The Impact of the Two-Minute Meta on Balance & Job Diversity

[aloneatsea]

The way that Endwalker's new, strict two-minute meta has impacted the game has been a somewhat hot topic as of recent. Mr. Happy has made a video on the topic; ZhephZaeora has made a detailed document discussing the impact on PLD.


A lot of this discussion has been brought forth by the recent Savage tier, where in the first two weeks, many groups struggled severely against the door boss DPS check -- even teams of world-class players. While the dev team have indicated this was simply because the fight was poorly tuned, evidence from who did and did not clear during that first week indicates that the bigger issue was largely one of job balance. For example, Xenosys Vex's team cleared the door boss from the very first pull he swapped from WAR (lowest-DPS tank) to GNB (highest-DPS tank).


To recap the changes from Shadowbringers, the 6 raid buffs that were not already on a two-minute timer in SHB were changed to be on the two-minute timer in Endwalker (or changed altogether). From memory, these buffs were:

- NIN's Trick Attack (1 min) -> Mug
- SMN's Devotion (3min) -> Searing Light
- DRG's Battle Litany (3min)
- BRD's Battle Voice (3min)
- MNK's Brotherhood (90s)
- AST's Divination (3min)

In addition, we received one more new raid buff in the form of RPR's Arcane Circle. These changes mean that rather than primarily aligning at the six-minute mark depending on composition, raid buffs will always align at even minute marks.


I think it'd be healthy to discuss the impact that the two-minute meta has had on various jobs. While I don't think it is by any means the exclusive reason why job balance is poor, it is certainly a contributing factor.



1. Some Jobs Burst Better Than Others
I think that this is fairly evident. Some jobs, such as NIN, have incredibly strong burst. Other jobs, such as PLD, are much more focused on sustained damage. Of course, this doesn't explain why WAR, for example, which consistently bursts at the two-minute mark, is so undertuned. RDM is another job that was stealthily impacted by these changes; the addition of Resolution to its finisher combos means that it can no longer fit two whole melee combos into a buff window; in SHB it is my understanding that a typical large burst would involve stocking enough mana for two melee combos.

This strictly burst-focused meta means that jobs that are able to pool and release resources for the two-minute buff window are going to benefit much more from this style of meta, as they can pour as much of their damage as possible into that specific timeframe. Sustained DPS jobs are unable to do so, and do not make nearly as good use of powerful buff windows as other jobs.


Also of note to consider is Black Mage, which has historically been strong enough in DPS to occupy a melee slot for a double-caster composition as opposed to a double-melee composition. As it stands, BLM just barely outdamages RPR, which is considered by far the weakest melee job. Whether this is a result of its nature as sustained damage lowering its overall DPS, or intentional design as Square Enix appears to want casters to deal lower damage than melees, I can't tell you.


2. The Value of Crits
While potencies generally don't run higher this expac relative to Shadowbringers, the number of buffs typically stacked does. Zheph went over this in his document in more detail than I can offer, but the gist is such:



Crits on high-potency abilities during buff windows are worth exponentially more than crits on regular abilities outside of buff windows, to the point where damage variance is genuinely problematic. I experienced this myself during Week 1 on the doorboss; a clean run would result in inconsistent damage -- sometimes enough to break past the check, sometimes not enough.

The developers are well aware of the issues regarding crit variance, but after the incredibly poor reception of the changes to Samurai (in part, likely due to the removal of a beloved ability being paired with these changes), I'm unsure if they will so hastily continue down this route.



Another impact of these changes to party buffs can be seen in how many jobs have had abilities on odd timers changed or adjusted. WAR's Inner Release window, DRK's Delirium window, GNB's Double Down, WHM's Presence of Mind, DRG's Lance Charge, MNK's.....MNK, half of BRD's kit, and BLM's Leylines to name a few.

It's not that odd-timer abilities have completely failed to stop existing -- see NIN's Bunshin, DRK's Salted Earth, and RDM's plethora of oGCDs -- but rather that almost every job has been forcibly aligned to better suit the two-minute meta, bringing into question what happens to the jobs who yet haven't.

