use either one.