Two Minute Meta in Dawntrail [FFXIV Media Tour]

[@WolfmanXD]

I mean, if I recall, Yoshi-P did an interview about the 2 minute meta and it boiled down to "deal with it, careful what you wish for." So no one should be surprised that the 2 minute meta lives.

[@Castersvarog]

Personally, I think they should change things back to a three minute meta like ShB was. Job design feels like it’s getting way to pigeon holed to be stuck on 120s cooldowns and it makes everything into massive Crit-direct hit fishing sessions on 1k potency actions, holding gauges and buffs for the bursts instead of actually using those buffs as needed

[@NabaniSaa]

Mind you though, many jobs had their own inherent power spikes as well. NIN with Trick, etc. So I don't think the 2 min meta is honestly that bad. Just need more moments of semi-burst windows in the 1 minute and what not.

[@cyrinius1979]

Honestly I never think about this . 2 minutes in lol never get back 😂

[@Marcomax-hh9ze]

Maybe it's just me, but it looks like a lot of the the changes for DT were around refining these two minute burst windows. I wonder if when the 2 minute burst window is in a good place for most classes, will see more changes to other parts of a job's kit?

[@subtlesong8936]

I have mixed feelings about the 2 minute meta. While it's fun to get all the buffs up and see the massive damage numbers, it causes a couple problems. Firstly, it makes it so the damage you do outside of burst feels almost negligible. Jobs like monk who used to do a bunch of damage outside of raid buffs now see that value decrease. It really feels like raid buffa or nothing. Secondly, the 2 minute meta really showcased the problems with the current direct hit/crit system. Having to hope your big attack direct crits or else you are at an exponential dps loss just feels really bad. The fact that happens during the 2 min only increases the amount of damage potential lost because of poor rng. I've seen way too many dps checks fail because noone got the crit they needed, or failed a mechanic because of everyone critting a specific add who needed to live a bit longer. In my opinion, 2 min meta would be fine if they fixed the direct hit/crit system. The two combined only makes both feel worse.

[@BorisTheGoose92]

I think at this point we are too far gone into 2 minute metas. Removing it would require so much work for 3 expansions where it has existed/built around. This IS a little fault of the community though. Like you highlighted people were requesting to have buffs align back in Stormblood. So, they did. Now we have all buffs at 60 or 120 with the majority being 120. These hints by Yoshi P claiming/hinting at 8.0 will likely be much large class/combat changes is really our only tiny bit we have of 2min window going away. Not only that but we have these absolutely bonkers base potency values at this point that crit+direct hit in these 2 minute windows swing it even more. I am not a hardcore player nor ever intend to be, but I can see the frustration being placed on rhe system just looking at it data wise.

[@DrakeWurrum]

I don't have a problem with the 2-minute meta, personally. Rotations aren't ever where an MMO's skill actually lies. But don't tell the fflogs parsers that.

[@basilnottheherb]

I can appreciate the concerns and the issues we've had with the meta but I def feel like not having a standard for all toe naturally jump at/allowing for more narrow but focused design philosophy. Like think of it being a restaurant only serves 5 things BUT it does those 5 things better than anyone

[@ozmintheobserver]

It seems like Viper gets to have fun in the 2 min meta.

[@jaquanepatterson2537]

I think it wouldn't be as egregious on both class design and player feel if it wasn't always 2 minutes, maybe if they pushed back most non dedicated support jobs raid cooldowns to maybe 4 minutes, then compensate it by tuning the buffs to be stronger on use and a bit of skill potency changes it would potentially create a better balance between job uniqueness by giving them more wiggle room for job design and maximum damage potential.

[@rionyascaret1004]

I’m guessing the savage fight will be like EW again where one death during burst window means you’ll certainly going to fail the dps check..

[@koy540]

8:21 bard also currently does not get blast/apex arrow on opener.

[@Xfr0stbiteX]

I'd rather party buffs just be removed, then you can just push your buttons.

[@cutejustice]

But then you run the risk of doing away with support classes. Even if you remove skills like divination or chain strat, the player base will still look for optimal methods to use buffs (like astro cards) which would just create another meta lol

[@seymour_]

Honestly the two minute meta is one of the worst parts of Endwalker's battle design, and it's really sad to see that they leaned further into it. I don't know if I can do another three raid tiers this expansion that just involves Direct Crit fishing under the buff window, lol. Regardless, I'm very happy to see that you got into the media tour!

