2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

[Kalaam]

There does need to be something to allow more breathing room outside of that 120s cycle, options are plentiful but none will satisfy everyone. I just hope something is done because this is making things very stale.

[Lyth]

It would be pretty fun if we had all sustained damage jobs with a relentless torrent of mechanics to keep you occupied while maintaining perfect uptime. For practical purposes, though, most players need a bit of ebb and flow in intensity order to handle fights, which is why you have periods of higher activity (burst) followed by downtime. These have to synchronize with fight mechanics, or else you just have free damage by bursting when no mechanics are up.

Burst is only meaningful if there are constraints placed on it. Raid buffs represent an external constraint by forcing you to commit your resources once you press the button. The alternative to this is if you script the damage windows directly into the fight itself (P8S Everburn), but this makes for an even more rigid system than the one we have.

Historically, there were fewer buff providing jobs, and the buffs they provided were more powerful (i.e. higher % damage increase over a shorter time interval). This meant that you saw jobs like NIN in virtually every comp. The current system replaces this with weaker, more diluted buffs, but spread across multiple party members to result in a comp independent setup.

I think it's reasonable to discuss alternative ways of solving these problems, but you do need to provide an alternative if you want the system to change. I'm not in favor of anything that blindly simplifies mechanics, however. There is plenty of content that caters to mindless play already.

[Ggwppino]

The biggest problem is if you die or do anything wrong in the 2 minute meta we have right now you are completely thrown out of line with rotation and your damage tanks tremendously.

Honestly, I don't find this a problem.
I don't consider it a significant problem, just don't die (ez lol).
The 2 minute meta (leaving aside the buffs) killed all those jobs that previously did damage in the long run. The 2 minute meta with bursts pretty much killed the stats to be distributed. But above all the 2-minute meta killed hypothetical ideas to keep the jobs very different from each other, even distributing the damage in different time windows: perhaps with jobs that work with micro burst windows following certain requirements, or jobs that would could work by keeping various dots up on the boss (taking poles apart examples). By the 2 minute mark they have put themselves in the position that all jobs are structured the same way.



For the buffs, however, I would remove them, or rather, redistribute them because as they exist now they are superfluous for the depth of the game due to how trivial they are: press the button every 120 seconds and the party will have x% more damage (or another way to say that it will have x% more damage). wow. currently everyone has buffs but most aren't
truly an integral part of the core of the work, they add nothing effective, especially because we are fed by the designers.
There should be some buffing-based classes emphasizing buffing and its optimal use. The others simply should not have this task because it is not in their essence. Their job is to vomit damage/do the things of their role that they cover and to put those who buff in the most optimal situation possible to do more global rdps for the clear.

[Aco505]

The system that we had previously meant that not all jobs synchronized with buff timings equally well, resulting in rDPS disparities. Some jobs like NIN were perennial picks, because a 1 minute buff aligns with pretty much everything. It also meant that your buff windows could be just free dps if they didn't align with mechanic checks.

This is important. Clamoring for the return of 90 and 180 second buffs disregards the fact that during ShB, the jobs that were the strongest and had good synergy were precisely those based around 60-120s windows: SAM, NIN and DNC with SAM in particular staying at the top of the rDPS charts too, creating an imbalance, just like BLM right now topping the rDPS, nDPS and aDPS rankings.

This doesn't mean that the idea cannot be explored, but blindly going back to how it was without further thought would be a terrible move.

On the other hand, removing buffs from all jobs would have the exact effect. And there's also to consider that, if most jobs (let's say melee and caster) had no buffs anymore, then they will all be "selfish" DPS but that won't mean that they will all be equal because bursts will still exist and the damage of a NIN burst is not the same as a MNK's.

I think that we should have jobs with different DPS patterns (some with strong burst and weaker filler, some with strong filler and alright burst, some in between, etc...), as well as various burst timings (some having strong 60s, some being the strongest at 120s).

We already kind of have this with SMN, whose Phoenix phase is quite good, MNK's 60s having their strongest attack in normal encounters with full uptime, or WAR's 60s being mostly the same to their 120s. The idea would then be to expand on this so that not everyone relied on the 120s burst, as well as to provide different timers within each job and to make the filler phase not feel like a mindless 1-2-3 spam in some cases (e. g. NIN between bursts).

