3.25 PVP Balance Feedback

So this was a hilarious little patch. I want to emphasize how little was done this balance patch and talk about the changes a little. In order of least ridiculous to most ridiculous. Feel free to give your thoughts as well.

I'd like to note I am a Monk main despite the fact that my profile states otherwise. Anyone who's seen me on Aether would probably know that already.

Alright on to these... "Changes"

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Archer/Bard
Farshot: [Potency has been increased from 170 to 200].
[Enhanced Farshot II: increased potency has been changed from 200 to 240.]

Good change here Bard can interrupt and burst a little better. I don't see anything really wrong with it, Bard wasn't the most lethal threat in the ranged world and after this change I still don't see them being the most lethal. They are however going to be a bit harder to heal through.

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Rogue/Ninja
[Overwhelm: Recast time has been reduced from 90 to 60 seconds.]
[Enhanced Overwhelm: recast time reduction has been changed from 60 to 40 seconds.]
[Ill Wind: Recast time has been reduced from 150 to 120 seconds.]
[Enhanced Ill Wind: recast time reduction has been changed from 120 to 90 seconds.]

Overwhelm being made a bit better might seem questionable since Ninja has Shukuchi however Overwhelm was always the better gap closer where Shukuchi was a better escape tool. Now Overwhelm can be used more often for gap closing leaving Shukuchi as Ninjas escape tool. Nothing wrong with either of these buffs, Ninja will be able to silence or stun a little more often, gap close and retreat a little more often, and use Ill Wind in a burst rotation a little more often. This brings Ninja a little bit closer to MNK/DRG, no mention of addressing the Stealth - Heavy Medal exploit currently.

Enhanced Overwhelm will give Ninja more options for well being a Ninja and moving quickly across the battlefield. I feel this is a good change and gives Ninja a bit more mobility in comparison to MNK/DRG .
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Pugilist/Monk
[Somersault: Potency has been increased from 180 to 200.]
[Somersault: Recast time has been reduced from 90 to 60 seconds.]
[Enhanced Somersault recast time reduction has been changed from 60 to 40 seconds.]

Oh wow where to start. First off , I felt Monk was fine before the patch, Monk was already a very powerful healer/ranged killer due to the burst level and availability of Forbidden Chakra, Howling Fist, Elixir Field, and Tornado kick, and the debuff of Somersault mixed with the slow from feint.

This change is absolutely ridiculous and this is coming from a Monk main. Increasing the potency alone enhances MNKs burst to a higher level beyond what was needed. Then they reduced the cooldown of Somersault from 90 to 60 seconds, 40 with recast reduction trait. Monk now has a 30%/50% on demand spell speed reduction that can last 15 seconds, and it's only on a 40 seconds cooldown. That is absolutely ridiculous haha. This can be mixed with feint for a ridiculously slow caster/healer/ranged.

To further make matters worse Somersault grants perfect balance. Which means Perfect balance can now be attained every 40 seconds / 180 seconds.

This is an indirect buff to One Ilm Punch as it can now be spammed every 40 seconds if needed. GL 3 can now be regained every 40 seconds, allowing more usage of Tornado kick than before without much penalty. For a good monk everything about this buff is ridiculously insane and it wasn't even necessary. We were already very powerful, now we burst harder, faster, and sooner.

I don't know why they made this change but they're pretty crazy. They obviously don't know how powerful MNK already was.
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Dark Knight (LOL)
[Tar Pit: Potency has been increased from 150 to 200.]
[Tar Pit: Recast time has been reduced from 180 to 150 seconds.]
[Enhanced Tar Pit: recast time reduction has been changed from 150 to 120 seconds.]
[Enhanced Tar Pit II: increased potency has been changed from 180 to 240.]
[Carnal Chill: Recast time has been reduced from 150 to 120 seconds.]
[Enhanced Carnal Chill: recast time reduction has been changed from 120 to 90 seconds.]

Congratulations Dark Knights! The buff you've all been waiting for! You can now Heavy every two minutes now! You can also now reduce damage every minute and a half now!

In all seriousness these are literally the most ridiculous changes this patch. This did nothing to fix the issue, It's so funny I nearly spit out my coffee how terrible of a buff this is.

This doesn't fix the issue of DRK lack of utility. This doesn't fix the issue of DRK being unable to burst or self sustain as well as warrior.

