2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

[Shurrikhan]

The thing is, current job design is made for that perfect buff stack alignement with burst and that is what annoys a lot of players.

If the problem is kits being designed for automatic/effortless alignment, then wouldn't it be enough just to have more of our CDs be, say, 45|80|90 seconds, thereby more rarely syncing up?

In either case, though, you'd still be hitting CDs on CD. So... what's changed exactly by breaking that alignment, except that you depend less on (or, are rewarded less by) team "synergy"?

The only real difference seems to be the degree and manner of advantage for sync:

Remove raid buffs, and there's no longer an advantage for keeping up with your team (in terms of uptime, as affecting rotational milestones, and avoiding deaths). We could say that frees up design, but to what result? To go from mostly hitting CDs on CD to... truly only ever hitting CDs on CD?

If you have staggered raid buffs, there's slightly more instances to optimize, but less value in each optimization -- and you risk set comps if you don't spread that variety in those timings out pretty evenly to/within each job, so that a party can't just go fully 90s or 120s for its primary interval (which would otherwise reduce job choice). Is that going to change how the game feels in any noticeable way, though? Especially, unless you're simultaneously someone who cares about your damage relative to others on an unofficial leaderboard, but not enough maintain uptime (including by being alive) as much as the rest of your party?

I suspect I'd slightly prefer that staggered layout, since I like having more things to bank for and play around, but the difference really isn't huge, and would end up constraining job kits just as much as the current 15|20|30|60|120s CDs do presently (just in terms of forcibly diversifying those CDs' rhythms to sync less instead of keeping them lined up to sync more).


I feel like we're still picking at one of several knots of a rope that's been soaked in glue, expecting that all would be solved if we could just get this single knot undone. But the exploiting CDs (what ought to be hit under buffs), the amplifying CDs (the buffs themselves), alternate in-kit means of pacesetting, alternate encounter-based means of pacesetting, our intended balance points between simpler/less risky kits and higher risk/more complex kits, and even future proofing for job balance across light party content (if we were ever to get mainstay more difficult 4-man instances) all play a part in this, and that's still likely not even an exhaustive list of factors. Tugging just the one of many knots free just leaves you with, more than likely, a messier still-bound-up knot.


Tl;dr: The "two-minute meta" is not as simple, not as new, and not as impactful as most are making it out to be. Yes, there are potential improvements possible, but they won't be had just by staggering CDs, and certainly not by just throwing out all raid buffs altogether.