2 minute meta: Rework or Remove?

[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.