2-minute meta

[Colt47]

The 2 minute meta is just a way to design the jobs so they sync better in groups, really. It sounds like they wanted to try minimizing the job selection bias and make teamwork easier due to the strained relationships that can form in the tougher content they end up making. Like if all there is a job that doesn't align to the other ones properly in a 10 minute fight and they are using multipliers instead of summation, it is going to mean that in the hardest content that job is going to get booted. Even if the developers design every job to be able to clear the content, the community still will prioritize which jobs are going to clear the content the best, and if there is one thing the community is good at, it's finding out which jobs get the best results.

Heck, they got job bias just from how difficult it is to learn a job, run a job under pressure, and how much damage the job does. Astro is on the bench because it takes a mountain of effort to do the same job as a whm, and anyone can tell you that Sage is a lot easier to learn than scholar.

And this late the most common tanks I'm seeing are warrior and paladin. Gunbreaker and DRK can work but they aren't as easy to run as the former two and both have some issues: The first is drift in the rotation and the second is being a faceroll on the keyboard during burst phase that doesn't have a good ordering to it.

[mallleable]

It's already been proven that the 2 minute burst meta cannot coexist with interesting job rotations, the proof is in pre and post 6.3 PLD, PLD was by far the most unique tank with a burst profile that doesn't follow the 2 minutes timeline. So what did they do with PLD? They reworked it to mash it into the 2 minute framework.

I think we have very different ideas of what constitutes 'interesting,' and what informs job identity. To me the most interesting thing about new PLD is Divine Might which actually integrates PLD's holy spells into its filler rotation. Which to me is way more paladin-y than using a damage up buff to buff a damage over time skill like with old PLD or even more abstracted whether it does sustain or burst damage tank. To me it is more mission critical that PLD is a good lowercase p paladin which means translating concepts like sword play, shield play, protecting allies, and holy magics into job actions than whether or not it does burst or sustain damage. I feel like there is a decent amount of potential for a mechanic like Divine Might.

Except you can't pull potency out of the burst window. The constraint of the 2-min meta is that every 2-minutes you need to put all of your major potency skills into the 15 second window or you fall massively behind.
Just look at old Paladin, in a vacuum there was actually no problem with it, it was one of the highest dps tanks. But it didn't matter, it's sustained damage playstyle couldn't put enough potency into the buff windows so as soon as you stepped into a group environment it completely fell off a cliff.

This consequently requires everything else to revolve around said window as well, your cooldowns, your resource generation, even your rotational loop in most cases.There are just too many stacking damage modifiers in that current burst window that any job not designed around it can't compete.
There is no interesting rotational variety because every job needs to be able to burst at exactly those windows and fit it all in a comparatively small time frame.

Except yeah you can, and it's happed before. Back in Shadowbringers, WAR could do 5 Fell Cleves during Inner Release, and it was on a 90 second cooldown, but it was tough because Inner Release was just a short buff and so the amount of Fell Cleaves one can preform was dependent on GCD speed, and ping. So when it was demanded that its cooldown be reduced to 60 seconds to align with buffs better, and be given a stack treatment it lost 2 uses of Fell Cleave as a result. So it's as simple as the more frequently a skill can be used, the lower its potency/damage potential.

[Supersnow845]

I think we have very different ideas of what constitutes 'interesting,' and what informs job identity. To me the most interesting thing about new PLD is Divine Might which actually integrates PLD's holy spells into its filler rotation. Which to me is way more paladin-y than using a damage up buff to buff a damage over time skill like with old PLD or even more abstracted whether it does sustain or burst damage tank. To me it is more mission critical that PLD is a good lowercase p paladin which means translating concepts like sword play, shield play, protecting allies, and holy magics into job actions than whether or not it does burst or sustain damage. I feel like there is a decent amount of potential for a mechanic like Divine Might.



Except yeah you can, and it's happed before. Back in Shadowbringers, WAR could do 5 Fell Cleves during Inner Release, and it was on a 90 second cooldown, but it was tough because Inner Release was just a short buff and so the amount of Fell Cleaves one can preform was dependent on GCD speed, and ping. So when it was demanded that its cooldown be reduced to 60 seconds to align with buffs better, and be given a stack treatment it lost 2 uses of Fell Cleave as a result. So it's as simple as the more frequently a skill can be used, the lower its potency/damage potential.

