2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

[Kalaam]

But what about every job being a build/spend 2 minute burst as it goes on? How can we have more variety in that too ?

[Shurrikhan]

But what about every job being a build/spend 2 minute burst as it goes on? How can we have more variety in that too ?

Depends on whether you want to popularize difficult 4-man content.

If not, then it's as easy as just swapping over many of the skills timings so they're not used at / bankable for the 2-minute burst and compensating the jobs most made less synergetic in doing so, which would still be only a faint difference overall.

If so, then you have to make those above benefits conditional and/or make raid buffs actually split their value among everyone so that buffers and exploiters scale that bit more evenly with party count, or you vary the timings of raid buffs if you want extremely tight parity.

But regardless, we're still free to make those kit changes even now.

Those kit changes won't much change gameplay, in themselves, though. Until rigid CDs > bankability for raid buffs aren't the only pace-setters, in 98+% of situations, you will continue to hit any single-charge skills on CD and to bank your bankables only for as long as they can be banked for the nearest raid buff.

For a more fundamental/significant change, you'd need competing pace-setters, be they from the encounter or other undermechanics that frequently misalign from rigidly timed raid buffs.

[Ggwppino]

Depends on whether you want to popularize difficult 4-man content.

If not, then it's as easy as just swapping over many of the skills timings so they're not used at / bankable for the 2-minute burst and compensating the jobs most made less synergetic in doing so, which would still be only a faint difference overall.

If so, then you have to make those above benefits conditional and/or make raid buffs actually split their value among everyone so that buffers and exploiters scale that bit more evenly with party count, or you vary the timings of raid buffs if you want extremely tight parity.

But regardless, we're still free to make those kit changes even now.

Those kit changes won't much change gameplay, in themselves, though. Until rigid CDs > bankability for raid buffs aren't the only pace-setters, in 98+% of situations, you will continue to hit any single-charge skills on CD and to bank your bankables only for as long as they can be banked for the nearest raid buff.

For a more fundamental/significant change, you'd need competing pace-setters, be they from the encounter or other undermechanics that frequently misalign from rigidly timed raid buffs.

It would be enough to have raid buffs that are completely redesigned and distributed exclusively to a few (2/3) select classes.
An absurd and imaginative example Let's take the DNC:

"Technical Finish" with low or non-existent CD to always keep up devilment (with a doubled duration) with Tillana usable every minute.
A standard step that can be used every 30 seconds on a target or on oneself which buffs for 10 seconds and if in these 10 seconds the partner overcomes x damage you get "Pas de deux" (name taken at random) which has y potency. Espirit that gains gauge for how many buffs you have active: 0 buff -> 0 gauge, 1 buff -> 5, 2 buff -> 10.

With a class like this there is no need to have classes that are highly synchronized with all the same windows to vomit damage thanks to the job designers (because let's face it, the synchronization is very artificial and is not thanks to the intellect of the players).
With only one such class, the role of the buffer is not diminished by a single key press every 120 seconds that everyone has.
Furthermore, this way you test the capacity of the buffer and of your party mates to always be ready to synchronize with buffs expecially in hard-content.

[Shurrikhan]

It would be enough to have raid buffs that are completely redesigned and distributed exclusively to a few (2/3) select classes.

That would have zero impact on how we play except for/from when there are therefore no buffers in the randomly matchmade group. It's the first raid buff that forms the gameplay. The rest are redundancies to increase the chance of having access to that gameplay.

An absurd and imaginative example Let's take the DNC:

"Technical Finish" with low or non-existent CD to always keep up devilment (with a doubled duration) with Tillana usable every minute.
A standard step that can be used every 30 seconds on a target or on oneself which buffs for 10 seconds and if in these 10 seconds the partner overcomes x damage you get "Pas de deux" (name taken at random) which has y potency. Espirit that gains gauge for how many buffs you have active: 0 buff -> 0 gauge, 1 buff -> 5, 2 buff -> 10.

This would only constrain Dancer gameplay by making its personal damage dependent on having a buff-stacked comp (unless you mean only that particular Dancer's buffs, in which case you've still reduced Dancer's ability to spread its ST buffs).

With a class like this there is no need to have classes that are highly synchronized with all the same windows to vomit damage thanks to the job designers (because let's face it, the synchronization is very artificial and is not thanks to the intellect of the players).

Even under the current raid buff timings, there is no need for "classes that are highly synchronized with all the same windows to vomit damage". You do not 2-minute-synced attacks even now. You need only have balanced party contribution (which is not the same thing as fflog's rDPS metric) in an average/random-composition party despite that, which can be managed through even rather modest compensation so long as you're not expecting every job in a given tier to have the same solo dps.

