The two minute burst

[baklava151]

I brought this up originally in the tank forums when talking about DRK's gameplay but thought it was a topic that deserved its own thread. Someone linked a Reddit post which I think does a good job introducing the topic

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus..._buff_meta_of/

Meta probably isn't the right word since Square intentionally designed classes this way rather than players figuring it out on their own, but basically in Endwalker a lot of raid buffs got moved to two minute cooldowns along with other abilities getting their CD changed to a multiple of 60 seconds. This has the benefit of letting everyone line up raid buffs as long as they're hitting buttons on CD, but on the flipside if you're trying to perform well, a lot of your damage will come from how well you're pooling resources and fitting them under 2 minute burst windows. Or 1 minute if you have a NIN in your group, which I think at this point TA is the only 1 minute raid buff in the game. It basically pigeonholes every class into being a burst class even if it's not necessarily one, and a lot of your performance starts depending on others using their buffs at the right time rather than necessarily on how well you're doing personally.

I brought this up in relation to DRK because outside of your burst window, there's not much going on because a) all your abilities are on CD or b) you're not using attacks like Edge of Shadow or Bloodspiller as often because you want to save resources for bursts. This leads to the common complaint that once you do your opener, you spend 45 seconds doing 1-2-3 until your next burst. DRG got affected by this change because before in ShB, your buffs didn't line up as nicely, so part of its gameplay was keeping track of these buffs and entering or delaying Life of the Dragon depending on what was coming off CD. Now that all its buffs are all multiples of 60s, that aspect got removed and you always enter Life as soon as you can which is a downgrade for me.

Basically trying to see what other people's thoughts are on this topic, whether they think it's a good change, bad change, etc...

[Illmaeran]

Personally, I do everything I can to avoid the two minute burst.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Total Noob Question: As a casual who at most does like 8 man normal raids, should I be casting my 120 Raid-Wides at the very beginning of the fight and then on Cooldown?

I doubt we are organized on buffs for this to matter that much, but if I can improve my gameplay on when to use these buffs I will. I've instead been building up my 'big attacks' before popping these buffs personally but I don't know if there is a general "best time" for the team I should use them.

[Ixon]

What I find funny is the design of MNK in EW was purposefully made your Phantom Rush didn't align with the 2min burst windows, as Yoshi-P said in his interview with Drak, but the community just came up with the Double Solar opener so it aligned anyways. The "everyone is 2min" was designed to help more excluded jobs like MNK or WAR who could only partake in bursts every other time and would fall behind in damage(though WAR still doesn't benefit from any crit buffs), and unfortunately there isn't anyway round the "hold resources for sync'd burst" mentality. the closest you get is with a NIN where you can dump some resource on the 1min, while making sure you still have enough for the 2min.

[Ixon]

Total Noob Question: As a casual who at most does like 8 man normal raids, should I be casting my 120 Raid-Wides at the very beginning of the fight and then on Cooldown?

I doubt we are organized on buffs for this to matter that much, but if I can improve my gameplay on when to use these buffs I will. I've instead been building up my 'big attacks' before popping these buffs personally but I don't know if there is a general "best time" for the team I should use them.

This changes all the time, but you should be putting buffs up at about the 3rd GCD, then on cooldown unless there is a mechanic where the boss will be away or untargetable. You can look at the openers in the Balance, but most openers are made so you and your team get the most value, and if everyone is also doing the same, you should naturally line-up every 2min. Mis-alignment will happen all the time in normal content, so just use your stuff on time for you, and pray others do the same.

[Saraide]

Total Noob Question: As a casual who at most does like 8 man normal raids, should I be casting my 120 Raid-Wides at the very beginning of the fight and then on Cooldown?

I doubt we are organized on buffs for this to matter that much, but if I can improve my gameplay on when to use these buffs I will. I've instead been building up my 'big attacks' before popping these buffs personally but I don't know if there is a general "best time" for the team I should use them.

Yes, you want to use your stuff on cooldown. Rule of thumb: losing a use of a damage cooldown is more of a damage loss than not having it lined up with every other buff. Smart resource usage will naturally lead to you having your big attacks inside of your burst windows. I personally have trouble pooling resources exactly but dont be discouraged when you overcap or when you spend all your resources right before a buff window. Cooldowns on the other hand are already designed to be used with the regular buff schedule in mind so all you need to do to be in sync is to press stuff on cooldown.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Thank you both Ixon and Saraide! I could certainly be far more efficient with my Raidwides.

[Jeeqbit]

Unless you're dying to enrage with no apparent problems such as deaths, worrying about these things is only going to make the game stressful to play when you can just do your rotation on cooldown, have fun and kill the boss.

[TheMightyMollusk]

I hear a lot of guys have this problem, it's nothing to be ashamed of.

[baklava151]

Unless you're dying to enrage with no apparent problems such as deaths, worrying about these things is only going to make the game stressful to play when you can just do your rotation on cooldown, have fun and kill the boss.

My bigger point, maybe I didn't explain it well, is that classes are moving to a similar design of bursting every 1 to 2 minutes and then the rest of the time is spent building back up for the next one. Hence why I brought up DRG because the weird timing of its cooldowns back in ShB added another layer of gameplay if you wanted to optimize, now that's gone in EW and you're just automatically entering LotD every minute. My friend has a similar complaint with NIN, it's all about how much you can fit in TA but outside of that there's not much to do other than 1-2-3 and occasionally 4 (which was true even in ShB iirc). You can't even use Raiton because ideally you're saving it for the next TA window. The devs aren't really leaving any room for classes that do sustained damage and it just makes classes less diverse if they all start following this same gameplay rhythm. Hence why I bring up 2 minutes as well because this only solidifies it.