"Players who already like the way things are can feel at ease..."

[ty_taurus]

It's crazy just how much the 2-min buff window idea was pushed so hard a few expansions ago as a solution to a problem that really wasn't a problem. Seeing that rare time everyone had their buffs align and getting the biggest, thickest, nastiest numbers was too hard a drug to resist, and now job feel is reduced to what color the attack is because the buffs and skills and fights are all built around 2 minute timers.

The demand for buff alignment was not unanimous back in ShB, but it's definitely something that sounds good in theory until you realize how it influences the rest of gameplay. it was really on them to understand what buff alignment would lead to and if necessary, perhaps have an open discussion about it and why it isn't healthy for the game. The more a game naturally leads you to the answer, the less room for error you have when you don't reach that answer.