2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

[Shikiseki]

I don't mind group buffs per se - the overreliance of one critical point of time is what annoys me the most.
This makes un-optimized play from new players incredibly punishing and deaths just throws your dps into the gutter even more so.

I've seen that especially in dungeons and alliance raids where you have variance inbetween downtime. Some save buffs for the bosses, others just use it on CD and there's already a whole mess. There's very little chance to get back on track if you miss one of these windows unless you 1-2-3 for 2 WHOLE MINUTES and waste resources.

They thought that would make battle and syncing up buffs braindead but it only did things worse with more punishing deaths and messy casual plays.
I'd rather see them go completely if I really had to choose though or cap the increase at 3-5% the most.

[Kalaam]

Most of those skills could remain whiled reworked too:

Battle Litany could be a Sks speed or auto attack speek increase
Brotherhood and Arcane Circle could just remove the damage buff portion, or have a side benefit like brotherhood doing an AoE heal around the monk each time it procs a chakra and Arcane Circle giving lifesteal/mana regen on hits for the party.
Searing Light be a wide range blind on trashs.
Trick Attack/Mug well... maybe could be so at the end of the effect it deals a burst of damage based on the number of total GCD of the party that hit the target, or empowers the next Assassinate/Dream Within a Dream. Kind of fit the idea of doing a sneaky attack while mugging the target in a group.

All random on the spot ideas but like, yeah, there is stuff to be done.

[ZiraZ]

Based on all the hideous ideas I've just read I rather they just leave it alone and didn't touch anything.

[Kalaam]

Incredible commentary, such forward thinking and advancement in the conversation. Thank you for your incredible insight good sir.

[ZiraZ]

Thank you, sometimes I just read ideas so stupid and backwards that they shock me and I have to speak up.
At this point I rather just not touch the 2min meta because I'm now aware it can get much MUCH worse.

[Rithy255]

I want the majority of raid buffs removed
I think "partner" buffs such as Dance partner, Astro cards, Dragon sight are perfectly fine.
Also Bards songs that don't just happen in a burst are fine.

Buff jobs should bring a consistent Buff for the duration (1%-2%? the entire duration) and/or a single target buff.

I don't think having these 120 raid (dur: 15-20) buffs on a single job is the issue It's just how every job plays into being a buff job outside of tanks, some healers and very very few DPS. bringing a "raid dmg buff" should feel interesting, not be the norm

[Kalaam]

Single target buffs are fine, especially on dedicated supports I think, since you can (for most) control when to apply it to your target based on their rotation (just takes knowing it and communication, which would be kind of neat in a team game).
But yeah just overall raid damage buffs have to go

[Shurrikhan]

I want the majority of raid buffs removed
I think "partner" buffs such as Dance partner, Astro cards, Dragon sight are perfectly fine.
Also Bards songs that don't just happen in a burst are fine.

Buff jobs should bring a consistent Buff for the duration (1%-2%? the entire duration) and/or a single target buff.

I am having difficulty understanding this position.


How is a constant buff interesting, especially if (usually because of its being constant) it lacks any impact whatsoever? It's too small to be worth holding for, and because it's constant, you can't hold for it anyways. It does literally nothing except bloat the Status Effects bar.


And how is a single-target buff so much better than a raid-wide buff?

Let's say we remove all raid buffs and leave only the single-target ones. Let's do a mockup of that scenario.

The fight has some occasional downtime and one short DPS that doesn't quite perfectly align with your 2-minute cycle. You're a MCH, DPSing alongside a DRG, NIN (whose personal damage has been increased for its loss of Mug), and DNC. Do, for all intents and purposes, raid buffs even exist for you? Do you have anything whatsoever that you would bank for?

Consider: Who will the DNC buff? Who will the DRG buff? Unless the NIN is way underskilled or undergeared, just him. Just the NIN. He is just the noticeably superior choice.

At which point, unless you're playing NIN, DRK, SAM, or BLM, raid buffs are simply gone from gameplay.

I don't think having these 120 raid (dur: 15-20) buffs on a single job is the issue It's just how every job plays into being a buff job outside of tanks, some healers and very very few DPS. bringing a "raid dmg buff" should feel interesting, not be the norm

On this, though, I get where you're coming from, but.... playing around buffs is just literally a layer of optimization / available gameplay more than... not playing around buffs. It's purely additive.

