3.2 PvP: Feast Game Mode Discussion Thread.

I just experienced a match of 4v4 where my team queued in to a group that only had 3 people. The healer never made it in. In PvE content, we can leave after somebody else does without suffering penalty. I attempted to see if the same would hold true in the Feast. Not only did I incur a 30 minute penalty for PvP content, but my rating also went down. I get not wanting to create a scenario where people can just disconnect to avoid losing their score, but the rest of the team shouldn't be penalized for someone else disconnecting. Before the season rankings start, there needs to be some sort of check in place that nullifies this impact to rankings.

Still no mention on AST with Nocturnal Sect. It is honestly the single most broken skill and coupled with the fact that you now have to deal 15% damage to interrupt casts. They either need to address how barrier heals work or simply reduce the amount it heals in PvP because running and healing with a barrier to mitigate is too unfair for most opposing teams. Speaking from experience whenever I see an AST in the opposing team I get another dps with me (I'm war) to help take them down asap. So you basically we've resorted to a "Kill healers first" strategy which is what Yoshi doesn't want teams to resort to.

These casting changes are part of what are going to be some completely game-altering decisions and they are just extremely ill-judged.


Summoner is strong, but the writing on the wall seems to be that it's going to be nerfed, and that's because the players on the lower end of the experience tier haven't yet learned how to handle them yet. In time they would have. Not anymore.

And at the same time, the devs are adding an interruption threshhold which will make already smart/good blms and whms ridiculously overpowered. The devs are basically giving them license to freecast anything they want. It's why I say ill-judged because the game is going to gravitate towards whms and blms being so far at the top of the food chain it'll make a current smn look like he or she is completely useless and they'll be marginalized out of the mode. You're going from one job being strong to two jobs being grossly overpowered. How does this solve anything?

Part of the problem is that it seems the devs are just looking at aggregate data as well as people complaining on the OF. Obviously you want to listen to your constituents and look at your data, but it doesn't seem as anything is going on beyond cursory review. It sure just seems like SE is looking at a piece of paper and arbitrarily going "oh yeah i guess those posters are right, according to our records SMN does do a lot of damage, so it must be as overpowered as they say, right?" But that doesn't actually look into the complete depth of what's going on, and now it seems as if a balance change is coming based on arbitrary judgments. To really know what's going on you have to play myriad hours at peak levels, but instead changes are happening because of anything but. This is very, very bad for balance.


If the intent is to create better pvp balance, that's fine. That should absolutely be a priority. But execution matters, and if you just follow through on what the mass of inexperienced players want without actual taking true competitiveness and in-depth analysis into account, balance can't be achieved. And what's likely going to happen now is just a dramatic shift from what actually was ok for competitive balance into a scene where blm and whm are going to completely take over.

[QUOTE=Marxam;3622009]Still no mention on AST with Nocturnal Sect. It is honestly the single most broken skill and coupled with the fact that you now have to deal 15% damage to interrupt casts.[ /QUOTE]

A Nocturnal astro lacks healing capabilities from my experience. The moment the fight starts dragging on and your entire party starts needing heals, they start ot fall behind on it. Though with the adjustments to cast interrupts still bother me in relation to nocturnal astros, the hp threshold becomes even higher to the point of it becoming surecast.

As a person who plays summoner... Yeah, it's a little too powerful right now... but our weakness lies in the fact that once we blow our stacks, we really don't have much burst. So, a good healer or team could outlast a summoner if they are careful and coordinated. Melee like to tear us apart. Groups with more PvP experience (not just doing it for fun) will easily be able to counter us if they coordinate.

I'm curious to see what adjustments are made. I do hope we won't be weaker than the rest of the compositions, now. That would be sad and depressing. I think maybe the problem with SMN in PvP is how devastating Deathflare can be. Perhaps they'll give it a nerf in PvP similar to the way BLM's Flare works (diminished returns after a certain amount of targets), but since it is 4v4, they would have to make it do something like half damage to all targets except the main one. I wouldn't be surprised if that's their solution, specifically for PvP content.