The writing on the wall seems clear -- Square Enix have outlined their intentions to make PLD align, and we can expect any other underperforming jobs who aren't aligned to be reworked as well.


So what are the options?
Two options I can see are to either continue going hard on unifying jobs to burst at two-minutes and in addition go hard on giving every job the SAM treatment. Spreading potency throughout the job's entire kit, and giving certain hard-hitting abilities the auto directcrit treatment to minimise crit variance.

Alternatively, they could pull back entirely, and mix up the party buffs once again, restoring abilities to odd timers where possible.

Out of these two options, it's almost certain that we'll see the former over the latter. While the former may have a lot of bad press with it, it's also a lot easier to change the few remaining jobs just a bit, as opposed to the majority of jobs quite a lot.


With that said -- what are your thoughts? How has your job been affected by these changes? What do you personally want to see happen to resolve the issues we've been seeing? Do you feel the two minute-meta has benefited you, or harmed your experience?

I'd like to hear from you!

[MagiusNecros]

They need to revert to ShB and kill the 2 minute meta. Balance was so much better in that xpac. The stat squish and the rigid 2 minute burst has done more harm then good. I dunno how they shifted from balanced across the board to making Tanks and Casters unbalanced to play whilst propping up Melee with large hitboxes guaranteeing nearly 100% uptime.

Encounter design also tends to be mechanic heavy at the 2 minute mark on purpose in some fights making it worse. Maybe players might have to adopt a 3 minute burst window instead to counteract this? Delay your burst by a minute to avoid the nonsense.

I mean if you want the 2 minute burst that's fine on a couple classes but other classes should have 1 minute or even half a minute bursts for some variety. Or even classes that have no burst but do sustained high damage all the time.

But what I'm seeing is they want every job class to conform or die to the 2 minute meta which leaves little room for error but also very little room for improvement.

From a fighting game perspective if players can't improve because the burst is all that matters the combat is gonna stagnate and die rather quickly. And if all the classes pretty much play the same that's equivalent to all your fighters having the same kit but other fighters have better or worse values then others so you just take the best one. And that's awful if you say love Class A but Class B outclasses you in every way. Such as your WAR/GNB example. Same can be said for Casters/Ranged.

Should there be burst jobs yes but there should be options to play a job that doesn't burst and just does damage also yes. Or even little damage spikes across a fight. Not everyone has to be a Dark Knight and throw it all out at once in 15 seconds.

There are raider arguments for why it's bad but making everything about burst and endgame content tends to make the leveling process another problem entirely. Which is also a concern. Taking a large amount of jobs through the level sync process is just awful. Like the jobs don't get fun until like 70 or mid 80. That's not good.

That's all I really have to say.

[Wyssahtyn]

Dev choices regarding job design among other things during this expac have made me seriously consider flat out quitting the game rather than keep chugging along under the sunk cost fallacy and general lack of other options for other games like I've been doing since ShB. Not going to pretend SAM was the most big brain job out there, but some thought was still better than no thought. NIN was fun in SB, didn't really play it much in ShB since I found SAM more enjoyable to the exclusion of, well, most every job, but while I enjoy how busy NIN still feels in EW, at least during its burst phases, they still decided to change dumb shit for the sake of making changes with the TA/Mug thing.

Frankly, I've pretty more or less given up on the combat aspect of the game because between job design and encounter design, it's become boring as shit. Only really log on to do the Frontline daily and sometimes an expert for the sake of capping tomes for the nebulous reason of "well the gear treadmill is just what you do in an mmo", if I'm not playing with friends at least. And I dunno what I'd like to see happen to resolve my issues with the game, simply because expecting the devs to do anything other than dig their heels in and double down on their shit or even just flat out ignore problems is a fool's errand so I've never given it much thought. Like, I'm reasonably certain that them actually listening to player grievances on shit trends towards either being an exception or the result of literally years worth of campaigning until they finally go "oh, so we noticed this was a problem", so to me, it's just not worth it. Maybe a miracle will happen and they'll finally pull their heads out of their asses.

