2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

[Kalaam]

But what about every job being a build/spend 2 minute burst as it goes on? How can we have more variety in that too ?

[Shurrikhan]

But what about every job being a build/spend 2 minute burst as it goes on? How can we have more variety in that too ?

Depends on whether you want to popularize difficult 4-man content.

If not, then it's as easy as just swapping over many of the skills timings so they're not used at / bankable for the 2-minute burst and compensating the jobs most made less synergetic in doing so, which would still be only a faint difference overall.

If so, then you have to make those above benefits conditional and/or make raid buffs actually split their value among everyone so that buffers and exploiters scale that bit more evenly with party count, or you vary the timings of raid buffs if you want extremely tight parity.

But regardless, we're still free to make those kit changes even now.

Those kit changes won't much change gameplay, in themselves, though. Until rigid CDs > bankability for raid buffs aren't the only pace-setters, in 98+% of situations, you will continue to hit any single-charge skills on CD and to bank your bankables only for as long as they can be banked for the nearest raid buff.

For a more fundamental/significant change, you'd need competing pace-setters, be they from the encounter or other undermechanics that frequently misalign from rigidly timed raid buffs.

[Ggwppino]

Depends on whether you want to popularize difficult 4-man content.

If not, then it's as easy as just swapping over many of the skills timings so they're not used at / bankable for the 2-minute burst and compensating the jobs most made less synergetic in doing so, which would still be only a faint difference overall.

If so, then you have to make those above benefits conditional and/or make raid buffs actually split their value among everyone so that buffers and exploiters scale that bit more evenly with party count, or you vary the timings of raid buffs if you want extremely tight parity.

But regardless, we're still free to make those kit changes even now.

Those kit changes won't much change gameplay, in themselves, though. Until rigid CDs > bankability for raid buffs aren't the only pace-setters, in 98+% of situations, you will continue to hit any single-charge skills on CD and to bank your bankables only for as long as they can be banked for the nearest raid buff.

For a more fundamental/significant change, you'd need competing pace-setters, be they from the encounter or other undermechanics that frequently misalign from rigidly timed raid buffs.

It would be enough to have raid buffs that are completely redesigned and distributed exclusively to a few (2/3) select classes.
An absurd and imaginative example Let's take the DNC:

"Technical Finish" with low or non-existent CD to always keep up devilment (with a doubled duration) with Tillana usable every minute.
A standard step that can be used every 30 seconds on a target or on oneself which buffs for 10 seconds and if in these 10 seconds the partner overcomes x damage you get "Pas de deux" (name taken at random) which has y potency. Espirit that gains gauge for how many buffs you have active: 0 buff -> 0 gauge, 1 buff -> 5, 2 buff -> 10.

With a class like this there is no need to have classes that are highly synchronized with all the same windows to vomit damage thanks to the job designers (because let's face it, the synchronization is very artificial and is not thanks to the intellect of the players).
With only one such class, the role of the buffer is not diminished by a single key press every 120 seconds that everyone has.
Furthermore, this way you test the capacity of the buffer and of your party mates to always be ready to synchronize with buffs expecially in hard-content.

[Shurrikhan]

It would be enough to have raid buffs that are completely redesigned and distributed exclusively to a few (2/3) select classes.

That would have zero impact on how we play except for/from when there are therefore no buffers in the randomly matchmade group. It's the first raid buff that forms the gameplay. The rest are redundancies to increase the chance of having access to that gameplay.

An absurd and imaginative example Let's take the DNC:

"Technical Finish" with low or non-existent CD to always keep up devilment (with a doubled duration) with Tillana usable every minute.
A standard step that can be used every 30 seconds on a target or on oneself which buffs for 10 seconds and if in these 10 seconds the partner overcomes x damage you get "Pas de deux" (name taken at random) which has y potency. Espirit that gains gauge for how many buffs you have active: 0 buff -> 0 gauge, 1 buff -> 5, 2 buff -> 10.

This would only constrain Dancer gameplay by making its personal damage dependent on having a buff-stacked comp (unless you mean only that particular Dancer's buffs, in which case you've still reduced Dancer's ability to spread its ST buffs).

With a class like this there is no need to have classes that are highly synchronized with all the same windows to vomit damage thanks to the job designers (because let's face it, the synchronization is very artificial and is not thanks to the intellect of the players).

Even under the current raid buff timings, there is no need for "classes that are highly synchronized with all the same windows to vomit damage". You do not 2-minute-synced attacks even now. You need only have balanced party contribution (which is not the same thing as fflog's rDPS metric) in an average/random-composition party despite that, which can be managed through even rather modest compensation so long as you're not expecting every job in a given tier to have the same solo dps.