Why can't we have more jobs like BLM with less burst but continuous damage yet with the ability to pool resources to dump into party/single target buffs? Why is SAM's burst stronger than NIN's considering the former has a good filler while the latter lives or dies by their burst?

[Rychu]

I think our arguments for or against the removal also hasn't factored in that not all of the current jobs will need to be reworked to be more sustained damage over the course of a fight. There should be jobs that are burst focused, that build up gauge to spend all at once on some big attacks. HOWEVER, the current raid buff system does not allow for both types of archetypes to exist, and I think that that blows. Let me give an example. Personally I would like to keep Ninja the way it is or close at least. Maybe their burst can be signified with keeping trick attack but having it be a debuff that only affects the ninja's damage and let them burst how they currently do. That's a very rough example, but you get the idea. And at the same time, you have a paladin behaving the way it did before the rework. Both players like different rotations, both get to have their fun.

To be honest, I am glad the developers made the 2 minute meta. Because it shows how much the jobs have to be homogenized to all fit into the box. The old system was not great, the jobs that had similar cooldown timers, naturally had the advantage in raids. But this system limits all jobs, both current and future.

Jobs may be homogenized further if we remove the raid buffs, they may not. What I do know is that all jobs currently are being homogenized right now with this system.

[Darkpaw]

Honestly, i don't adhere to either of these options, I'd like to go back to the heavensward style. Away from the 2 minute meta, where you may not be able to align every single buff properly, I feel it allows them more fight creativity and more job creativity, I think this 2 minute meta has reached the limit of it's effectiveness and the cost is too high. Make good unique jobs and good unique fights and let us figure out how to best combine them.

Yes make sure all party makeups can clear the fights, but i never saw the problem with there being a "meta" it's like some fighting games. Yes there are characters that are not as innately strong as others but if you love your job you'll get good enough to make sure it clears all content and overcome meta.

Doing away with the 2 minute meta lets us get back to more creative fight designs like we had in Alexander, interesting and different style jobs like we had in heavensward. Allowing us to combat the homogenization that we have been seeing by the people who were once clamoring for the synchronized meta.

[Shurrikhan]

I think that we should have jobs with different DPS patterns (some with strong burst and weaker filler, some with strong filler and alright burst, some in between, etc...), as well as various burst timings (some having strong 60s, some being the strongest at 120s).

We kind of see that in other games, where depth of flexibly timeable burst is considered a powerful utility but is still just that -- utility; that is to say, its value is context-dependent, rather than something you can easily and/or pretty directly calculate.

Give us things within our encounters that would allow burst to be useful but variably so, and, as part of job selection, you'd be determining whether you want to be the kind of player who likes to take priority on this or that sort of responsibility --to have your value depend more on your ability to deal with this or that sort of mechanic-- atop the particular way in which you meet those and other responsibilities (by adjusting your rotation to hit its highest turns right as the need begins, and/or by banking gauge, and/or by adjusting the order of cooldowns, and/or by outright delaying cooldowns when you have to or for greater total damage, etc.).

[Ggwppino]

It doesn't, though. The design goal remains the same as ever: jobs should be competitive. If they all needed to have the same raw damage, then those with the best exploitable damage density would produce the most output, but not even every jobs without raidbuffs needs to all have the same raw damage. There can be a range between higher exploitability/burst and higher overall raw damage.

Take pld as an example.
The old pld could not exist with the new 2 minute meta and was reworked to be in the image and likeness of practically all rotations.
All the classes that were designed to have a sustained damage output over time have been transformed like all the others into burst classes. There is no other way out with this system.

Clearly, if we take shB as an example, leaving the 2 minute goal leads to another problem: some comps will perform better than others. Bad. But the point is another: why did it happen? why were some better than others? For raid buffs.
So we always return to the same point.
If you remove the raid buffs, or rather, you really skim them considerably, and these buffs become the main characteristic of the job that has them, these are used not when it is convenient for the user because he manages to take his hypothetically damage windo, but they would be used much more expertly, since they are the considerable source of their rdps.

While I'm tempted to agree, since that sounds more fun than just %dmg buffs, I have to ask: in what way? Even a rough example would be appreciated.

