What jobs actually need Raid Buffs?

[Azurarok]

The more I think about it the more I'm finding raid buffs that can be turned on/off at a cost to be a more meaningful approach than one on hard cooldowns. That or balance/spear + royal road ewer/spire. Limit its usage but have control on when to use it.

Maybe this is a bad take (like, genuinely not sure), but when the cooldown does the synchronization for you the effort seems to lean more on the selfish jobs to adjust to drift and such. Imo it would feel more like you're contributing with them if you're the one that needs to time it to your party's burst timings.

[Carighan]

The more I think about it the more I'm finding raid buffs that can be turned on/off at a cost to be a more meaningful approach than one on hard cooldowns. That or balance/spear + royal road ewer/spire. Limit its usage but have control on when to use it.

The issue with that is that smarter minds than me will math the optimal use out ~instantly. And at that point, it's no different than one with a CD, just with one the UI - needlessly - refuses to show you. Like if you had something you can turn on/off and it turns out that the optimal use is to have it on for 25s every 90s, why not just make it 90s CD / 25s duration? That's how it ends up being used, and there's no reason to make this needlessly "Go to The Balance Discord" for newcomers, just bake the tutorial (which in this case is the CD!) into the game.

Likewise with usaged. If the optimum one is back-to-back, just make it last longer and adjust the CD as needed.

The issue is here not tha those mechanics would not be interesting on paper. The issue is that it's not how they end up being used at even moderately-optimized levels of play. And MMORPG as a genre is way too old and established to still do anything by vibes, it's all optimization, all the time.

A better way of doing it would maybe be to hide the actual synchronization of raid CDs under personal mechanics that don't clearly show what they are?

Like if you got a proc on any of your main filler rotation attacks that has a medium~low chance to happen, and unlocks another oGCD. That oGCD in addition to doing X gives you a charge of Y. At 5*Y, you can use it for a raid buff that has no other CD.

The key here is that the proc chance is... fudged. You'll use that raid buff every 120s, maybe 5-10s out either direction (so make it weaker + longer to compensate, like Summoner one). But it can never drift more than that unless you stop using your filler combo entirely. The fudging is baked into the proc which is on a 5-per-90s PPM rate that quickly escalates the chance per attack until you get a proc, then drops back down to near-nothing. Meaning you can't realistically get 6 procs, either.

Feels better - random proc chance, clearly it varies which attack it procs on, varied gameplay, no clear "press this every 120s"-button. But ultimately it satisfied the need for aligned optimization, just invisibly to the player.

[Mikey_R]

The key here is that the proc chance is... fudged. You'll use that raid buff every 120s, maybe 5-10s out either direction (so make it weaker + longer to compensate, like Summoner one). .

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.

To make a comparison, how frustrating is it when you don't get the Verfire/Verstone procs on RDM or Refulgent Arrow doesn't want to proc on Bard? The difference here is that it only affects your own rotation, but, if you are expecting a raid buff to come out at a certain time, and it doesn't, do you delay your burst? How long are you going to be waiting? How many cooldowns are you holding onto for an unknown timeframe, etc.

As you have stated, players are always going to optimise MMOs, and if you have a job that can delay bursts for something out of their control, it will likely push that job away from being used.

Really, the thing to take away is bad RNG is frustrating when that RNG also screws over other people. This is why SB ASTs were getting frustrated when they couldn't AoE Balance or Spear and the game just refused to give it to them.

[Connor]

The issue with that is that smarter minds than me will math the optimal use out ~instantly….

Isn’t this kinda the reasoning the 120-meta even exists though? ‘We [devs] don’t want players stressing and checking guides for optimisation so we made it all happen at the exact same time’. It seems like you’re arguing against it but then you’re justifying the exact reason it exists (because ‘everyone will just math out things they can control’, which to the devs means ‘nobody should control anything except the game itself’. Player tension and all that). Which honestly I think is how the whole ‘120s-meta’ started; devs somehow managing to take the wrong messages from player feedback.

Like if you got a proc on any of your main filler rotation attacks…

I’m not sure ‘give the player little control’ is really any better than ‘you have control over it but there are [expectations] on usage’ though, personally. I mean, in an ideal world abilities could exist on their own merit and not as optimisation tools lol, especially since not everyone is playing with a parser as thus can’t really optimise anyway (cuz you can’t see if dps goes up or down lol). Plus, it would turn the vast majority of dps into ‘proc style dps’ if their raid buffs were made into procs, which might not go well for certain jobs (idk if there’s jobs with literally 0 procs or not lol)

The key here is that the proc chance is... fudged...

I’m a bit confused by this. So raid buffs would become random chance procs and thereby cannot be pre-optimised? Isn’t RNG predictable though? Like as a Bard you always have a sense of when the next proc will happen even though it’s technically % based - because on average it generally will happen in a specific ‘rhythm’ (or you just use Empyreal Arrow lol). It might not be exact, but after enough times you start to average out the ‘expected window’ for that proc, right? So people would still expect the skills to be mapped out to be used at certain specific times in the encounter and we’d essentially be where we are now but with even less control over our own abilities? Either that or you’d get that one parser addict wiping a raid because they didn’t get the proc for 5 stacks when everyone else did lol

It’s also worth mentioning, SE seems to be extremely against having RNG involved in any mechanics for FFXIV. We’ve seen that with how Astrologian cards turned out, or how they decoupled Bard procs from DoTs to make them more consistent. There’d just be complaints about ‘my dps output is RNG and it’s not fair! (Pushes crit variance under carpet)’, which I vaguely remember being a thing in the past, Stormblood maybe.