But in practice the job just plays like diet gunbreaker, “coat of paint” differences between classes don’t work (as evidenced by the healers), PLD used to be the most unique tank who’s most similar class equivalent was BLM, now it’s just another version of the same class again

And inner release being shorter than the number of fell cleaves doesn’t really apply, you weren’t punished because it was impossible to fit 5 fell cleaves inner release, you were punished if you drifted inner release outside of other party members buffs like technical step or divination

[VentVanitas]

I think we have very different ideas of what constitutes 'interesting,' and what informs job identity. To me the most interesting thing about new PLD is Divine Might which actually integrates PLD's holy spells into its filler rotation. Which to me is way more paladin-y than using a damage up buff to buff a damage over time skill like with old PLD or even more abstracted whether it does sustain or burst damage tank. To me it is more mission critical that PLD is a good lowercase p paladin which means translating concepts like sword play, shield play, protecting allies, and holy magics into job actions than whether or not it does burst or sustain damage. I feel like there is a decent amount of potential for a mechanic like Divine Might.

what potential? Divine Might is a cookie-cutter "1-2-3 get 4" mechanic that literally every tank has. It's Burst Strike, Fell Cleave and Bloodspiller. there's barely anything inherently unique about it or its usage in PLD's rotation other than Holy Spirit being a ranged attack

[Aravell]

I think we have very different ideas of what constitutes 'interesting,' and what informs job identity.

Yes, you see current PLD as stronger identity, I see current PLD as half of what it used to be.

Old PLD had one phase for their roots as a gladiator and one for their new magic abilities as a PLD. That, to me, tied the job mechanics very well to the job lore. Mashing both FoF and req into the same phase feels like they deleted any tie to the gladiator side of the job in an effort to make the holy magic side stronger.

[Absurdity]

Except yeah you can, and it's happed before. Back in Shadowbringers, WAR could do 5 Fell Cleves during Inner Release, and it was on a 90 second cooldown, but it was tough because Inner Release was just a short buff and so the amount of Fell Cleaves one can preform was dependent on GCD speed, and ping. So when it was demanded that its cooldown be reduced to 60 seconds to align with buffs better, and be given a stack treatment it lost 2 uses of Fell Cleave as a result. So it's as simple as the more frequently a skill can be used, the lower its potency/damage potential.

??? you just confirmed what I said.
They took IR, a 90 second cooldown that did not fit into their new 2-minute meta and therefore put a lot of warrior's potency outside of the new buff window, and turned it into a 60 second cooldown while also reducing it's overall length so you can comfortably get all your big hitters into the 15 second window every 2 minutes.
It was reworked for the new 2-min meta or it would've fallen even further behind than it already did on Endwalker launch.

Inner Release was able to be a 90 second cooldown before exactly because there was no unified 2-minute buff window, you had buffs with 60, 90, 120 and 180 second cooldowns which spread out the party buffs and allowed for jobs with odd burst timings to still be viable.

[mallleable]

??? you just confirmed what I said.
They took IR, a 90 second cooldown that did not fit into their new 2-minute meta and therefore put a lot of warrior's potency outside of the new buff window, and turned it into a 60 second cooldown while also reducing it's overall length so you can comfortably get all your big hitters into the 15 second window every 2 minutes.
It was reworked for the new 2-min meta or it would've fallen even further behind than it already did on Endwalker launch.

Inner Release was able to be a 90 second cooldown before exactly because there was no unified 2-minute buff window, you had buffs with 60, 90, 120 and 180 second cooldowns which spread out the party buffs and allowed for jobs with odd burst timings to still be viable.

You said that potency cannot be pulled out of raid buffs, I'm trying to demonstrate that it can be. Let's say that they reduced the cooldown of Inner Release even further, and now it has a 40 second cool down. It can still comfortably, and consistently be used under raid buffs, but you will be using it twice as often outside of buffs -- assuming full uptime. Its damage output would have to be adjusted to compensate that it will be used even more frequently than it is now. In this scenario we probably don't want to remove any more uses of Fell Cleave, we'll keep it at three so their potency would have to be reduced, and potentially redistributed elsewhere like its Storm's combo. WAR will still be dealing relatively high burst damage, and it will still be able to burst under buffs, but its damage spikes will be less severe, and its damage profile will be a little more evened out. Potency has been pulled out of raid buffs.

