Feedback: You need to balance your game and fix your map (200+ games)
Background: I've been pvping in this game since WD came out and have probably 3000-3500 solo queue matches in WD as well as 200 matches spread across Feast (75% solo). This game type should most definitely NOT be balanced around solo queue which is what a lot of the opinions and misinformation I see around here is about. You people play solo queue but don’t understand the implications in team play with 8 good players.
4v4 mode
So let’s start with the map....You need to remove the staircases from existence and make the spawn area its on separate unreachable platform. Next you need to add a barrier preventing anything from crossing the barrier in either direction (spells/heals/stupid shield lobs). Then you need to kick people out of the spawn area after 5-10 or so seconds. This prevents all this cheesy nonsense play where you can turtle up top or heal bomb people after you respawn. There is no, and i repeat, NO reason anyone should be able to stand in someones spawn in any sort of pvp game. Even your frontlines maps only let you stand below the spawn ledge ://///. By changing this you still allow for box/buff stealing counterplay and remove all the nonsense. I think the center of the map is excellent and much better than the Fold's map and is fine as is. The boxes at the start of the match need to be removed because they just create such a damage spike that in the best players hands they create unhealable situations in the first 15 seconds.
Class Balance
Let me balance your game for you.
SMN:
So from 50-60 they got an insanely well developed skill set that is absurd in pvp. anyone that says "OH BUT EX YOU CAN TIME PURIFY WHEN THEY TRIDISASTER" yea you're playing bad summoners. Every good smn I’ve played can time fester to where there is no time to purify unless you use it while the tri disaster particle is mid air/trajectory. Also with the atk buff in the beginning of the match you can add a good melee with the buff to a good smn and they will do unhealable damage. You’re wrong if you think you can counterplay it because there is no counterplay to a good SMN/DRG other than playing it better yourself. It’s a slippery slope when trying to balance dot classes in pvp games but something has to be done regarding tri disaster. Perhaps a longer cooldown or maybe we should look at deathflare being instant cast AND aoe and accessible immediately. There’s so many glaring issues that all the pvpers knew about from seal rock months ago that worried us when we figured they wouldn’t balance anything before Feast…and here we are with no effort towards balancing pvp.
BRD: (and generally MCH too for shortness sake)
So from 50-60 we got a skill that boosts our damage by 30% too bad its near unusable in pvp unless you’re not being focused or trying to get off a SINGLE Emp arrow cast for your burst. Comparing this to SMN…..it’s like we got nothing from 50-60 and SMN just got a bunch of instant cast damage with no downside. Oh but BRD has 2 self heals! Haha yea let me know when those save you against good players. They might as well not exist with how high damage output is. I do fine in PVP as a bard. I can solo kill players and catch healers off guard but I know in my heart that I could be doing 5x as much for my team as a SMN which is just wrong at a core level.
BLM
This class will never work in solo queue at lower tiers so stop asking for changes to the cast time interruption because it’s a bad recommendation. The only fix is communication which is hard to come-by in solo queue. I don’t see a solution to this being fixed without breaking the rest of the casters.
SCH:
Give Aetherflow immunity to being removed. It was ok and balanced in 50 cap but now its just absurdly bad. Also give them a reset on its CD when death occurs. They are in such a bad place that even these two things will barely bring them CLOSE to the other two healers.
WHM/AST:
AST is obviously more of the solo queue healing pub-stomper but WHM is leaps and bounds better in pre-mades. I think it’d be hard to change this without giving AST more real meaningful cc). But as it stands all the strongest pre-made teams will run WHM. With the SCH changes we might see some alterations but I doubt it
Tanks:
DRK definitely leaves something to be desired. WAR is like AST a pub stomping solo-queue class. No real team is going to bring a WAR over the CC and control from PLD (clemency/shield bash/ COVER IS OP). :^)
Melee
DRG is insanely broken with the damage buff/box which, by the way, need to be removed from the start of the match if not all together. Good players ABUSE this extra damage to create such high damage output that is ruining competitive pvp. I’ve seen more out of MNK than NIN but my verdict on the two is still pending. All I do know is that they aren’t DRG by MILES.
Ex’s Tier list (pre-made 4v4 the only gametype that should be balanced around):
Top: WHM, PLD, DRG, SMN
Middle: It doesn’t matter because none of the best teams are going to be running anything but the above ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
TL;DR: Lots of work needs to be done to fix the pvp for arena and balance needs to be looked at per game type (arena/frontlines and pve/pvp). We know you can do this because you have before. You’re going to need to balance your game more than twice in two years.
-Ex