My take on what can be changed for FFXIV

[Rithy255]

Sooooo just curious, but what do people who want to remove the 2 minute meta want to do after that?

I dislike coordination, but isn't the 2 minute meta a necessary evil? Contrary to what the vast majority of ffxiv players think pushing your buttons is easy. You should naturally memorize most of your combos and even when to pop things like defensives because of how timeline based fights are.

Having to watch your CDs and make sure your abilities don't drift off the 2 minute timeline is something extra to keep you busy with. Assuming you could outright remove the 2 minute meta right now, what would you replace it with?

Remove Raid buffs (as they are)
Allow partner buffs like astro cards, dragon sight buffs & consistent buffs like bards songs.

I think the problem or issue with 2 minute raid buffs is they're not really interactive or fun, theirs no choice or skill expression to be found in them, you literally just press them on cooldown basically when everyone else does. Ontop of that we've seen the effect of 2 minute raid buffs basically ruin sustained jobs like PLD, or jobs having unique and different burst windows.

The main downside to non "2 minute meta" is that its harder to create "down time cant attack boss" phases, It cant also be "less harder to balance" but that's another issue with ff14's "balance" every job is meant to play the same with some small expectations in the DPS category, at this point you might as well give every job the same skillset and cool it a day. 2 Minute meta didn't exist in SHB and it was perfectly fine, it added skill expression to raid buffs, it allowed for jobs to be more about sustained damage, So it's really not a necessary evil

Even if they didn't get rid of raid buffs, I don't think every job should just be given a raid buff, it's more unique to not have a raid buff as a DPS. I feel like the game would havemore role design choices without raid buffs, you can make less burst jobs and have burst jobs.

[NekoMataMata]

Remove Raid buffs (as they are)
Allow partner buffs like astro cards, dragon sight buffs & consistent buffs like bards songs.

I think the problem or issue with 2 minute raid buffs is they're not really interactive or fun, theirs no choice or skill expression to be found in them, you literally just press them on cooldown basically when everyone else does. Ontop of that we've seen the effect of 2 minute raid buffs basically ruin sustained jobs like PLD, or jobs having unique and different burst windows.

The main downside to non "2 minute meta" is that its harder to create "down time cant attack boss" phases, It cant also be "less harder to balance" but that's another issue with ff14's "balance" every job is meant to play the same with some small expectations in the DPS category, at this point you might as well give every job the same skillset and cool it a day. 2 Minute meta didn't exist in SHB and it was perfectly fine, it added skill expression to raid buffs, it allowed for jobs to be more about sustained damage, So it's really not a necessary evil

Even if they didn't get rid of raid buffs, I don't think every job should just be given a raid buff, it's more unique to not have a raid buff as a DPS. I feel like the game would havemore role design choices without raid buffs, you can make less burst jobs and have burst jobs.

See that's where you're wrong. The skill of the two minute meta comes from monitoring your abilities. Like I said earlier, while most of the community finds hitting their buttons difficult, it's actually rather easy to do so. The two minute meta just forces you to stop hitting them non-stop. For example SAM actually has to delay some abilities by a couple of seconds in order to keep them from drifting away from the two minute burst.

Removing the two minute meta would provide a lot of individual power, but it would also simplify raids a lot. I thought people didn't want to dumb the game down any more?

[Rithy255]

See that's where you're wrong. The skill of the two minute meta comes from monitoring your abilities. Like I said earlier, while most of the community finds hitting their buttons difficult, it's actually rather easy to do so. The two minute meta just forces you to stop hitting them non-stop. For example SAM actually has to delay some abilities by a couple of seconds in order to keep them from drifting away from the two minute burst.

Removing the two minute meta would provide a lot of individual power, but it would also simplify raids a lot. I thought people didn't want to dumb the game down any more?

What skill expression lies in holding your abilities for the same burst windows though?

I'm not suggesting to completely remove dmg buffs either, but what I'm saying is that the game would be way more enjoyable even without raid buffs, it's not fun to hold your buttons for the same set times nor does it even take skill, it results in making every class play the same.

Imagine the team work of pairing partner buffs instead to maximise damage depending on other players burst damage abilities or Buffs on different CDs where the optimal meta of "holding" or not holding your raid buffs would make a massive damage difference depending on comp and the fight.

Removing two minute meta doesn't make the game more simple, Every job plays the same and would never need to adapt in the moment of gameplay, once they got a rotation down that sinks properly into the 2 minute meta they don't need to really think about anything else.

PLD is a perfect example of a Job who was sacrificed because of the two minute meta, Optimising it was one of the highest skill expressions in the game, but because 2 minute meta it can't exist in that way.

[Lyth]

What skill expression lies in holding your abilities for the same burst windows though?

Coordinating around burst windows have always been important, dating back to NIN's introduction and TA. Essentially every opener that you have learnt from HW onwards has been designed around the timing of raid buffs. Jobs which are less burst-focused and that have buff windows that don't sync up well with the others usually end up at a disadvantage, and we've seen many examples of that historically, especially in Stormblood.

By syncing up all the burst windows in a more transparent way while having individual jobs bring relatively smaller buffs, they've made the design around this a lot more transparent to casual players. The game itself hasn't changed, there's just an increasing awareness at lower skill levels of how players have been optimizing for about 8 years or so.

The other effect of this is that the fight designers have more opportunities to challenge you around buff timings. You may have noticed that most important mechanics coincidentally happen during those buff windows. That's deliberate. So now you have 'rest' periods where you can have a breather, coupled with more mechanically-intensive sections that are timed against periods where you want to focus on your burst. It's no longer just free damage.

[Rithy255]

Coordinating around burst windows have always been important, dating back to NIN's introduction and TA. Essentially every opener that you have learnt from HW onwards has been designed around the timing of raid buffs. Jobs which are less burst-focused and that have buff windows that don't sync up well with the others usually end up at a disadvantage, and we've seen many examples of that historically, especially in Stormblood.

By syncing up all the burst windows in a more transparent way while having individual jobs bring relatively smaller buffs, they've made the design around this a lot more transparent to casual players. The game itself hasn't changed, there's just an increasing awareness at lower skill levels of how players have been optimizing for about 8 years or so.

The other effect of this is that the fight designers have more opportunities to challenge you around buff timings. You may have noticed that most important mechanics coincidentally happen during those buff windows. That's deliberate. So now you have 'rest' periods where you can have a breather, coupled with more mechanically-intensive sections that are timed against periods where you want to focus on your burst. It's no longer just free damage.

Shame that Ninjas TA is a selfish buff now and mug was made into a 2 minute burst, despite TA synching into bursts anyway.

I'm sorry but theirs zero skill expression in being "busy once every two minutes" and knowing exactly when the right time to burst is, Its a very 1 dimensional way of balancing jobs and fights, I'd take more diverse Jobs any day over having "intense burst moments" most jobs bursts are just weaving some things or clicking their high damage skills and not even weaving much.

I rather a Job be fun all the time then be super fun 20% of the time and you're taking a breather 80% of the other time, EXT+ Fights and abilities shouldn't be balanced around casual players, casual players don't care about optimising Damage rotations into burst windows in the first place.

My personal beliefs in job balance is that Fun and Varity should go over pushing every job into the same Box, the gameplay shouldn't be only fight design exclusive, Job design and Variety is very important and burst meta pushes another way of making the jobs closer and closer, I really rather jobs be unique then "balanced" Ideally I want both as every step SHB/EW made was to everything more of the same, Fight design is even starting to accommodate jobs such as melee DPS with massive hit boxes, instead of embracing that downtime for melee's and optimising uptime is what makes them unique in the first place.