what potential? Divine Might is a cookie-cutter "1-2-3 get 4" mechanic that literally every tank has. It's Burst Strike, Fell Cleave and Bloodspiller. there's barely anything inherently unique about it or its usage in PLD's rotation other than Holy Spirit being a ranged attack

One of these ideas is bound to stick

letting more physical attacks grant Divine Might
letting it stack
grants multiple stacks
add heavier hitting spells with steeper MP costs
letting it affect utility spells like Clemency
letting it affect utility spells, and giving PLD more utility spells (after cleaning up action bloat of course)
utility spells used under Divine Might gain additional effects on top of being instant
damage spells used under Divine Might gain additional effects on top of being instant, and increasing in potency
Divine Might imbues certain melee attacks with holy magic
spells used under Divine Might reduce the cooldown of other magic related actions
invert the concept, and have hard cast spells grant some kind of useful buff for physical actions

Yes, you see current PLD as stronger identity, I see current PLD as half of what it used to be.

Old PLD had one phase for their roots as a gladiator and one for their new magic abilities as a PLD. That, to me, tied the job mechanics very well to the job lore. Mashing both FoF and req into the same phase feels like they deleted any tie to the gladiator side of the job in an effort to make the holy magic side stronger.

Fair.

[Supersnow845]

^thats not what they are referring to when they say damage can be pulled out of raid buffs. If you make inner release CD 40 seconds you get more uses out of it but still the use that really matters is the one in the burst window

“Pulling potency out of the burst window” means that skulls that could reasonably be put into the burst window (for example DNC’s feathers) it’s always optimal to put them in the burst window, same as any skill that has a slightly odd CD, it’s always best to save it for the burst window (or skills like phlegma that have 2 charges, you should always be putting 2-3 charges inside the burst window)

If there was a compensation mechanism for damage potentially lost by using skills outside the burst window if you had the skull to utilise it (for example ShB enchanted reprise) then it would add a lot of depth to a lot of classes

[ForsakenRoe]

everyone fuming about PLD feeling like GNB lite because of Divine Might/Burst Strike comparisons, I'm fuming because even after a rework we still have to press Atonement three times in a row

IDK why they couldn't have done, as an example:

Combos are all hard-combos and 4 steps long, to differentiate the PLD from other tanks and to make the combo 10s long
Rotation loop per minute is constructed from 6 of these combos, freeform based on MP management required

Combo 1: Fast Blade - Riot Blade - Royal Authority - Atonement x1. This is the MP restoration combo
Combo 2: Fast Blade - Savage Blade - Goring Blade - Holy Spirit. This is the MP spending combo, with DM Holy Spirit having a bigger potency to feel more bursty
Combo 3: Confiteor - Blade of - Blade of - Blade of. This is the burst window combo used every 60s under FOF

So you'd do Conf, Blade X3, and a HS combo as your 8 GCDs in FOF. Req could have been reworked into a hard hitting GCD (as Goring currently is), which upgrades into Conf (gaining potency and becoming AOE). Req/Conf's effect could have instead been 'reduces MP cost to 0 for 3 spells, and removes cast time', allowing for Req - HS x3 as your 'lower level' burst window, while also allowing for 3x instant Clemencies if that is required for some reason. Then the gameplay would be a 'build your rotation' style, constructing a 60s loop from these 'building blocks' as required by the fight. The optimization and depth this would allow for, would come from the fact that during downtimes, MP continues to replenish, so if you know you're going into a downtime (or you're definitely going to die and get LB3'd back up, cough Magic Number), you can purposely dump Holy Spirits more, by swapping out some Royal Auth combos and replacing them with Holy Spirit combos, to take advantage of the extra MP coming in.

IDK I've not thought much about the potencies, but I'd argue something like this would be a bit more interesting, compared to what we have now where Snoring Blade is functionally identical to Sonic Break, and we have to smash Atonement 3 times in a row. You could even swap one of the combos to not start with Fast Blade, but instead start with Shield Bash, such that it can still be spammed for it's stun effect (deep dungeons etc), but it also sees use in the actual rotation instead of being a bit of a meme button

[Yuella]

the community still will prioritize which jobs are going to clear the content the best, and if there is one thing the community is good at, it's finding out which jobs get the best results.

This is a game where everyone can play every job. It doesn't matter if a job is not favored by the raiding community. People can easily change to a job that fits the meta.