Feedback on Frontline balance – tanks are too oppressive

GNB is still hilarious. Rampart + Fated Circle/Brand + GNB LB + HoC = laugh and shrug off all the damage, reduce damage dealt by enemies while dealing damage to them, counter attack any incoming damage against you, auto-heal when dipping below 50% and if you don't have LB, you can still throw out fated + hoc and stand in everything while the BLM near you passes out because a MCH sneezed at them.

tank is not like super op, tanks hp bar can get empty with one sam lb. and if ur at 50% hp and getting hit by everyone nin can also delete you. It is called counter bs with bs. I don't like any of this but hey if it works it works.

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Originally Posted by NevaehQuest

It is called counter bs with bs.

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Haha, pretty much it's this.

This supposed "problem" with tanks has the same origin as every other "problems" (like premades) : most players in frontline suck ; because of the absence of tutorial, rewards given for free, no incentive to get better, no default hotbar, the default UI doesn't help, PvE lobotomizes players, etc.

A swarm of bad players only know how to attack (inefficiently). The best attack isn't needed to kill them, and a good defense will render them completely useless.

I think it all depends on if your team gives you backup. There are days as a tank I can go blazing in with a good team, and others that just run off and leave me for cannon fodder. I don't expect to get good numbers as a tank, but there are those times (more not than often) it feels good to be able to go in, take all the CC, and let the rest of the team do cleanup.

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Originally Posted by Genz

This supposed "problem" with tanks has the same origin as every other "problems" (like premades) : most players in frontline suck ; because of the absence of tutorial, rewards given for free, no incentive to get better, no default hotbar, the default .

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Most players in Frontlines suck because they don't pay attention.

Did you notice the new node BEFORE the first callout went out about it?

Did you notice we are not focusing the lead team and really need to be, BEFORE the first callout went out about it?

Did you notice the incoming pinch BEFORE the first callout went out about it?

Do you ignore callouts?

I have seen teams half full of bh5 lose for lack of paying attention.

GNB was already a top tier job in FL. After they got more buffs last patch, I can comfortably say they should probably be dropped down to 40% damage reduction. Especially considering their innate kit gives them near constant damage reduction, healing, shielding, and movement speed.

I don't know if anyone in this thread has already talked about it, but I also think something should be done about the frankly absurd Guardian + Elixir combo that's possible at the moment. Since Guardian absorbs all damage, somebody else like a Dark Knight who dove into the enemy team can use their elixir while under attack and get away with it. And killing the responsible Paladin in those 4.5 seconds isn't easy either.
After the Guardian exploit in Danshig Naadam, we really need some caution about what kinds of combinations like this are possible. Premades already have a major advantage in PvP, and these exploits just further squash the chance for other teams to get anywhere.

I can't say I recall a single situation where a DRK required guardian in FL since their whole job is to pull everyone in, and just let the premade do its job. Potentially pop living dead as well.

Guardian I've seen used by some PLDs in premades to save the ass of their allies when trying to counter them though. And most of the time, this is actually used to cover the DNC because they're extremely vulnerable while channeling Contra.

As a PLD main, I do wish we'd move away from designing the job around Cover/Guardian.

After losing several Frontline matches in a row, I'm perhaps letting the frustration speak through me but it is what it is.

It's always the same story. One or two GNB backed up by other tanks can dominate everything. Match starts and not two minutes in and they already have battle high 5 ( the Bh system could also be removed by the way). I try to contribute to the team as much as I can but it's not possible. If I go as MCH, my kit is nearly useless and my lb is wasted most of the time, since melee DPS have innate damage reduction. If I go as WAR, I try to use Blota to pull the dangerous individuals close so the alliance can kill them but they still get away. if I go as healer, I'm squishy and die in few hits. If I go as melee DPS, I can't even scratch them but they do kill me in few hits. And what else do I see?

A GNB with a dozen people attacking and still manages to get away. Worse, the PLD he was with activated their invulnerability and casted Protect on them so the GNB counters. And is not alone, has an Astro healing too. And a DRK. And 2 or 3 DNC using their lb in a row so nobody can defend themselves. And if it's not a GNB is a NIN also running away alive. Or a MNK. Or a VPR with their whooping 60% damage reduction. Or a WAR.

This mode is designed to be as infuriating and frustrating as possible. Rewards good yeah but not worth the suffering.

MCH is great to snipe ranged BH5 players but unfortunately they're rarely part of the premade meta, but good solo players leeching off the kills. Sniping melees require more subtlety and often need to wait for their HP to drop low enough even with BH5. Tanks are usually a little hard to do on your own since they have plenty of defensives and if some use rampart it's a no go. But if you can drop them low enough and threaten them when they're engaged, maybe your team can kill them. But the real issue isn't so much this, it's the ebb and flow of FL: I have tried multiple times for example to use a DNC LB to instantly counter a premade coming at us, but the real issue is that people are skittish and immediately flee when a horde of tanks comes at them and don't engage, so you end up doing something that will essentially account for nothing and just get you killed. Generally you need to wait for moments where they're flanked, or not about to engage your team, in order to kill them.

