2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

[Kalaam]

Then explain to me what the majority of people complaining about it thinks.
I understand what I dislike about it myself, no need to tell me what I think. That gas won't be lit my friend.

[Lyth]

The majority of players aren't doing raid content, and are not affected by raid buff management to begin with. I can say that I've seen a lot of complaints about gameplay simplifications from people who actually participate in raid content, and removing raid buffs are a definite simplification.

...

I understand that you're keen to play freestyle WAR, and you still can under the current conditions. Don't worry, the job intrinsically allows you to work on your personal expression/'build variety' however you choose to smash the keys together. You do you.

The point being made here is that the original complaint around the 'two-minute meta' was that it simplified gameplay. Your proposed solution to eliminate raid buffs altogether is an even bigger simplification.

You can try to alter raid buff window timings to an extent, but current raid content is designed to allow full uptime while doing mechanics, and there's always the risk of pushing an existing buff window into an intermission phase without targets. Just do the mechanics, it's not a big deal.

[4clubbedace]

Option 2 without a doubt.

I know it's already been said that "oh well the jobs will just be homogenized to do the same thing, deal enough damage to kill the boss" which is a pretty weak argument. Samurai and Black mage both have that exact same philosophy "no raid buffs, all damage", but they couldn't play any more differently from each other.

It is just frustrating knowing that every job has to fit into this 2 minute box, and especially when the said two minutes comes up during parts of fights that does not play well with said burst window. I have brought it up plenty of times in the forums but P12S is miserable on Red Mage because 2 of the burst windows happen when casters are forced to be away from the boss and cannot do their melee combo. And the damage of Red Mage isn't good enough to force a random pf party to adjust for you, but that's a separate issue.

I would prefer if they just got rid of all of the 2 minute burst abilities and move the damage to somewhere else in their kits. We can keep consistent buffs like bard's songs and maybe rework dancer's technical finish to do something similar instead of just being a burst window buff. This decision to have all jobs in a 2 minute window means that we will never ever get another job that is just sustained damage throughout a fight, because they won't fit into the burst window.

The 2 minute meta was made to make it easier for new players to understand how to play their jobs "right", but guess what? New players don't care about pressing their buttons immediately as they come off cooldown, meaning they won't fit into the burst phase regardless. All this does is force endgame players to play a specific way every raid tier.

"giving atk up to the party" is as instrumental to Role playing games as "giving def buffs" or healing to the party, all these are part of the fantasy since its been derived from tabletop. removing them at all is a bland decision choice that limits the world feeling and vibes of the game, and overall more stale balancing decision.

[Ggwppino]

I can say that I've seen a lot of complaints about gameplay simplifications from people who actually participate in raid content, and removing raid buffs are a definite simplification.

Yes and no. Having a button to press every 2 minutes isn't that complicated.
Clearly if the meta remains what it is, you will practically lose just one button and it is still a simplification.

In my opinion, to modernize the gameplay we should move away from the burst phases every 60/120 seconds. Or rather, have classes that have different functions for damage and non-force output with 1000+ potency. This is above all to free ourselves from the homogenization and stagnation of classes.
At this point it would be better to have a few classes specialized in buffs and that their gameplay is highly influenced by this and that their buffs weigh heavily on both their own and the party's rdps, rewarding both those who buff (using them at the right time and/or on the right player) and team play.

Now everyone presses the single button every 2 minutes except for just a few classes (then okay there are fights that require you to delay the GCD but it's quite irrelevant since it's just 1 button).
There should be specializations to respect the fantasies also regarding the gameplay and not that everyone does everything but they do little.


This can very well be applied to mitigations etc.
Furthermore, it would be nice if some classes also had transversal utilities and not just buffs that directly increase damage. (Like mana regeneration or sch speed).

[Rychu]

Yes and no. Having a button to press every 2 minutes isn't that complicated.
Clearly if the meta remains what it is, you will practically lose just one button and it is still a simplification.

In my opinion, to modernize the gameplay we should move away from the burst phases every 60/120 seconds. Or rather, have classes that have different functions for damage and non-force output with 1000+ potency. This is above all to free ourselves from the homogenization and stagnation of classes.
At this point it would be better to have a few classes specialized in buffs and that their gameplay is highly influenced by this and that their buffs weigh heavily on both their own and the party's rdps, rewarding both those who buff (using them at the right time and/or on the right player) and team play.

Yeah see this guy gets it. People that choose option 2, don't choose it because "oh just get rid of it and let it be that". Option 2 is chosen under the assumption that getting rid of the 2 minute meta will free up the job designers to do different things with each job. I wouldn't want them to just remove the raid buffs, I would want it with reworks to job kits to be more varied. That is a huge ask to ask for such sweeping changes, but really where else can we go with our jobs as they currently are? Gunbreaker alone can barely fit their burst skills into the burst window, and we want to add more? For fucks sake those guys are drowning in gcds and ogcds while shirking or provoking the boss. Are we just going to extend the buff timers so that everyone can fit everything? I'm sorry but that is lame.