I think I wasn't clear here and you might have misunderstood, but in any case what you mean is a point that I would like them to valorise.
What I meant here is that a buff shouldn't be a measly button press every 120 seconds, but should be an integral part of the rotation.

Take for example the ast and the sch: they are 2 classes that buff (ok, the sch debuffs the boss but that's the story), the importance of these 2 buffs in the core of the rotation are completely different. The one for the sch is a button that you press every 120 seconds which is separate from everything else, the one for the ast is an active component of its rotation, it is its gameplay which is based a lot on its buffs and which rewards it by also unlocking some damage .

The fact is that if I take the brd, I know that I take it because they are a class that is based on support, its gameplay makes me understand it and I'm happy, it's part of its fantasy. If I take the rpr I take it because I want to hit Athena in the gums with my scythe not because it has a sad buff to use every 120 seconds. So I don't find the reason why all these classes should have raid buffs (that compromise the concrete and feasible possibility of get out of the 2 minute meta).

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As for what you mean and what I would like to see anyway, they are the buffs that do not directly affect the damage, and they could be mana regeneration for example, it could be the speed up, it could be the skill-speed. These buffs could change the considerations that are made during the content, also changing the way of approaching the fight.

[Raikai]

Yes, it's another 2 minute raid buff thread. This horse has been beaten to death but I got a new whacking stick so why not. Someone brought this up on the xivdiscussion subreddit and it got my noggin joggin'. Let's say the devs leave this to a community vote. In 7.0 we get two options:
1. Raid buffs are put back on the cooldowns they had before EW.
2. Raid buffs are entirely removed. Anything that increases how much damage your party members deal, be it a buff on them or a debuff on the enemy, is gone.

Which would you pick and why?

First option. Second option would actually hurt more than it would mend, unless it's made in a sensible way that the jobs considered support at their cores could find a way to retain the role. Like Bard buffing the entire party for the whole fight, Dancer buffing a single person for the whole fight, or Astrologian jumping buffs through different people for the whole fight.

[Shurrikhan]

Take pld as an example.
The old pld could not exist with the new 2 minute meta and was reworked to be in the image and likeness of practically all rotations.
All the classes that were designed to have a sustained damage output over time have been transformed like all the others into burst classes. There is no other way out with this system.

Again, though, Paladin could at the time literally could have been made fully competitive... by just being slightly buffed.

Heck, it still needed to be buffed twice more after its rehaul (6.4 and 6.5), so clearly just shuffling around when that damage was dealt was not enough.

Clearly, if we take shB as an example, leaving the 2 minute goal leads to another problem: some comps will perform better than others. Bad. But the point is another: why did it happen? why were some better than others? For raid buffs.

Not really, no. The majority of Shadowbringers' raid balance woes was from non-buffers overperforming, not underperforming.

It just happened that jobs with no business looking at rDPS for their measure of balance complained that their rDPS was fell below other jobs' (as it should, because it's still missing a good 3-5% of their additional value over other jobs with lesser ability to exploit buffs, which is only accounted for within the aDPS metric, with neither side alone telling the whole story of the value buffers bring).

BLM generally remained on top in rDPS and SAM near the top in rDPS despite their offering more value than anyone else from constant and finite-duration raid buffs, respectively, outside of the usual issues of minor outliers (SMN just wiping everyone else off the table in Ifrit/Garuda and Shiva, and later OoD, etc.).

And even before Shadowbringers, the problem was less that there was a meta comp or better performing jobs on the basis of raid buffs... as that there were set comps (outside of NIN being able to glide between whatever).

By late Stormblood, the best comp for a RDM could have damn near equal party dps to the best comp for SAM as the best comp for BRD as the best comp for DRG, etc., etc.; the issue was just that once you had jobs A, B, and C you wanted jobs D, E, and F, not jobs G, H, I, J, K, L, or M.

What I meant here is that a buff shouldn't be a measly button press every 120 seconds, but should be an integral part of the rotation.

Yours? Theirs?

If it's a vital part of your rotation, then you'd have to keep your rotation synced to the time others could most benefit from it, likely meaning you must follow a specific GCD tier and/or rotation, which would be less flexible even than what we have now (though obviously some jobs, like DRG, will be less flexible than others, like MNK/SAM).

If it's a vital part of their rotation or otherwise affects their gameplay in some pace-setting way, too, then they doubly have to keep synced to your actions, too. Again, not an increase in flexibility. Quite the opposite.