[@ShimoKuma]

That's only the case for parsing, outside of that none of the fights except for maybe P8S needed you to maximize the RNG aspect of your DPS. The alternative case scenario is either buffs are now different timers and you still try to align them whenever possible OR you get rid of buffs and now everyone is just doing their own thing and you play whatever does the most damage.

[@seymour_]

@@ShimoKuma No, I emphatically disagree. The two minute meta is far and away the worst battle design philosophy we've had. Direct Crit fishing is not fun, and it's not just done *in parsing*.

[@ShimoKuma]

@@seymour_ Outside of parsing I don't see the purpose though. It's also ironically these complaints that lead to less diversity since classes like SAM got changed where big hits are guranteed crit direct hits which is funny to me. If your failing to kill a boss it's not because you got unlucky in crits/dhs it's a skill issue tbh. If your failing to get a 100 parse then yes it's because you didn't crit/dh. Now let's get rid of all the raid buffs in the game and imagine a world where your damage is completely sustained. Your still going to suffer from the same issues of not getting a 100 because someone else did the exact same rotation and got quite a bit luckier. That's not a 2 minute meta issue, that's just how the game works with secondary stats, as long as crit chance and direct hit chance are in game your going to have a certain level of RNG to your rotation. Not even including the fact that damage is scaled from I believe 0.95 to 1.05 so even two autos that don't crit nor direct hit can still do the same damage.

[@lolmuffins1]

​@@seymour_ Why is it not fun? especially if you don't care about parsing?

[@Voicelet]

I'd rather have no raid buff window at all. It's unnecessarily stressful. Just, I don't know, make buffs only effect the user so they can time their own burst, and classes that are more focused on supportive buffs deal less damage by themselves but the buffs can be refreshed back to back, I guess?

[@iamme1743]

So you’re saying the solution is to remove the team play from the game. Nice nice. If you want no team play you should look into some other MMO’s like Lost Ark or BDO.

[@Voicelet]

@@iamme1743 The formation of tank/support/dps and doing mechanics right are teamplay enough, balancing skills on the basis of everyone must go all-in at this specific interval or bust, isn't. The example I suggested had no real thought behind as it was pulled from the top of my head. And I did point that buffs should be spreaded out over time instead.

[@SaltNip]

@@Voicelet It's especially odd when you consider that most people in your average run of casual content drift their buffs super hard and still get through content just fine. 90% of people don't really bother to coordinate for raid buff windows, so that aspect of "teamplay" is completely minimal to the experience of the vast majority of players- and the players that do actually have to worry about it only ever seem to complain about it.

[@Xfr0stbiteX]

@@iamme1743 If you're saying all the teamplay in the game is just syncing a single button press every 2 minutes. Sure, that's not fun in the grand scheme of things.

[@Voicelet]

@@SaltNip Weird isn't it that when it's about wanting to play harder content, we want it to end quicker so we don't have to play it for so long? But I'd welcome that casual experience for raiding any day, if they'd be so kind to balance the game away from the current trend.

[@mismismism]

I get why they didn't change it in DT with how much is changing from the new story arc to the graphical update but I do hope that in the next expansion they remove raid wide damage buffs completely. It's why everything feels so homogenous, everything has to have the same timings basically so it's kind of the same vibe for every job.

[@DevilSeiji]

But I like more crit D:

[@mismismism]

@@DevilSeiji I do too but not when the cost is 21 flavors of the same kit.

[@Glacevelyn]

Stormblood did a lot of good for job kits but we still have to live in the shadow of its grand idea to fix the Heavensward raid buff meta by giving one to every fucking job

[@mismismism]

@@Glacevelyn It's bad, BLM is the only one that can even be sustained DPS just by doing such heavy damage. It's not worth it, every job needing to sync raid buffs is not worth all of them being shackled like this. It's the number one pain point in the game for me that I hope is fixed.

[@ShimoKuma]

Not a huge fan of this take, your going from most classes having buffs to no classes having buffs so now the classes who were "Selfish" DPS are no longer unique and classes where the fantasy revolves around buffs like AST, DNC, BRD for examples are no longer interesting and lose a ton of flavor.