[SargeTheSeagull]

I've spent the last few days thinking my position through a bit more. As i've thought it through and read the discussion id like to add: By "remove every existing raid buff" I think it would work as a blank slate. Every current raidbuff is removed so the devs have 21 jobs with no party buffs so they can totally reevaluate how they want each job to function as it pertains to buffs/burst windows. For example, let's say they decide they want bard to be totally buff focused. 75% of bard's damage contribution to a party is done via its songs which it sustains over the span of a fight, not in short windows. This means a few things to start: 1. Bard no longer has any need to have a burst window as most of its contribution is via the party. 2. Bard can have a more sustained damage rotation similar to how it was in say, stormblood. 3. They can radically change how songs work. No longer would bard have to rotate between three songs to build up to radiant finale. Now one song can grant party members extra main stat for a few seconds and the bard can extend the song using its rotation. One song can be a flat crit increase. One song can have a tiny chance to decrease party member's personal cooldowns like bloodfest or manafication. Stuff like that.

On that note, because now dedicated 2min burst windows aren't a thing they devs can give jobs passives that reset personal cooldowns. Say SAM: Every iaijutsu has a chance to reset ogi namikiri's cooldown. Something like that wouldn't work at all now because if it happened at an inopportune time then your rotation would be completely thrown off the rest of the fight. In a world where buff windows either didn't exist or weren't remotely as consequential that could work and would be fun.

For the record, I think the majority of the issue with 2min's isn't "oh waah i have to press battle litany every two minutes". It's just the raw number of buffs that are on two minute cooldowns. If you have a comp of SCH, AST, DRG, NIN, RDM, and BRD that's eight 2 minute buffs. 8. Thats an insane amount of compounding damage buffs every two minutes. If they took some and put them on one minute buffs or even 30sec's for a few, that would go a long way to help.

[Shurrikhan]

Yes and no. Having a button to press every 2 minutes isn't that complicated.
Clearly if the meta remains what it is, you will practically lose just one button and it is still a simplification.

In my opinion, to modernize the gameplay we should move away from the burst phases every 60/120 seconds.

Yeah see this guy gets it. People that choose option 2, don't choose it because "oh just get rid of it and let it be that". Option 2 is chosen under the assumption that getting rid of the 2 minute meta will free up the job designers to do different things with each job.

Those pace-making alternative additions aren't incompatible with at least having something to fall back onto (i.e., the pace-making caused by raid buffs) when those other elements aren't in place in the given fight, though?

You can have shorter DPS checks set pacing for CD usage. You can have new undermechanics set pacing for CD usage. You can have all of the above. And you could still have raidbuffs atop that. Net optimization is still a factor regardless; they are not mutually exclusive.

[Turtledeluxe]

Remove.

The more I have looked into it the more I have realized that all of the job changes people hate and the two minute meta are driven by raiders and these concerns:

- FFlogs need to be "balanced" or roles risk not being taken to raids. Oh no. It's not like the participation rates are balanced for prog anyway even though we have achieved this alleged balance. Players are always going to decide a meta party based on the current Job design regardless of classes being balanced.

- Job X gets envious of job Y when they have utility, mitigation, healing etc that job X lacks. Job X says they need what Y has bc without it there is no way for their class to be viable or fun. Class x gets what Y has. This is why jobs have become homogenized outside perhaps BLM. Once again it is in the name of making classes preferred for group play.

-Raiders complained that managing buffs for bursts was too hard so devs have made it easy mode with the two minute burst with no regard for how it affects easier content.

Option 1 works too but Option 2 imo gives devs the breathing room to get more creative with classes and focus on their roles and how they feel. If a class has a buff it should be relevant to their role as a utility centric class.

[Ggwppino]

Those pace-making alternative additions aren't incompatible with at least having something to fall back onto (i.e., the pace-making caused by raid buffs) when those other elements aren't in place in the given fight, though?

You can have shorter DPS checks set pacing for CD usage. You can have new undermechanics set pacing for CD usage. You can have all of the above. And you could still have raidbuffs atop that. Net optimization is still a factor regardless; they are not mutually exclusive.

Imposing a rhythm in itself requires that all classes are similar to each other in order to all be synergistically compatible.
This is exacerbated when out of 19 classes 10 "buff" (aka press the button every 120 seconds). among these 9 without buff of which 5 are all tanks.

My comment actually introduces several points:
1) the 2 minute rhythm is limiting and forces all jobs to have synchronized burst phases, force all jobs to work with burst GCD with 1000+ potency. (Don't get me wrong, it forces the designer to force the job into a very routed rotation where everything has to coincide perfectly with the 2 minute cycles.)

2) the buff should be part of the fantasy of the job and that it heavily influences the gameplay and way of thinking. If I choose MNK it's certainly not because I intend to buff my party mates.

3) Nowadays everyone does everything and there are no longer certain peculiarities that influence gameplay. Everyone mitigates, everyone buff. And they all (in general) do it at the push of a single button. (Because actually they are tools purely disconnected from the core or introduced rather forcibly)

4) There shouldnt be almost exclusively utilities that directly influence damage (inflicted -> buffs, received -> mitigations) but there should also be utilities that influence gameplay in some way.

[ZiraZ]

I'm curious if anyone that wants raid buffs completely removed even raids. I mean completely removed, asking for a raid buff rework is perfectly understandable, worth discussing and high IQ, but wanting them completely removed is just about the biggest smooth brain behavior I can think of, I can't fathom why anyone that actively raids wanting to go down this exit route.