Why do Raid Buffs even exist?

[CelestiCer]

I mean ARR-SHB definitely had varied and interesting jobs without a 2 minute burst window meta and no skill trees etc.

Yup. And it didn't require elaborate skill trees to achieve it no. They shown they can do it. Just saying they won't. Hence I wrote the last bit you didn't quote I'll, put it there as well.

...I am all for it though if it makes players happy? more different ways to play a Job, and/or different burst minutes or back to 1 minute? sure, it's gone require a lot of changes? and they could probably do it as well. But... just like the loss of my beloved skills, I wouldn't hold your breath with Square's design philosophy obviously leaning towards " Simplifying and Streamlining everything for least amount of Job variables the Dev's need to balance. "

They clearly are aiming to streamline everything. If they want to steer away from 2 minute meta now? they'd have to do a lot of changes. It's not that they can't, they shown that they can. They just aren't showing any signs of wanting to is all I am saying. But if it makes players happy? I am all for it.

[Valence]

How would that solve the core issue? As long as you have buffing jobs to play with, everybody else will want to align their bursts with their buff windows/timers (unless their job makes it impractical/impossible). Is the suggestion to actually turn every non raid buffing job into some kind of BLM, or old BRD, floating completely independently of buff windows?

I actually have no strong opinion around this, except that they already removed whole parts of the pve gameplay when they released shb, like MP/party resource support, enmity, etc... I feel that if anything the game needs more varied things to play with, not less where everybody is just focused on damage in their own corner, what you're suggesting is that we also remove most of the teamplay and raid buff coordination as well. Not that it's exceptionally hard or complex in EW since everything is on the 2min timer now, but still...

[Shurrikhan]

Why do Raid Buffs even exist?

Since the follow-up to your question seems centered mostly on damage buffs, if we were to guess from their effects on the game over time...

• To create a more favorable position to flavor jobs by obfuscating performance. (This lasted only until logs swapped to default rDPS sorting around the end of Heavensward.)
  
• To more greatly punish deaths, especially in excess of Swiftcast.
  
• To force job dependency (job A needs X composition to fully perform) or set compositions. (This was reduced greatly with the rise of the 2-minute-meta.)
  
• To constrain job design to a more homogeneous template of available timings (i.e., all CDs must be able to be integer-multiplied to 120 seconds). (I.e., the 2-minute meta.)

...Were you looking for good reasons? It might be hard to find any of those at a significant level.

_________

I suspect jobs like Reaper have raid buffs if only because it costs no more buttons than a personal damage buff while still obliging particular behaviors for full performance (i.e., equally extending skill ceiling) without having as much of a gap between that solo/light-party near-optimization and true optimization. Or, put more simply, because Reaper would be more slightly boring itself and in a typical light party if it didn't.

Personally, I like a degree of constraint (syncing direct damage CDs to damage modifiers), but it's hard to warrant an in-between here. Having any CD timing to play around rapidly narrows itself down to either a few dominant timing systems with set comps (such that, even when performing well itself, job A becomes non-meta if most synergetic jobs fall out of the meta) or consolidation to a single timing system. Having fewer raid buffs, changing a third or so of them (back) into personal damage modifying buffs might help slightly, but that'd be less a matter of no longer being constrained by what raid buffs remain as simply being less punished for falling out of sync (due to deaths, etc.).