I think it’d be a cool idea for a ‘new’ supporter class like another phys ranged or whatever. Having more consistent and/or long duration buffs, but with RNG to balance them out. Then again, isn’t that just pre-Shadowbringers Astrologian? But I think applying that style to ‘raid buffs’ in general wouldn’t really get us much further than where we are now, just in a different direction. Or maybe something along the lines of Astrologian cards in the past, where the support effect itself is RNG but you have certain means of control over it. Thought maybe that’s more what you were suggesting anyway? Best of both worlds? lol.

Addendum: quotes were cut to save characters but I wanted to make it clear which parts I was talking about lol, not trying to take them out of context despite how it looks lol

[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.

[AmiableApkallu]

My problem with raid-wide damage buffs is that they just feel so inconsequential.

HP restoration is lacking or mis-timed? Shields are lacking or mis-timed? Damage reduction is lacking or mistimed? These are all easily felt, because these failures are noticed in relatively short order.

Unless you happen to have some idea of HP bar remaining vs. encounter timeline, there's little in the game to even hint that the party has failed at raid-wide damage buffs. To say nothing of the fact that there are rarely adds or phases where it might actually matter whether damage buffs and burst was saved up. The Chrysalis trial comes to mind here.

[Azurarok]

What if burst timings aren't all synchronized to 120s, being back to the 60, 90, 120, 180s and such, have different lengths by the job, and the jobs with these buffs also could vary the strengths of the buffs with different costs? Could it not help address how we currently only have one exact way to go about applying buffs no matter who is in your party?


As for AST's card RNG and its lows, I think that inconsistency was necessary for it to be as strong as it is. Theoretically they should have higher highs than WHM could but also risk being lower lows in the worst case, while having enough tools for a skilled player to turn around that bad RNG to keep it from dipping too far low.

[Connor]

What if burst timings aren't all synchronized to 120s, being back to the 60, 90, 120, 180s and such, have different lengths by the job, and the jobs with these buffs also could vary the strengths of the buffs with different costs? Could it not help address how we currently only have one exact way to go about applying buffs no matter who is in your party?


As for AST's card RNG and its lows, I think that inconsistency was necessary for it to be as strong as it is. Theoretically they should have higher highs than WHM could but also risk being lower lows in the worst case, while having enough tools for a skilled player to turn around that bad RNG to keep it from dipping too far low.

I think different burst timings / less standardised cool downs could be a good way to ‘diversify’ things a little. I’d even say to do some as low as 30 sec cool downs. Basically as long as it eventually reaches ‘120’ any cool-down could work while enforcing a specific ‘burst window’. Even like 10-20 second cool downs would still fit in there lol (maybe a bit short but I just mean in theory’. It would still end up the same as what we have now at 120s mark but at least you’d get to use your support a bit more actively.

And I’d definitely say to throw in one or two abilities like Foe Requiem / Turret Promotion that are MP/Resource based as opposed to cool-down. People would optimise everything out of them until there was no choice on when to use them, but they’ll literally do that no matter how the abilities are designed anyway lol. Plus it’s not like ‘optimised play’ is generally a thing people seem to do much outside specific situations I.e savage. In my experience anyway

As an aside, it’s sad seeing the state Astrologian is in now. Astrologian’s ‘stronger but less consistent’ support gave it a fairly unique way to offer the same utility other jobs could. Especially when we had ways to manipulate the random elements to tip the scales in our own favour, like Royal Road, Time Dilation, or Celestial Opposition. Now Draw is basically just ‘Aetherflow with a different name’.

[Aravell]

What if burst timings aren't all synchronized to 120s, being back to the 60, 90, 120, 180s and such, have different lengths by the job, and the jobs with these buffs also could vary the strengths of the buffs with different costs? Could it not help address how we currently only have one exact way to go about applying buffs no matter who is in your party?

While variations in raid buffs increase flexibility, it doesn't make the entire system any more interesting unless damage profiles among the jobs are diverse again.

If we go back to 60s/90s/120s/180s, all it does without changing the jobs is that it addresses crit potency scaling, it doesn't really make combat itself more interesting without changing the rigid burst>filler>repeat cycle of every job.

Reverting the buff cooldowns do vastly increase flexibility again though. Pre-EW, if a fight ends at 9:43, you can hold the 120s at 8 minutes and move them to full alignment at 9 minutes with the 180s. Or if a fight ends at 7:50, you could delay 180s at 3 minutes for full alignment at 4 minute and delay 120s at 6 minutes for another full alignment at 7 minutes, so you get 3 full alignments in the fight even if the fight is that much shorter than 12 minutes long.

Post-EW though, if a fight ends at 7:50, that's too bad, you just killed 10 seconds before your next full alignment and nothing you can do will fix it because there's no flexibility.