Rather the timings of bursts come from three things:

1. The devs wanting to add mechanical intensity to burst intervals, creating additional challenge
2. The devs wanting a more "all together" rhythm to party dynamics (and thereby ease in delaying damage as a team, such as when the mechanical intensity is too high for people to pull off their full bursts at that time).
3. The developers believing that more homogenized rates of attack are easier to learn and therefore more desirable to a large section of players that (apparently) hold a majority of the value for appeasement.

Less synergetic use of raid-wide buffs, though, could easily be compensated for. That's not the reason nor issue here.

With only one such class, the role of the buffer is not diminished by a single key press every 120 seconds that everyone has.

It has nonetheless slightly diminished through removing alignment of buffs, though. Your skill ceiling, even as the buffer, is literally less in that context that it would be when working alongside other buffers. ???

Furthermore, this way you test the capacity of the buffer and of your party mates to always be ready to synchronize with buffs especially in hard-content.

Which we can already do right now. ???

[Ggwppino]

This would only constrain Dancer gameplay by making its personal damage dependent on having a buff-stacked comp (unless you mean only that particular Dancer's buffs, in which case you've still reduced Dancer's ability to spread its ST buffs).

In the example I mean the dancer's buffs. If you're good at always keeping everything up, you do more damage. Furthermore i think that it is not true: the buffer is led to have to follow priorities and the better it knows the other classes the more it can enhance them by delaying buffs or telling the partner that it will buff him there by reaching an agreement with the other players.

It has nonetheless slightly diminished through removing alignment of buffs, though. Your skill ceiling, even as the buffer, is literally less in that context that it would be when working alongside other buffers. ???

Like now. The ceiling that now does not exist for raid buffs is exchanged into the ability to always keep everything up while using your damage skills, furthermore the ST buff is emphasized.

(then you talk about ceiling, but now the buffs cover the entire arena. the *fake* buffer doesn't even have to think about how to position itself or delay it some GCD...)

Which we can already do right now. ???

No, I dont think.
I have burst at 90s. sigh. I, on the other hand, have damage that is sustained over time. Im gonna cry. Nobody wants me. sigh.
SQE: We do everything every 120 seconds, dw.

I repeat, if you do damage and it is not included in the buffs (which the player doesn't have to think about at all because it was all done by the job designers), you must essentially gain all the rdps of all 5 buffers that lost his damage, otherwise he lost appeal. The overall dps of the party must be very similar to each other, you cannot keep a class that does not have the burst phase like all the others without buffing it in such a way as to recover the damage it causes the rdps buffer to lose. (nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed lol)

[Shurrikhan]

I have burst at 90s. sigh. I, on the other hand, have damage that is sustained over time. Im gonna cry. Nobody wants me. sigh.

Which is ultimately a party-contribution tuning issue, not necessarily a design issue.

If I give you a situation better for you, you'll perform better. If I give you a situation worse for you, you'll perform worse. If every situation is worse for you, though, there's a very simple solution: I increase your raw dps so you produce the same contribution despite getting less out of raid buffs. Now, you are some only at most 0.3% overpowered in a composition with the least buffs and some 0.5% underpowered in the most buff-heavy composition possible -- indistinguishable among Crit/DHit RNG/luck.

I repeat, if you do damage and it is not included in the buffs (which the player doesn't have to think about at all because it was all done by the job designers), you must essentially gain all the rdps of all 5 buffers that lost his damage, otherwise he lost appeal.

No, that's not even close. You must be buffed to provide the effective potency otherwise lost for having taken you over a job with average party contribution. That's it.

you cannot keep a class that does not have the burst phase like all the others without buffing it in such a way as to recover the damage it causes the rdps buffer to lose.

Did... you even read the post you're quoting?

Then buff it. Buff it in such a way as to make up for the party contribution it'd otherwise fall behind on amid a random-average composition.

Use a potency map. Look at its theoretical relative potency contribution under a composition with a median buff density and increase it until it meets the median job's relative potency contribution in that same context. That's it.

If we're not planning on having serious 4-man content with actual rewards or any longevity, then there's no risk there. And even if we were, there are ways to make that conditional.

2-minute buffs do not demand 2-minute play for parity. Design can just compensate those who are less buff-synergetic/-dependent. They'll be the disfavored single-target buff recipients during raid bursts but also the favored single-target buff recipients during a great overall number of Play or Standard Step casts.

but now the buffs cover the entire arena.

Buff radius is not a matter of CDs. They are utterly irrelevant to each other.

If you're good at always keeping everything up, you do more damage.

Except it still adds nothing because it's the exact same gameplay you'd have even when playing solo. You'd already hit Standard Finish on CD because it's your nuke. If it doesn't offer any priority conflict through that capacity to buff others, it isn't adding anything beyond your ability to keep up, which you've only reduced the reward for.

[Ggwppino]

Then buff it. Buff it in such a way as to make up for the party contribution it'd otherwise fall behind on amid a random-average composition.

