Why do Raid Buffs even exist?

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

You keep calling it the 2 min Meta...

It's not a meta.

A meta emerges organically by the playerbase through experimentation, strategy crafting and so on.

This is a dev design decision. Not a meta.

META (Most Effective Tools Available) is a common terminology for a set of actions, equipment, strategies, builds etc. that a community agrees on to be (highly) viable if not the best to use, depending on various circumstances.

Not once have I heard that community agreeing to a common standard organically and developer intention bruteforcing it needing to be mutually exclusive to call things "meta". The commonly used terminology is the acronym named above, so I'm not sure what your intent is here. It is a 2min meta, whether you like the terminology or not.

Some sources to read up about it:
[DOT Esports] What is “the meta” and how does it affect gaming?
[Plarium] Meta in Gaming: What Does it All Mean?
[ggn00b] What Does “Meta” Mean In Competitive Gaming?
[GINX.tv] The Meta or Metagaming, explained in less than 3 minutes

They may not all be 100% accurate, but not once am I reading "must be mutually exclusive with devs intention" in any meaning.

[fulminating]

That contrived backronym is a loathsome nonsense serving only to muddy the waters.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

That contrived backronym is a loathsome nonsense serving only to muddy the waters.

Nonsense or not, the average player will perceive meta to be what was mentioned prior. It has simply become an alias for it, even if it isnt accurate, but for the sake of discussion it makes no difference.

"The 2min raid buff design/meta is awful" - this is the core of the thread and everyone will understand what it means, regardless of incorrect nomenclature.

[Razhius]

META (Most Effective Tools Available) is a common terminology for a set of actions, equipment, strategies, builds etc. that a community agrees on to be (highly) viable if not the best to use, depending on various circumstances.

Not once have I heard that community agreeing to a common standard organically and developer intention bruteforcing it needing to be mutually exclusive to call things "meta". The commonly used terminology is the acronym named above, so I'm not sure what your intent is here. It is a 2min meta, whether you like the terminology or not.

Some sources to read up about it:
[DOT Esports] What is “the meta” and how does it affect gaming?
[Plarium] Meta in Gaming: What Does it All Mean?
[ggn00b] What Does “Meta” Mean In Competitive Gaming?
[GINX.tv] The Meta or Metagaming, explained in less than 3 minutes

They may not all be 100% accurate, but not once am I reading "must be mutually exclusive with devs intention" in any meaning.

If the ffxiv players come up with a way to effectively make the 2min rotation burst DEV DESIGN any better, or ways to make it effective without lining everything up in this rigid design, guess what, that is a Meta that emerges from SE's battle design.

You are arguing semantics. All I'm saying is that at the moment all battles (at least at ex/savage tier) are DESIGNED to work around the 2 min burst mechanic they introduced to almost all classes, and probably will slowly introduce to the rest in the coming patches.

If a team does p8s without lining anything up and still make it, that would be finding a meta that works outside their battle design decisions. (Thisd wont happen though, because battles are so choreographed and finely tuned to be done in just 1 way that diverging from SE's "Meta" is impossible).

Edit: yes META would stand for Most Effective Tool Available...

But in this case we have "The Only Tool Given By SE".

[RaevusAstra]

I had a thread a while back where I suggested getting rid of raid buffs (or at least greatly reducing them) in favor of different burst windows and single target buffs like Dragon Sight, Astro Cards, and Dance Partner. I think it's much more rewarding to work on your own timer, be able to adjust easier and realign buffs (in the case of faster burst window jobs), recover more easily from death, and at the end of it all, if everyone did everything perfect, have an incredibly strong 6min window.

Not everyone should have to play this perfect, and they should tune fights and gear so that the top players still have a challenge while there's also a fair bit of optimization to go off of. Ofc it'll be harder to balance, but if they get it right, they simultaneously solve so many issues with the 2min meta imo. Maybe make weakness and brink of death stronger to balance the increase in damage from buffs not being aligned every 2 mins, maybe increase the gap between crafted gear and capped gear so that you get bigger relative gains. Either way, something has to change so the meta becomes more fun.

[Absimiliard]

I cannot adequately put into words my dislike of the two-minute burst window meta we are currently being subjected to. I'd much rather them balance the game around sustained damage. This simple change would raise the skill ceiling a bit without pulling the rug out from under less skilled players. Additionally, it would make things more fun.

I'd be pretty happy with the removal of some raid buffs. Keep buffs in general, of course - we don't want jobs to turn into 123. Just make it so every job is extremely selfish. Make everyone responsible for their own damage. Heck, give healers more DPS buttons and give DPS jobs somewhat better self-healing. Make people be more responsible for their own survival than they are at present. An increased focus on personal responsibility would be rather welcome, in my opinion.

[Equitable_Remedy]

Why do Raid Buffs even exist?

So that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

[Spigg]

So that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Hm? I'm not exactly sure what this means. Do you mean that raid buffs add complexity or force cooperativeness between party members? I don't really want to put words in your mouth, so I won't keep on guessing.

[Lyth]

Raid buffs force you to think as a team about when you want to enter into the burst phase of your rotation. This has always been a part of the game. The problem is that less experienced players tend to ignore all this and execute buffs whenever it's personally convenient, which then amplifies the performance difference between skill levels. They've historically tried to reduce the amount of damage that comes out of such buffs, but at that point you might as well just remove the buffs altogether and turn dps into a single player game.

By moving these buffs on to easily recognizable integer multipliers of each other, buff timings start to make sense to even to average players and they start to think about them, because the LCM is always 2 minutes. The fact that so many players can now parrot out the phrase 'two minute meta' means that they're actually finally starting to think about coordinating their burst with their team, which is a success story by my book. Could they vary some of these windows such that they're more or less frequent? Sure, but the LCM should probably stay at a relatively consistent number.

Since the OP is around, I'll just add that I can appreciate what they tried to do with RPR's buff window, even if we do get double taxed for it. Void contracts are all about making a bargain, and Arcane Circle is no exception. You grant your teammates power, but you also absorb power from them to perform Bountiful Harvest. So you can think of it almost as a reverse buff in a sense, in keeping with the job theme. It does, however, mean that you get doubly penalized for dead or out of range teammates. You can't win them all.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

[Summary of how designing everything around a 2min buff window more or less makes everyone auto-default to it by design]

I believe this was discussed before, but I believe we can safely agree:
- on paper, making buff synergy a baseline standard (120s) will absolutely teach people to play around that window
- in truth, players are indeed doing as expected on paper
- the ugly side effect is that the homogenized window will prefer jobs who CAN get value out of it by condensing their window of activity to be high at the 0s, 120s, 240s, etc. interval over those that cannot do it efficiently or get less out of it.
- another side effect is that any death in high-end content during the 2min, 4min, 6min etc marks before having done your entire burst is a monumental damage loss to the point where the DPS check can't be reached, making it overly punishing by design. This applies doubly at Pot Windows now.

Short: Yes 2min window homogenisation means everyone is part of it, no we still don't like it because it is basically just homogenised (forced) cooldown alignment with ugly side effects.