Rather the timings of bursts come from three things:

1. The devs wanting to add mechanical intensity to burst intervals, creating additional challenge
2. The devs wanting a more "all together" rhythm to party dynamics (and thereby ease in delaying damage as a team, such as when the mechanical intensity is too high for people to pull off their full bursts at that time).
3. The developers believing that more homogenized rates of attack are easier to learn and therefore more desirable to a large section of players that (apparently) hold a majority of the value for appeasement.

Less synergetic use of raid-wide buffs, though, could easily be compensated for. That's not the reason nor issue here.

With only one such class, the role of the buffer is not diminished by a single key press every 120 seconds that everyone has.

It has nonetheless slightly diminished through removing alignment of buffs, though. Your skill ceiling, even as the buffer, is literally less in that context that it would be when working alongside other buffers. ???

Furthermore, this way you test the capacity of the buffer and of your party mates to always be ready to synchronize with buffs especially in hard-content.

Which we can already do right now. ???

[Ggwppino]

This would only constrain Dancer gameplay by making its personal damage dependent on having a buff-stacked comp (unless you mean only that particular Dancer's buffs, in which case you've still reduced Dancer's ability to spread its ST buffs).

In the example I mean the dancer's buffs. If you're good at always keeping everything up, you do more damage. Furthermore i think that it is not true: the buffer is led to have to follow priorities and the better it knows the other classes the more it can enhance them by delaying buffs or telling the partner that it will buff him there by reaching an agreement with the other players.

It has nonetheless slightly diminished through removing alignment of buffs, though. Your skill ceiling, even as the buffer, is literally less in that context that it would be when working alongside other buffers. ???

Like now. The ceiling that now does not exist for raid buffs is exchanged into the ability to always keep everything up while using your damage skills, furthermore the ST buff is emphasized.

(then you talk about ceiling, but now the buffs cover the entire arena. the *fake* buffer doesn't even have to think about how to position itself or delay it some GCD...)

Which we can already do right now. ???

No, I dont think.
I have burst at 90s. sigh. I, on the other hand, have damage that is sustained over time. Im gonna cry. Nobody wants me. sigh.
SQE: We do everything every 120 seconds, dw.

I repeat, if you do damage and it is not included in the buffs (which the player doesn't have to think about at all because it was all done by the job designers), you must essentially gain all the rdps of all 5 buffers that lost his damage, otherwise he lost appeal. The overall dps of the party must be very similar to each other, you cannot keep a class that does not have the burst phase like all the others without buffing it in such a way as to recover the damage it causes the rdps buffer to lose. (nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed lol)

[Lyth]

Raid buffs are a design constraint. Without it, you can place your burst window wherever you feel like it. It's a skill check, but it naturally has a convergent effect on job and fight design. But that's a necessary evil, if you want to be able to reward skill over freestyle gameplay.

Raid buffs don't necessarily need to be player generated. You can just as easily have a scripted window where a boss takes more damage. This is actually a harder check, because players have no control over the timing and no way of adapting to problems on the fly (i.e. player deaths). The easiest check of all is if you have a single player that dictates the timing of the raid window, because you can essentially place it wherever you want on the fly. It also means that you could potentially run a full freestyle group without buffs, if all jobs are balanced around rDPS. The middle ground is the system we currently have (most jobs provide raid buffs, but individually they are all weaker and comp independent).

Raid buffs can't be asynchronous, because jobs that align their buffs more conveniently are preferentially picked. Given the choice, why would I bring a job with 90s raid buffs when everyone else has buffs on multiples of 60s?

Who gets the privilege of bringing the raid buff is less of an factor than you think it is, because everything gets balanced around rDPS. If anything, we've seen that jobs that focused on personal damage output like SAM and BLM have had preferential treatment over other jobs this expansion. They are generally on the higher end of the rDPS scale, despite also contributing more damage than other jobs under raid buffs (and the latter has not been accounted for in rDPS balance). If VPR ends up bringing a self-only buff, it's likely going to end up in a very good place, similar to these two. It actually works to your favor, if anything, to let someone else bring the raid buff.

Bottom line is that the current system has drawbacks, but there are plenty of ways that you can make the existing system worse.

[Ggwppino]

Raid buffs are a design constraint. Without it, you can place your burst window wherever you feel like it. It's a skill check, but it naturally has a convergent effect on job and fight design. But that's a necessary evil, if you want to be able to reward skill over freestyle gameplay.