Do you buff it by considering 6 buffers in the party? Do you buff it by considering 5 buffers in the party? Do you buff it by considering 3 buffers in the party?

Buff radius is not a matter of CDs. They are utterly irrelevant to each other.

Well it saddens me to think that before, at least, for some mechanics you had to delay a few GCDs to be able to reunite with the whole party and buff everyone. Now press it during the CD. What kind of optimization is this? Isn't everyone's raid buff even dumber now?

Now even more so an rpr will use his buff when it suits him, not to suit party members. Without thinking about anything, you remain on the rotation of the balance without the slightest variation. Play like a bot, without thinking about anything.
Does my solution change anything for him? no, he will play like a bot anyway. But at least not everyone will have the buffs but only the 3 classes that were designed to be buffs. Where their gameplay is full of buffs.

Except it still adds nothing because it's the exact same gameplay you'd have even when playing solo. You'd already hit Standard Finish on CD because it's your nuke. If it doesn't offer any priority conflict through that capacity to buff others, it isn't adding anything beyond your ability to keep up, which you've only reduced the reward for.

every 40 seconds you have to keep up devilment otherwise you'll make everyone lose x critical damage. Every 30 seconds you have to know which job should do the most damage in that specific 10 second window every 30 seconds to optimize your rdps also in an extreme way but essentially that of the party, thanks to your knowledge and the help of the other dps who help you they say: "hey it's not worth buffing me, at this point in the rotation I don't do much damage, buff him" or "hey, can you wait for a GCD? At least you can get this CD inside the buff" or "I'll buff you at 1 minute and 40 and 3 minutes, get ready. While you at 2 minutes and 4".
Furthermore, the better you buff and the more you keep up devilment, the more damage you do. This was the purpose of my example, to have a class that is effectively a buffer because it has to reason and adapt to the various comps.

[Lyth]

Raid buffs are a design constraint. Without it, you can place your burst window wherever you feel like it. It's a skill check, but it naturally has a convergent effect on job and fight design. But that's a necessary evil, if you want to be able to reward skill over freestyle gameplay.

Raid buffs don't necessarily need to be player generated. You can just as easily have a scripted window where a boss takes more damage. This is actually a harder check, because players have no control over the timing and no way of adapting to problems on the fly (i.e. player deaths). The easiest check of all is if you have a single player that dictates the timing of the raid window, because you can essentially place it wherever you want on the fly. It also means that you could potentially run a full freestyle group without buffs, if all jobs are balanced around rDPS. The middle ground is the system we currently have (most jobs provide raid buffs, but individually they are all weaker and comp independent).

Raid buffs can't be asynchronous, because jobs that align their buffs more conveniently are preferentially picked. Given the choice, why would I bring a job with 90s raid buffs when everyone else has buffs on multiples of 60s?

Who gets the privilege of bringing the raid buff is less of an factor than you think it is, because everything gets balanced around rDPS. If anything, we've seen that jobs that focused on personal damage output like SAM and BLM have had preferential treatment over other jobs this expansion. They are generally on the higher end of the rDPS scale, despite also contributing more damage than other jobs under raid buffs (and the latter has not been accounted for in rDPS balance). If VPR ends up bringing a self-only buff, it's likely going to end up in a very good place, similar to these two. It actually works to your favor, if anything, to let someone else bring the raid buff.

Bottom line is that the current system has drawbacks, but there are plenty of ways that you can make the existing system worse.

[Ggwppino]

Raid buffs are a design constraint. Without it, you can place your burst window wherever you feel like it. It's a skill check, but it naturally has a convergent effect on job and fight design. But that's a necessary evil, if you want to be able to reward skill over freestyle gameplay.

Although your argument makes sense in this way, actually it would be enough to calibrate the dps check.
If in normal a person plays freestyle without producing the highest damage, nothing happens, and that's okay. But if he does it in savage or ultimate and there is enrage, there is a basic problem: he is not capable of playing his class at higher levels, because he is not able to guarantee a certain dps. And that's beyond buffs. If the buffs weren't there, nothing would change: players must try to do as much damage as possible anyway.

Raid buffs can't be asynchronous, because jobs that align their buffs more conveniently are preferentially picked. Given the choice, why would I bring a job with 90s raid buffs when everyone else has buffs on multiples of 60s?

This is true but because the way the buffs are set up in ff14 makes it true. If you put a class that buffs but only buffs for x seconds with a very high cooldown interval, you make all the jobs that manage to make good use of this buff much more attractive.
If the buffs were much more frequent and especially ST this problem wouldn't exist at all.

[Reimmi]

Remove it, only allow astrologian and bard/dancer to have raid buffs, and those raid buffs aren't raw damage increases, rather utility like movement speed and such
Give everyone unique burst cooldowns like reaper's enshroud or monks perfect balance, and shift the focus to personal burst windows and not raid buff windows.