It comes down to the details for any of these implementations. What flexibility are you willing to give up? What is the threshold for something being "integral"?

Arcane Circle, for instance, is already useful to RPR's rotation, and Brotherhood to Monk's, regardless of their 3% and 5% buffs, respectively. Does that count, or is it something entirely separate?

Let's say we made it Chain Stratagem would cause each Crit landed on an enemy to increase their chance to be critically struck.

Does that change behaviors or otherwise make it any more integral to gameplay than the mere more direct damage increase of +10% crit? In itself, no.

There'd need to be available compromises between total damage and more opportunities to crit, so that before and after reaching a certain Chain Strategem stacks threshold given one's crit chance, you'd prioritize A and then prioritize B.

Maybe we go further, and make it so every job had some sort on-Crit proc, and many had ways to force a crit (revised Kaiten, certain procced arrows, Berserk, Life Surge, what have you), and Battle Voice would increase all proc chances by 25% (of their existing chances, so Repertoire becomes guaranteed), while Battle Litany stays as a crit.

Now they would all have gameplay effect, of some sort, that makes their value that bit more contextual. But would that at all redeem them in your eyes? What are you looking for here?

The one for the sch is a button that you press every 120 seconds which is separate from everything else, the one for the ast is an active component of its rotation, it is its gameplay which is based a lot on its buffs and which rewards it by also unlocking some damage .

...When Divination was actually linked to the grade, I'd agree, but... they are quite functionally identical now in single-target combat. It's just that SCH has and rDPS buff and a utility buff (Expedient), while AST has two purely rDPS buffs.

Now, thematically, if I were to make just one of them a buff job, and knowing what I do of their history in this game (had I known nothing of how XIV planned to implement each or seen only their ability names across the multiple languages, I would likely have gone with making SCH the buffer instead, but w/e), yeah, I'd make AST the buffer over SCH. But...

At the same time... does Chain Stratagem harm SCH's identity through its inclusion? Is it mutually exclusive with some other, more "XIV SCH-like" action that SCH would/likely could otherwise have had? Does it harm AST's, WHM's, and SGE's by association? I am not convinced it does any of those things.

As such, I don't see an issue in SCH's one-off raidbuff except in that could at least be more interesting for the SCH itself (and, per my preference for more staggered timers, perhaps could have been more engaging for the party as a whole if introduced in some other way).

As for what you mean and what I would like to see anyway, they are the buffs that do not directly affect the damage, and they could be mana regeneration for example, it could be the speed up, it could be the skill-speed. These buffs could change the considerations that are made during the content, also changing the way of approaching the fight.

Agreed. As long as there's sufficient context for them without also obliging them.

If a job can give MP with no alternatives (nothing else that cooldown or their MP-draining effect can be spent on) but no one has any way to favorably spend excess MP, then there needs to be a context in which that extra MP almost certainly cannot be excessive. But if you do that, then gameplay now depends on that MP-granting class being present, else the MP-receiving jobs end up with dead GCDs for reasons entirely outside their control, which will probably be far more unfun than uniquely granting MP will be to the MP-granter. (And what of the jobs that have no use for MP? Do we just avoid bringing them if bringing the MP-granter?)

If you give a job that grants Attack Speed, cool, you can hit new rotational/GCD breakpoints. Except, now you have to carry two sets of materia-ed gear, one for with that job and one without, in order not to be caught awkwardly between rotational/GCD tiers. Is that likely to carry a net improvement to enjoyment, in the current context?

Now, don't get me wrong: I absolutely think you could create a context in which those things are net gains or perhaps even have little to no downsides. But it's going to take a lot of very careful consideration and likely even some pretty drastic shifts in undermechanics.

• Games built around Stamina/Energy bars (with at least the length of a full rotational string before being depleted), for instance, can far better absorb differences in attack rate, because they take on a small amount of flexibly timed downtime in place of a lower base GCD, allowing them to overclock or underclock).
• If all jobs used MP, then we'd have a far better signal of readiness to burst at a glance from our party frames and %max, flat, or % of missing MP restoration or %MP cost reductions could be useful to each role without necessarily being identically useful to each role (may still favor emergency situations).
• Etc., etc.