I therefore preferred it when it was less "all or nothing" and there were more checks to meet (even if at less reward each), but... if we want that layer of depth... we also want a decent chance of having those raid buffs in a given light party.


The issue isn't so much that there are too many buffs as simply that there's nothing else to act as pace-setters for gameplay, because we so often lack short-term DPS checks of any sort, let alone ones with regular enough frequency to give them rotational interest.

Give us means of suppressing an enemy attack with timely burst damage, give us more add checks, etc., and then you'd have competing and shifting priorities among which raid buffs would just be one of multiple gameplay additions.

[Shurrikhan]

Most of those skills could remain whiled reworked too:

Battle Litany could be a Sks speed or auto attack speek increase
Brotherhood and Arcane Circle could just remove the damage buff portion, or have a side benefit like brotherhood doing an AoE heal around the monk each time it procs a chakra and Arcane Circle giving lifesteal/mana regen on hits for the party.
Searing Light be a wide range blind on trashs.
Trick Attack/Mug well... maybe could be so at the end of the effect it deals a burst of damage based on the number of total GCD of the party that hit the target, or empowers the next Assassinate/Dream Within a Dream. Kind of fit the idea of doing a sneaky attack while mugging the target in a group.

So, ultimately... this kind of stuff is going to come down to...

1. How many raid buffs do we want to use up on just moving around numbers and punishing desync / rewarding sync? I.e., do we want every random comp to likely have some sort of pace-maker, or should sync be something we generally think even less about?
   
   
2. What other forms of pacemaking could we create through fight design? And do we even want that? (Do we want, say, short-term DPS checks that we'd have to save some CDs for, at greater or lesser efficiency based on the jobs and quality of players with us?)
   
   
3. Do we (to have to) play differently in different compositions? (Would we instead like to increasingly feel like 8 people dancing in their own rooms, with Second Life simply making us visible and seemingly responsive to one another, rather than being dependent on Timmy the Terrible?)
   
   
4. How many utility buffs (not just rDPS / basic number-shuffling, and therefore of typically varying rDPS that indirectly comes out of the given buff) can we really make space for without feeling oversaturated?
   
   
5. How can we balance future (and, especially reworks of past) fights' design between making intentional use of those utilities and incidental/complimentary use of those utilities?

Personally, I don't mind having to play my job differently in different contexts, as long as the meta doesn't shift such that I'm always pigeonholed into the context that gives me an outright duller experience of my job (though such is unlikely given sane constraints on how much a given buff, etc., could excuse resource-banking), and I'd love to see more pace-making than just our raid-buffs, especially given how they've increasingly gone from something we ever thought about aligning to just a cumulative punishment for downtime (in excess of the rest of our party members').

But, given that each change would invite yet another (for better, imo, but for the worse to others), it is a bit of a pandora's box there. Don't expect it to resolve simply.

[TheDustyOne]

How is a constant buff interesting, especially if (usually because of its being constant) it lacks any impact whatsoever? It's too small to be worth holding for, and because it's constant, you can't hold for it anyways. It does literally nothing except bloat the Status Effects bar.

I'll try to answer this part specifically, even though I'm more in favour of staggered timers again.

If we had to remove raid buffs like some are clamouring for, I'd still like to have them represented in some form, like Bard buffs are currently. The reason being entirely around flavour, seeing that party list littered with your buff that says "increases damage dealt" is enough for someone to feel like they're supporting the groups overall output compared to early ShB bard where the songs were purely rotational.

Maintenance is another point as well, even if it's not exactly a deep decision to make. In order for the buffs to be constant, they have to be reused when they're falling off. Let's say we take old NIN trick and buff its duration to 60s (assuming we nerf the Ninja and Trick potency enough for it to be balanced), Ninja still has to maintain that Trick every 60s, but we no longer have to actively burst around it. Ninja still keeps that flavour of "sabotaging the enemy" that helps the party every 60s, but doesn't favour burst jobs over sustain jobs.

I miss old Trick Attack on 60s. Mug doesn't feel right as the sabotage debuff.

That said, my actual preferred position would be to bring back staggered timers, and ideally remove a handful of the current raid buffs (whether that be outright disposal or rotationally maintained, effectively deleting it as a burst window anyway).