[CKNovel]

The 2 mins meta is more trouble than worth.

Jobs with sustained DPS are getting punished for the simple reason that their gameplay is different. This effectively kills jobs creativity.
Back in ShB they wanted to kill synergy, in EW established the 2 mins synergy. You have the jobs who kitchen sink everything in their 2 mins burst and those who don't.

It doesn't help that long downtime greatly benefits those jobs, further reinforcing said meta.
The ranged role suffers from it on top of many other problems, DNC just fits the 2 mins burst meta too well compared to the two others.

Bring back job creativity, stop that 2 mins burst meta.
Get us those 30s, 45s, 75s, 90s juicy cooldowns.

[Mithron]

I wanted the 2 minute meta. I asked for certain abilities like DRK Delirium to be 60s. I got it, and realized it didn't make the game necessarily more fun. Now I hate it and want it gone while every job is more individual focused again. I don't want your job performance to be based on how well you can fit your kit into a 2 minute party burst window. I want your job performance to be based on how well you play your individual job.

[pympcakes]

There are raider arguments for why it's bad but making everything about burst and endgame content tends to make the leveling process another problem entirely. Which is also a concern. Taking a large amount of jobs through the level sync process is just awful. Like the jobs don't get fun until like 70 or mid 80. That's not good.

This is often lost, but with lower level content such a big part of this game it's actually a pretty big deal to feel good (strict balance is less important). Level 50 ninja can't refresh without mudras (then getting two ways shortly after), bard missing songs, summoner feels incomplete until 86, paladin no charge until 74, healers are blah, etc...

[Aikaal]

the 2 minutes meta is really bad on Summoner. They have an insane rigid rotation which basically forces them to not delay and if buff windows are detayed, they desync and lose a lot of DPS. We talk about 35% more fire power that isn't put in the buff window. It's to the point if I want to do P7S, I have to convince my party to not hold buffs at the 6 minutes mark and sac 1 GCD under the buff window because it is a higher raid gain to not have the Summoner desync than this 1 GCD.

[angienessyo]

On NIN I don't mind it because NIN's playstyle hasn't changed at all with the 2 minute focus. I'm still just pressing every ability under the sun every 60 seconds and I just have an extra spicier buff every other buff window. Poor RDM is suffering though and I hate it on when I'm playing that job. I'm also confused why 2 minutes is such a focus if they're going to put awkward phases or phases where you can't even hit the boss around when 2 minutes is up. (charge/knockback+devour in P5S, limit cut in P2S, dog first/natural alignment 2/HC1+HC2 in P8S, the knock into the air before Purgation in P7S, oh god almost every fight this tier has a moment that you either delay or you just have 1 really jank 2 minute window)

[Mithron]

This is often lost, but with lower level content such a big part of this game it's actually a pretty big deal to feel good (strict balance is less important). Level 50 ninja can't refresh without mudras (then getting two ways shortly after), bard missing songs, summoner feels incomplete until 86, paladin no charge until 74, healers are blah, etc...

Actually since I started this game in 3.4, I got to experience NIN in level 50 synced content when they still played a lot more like they intended at level 50, and I really like how NIN feels and changes at 50 without Armor Crush. It's not like I prefer no Armor Crush or anything, but I just appreciate how much the way you play NIN changes at different levels. You essentially give up a Raiton to do another Huton, but you want to do Huton right before it expires without clipping Mudra cooldowns to maximize duration. It makes it really fun in a fight by fight basis, like synced ex trials, and forces you to look at NIN differently. I enjoy it!

[Raikai]

I wonder if they are going to address this in next week's LL. Of course it's not a prospective change even for the .3 patch, it seems more llike a 7.0 decision, of what to do with this topic. I also wonder what is JP's community's reaction to the current situation...

I feel they might change it, maybe? Not just because that kind of homogenity is annoying for us, players, but also because it is detrimental to the future. I think it must be painful to design additions or changes to current/new jobs with that huge leash called 2-minute-meta.