2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

[Rithy255]

I want the majority of raid buffs removed
I think "partner" buffs such as Dance partner, Astro cards, Dragon sight are perfectly fine.
Also Bards songs that don't just happen in a burst are fine.

Buff jobs should bring a consistent Buff for the duration (1%-2%? the entire duration) and/or a single target buff.

I don't think having these 120 raid (dur: 15-20) buffs on a single job is the issue It's just how every job plays into being a buff job outside of tanks, some healers and very very few DPS. bringing a "raid dmg buff" should feel interesting, not be the norm

[Shurrikhan]

I want the majority of raid buffs removed
I think "partner" buffs such as Dance partner, Astro cards, Dragon sight are perfectly fine.
Also Bards songs that don't just happen in a burst are fine.

Buff jobs should bring a consistent Buff for the duration (1%-2%? the entire duration) and/or a single target buff.

I am having difficulty understanding this position.


How is a constant buff interesting, especially if (usually because of its being constant) it lacks any impact whatsoever? It's too small to be worth holding for, and because it's constant, you can't hold for it anyways. It does literally nothing except bloat the Status Effects bar.


And how is a single-target buff so much better than a raid-wide buff?

Let's say we remove all raid buffs and leave only the single-target ones. Let's do a mockup of that scenario.

The fight has some occasional downtime and one short DPS that doesn't quite perfectly align with your 2-minute cycle. You're a MCH, DPSing alongside a DRG, NIN (whose personal damage has been increased for its loss of Mug), and DNC. Do, for all intents and purposes, raid buffs even exist for you? Do you have anything whatsoever that you would bank for?

Consider: Who will the DNC buff? Who will the DRG buff? Unless the NIN is way underskilled or undergeared, just him. Just the NIN. He is just the noticeably superior choice.

At which point, unless you're playing NIN, DRK, SAM, or BLM, raid buffs are simply gone from gameplay.

I don't think having these 120 raid (dur: 15-20) buffs on a single job is the issue It's just how every job plays into being a buff job outside of tanks, some healers and very very few DPS. bringing a "raid dmg buff" should feel interesting, not be the norm

On this, though, I get where you're coming from, but.... playing around buffs is just literally a layer of optimization / available gameplay more than... not playing around buffs. It's purely additive.

I therefore preferred it when it was less "all or nothing" and there were more checks to meet (even if at less reward each), but... if we want that layer of depth... we also want a decent chance of having those raid buffs in a given light party.


The issue isn't so much that there are too many buffs as simply that there's nothing else to act as pace-setters for gameplay, because we so often lack short-term DPS checks of any sort, let alone ones with regular enough frequency to give them rotational interest.

Give us means of suppressing an enemy attack with timely burst damage, give us more add checks, etc., and then you'd have competing and shifting priorities among which raid buffs would just be one of multiple gameplay additions.

[TheDustyOne]

How is a constant buff interesting, especially if (usually because of its being constant) it lacks any impact whatsoever? It's too small to be worth holding for, and because it's constant, you can't hold for it anyways. It does literally nothing except bloat the Status Effects bar.

I'll try to answer this part specifically, even though I'm more in favour of staggered timers again.

If we had to remove raid buffs like some are clamouring for, I'd still like to have them represented in some form, like Bard buffs are currently. The reason being entirely around flavour, seeing that party list littered with your buff that says "increases damage dealt" is enough for someone to feel like they're supporting the groups overall output compared to early ShB bard where the songs were purely rotational.

Maintenance is another point as well, even if it's not exactly a deep decision to make. In order for the buffs to be constant, they have to be reused when they're falling off. Let's say we take old NIN trick and buff its duration to 60s (assuming we nerf the Ninja and Trick potency enough for it to be balanced), Ninja still has to maintain that Trick every 60s, but we no longer have to actively burst around it. Ninja still keeps that flavour of "sabotaging the enemy" that helps the party every 60s, but doesn't favour burst jobs over sustain jobs.

I miss old Trick Attack on 60s. Mug doesn't feel right as the sabotage debuff.

That said, my actual preferred position would be to bring back staggered timers, and ideally remove a handful of the current raid buffs (whether that be outright disposal or rotationally maintained, effectively deleting it as a burst window anyway).

[Shurrikhan]

I'll try to answer this part specifically, even though I'm more in favour of staggered timers again.

If we had to remove raid buffs like some are clamouring for, I'd still like to have them represented in some form, like Bard buffs are currently. The reason being entirely around flavour, seeing that party list littered with your buff that says "increases damage dealt" is enough for someone to feel like they're supporting the groups overall output compared to early ShB bard where the songs were purely rotational.

Ehh. I mean, alright then, I guess? But I'd love to be able to filter that shit off my Status Effects bar, at the least, cus it's generally about as relevant to moment-to-moment decision making as my FC buffs are. Granted, we need more Statue Effect filtration control regardless of whatever we do with raid buffs.

Maintenance is another point as well, even if it's not exactly a deep decision to make. In order for the buffs to be constant, they have to be reused when they're falling off.

Aye, but that actually hurts the gameplay of the Bard itself, then, as it further rewards avoiding nuance, alterations, etc. If you can't hold Ballad for an AoE phase without so badly hurting your overall DPS on one end or the party's DPS through the dropped uptime (and desyncing Radiant Finale) on the other, the whole core mechanic of shifting around your bonus affordance (RoD, PP, Haste) becomes that much less leverageable and therefore worthwhile.

That said, my actual preferred position would be to bring back staggered timers, and ideally remove a handful of the current raid buffs (whether that be outright disposal or rotationally maintained, effectively deleting it as a burst window anyway).

I'd like to see the staggered timers, but I still want a "full burst" window. I'd just happily turn those into flexible CDs instead, where for less "support"-ive jobs longer time charged = greater duration, while more "support"-ive jobs have more control and can perhaps toggle. I don't want to see more constant buffs, rotational or otherwise.

I'd honestly rather see Bard's constant buffs removed, and Battle Voice retooled into a flexible CD with effect based off current song, and for Dancer to have Closed Position to instead increase primary stats by 5% [thereby affecting healing and eHP, too] and have 2 charges on a 15s CD or so (with Standard Finish lingering after the swap or being removed such that Closed Position itself grants the buff -- either way).

I don't like replacing elements that have at least some skill expression with what, at greatest impact, just constrains behavior to further reduce in-practice complexity. Which is all I've ever seen from constant buffs, especially if their value isn't primarily contextual (see Bodyguard, Vigilance, etc.) or isn't a means of varying the other's kit (think PvP GNB's Draw, if it were to offer something in turn).

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Food for thought:

Moreover, why do we specifically need raid-buffs to note phases for which to bank and in which to burst? Like, why are discrete buffs the only form of pace-setting players can bring to the table?

Even outside of the encounter design additions mentioned before (e.g., dangerous adds to be burned down, burn shield to interrupt the deadly cast, vulnerability phases, etc.), there are things we could do with just, say, the damage types we let fall by the wayside.

What of Piercing, Slashing, and Blunt -- not in the sense of typal debuffs that force three names for the same thing, but instead as ways of bypassing or breaking enemy armor? What of enemy HP segmentation, or sub-units ("breakables parts")? You can still have <Dragoon doing its obvious tell> signal a full attack, even if that's entering Life of the Dragon ("I'm about to break through with Stardiver. Kick the f-er while he's down") instead of Battle Litany. Etc., etc.