Else you'll need to play perfectly some of the hard counters like MNK or RPR that can lock out some of the premade members of the fight long enough during that critical moment in their engage to send their effort in the ditch. It won't magically win you the engagement, but it can throw a serious wrench in their playstyle.

Another series - Still getting rolled by premades rolling 3 or more tanks. Specifically DRK and GNB premades. Fun times.

Literally how is it okay for these two tanks specifically to dive in 1v20 and STILL live? How can they kill 3 people while barely taking damage. It's just not fun, all reward for no risk.

They just let the DRK pull spam their CC on top of everyone get BH5 at the start and then roll the rest of the game.

You nerfed other jobs because they were too good with too little risk but for these two its somehow okay?

It is possible because a lot of players just dont know how to pvp. You have a whole bunch of CC that should make 1v20 impossible. yet too many people dont know what their abilities do and/or flee at the first sign of any possible combat. if a tank is diving on you: silence, bind, knockback, miracle of nature.

Frontline has been hot garbage for years now and will continue to be so. I'm just so pissed to find they added a new dumb 100 wins mount. I got all the mounts from this mode ages ago and thought I don't have to touch foot on this cesspool ever again.

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Originally Posted by Ankhira

Another series - Still getting rolled by premades rolling 3 or more tanks. Specifically DRK and GNB premades. Fun times.

Literally how is it okay for these two tanks specifically to dive in 1v20 and STILL live? How can they kill 3 people while barely taking damage. It's just not fun, all reward for no risk.

They just let the DRK pull spam their CC on top of everyone get BH5 at the start and then roll the rest of the game.

You nerfed other jobs because they were too good with too little risk but for these two its somehow okay?

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Tanks are a problem but so are melees in the hands of competent players if you stack enough of them due to them literally having twice the innate damage reduction than other classes. It was less of a dramatic issue before they added crazy role actions like Rampart (you can solo a whole enemy alliance as long as it's up) or Rampage (synergy to melt down enemies pulled by DRK even better). You can add Diabrosis to the mix to make damn sure nobody recuperates if they survive.

The discrepancy between melees and ranged has always been a problem in FL since most casual players just die on melee because they don't know how to capitalize on their strength, while melees will shine under the hands of good players especially within organized groups.

Like at some point it is expected to have already a big imbalance when you put together skilled pvp players together in a team and make them face very casual players, but adding those role balance issues and obnoxious role actions on top of it is a surefire way to disaster imo.

I don't think melee DPS are currently a huge issue considering how their own role actions aren't game breaking like tanks, and tanks also tend to have the bigger AoE/crowd control abilities that mesh very well with FL playstyles. The only current melee i'd classify as a pseudo tank is VPR, and you can bet if it had access to Rampart/Rampage it would become out of control as well.

SAM is absolutely busted but so little of the playerbase knows how to realize its potential it kind of works out and the people who play it well are like mythical creatures.

Battle High should be removed. It exists largely because Square Enix believes matches would drag on without it, treating it as a mercy mechanic to end games faster and keep queues moving. It also feels good to have kill streak rewards.

Battle High also exists to actually encourage pvp over objective capture. The main problem is that it's a system that doesn't seem to be clear enough for the casual playerbase to understand that this pushes FL into capitalizing on kills while minimizing losses in order to achieve supremacy in territory control. Once your team is full of BH5 you'll roll over any opposition and have free reign to achieve anything. This is also where the three sided facet of the game enters into action as a way for losing teams to try and turn the tables by ganging against a runaway team.

Honestly it's all just a wider problem of scaling and balance isn't really done around Frontline.. Which is fine for it not to be the primary thing to scale around... But they are doing some fundamentally ridiculous things, which they could quite as easily address without impeding on what they do balance around, or "bUt mUh cR0wD C0NTr0l"

It's fine they promised role action changes for 7.4, and we got a single change on... Healan. Surely this was going to fix all role action related issues.

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Originally Posted by Valence

It's fine they promised role action changes for 7.4, and we got a single change on... Healan. Surely this was going to fix all role action related issues.

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We got a whole new FL map. We're not getting any PvP stuff until 8.1 let's be realistic here.