Regardless, I am looking forward to being on a more even playing field... provided we aren't nerfed into the ground. I notice SE is very careful about the adjustments they make (keep nerfing something until they feel it is adequate), so I'm not too concerned. I thought the nerf on the weight from Miasma/Miasma 2 (back in the day) was fair. At 50, SMN wasn't so bad to deal with... but at 60... if I walk up to someone, Tri-Disaster, Fester, Painflare, Energy Drain, Deathflare (in the span of a few seconds)... they're going down unless they have help from a healer or mitigation. Plus, as long as they don't Purify the dots as soon as they are on, I won't lose stacks (Fester will hit, and the other two don't matter). That's soooooo deadly. I do wonder what they are planning to do.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Marxam

Still no mention on AST with Nocturnal Sect. It is honestly the single most broken skill and coupled with the fact that you now have to deal 15% damage to interrupt casts. They either need to address how barrier heals work or simply reduce the amount it heals in PvP because running and healing with a barrier to mitigate is too unfair for most opposing teams. Speaking from experience whenever I see an AST in the opposing team I get another dps with me (I'm war) to help take them down asap. So you basically we've resorted to a "Kill healers first" strategy which is what Yoshi doesn't want teams to resort to.

---

Noct.AB was already nerfed (shield halved in PvP). If you nerf it even more, then Noct AST will be completly useless in PvP.
It's already quite vulnerable to DoTs and an AST doesn't have the tools of a WHM to get rid of the harasser tank (Fluid Aura+Sleep combo).

N.AB has rougly the same potency as a Benefic in PvP. You can't just spam that and keep everyone alive, the enemy DPS will outdamage your healing/shielding output anyway.
In short terms, a Noct AST doesn't have much besides Noct.AB and that's the main reason while you'd even consider going Nocturnal. You'll be able to heal through fluff damage quite easily, but any focused burst will eat one or more of your cooldowns (Lightspeed, Equanimity, Synastry...). Any CC coming your way at this very moment will mean the death of your teammate(s), and you can't count on regens to help your team endure the damage while recovering from CC.

Just like SMN is a noob killer (big predictable burst which will only surprise oblivious players), a Noct.AST will be a piece of cake to play against noob DPS who can't focus on something. It's balanced by the fact that this doesn't work as well (in fact it may not work at all) against good and experienced players.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ryuko

As a person who plays summoner... Yeah, it's a little too powerful right now... but our weakness lies in the fact that once we blow our stacks, we really don't have much burst. So, a good healer or team could outlast a summoner if they are careful and coordinated. Melee like to tear us apart. Groups with more PvP experience (not just doing it for fun) will easily be able to counter us if they coordinate.
.

---

As much as people keep saying this, it also holds true for BRD and MCH as well regards to bursts, except SMN has a lower effective cooldown. Not to mention SMN's hits in an area, as well as having bane which can be the bane of a nocturnal AST's existance when it comes to keeping their party up. On the other hand, MCH/BRD were able to keep casters and healers under some form of control through interrupts, which is going to be out the window with the upcoming changes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

[INDENT]

• Damage received is less than 15% of max HP → Casting succeeds.
• Damage received is 15% or more of max HP → Casting is interrupted.
• Sleep/Stun/Silence → Casting is interrupted (no change).

---

You placed so much power in casters hands due to the low availability of casts through interruptions, this change is basically removing the interuptions for the most part while leaving their skill sets un-changed. I can't see how this can lead to anything but extreme imbalances. Yes this will address the issue with low skilled players being useless, but at what cost? Good healers will be nigh on invincible, blms will literally be walking gods, cc machines with insanely powerful, consistent damage.

To me this is just saying, okay our original system (which worked) is too daunting for too many players, so lets scrap the aspect that people find the hardest, while keeping everything else the same. I can't see this working, if you are going to make such a dramatic change, you need to do a total re-balancing, a partial one like this will only lead to heavy class imbalances as you are just throwing a wrench into what was a finely tuned system. To me it looks like you are trying to give people what they want (freecasting with occasional interrupts, standard mmo fare) while desperately grasping to hold your original system/vision in place. I don't think you can mix the two, it's one or the other. I hope if you do decide to give the people what they want, that you come to a pvp system very close to WoW's 3.3.5a patch... that was pvp as it should be.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RiceisNice

As much as people keep saying this, it also holds true for BRD and MCH as well regards to bursts, except SMN has a lower effective cooldown. Not to mention SMN's hits in an area, as well as having bane which can be the bane of a nocturnal AST's existance when it comes to keeping their party up. On the other hand, MCH/BRD were able to keep casters and healers under some form of control through interrupts, which is going to be out the window with the upcoming changes.

---

It just goes to show you how spoiled SMN have been by their toolkit so far. You really take how good you had it for granted if you think SMN are the only job that plays out like that - news flash, everyone's capacity to put out pressure drops drastically once their blow their cooldowns and have to wait. Welcome back to earth.

Nerf a class because the bad and the casuals don't know how to deal with it and take to the forums and cry *slow clap* Summoner was fine how it was.