Although your argument makes sense in this way, actually it would be enough to calibrate the dps check.
If in normal a person plays freestyle without producing the highest damage, nothing happens, and that's okay. But if he does it in savage or ultimate and there is enrage, there is a basic problem: he is not capable of playing his class at higher levels, because he is not able to guarantee a certain dps. And that's beyond buffs. If the buffs weren't there, nothing would change: players must try to do as much damage as possible anyway.

Raid buffs can't be asynchronous, because jobs that align their buffs more conveniently are preferentially picked. Given the choice, why would I bring a job with 90s raid buffs when everyone else has buffs on multiples of 60s?

This is true but because the way the buffs are set up in ff14 makes it true. If you put a class that buffs but only buffs for x seconds with a very high cooldown interval, you make all the jobs that manage to make good use of this buff much more attractive.
If the buffs were much more frequent and especially ST this problem wouldn't exist at all.

[Connor]

snip

For Bard I personally think the PvP Powerful Shot ability would work really well in Paeon. Currently it’s the only song that has no mechanic associated with it (I really don’t consider 100% passive fake greased Lightning a mechanic lol), so having the Burst Shot change to Powerful Shot would give it an actual mechanic of its own. It’d also mean the casting would be limited to that specific window, so they could potentially mix up song rotation to maximise the uptime of mobility before going into the Paeon. Plus, the fake Greased Lightning synergises with cast times by reducing how limiting they can be through the haste effect

As for Dancer I agree that it was better then they were moving between melee and ranged. Since they have En Avant along with full mobility, it makes sense for them to have to leverage that with rapid repositioning. Unfortunately outside of Curing Waltz and Improvisation (lol), you have absolutely no need to reposition as a Dancer now that they changed how procs work (not that 99.999% of fights aren’t just the entire party sitting up the enemy’s butt lol). Still I think it’d make sense for Dancers to have more abilities that require them to fully leverage their mobility.

Lastly I personally don’t think ranged phys should ever be ‘equal to’ casters. It just kinda defeats the purpose of the role; they’d be as well just merging them into a full ‘Ranged’ category.

According to SE’s literal job guide that they wrote lol, physical ranged dps provide support to companions . Except literally every melee not called Samurai / every caster not called Black Mage brings just as much to the table as phys ranged in support. Hell casters arguably have infinitely more valuable support options solely because they have Raise. Red Mage can provide on-demand heals, chain resurrection, damage reduction, damage buffs, and still pumps out respectable dps. Same with Summoner to a lesser extent. Practically every melee has party damage buffs, Monk literally has a copy of Bard’s Nature’s Minne on a shorter cool-down (technically it was Monks first but again, since when was Monk a party support?), Dragoons have been lol’ing their way into raids for years thanks to Battle Litany and the Dragon Eye tether thing (I still cannot fathom why Dragoon is a support/rDPS class, has Yoshi-P played an FF before? Lol).

Basically I think that what SE needs to do isn’t increasing the overall dps output of physical ranged, they should build upon the ‘supporting the party’ aspect of the role ( which literally does not exist in any other role, according to SE ), and stop giving out copies of every raid buff ever added to melee. They already have enough! Why the hell can Reapers do a party wide regen? They’re edgy dark fighters with a giant sickle for god’s sake, in what world does that theme scream ‘this is a job that likes to help his party and heal his companion’s wounds’

[Ayche]

I love that after the community has reached this zenith moment of collective conclusion on the 2min matter, the proposed solutions involve absolute schism.

You know, this is where time being an everflowing river might come to being an advantage for the developers. Nothing is worse than an uneven number, as seen by the struggles of the tank and healer roles through out 3.0 to 5.0/6.0. It is better off being accepted than unique after all, but even number of jobs finally allows you to return to the idea of subroles inside roles, as seen with the concept of shield and regen healers. Yes, they did not really pop off with the concept in Endwalker, but it is a lot healthier way to built exclusive features into jobs than the alternative of ... not doing so.

[Connor]

A forced, harder to cancel heavy is actually more likely to get you killed than the HW cast times despite having about the same overall movement speed reduction...

If a 1.5s cast with full mobility during is going to kill people how do Black/Red Mages survive?

HW Cast Times still didn’t allow actual movement either, so you’d have to deal with interrupts if you tried to walk while casting (or turn off Minuet and cry at the amount of lost dps lol). Powerful Shot still allows you to literally walk out of an AoE while casting, so I don’t understand how it would affect survivability in any way.

You could argue ‘but that’s not that different from what we have now!’ which is true, it wouldn’t be a massive ultimate rework. But it’s still better than literal nothing lol. I’d rather have some fluff abilities that are there just to be fun than a bunch of sterile automatic-use ones that are perfectly optimised (which is our current toolkits)