What jobs actually need Raid Buffs?

[Carighan]

The issue is when you get unlucky and you get access to the buff late, it is going to feel bad. Your raid buff has gone out late due to something out of your control.

It wouldn't.

That's my point.

Even if you get the fifth stack one late, that means you fire in-sync with everybody else. And usually you get it 5s earlier, and very rarely 10s earlier, but it lasts 10s longer than it'd need to.

Like I said, hide mechanical homogenization behind non-homogenized systems. We can't avoid the homogenization (at least, according to all even mildly successful MMORPG so far), so might as well do different gameplay and gameplay systems behind which the homogenized parts of balance are automated?

[Mikey_R]

It wouldn't.

That's my point.

Even if you get the fifth stack one late, that means you fire in-sync with everybody else. And usually you get it 5s earlier, and very rarely 10s earlier, but it lasts 10s longer than it'd need to.

Like I said, hide mechanical homogenization behind non-homogenized systems. We can't avoid the homogenization (at least, according to all even mildly successful MMORPG so far), so might as well do different gameplay and gameplay systems behind which the homogenized parts of balance are automated?

I think I might have misinterpreted how you wanted it to work. The way I read it was, on average, you get the raid buff every 120 seconds, however due to RNG, this buff could come up up to 10 seconds early OR 10 second late, depending on RNG luck. Obviously, if it is 10 seconds early, because you have the extended period it still covers the '20 second' burst phase. The issue comes when you get access to it late, you miss the first part of the burst. This is the bit I was commenting on.

There is also a case where, if you get continuously lucky, and it keeps coming up early, you will drift the end of the buff so it falls off whilst the burst phase is still going, meaning you have to hold it for a certain period, but this then goes against what you said initially, that is you shouldn't have to track time without some sort of UI element to help you.

Even then, you say it has a low % chance, what is stopping you from getting lucky and getting the raid buff very quickly? Do you hold it or use it? How about unlucky and you do not get the 5 procs (if your system would even allow it?), Even with the 50% chance, I have gone full minutes without Verstone/Verfire procs or even procing the GCDs from Dancer. I have also had the exact opposite where I continually get procs. These might be in the extremes, but they will still happen and need to be accounted for.

Now, there is no reason a job couldn't work on this idea, if it was all personal buffs, especially if there was no limited time raid buffs to account for as well. You could have this job that has a varying burst window and, if you potentially implemented some limited overcap functionality, you could make the job even more flexible, allowing it to cover many different situations. For me, this would be better than trying to 'reinvent' the 120 second raid buff meta. Of course, your opinion may vary.