2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

[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.