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

[Zolvolt]

I hate the 2m meta as a healer. Especially since something healing intensive is always happening when I need to dump energy drains or use my very strict ast burst.

[Curisu]

When have you ever seen 2 min buff's being used at the same time during a alliance raid or normal modes and PF group's?
One death and it becomes nearly impossible to get back into the loop.
Casuals don't use it and having so much focus on it hurts the DMG of all attending player's.
With the old timers it didn't matter so much because as long you played your own rotation correctly you did decent DMG.

Also, i personally don't like the burst gameplay and prefer a well rounded rotation that deal's equal dps during it's full rotation.

[SweetPete]

The 2 minute rotations needs to go. Like it’s nearly killed the game. I hope they revert this in 7.0 this is not fun at all.

[Kansene]

I'd prefer if all buffs but bard/dnc/ast were personal to be honest. If I use an ability at the wrong time I'd rather I be the only one to get punished for it, rather than my drift causing a potential failed dps check and a wipe.

In my opinion it'd be better if succeeding on mechanics were a group effort, while people not specifically playing support would be responsible for their own damage rather than worrying if those 2 seconds of missing pressing a button because of dodging stuff has led to a massive raidwide dps loss.

[aloneatsea]

I'd prefer if all buffs but bard/dnc/ast were personal to be honest. If I use an ability at the wrong time I'd rather I be the only one to get punished for it, rather than my drift causing a potential failed dps check and a wipe.

In my opinion it'd be better if succeeding on mechanics were a group effort, while people not specifically playing support would be responsible for their own damage rather than worrying if those 2 seconds of missing pressing a button because of dodging stuff has led to a massive raidwide dps loss.

If you use an ability at the wrong time, no matter how you slice it, you're contributing to a (potential) failed DPS check. Doing less personal DPS does also mean doing less raid DPS. Whether it's because you failed to burst in the buff window, or you forgot to press something entirely, any mistake on the part of the player is a DPS loss. Removing raid buffs would simply remove interplay between classes more than has already been removed. There is the argument that it would lead to more class-specific optimisation, but that's at the cost of party-specific optimisation.

That said, I do very much agree with your sentiment that the current meta is extremely punishing relative to mistakes. Drifting your buff window and/or scuffing your rotation now moreso than ever is a huge DPS loss. Recovering from a death is either a cakewalk (if you died right after your two-minutes) or entirely impossible (if you die just before/during two-minutes, pushing your burst outside raid buffs for the rest of the fight). I'd love to move away from "burst at 2 minutes" to something more akin to raid buffs in previous expansions. If fewer buffs are stacked, there's much more potential for recovery, optimisation, and much less pressure to burst at strict. If my MNK gets his Brotherhood back at 90s, and my NIN gets Trick Attack up at 1min, unless I'm overcapping my gauge, it shouldn't matter which buff I spend it in -- I can adjust that to suit my rotation and the fight.

Well, there's all that, and the fact that I don't think the two-minute meta is very fun to play with. It was really disheartening to see Ninja initially escape the wave of homogenisation, only to be barraged with poor design decisions (6.0 Raijus, overall low DPS) until they decided to give it a mini-rework and make it just like any other melee. Ninja used to be a support job, but now people view it as a hard-hitter... it's very frustrating as someone who specifically enjoyed playing a "melee support".

[Mesarthim]

My opinion of the two minute meta in the longest explanation I am willing to give:

I hate it. I tried feeling how summoner is but even with its mixed reception the two minute burst meta made it worse for me (namely if a boss goes untargetable or out of range and need to hold buffs).

[Aikaal]

My opinion of the two minute meta in the longest explanation I am willing to give:

I hate it. I tried feeling how summoner is but even with its mixed reception the two minute burst meta made it worse for me (namely if a boss goes untargetable or out of range and need to hold buffs).

and Summoners at 98% of the time won't hold Bahamut if buffs are delayed desyncing them from buff windows. Issue since 6.0 that no dev have ever considered when they reworked Summoners and built the 2 minute burst meta.

[Lustre]

Not really a fan of the 2 min burst windows, they're stale and they're holding job design back.

[Absurdity]

I feel like I am endlessly repeating myself but yes, the 2 minute meta 100% needs to go, it introduces way more problems than it solves.
1. It pushes all jobs into a very limited design. Does your job do almost all it's damage every 2 minutes? Yes? Good. No? Sucks to be you.

2. It makes already existing problems that much worse due to how many damage modifiers are stacked, namely potency bloat on skills and crit/direct hit damage variance. Ever let out a sigh when your Double Down, Confiteor, Communio, Akh Morn, etc didn't crit once during any of the 2 minute windows? You'll know what I mean.

3. It punishes you harder than ever before for messing up or missing a 2 minute burst. Died right before the 2 minute buffs? Irrecoverable dps loss. Died sometime before the burst but don't have enough time to build enough resources? Irrecoverable. Managed to accidentally desync your burst from raid buffs? Irrecoverable.


As for more subjective issues.
4. It is simply really boring to play. Not only are you required to burst every 2 minutes in sync with raid buffs, your job is most likely designed to just press things on cooldown so they automatically align with the 2 minute burst, and if it isn't designed that way yet it will be.

[Ggwppino]

I'll be out of the box, but I don't mind 2 minute bursts. I prefer them over shb buffs 60 90 by creating your own meta groups, and making all the works synergistic gives me the feeling of playing with other people and not on my own and that's it and being useful. Besides the fact that it is rewarding to have a phase where I do more damage and thanks to me other people are doing more damage. People view buff desync as a problem, I personally consider it an extra difficulty to get people to talk and agree on how and when buffs are to be used to have higher collective damage, thus forcing people to play as a team and not on their own. Forcing people to think and not to do "monkey see cd, monkey press cd", but to keep the brain active by anticipating, delaying or keeping the buff cd unchanged to have an overall damage. The problem is not the 2-minute buff, the problem is the balance of the game severe, so bad that these optimizations that should be the basis for high-level content, are outclassed by the insane damage of the melee who can practically do whatever they want and absurdly carry the party. High-level bosses should be defeated thanks also to optimizations and not just the mere fact that you did the mechanics well at the expense of damage.