2-minute meta

[Absurdity]

An alternative could be to reduce the impact of DH and crits by reducing the damage bonus they give, for example, making DH be a 5% increase and crit being a 10% increase as an example. Of course, if your normal 100K hit crits for 110K, it probably won't feel impactful.

The only other concern is, if you do remove DH, what could they do to replace it?

It will probably never happen, because the job team quite obviously doesn't have the manpower to balance it, but I'd like to see some sort of mastery stat that interacts with job specific mechanics.

[ThaCa]

Buff stacking is super boring, just give few generic buffs to healer and remove most of non-personal ones.

[Deo14]

An alternative could be to reduce the impact of DH and crits by reducing the damage bonus they give, for example, making DH be a 5% increase and crit being a 10% increase as an example. Of course, if your normal 100K hit crits for 110K, it probably won't feel impactful.

The only other concern is, if you do remove DH, what could they do to replace it?

Just like any other game. Remove DH and split crit into critical damage and critical chance. Much easier to understand than crit hit which affects both it's multiplier and rate, and DH which affects only rate and then the CDH. Not like it matters what they do with stats anyways, you only need to know meld priority + desired GCD and that's as far as stats go in this game.

Now you're left with 2 random variables, and you can fine tune them to make anything balanced. If variance is too high, make critical damage lower and critical chance higher and so on. There is reason why so many games use this simple system, it just works.

[Absimiliard]

The two-minute burst window meta is quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen to PvE in this game. In fact, not just in this game. They got the idea from other MMOs that've done the same thing, and just like in those others, it resulted in oversimplification of just about everything. They're trying to make up for the loss of job complexity with increased fight complexity, but it just doesn't work in a game that revolves around memorization as opposed to reaction. If they really want to stay the course, then they badly need to update the netcode and game engine to make the fights less clunky. The two-minute meta won't be any less lame, but at least we'd have fast-paced, reactive fights to partially compensate.

As an aside, putting everything on a two-minute window only to then design the bosses to go absolutely apesh**t when you're supposed to burst them is not increased difficulty - it is an annoyance, designed to drag the fights out a bit longer. It doesn't make the boss any more dangerous.

[Absurdity]

The two-minute burst window meta is quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen to PvE in this game. In fact, not just in this game. They got the idea from other MMOs that've done the same thing, and just like in those others, it resulted in oversimplification of just about everything. They're trying to make up for the loss of job complexity with increased fight complexity, but it just doesn't work in a game that revolves around memorization as opposed to reaction. If they really want to stay the course, then they badly need to update the netcode and game engine to make the fights less clunky. The two-minute meta won't be any less lame, but at least we'd have fast-paced, reactive fights to partially compensate.

I'd argue that still wouldn't work simply because they absolutely do not want to make the core content (MSQ, dungeons, alliance and normal raids) any harder and you really shouldn't have to do savage to get a satisfying gameplay experience.

Maybe I'm overestimating casual players but I like to imagine that even people who don't do extreme, savage or ultimate want to have fun gameplay...and currently there just isn't any in those core activities.

[ForteNightshade]

An alternative could be to reduce the impact of DH and crits by reducing the damage bonus they give, for example, making DH be a 5% increase and crit being a 10% increase as an example. Of course, if your normal 100K hit crits for 110K, it probably won't feel impactful.

The only other concern is, if you do remove DH, what could they do to replace it?

That could also work but as you noted, it would make both stats feel largely irrelevant. The whole idea behind Direct Hit being implemented is the dev team wants players to see "big numba!!!" They outright said it during Shadowbringers' media tour.

As for what to replace it with. Damage and Variance. Critical Hit does far too much, which is why it's been the runaway best substat from day one. Splitting it up would allow for easier balancing and maybe make Determination or god forbid Tenacity more relevant. The latter is pretty much a dead substat now that Warrior can meld Direct Hit. On the whole, I'd prefer something more interesting like what Absurdity suggested but the dev team seems determined to keep everything as basic as possible. So splitting up Crit works well enough.

[AngelCheese77]

What is a 2 minute meta?

[Mikey_R]

Just like any other game. Remove DH and split crit into critical damage and critical chance.

You know, I've had this thought in the past, surprised I didn't remember this when I made my previous post >_>

Something else that irks me is the fact tanks have their own stat, Tenacity, healers have Piety, however, DH is not a DPS exclusive stat. If it was changed where we split crit into the 2 stats, which one would be the better one to be exclusive for DPS? or if it is even a good idea to begin with. I think personally, crit damage should be on the DPS with the rate being the stat everyone can have. It just feels right that the DPS, the ones who are designed to do more damage, does more with each crit.

[Derio]

Remove DH. Fix Tenacity. Improve Piety. Remove the 2 minute meta

[Payadopa]

If the dev team is set on making buffs easier to manage. The solution would be to make them almost entirely independent from the party (i.e. like Large Charge, Huton and etc). Yes, this heavily removes party synergy but that is a far better alternative than the mess they've come up with for Endwalker.

I agree completely except with the part above. We shouldn't encourage the devs to have even less synergy.