2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

[Aco505]

The system that we had previously meant that not all jobs synchronized with buff timings equally well, resulting in rDPS disparities. Some jobs like NIN were perennial picks, because a 1 minute buff aligns with pretty much everything. It also meant that your buff windows could be just free dps if they didn't align with mechanic checks.

This is important. Clamoring for the return of 90 and 180 second buffs disregards the fact that during ShB, the jobs that were the strongest and had good synergy were precisely those based around 60-120s windows: SAM, NIN and DNC with SAM in particular staying at the top of the rDPS charts too, creating an imbalance, just like BLM right now topping the rDPS, nDPS and aDPS rankings.

This doesn't mean that the idea cannot be explored, but blindly going back to how it was without further thought would be a terrible move.

On the other hand, removing buffs from all jobs would have the exact effect. And there's also to consider that, if most jobs (let's say melee and caster) had no buffs anymore, then they will all be "selfish" DPS but that won't mean that they will all be equal because bursts will still exist and the damage of a NIN burst is not the same as a MNK's.

I think that we should have jobs with different DPS patterns (some with strong burst and weaker filler, some with strong filler and alright burst, some in between, etc...), as well as various burst timings (some having strong 60s, some being the strongest at 120s).

We already kind of have this with SMN, whose Phoenix phase is quite good, MNK's 60s having their strongest attack in normal encounters with full uptime, or WAR's 60s being mostly the same to their 120s. The idea would then be to expand on this so that not everyone relied on the 120s burst, as well as to provide different timers within each job and to make the filler phase not feel like a mindless 1-2-3 spam in some cases (e. g. NIN between bursts).

Why can't we have more jobs like BLM with less burst but continuous damage yet with the ability to pool resources to dump into party/single target buffs? Why is SAM's burst stronger than NIN's considering the former has a good filler while the latter lives or dies by their burst?

[Rychu]

I think our arguments for or against the removal also hasn't factored in that not all of the current jobs will need to be reworked to be more sustained damage over the course of a fight. There should be jobs that are burst focused, that build up gauge to spend all at once on some big attacks. HOWEVER, the current raid buff system does not allow for both types of archetypes to exist, and I think that that blows. Let me give an example. Personally I would like to keep Ninja the way it is or close at least. Maybe their burst can be signified with keeping trick attack but having it be a debuff that only affects the ninja's damage and let them burst how they currently do. That's a very rough example, but you get the idea. And at the same time, you have a paladin behaving the way it did before the rework. Both players like different rotations, both get to have their fun.

To be honest, I am glad the developers made the 2 minute meta. Because it shows how much the jobs have to be homogenized to all fit into the box. The old system was not great, the jobs that had similar cooldown timers, naturally had the advantage in raids. But this system limits all jobs, both current and future.

Jobs may be homogenized further if we remove the raid buffs, they may not. What I do know is that all jobs currently are being homogenized right now with this system.

[Shurrikhan]

I think that we should have jobs with different DPS patterns (some with strong burst and weaker filler, some with strong filler and alright burst, some in between, etc...), as well as various burst timings (some having strong 60s, some being the strongest at 120s).

We kind of see that in other games, where depth of flexibly timeable burst is considered a powerful utility but is still just that -- utility; that is to say, its value is context-dependent, rather than something you can easily and/or pretty directly calculate.

Give us things within our encounters that would allow burst to be useful but variably so, and, as part of job selection, you'd be determining whether you want to be the kind of player who likes to take priority on this or that sort of responsibility --to have your value depend more on your ability to deal with this or that sort of mechanic-- atop the particular way in which you meet those and other responsibilities (by adjusting your rotation to hit its highest turns right as the need begins, and/or by banking gauge, and/or by adjusting the order of cooldowns, and/or by outright delaying cooldowns when you have to or for greater total damage, etc.).