2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

[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.