Raid buffs and combo actions should go.

[ForteNightshade]

The two minute meta is a self inflicted wound.

We didn't have anywhere near these problems in Shadowbringers when raid buffs were on different timers. While yes, they followed a 60s interval, damage was spaced out enough to make it less volatile. The issue nowadays is our only major damaging window happens every two minutes whereas in the past it was simply the highest but not the only window. Three minute windows could actually overtake two minutes depending on your specific comp. Two another factors which both existed in Shadowbringers but has become far more egregious in Endwalker is crit variance and high potency abilities. While they're technically each a separate problem, they do compound on one another. With only a single damage window, several jobs have become entirely dependent on RNG.

No better is this exemplified then on Dark Knight and Gunbreaker. The latter has Double Down and Blasting Zone. If neither crit, you've essentially lost half your burst through no fault of your own. It's utterly insane just how much DPS comes from those two abilities. Meanwhile, Dark Knight spaces out its damage contribution with a ridiculous amount of oGCDs but suffers the same problem: RNG. If you aren't crit-ing, you're screwed.

Why wasn't this an issue in Shadowbringers, especially when Blasting Zone and most of Dark Knight's kit still existed? Those extra damaging windows, while weaker, helped mitigation potential crit pitfalls. Say you didn't crit a single Bloodspiller or Carve and Spit at two minutes. You still had a three minute window which could potentially have Trick Attach, Battle Litany and Battle Voice rolling. In other words, you could make up your loses. Now you can't. Blasting Zone was actually a problem though. Now it's simply worse.

Big potency abilities are an awful inclusion with how volatile crit is. Reigning in the stat would do wonders for job balance. It's simply gotten far too out of control. For reference sake, my week 1 group missed killing P8Sp1 on two pulls because our Ninja didn't DHC a single Hyosho Ranryu. Now yes, the fight was overtuned but that's still ridiculous. The difference between a DHC and non-DHC was somewhere in the neighborhood of 70k.

With all of that said, removing buffs entirely creates a new problem. Now every job becomes Samurai. Instead of being excluded because of raid buffs, jobs will be excluded for not dealing enough damage. And no, utility will not make up the difference because the game doesn't value it. At least not enough to supersede damage. Once again, we need only look to the tanks for our example. Warrior has fantastic defensive utility yet nobody cares due to said utility not being enough to overcome what Dark Knight offers alongside its monstrously high DPS. This is even more noticeable with Paladin, and partly why they're adding Bulwark back. Unfortunately, FFXIV is a game where damage is king. If you lag too far behind, no amount of utility will matter because nothing makes it matter.

You're essentially trading one form of exclusion for another unless every job's DPS contribution is made to be within 1-2% of each other. Which then creates a another issue. How do you balance jobs like Summoner who are drastically easier to play? You're left with the same problem we have now... except Summoner can't fall back on having a raid buff since in this hypothetical it no longer exists.