Next points are not aimed at you, just a general statement just quoted you to reply to you with my first line of text :)

But yeah, idk, I'm really tired of Tanks just being unkillable, you can argue "Just CC them" which sure, but I only have ST CC, and the rest of my team abandons me or doesn't press their CC, or has already used it on another tank. So what can we even do? Like we were fighting a gunbreaker who kept healing himself, I polymorphed him, used my role action but the others are not doing anything to help and he just kept rolling us, I couldn't get away cause they have a gapcloser too for some reason.

I understand its a team game mode, but if you need more than 3 people to spam CC to kill a single person it's a problem.

Premade of AST > DRK > WAR > GNB or triple GNB just running over anyone they look at is not my definition of fun. Sure, it could be solved by changing how battle high works since there's always going to be one outlier in balance but I'm far from the only one who is just not having fun in FL anymore with the last two patches. "Not everyone knows how to pvp, balance is fine." is also kind of a bad argument in my opinion because how can anyone learn when these three outliers keep running the show with premade parties so nobody can stop them?

It's fine in CC, I guess, but in FL it's just a complete mess right now and has been for a while. I just wish the devs were more transparent because again, SCH and SMN had to much power for too little risk = nerf them for FL specifically but the tanks and to a degree certain melee are exempt from this for some reason. I do think melee takes WAY more skills than the tanks so I'm mostly fine with how melee are, I mostly feel atleast SOME impact when I CC them compared to tanks. It's just tanks that are way too good at everything.

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Originally Posted by Ankhira

the rest of my team abandons me or doesn't press their CC

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No matter what you do with pvp or frontlines or premades or abilities. this will be the problem. address that problem

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Originally Posted by ChrysOCE

No matter what you do with pvp or frontlines or premades or abilities. this will be the problem. address that problem

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I’m talking about balance not mind‑controlling 24 randoms to be perfect players. If the only solution is ‘pray your team actually knows how to play,’ then that kinda proves my point. In a mode where 72 people get thrown together, no job should require perfect coordination just to stop it from steamrolling everyone. SE could make a few small tweaks to FL and instantly reduce how oppressive some jobs are.

Sure, it’d be great if all 24 teammates played perfectly, but that’s not reality. Tanks (and some melees) are way overtuned compared to the rest of the roster. If it takes multiple CCs to kill ONE tank, that’s not good design. And while you’re blowing all that CC on one guy, there are five more tanks ready to roll your team anyway.

Tanks and melees have always been a bit overpowered in the hands of good players, and bad in the hands of casuals that just go in and die. Something of a nightmare to balance properly, but it wasn't that bad before the introduction of their infamous role actions last tier. Rampart, Rampage, break the game especially in the hands of optimized groups that just run stacks of tanks and steamroll every lobby.

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Originally Posted by Ankhira

I’m talking about balance not mind‑controlling 24 randoms to be perfect players. If the only solution is ‘pray your team actually knows how to play,’ then that kinda proves my point. In a mode where 72 people get thrown together, no job should require perfect coordination just to stop it from steamrolling everyone. SE could make a few small tweaks to FL and instantly reduce how oppressive some jobs are.

Sure, it’d be great if all 24 teammates played perfectly, but that’s not reality. Tanks (and some melees) are way overtuned compared to the rest of the roster. If it takes multiple CCs to kill ONE tank, that’s not good design. And while you’re blowing all that CC on one guy, there are five more tanks ready to roll your team anyway.

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you dont need to be perfect to press buttons. you said yourself, they either dont press their cc or run away. so you can make any adjustment you want. you can roll back the role changes. do all the re-balancing you want. you will still get the same results.

there will always be people who can dive into a crowd and escape untouched, because some players join pvp to not pvp. or they dont make any effort to understand what their job is capable of. i was in a game a few days ago. 3 people running away from a bh0 bard.

if you enjoy pvp, your best bet is to lean into the jobs that can make a difference and queue up with friends who also like pvp and play with them. hopefully they will press their buttons and wont abandon you.

I agree. They are way OP in Frontlines, especially DRK and GNB - which is the worst offender. Every single game, you'll see them all BH5 in a matter of a minute or less, and they normally remain that way for the full game.

I die a lot as a tank. I don't expect to get a lot of BH. Because people like to jump my bones.

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Originally Posted by Miki_L

I like how every frontline threads devolves into premade talk.

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Yep, it's because everytime a class gets brought up, "a premade" is used as an example of how broken that class is.
Just because regulars get an organised group going doesn't mean that job is overpowered. These same regulars will be demolishing casuals with any class.
You can't balance for that.

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Originally Posted by NorthernLadMSP

I agree. They are way OP in Frontlines, especially DRK and GNB - which is the worst offender. Every single game, you'll see them all BH5 in a matter of a minute or less, and they normally remain that way for the full game.

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As a mostly solo drk player, DRK is by far the most neutered job in frontline. The reason why it keeps receiving nerf is mostly to do with CC.
Lowest damage reduction out of all the melee classes. Lowest damage dealt reduction in all the classes (only drg has similar). Longest limit break charge out of all the jobs (+45s, which is 3 times higher than any other job).

Friends shared pvp stats with me of their encounters with DRK players in all of their games (i am on ps5, but they have some tools that let you see the stats), and DRK has the highest death per minute rate of all the jobs, and highest damage taken out of all the jobs on average on most regions as far as i can see. It's also the least played tank class, and one of the least played classes.

Try playing it (solo) and see how difficult it is to get to BH5 compared to literally any other job.

Gunbreaker, on the other hand, is massively overtuned.

Tanks needs nerfhammer both in PvP and PvE. Last frontline, 6 players trying to kill a Paladin and the Paladin survived.

6 players isn't enough to kill melees reliably to begin with, so imagine a tank with rampart up...

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Originally Posted by Laerune

Tanks needs nerfhammer both in PvP and PvE. Last frontline, 6 players trying to kill a Paladin and the Paladin survived.

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Only 6? I mean it's possible to fight and kill vs that many lackadaisical players as a melee (not talking about SAM LB) so... yeah only 6?

I dunno though, I feel like tanks should be durable in mass pvp like that by virtue of what they are you know? It's if they can slowly whittle down multiple people with little risk to themselves is when it becomes a problem; if they can be "immortal" yet kill with little effort vs a clump alone. If they just exist to debuff and die then it's just not a good feeling innit, tank usage will crash dramatically as who wants to be that whipping boy that exists to set the table with no tip? (Maybe some are into that idk). Then you'd only see them in premades because it's too rough in the solo queue.

Anyway, y u attack pld?!??!?? REEEEEEEEEEE!! Punt away!! Attack squishies!! Y u do?!??!?!?

Or just do enough to force them away then pretend they don't exist... just please stop attacking the tanks over other better targets. Trust me they're out there, it's not all tanks I swear. Look over their shoulders, they're right there.

ED: I am not a tank main right now. /disclaimer

The main troubles I've seen is Gunbreaker because of the Fated Circle is insanely strong, you combine it with Rampage+LB and the job absolutely slays. Everybody is playing it now because it's sort of unrivaled.

It's not just tanks though, Viper is basically as good as a tank (and better than some) thanks to the Scales+Bloodbath combo, You'd have more luck trying to take out a Paladin. I've seen Vipers dive into a entire alliance and get away with being focused down, and live.
Pretty over-tuned in CC as well, but in Frontline it becomes far worse.

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Originally Posted by SalamanderIX

The main troubles I've seen is Gunbreaker because of the Fated Circle is insanely strong, you combine it with Rampage+LB and the job absolutely slays. Everybody is playing it now because it's sort of unrivaled.

It's not just tanks though, Viper is basically as good as a tank (and better than some) thanks to the Scales+Bloodbath combo, You'd have more luck trying to take out a Paladin. I've seen Vipers dive into a entire alliance and get away with being focused down, and live.
Pretty over-tuned in CC as well, but in Frontline it becomes far worse.

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Yeah, VPR is starting to catch on, I'm seeing more and more in FL lately on top of GNB spam, it's just miserable. One more game tomorrow and I'm lvl 25 at least. Then I can not bother with this mode until 7.5.

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Originally Posted by Ankhira

Yeah, VPR is starting to catch on, I'm seeing more and more in FL lately on top of GNB spam, it's just miserable. One more game tomorrow and I'm lvl 25 at least. Then I can not bother with this mode until 7.5.

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Yet VPR (and GNB) are two of the easiest jobs to gotcha Chiten trap with a SAM. In the VPR's case you're not even dealing with a random stun that may make it through regardless. Yes there are those dumb snow wards to contend with on the new map, but it's still viable. I'm surprised there isn't an uptick in targeted SAM usage considering that (though I can hear the groans from over here).

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Originally Posted by ThreeBeastSmile

Yet VPR (and GNB) are two of the easiest jobs to gotcha Chiten trap with a SAM. In the VPR's case you're not even dealing with a random stun that may make it through regardless. Yes there are those dumb snow wards to contend with on the new map, but it's still viable. I'm surprised there isn't an uptick in targeted SAM usage considering that (though I can hear the groans from over here).

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Just be careful with sam lb as in frontline it is easy to negate this with many shields and effects. A lot of classes nowdays bait sam's lb as they have a shield to negate you.

Just watch for the shields then, it's not like they're permanently on demand are they? They have cooldowns just the same, just another tit for tat affair that goes either way. I have no problem getting around them personally.

Anyway, it was just a heads up because sometimes the tone do be getting too despairing when it comes to 123 fare around 'ere, when there are some solutions, and VPR really is that simple to checkmate once locked into 'Scales unless they have some attentive support. /shrug