DRK is absolutely terrible and deserved far more changes than this. I guess this is a start? But its not really even a good start. As a DRK you can now save your team a little more often now but not often enough with the availability of burst. Most burst is available on a minute CD or a minute and a half, DRK lacks the CC tools to be competitive with PLD and WAR, and lacks the burst to be even with Warrior.

DRK currently is just a heavy defense DPS class that doesn't even DPS well. The changes while somewhat helpful do nothing to change this and DRK will remain that job that is just worse. less utility than PLD and WAR, less burst than WAR, less ability to save team as a PLD.
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Also of note, no changes to sleep, no buffs to scholar, no change to aetherflow (despite making Somersault on a 40 S CD, if you were having issues before keeping aetherflow, Good luck now)

I can't believe they even waited to make these changes. They could have done this kind of work in a hotfix. There weren't even enough changes made to the jobs to help enough. In fact I believe they may have made things skewed even more towards Monk with this patch.
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All in all if you're looking for a TL;DR here it is, Ninja and Bard changes were actually pretty good. Monk buffs are laughable and Dark Knight buffs are ridiculous , changed nothing and for a DRK main honestly would be pretty depressing after a promise of real buffs.

Rip DRK :cccc

Those Dark Knight changes make me glad Bethesda dropped the Survival beta patch today...

Can someone from the development team actually explain Dark Knight to us? When compared to Paladin and Warrior, there is absolutely no way this Job can be considered balanced... Even if you factor something like Grit in, this is still stupid... I'd beg for some Dark Knight changes to be in 3.26, but having seen what I waited two weeks for... No... I'm having a hard time even bringing myself to care anymore, which is a shame, I loved Feast before interrupt changes took a dump on Dark Knight... Rating and matchmaking had issues of course, but I really enjoyed aggressively harassing healers on Dark Knight prior to 3.22... Dark Knights ability to chase and interrupt was all it really had, but with a few tweaks that was enough IMO...

EDIT

Patch is installing, so I'll just leave this stupid list of Dark Knight adjustments for you to work on, none of which are remotely balanced, before disappearing until the next patch;

Sole Survivor - Additional effect of dealing 20% of the Dark Knights total HP as damage, if the Dark Knight dies while the effect is on. Perhaps OP, but also very easy to counter (stop killing the Dark Knight until Sole Survivor wears off).

Enliven - Change this to Manadraw... Sprint changes render Enliven completely moot, for all Jobs, actually... Meanwhile I'd quite like Manadraw on Dark Knight...

Carnal Chill - Change the damage debuff to a potent Paralysis. Change its recast back. Paralysis is super annoying... I'd love it...

Tar Pit - Change the drain effect to being 100% with no AP spent, or 150% with AP spent. It's on a cooldown... There is no reason for its drain to be weaker than Abyssal Drain...

New Skill - Heals target party member for X% of the Dark Knights total HP, while also dealing that amount in damage to the Dark Knight. Effectively a more powerful Clemency/Thrill of War with the sacrifice aspect balancing it out and adding some nice synergy with Living Dead.

Delirium - Change to -10% Mind on target, rather than -10% Intelligence.

Dark Arts - Dark Arts all the things... All the things... Dark Arts Shadowskin? Similar effect to Vengeance. Dark Arts Blood Price? HP recovery rather than MP. Dark Arts Plunge? Stun. Dark Arts Salted Earth? Direct damage AoE. Dark Arts Living Dead? Raise a f*cking army of undead from all the salt 3.22 to 3.25 has caused me to produce and end days. OK that last one was a joke... I think... Some of these can apply to previous suggestions as well, Dark Arts Sole Survivor, for example, can switch it to dealing damage if the Dark Knight dies. Dark Arts Delirium can nerf Mind.

Oh, and this has bugged me for a while... Why do Job mechanics not play into PvP skills? I mean, Monk gets Perfect Balance and Greased Lightning out of theirs, which is kinda what I'm talking about... But take Ill Wind... That's essentially AoE Jugulate, why does it not function on the same basis? Wasp Stun, Viper Silence? Why do none of Dark Knights PvP skills make use of Dark Arts? Why do Summoner and Scholar have no PvP skills that make use of Aetherflow, or grant it?

I was expecting a lot more. I'm just gonna level up white mage as I think even with some changes scholar still isn't the class for me in PvP.

These "balance" changes are laughable, to say the least.

I laughed my butt off reading the notes highlighted in red that Season One will be postponed for more balance adjustments. But let's be honest, the adjustments are laughable at best.
I main a BRD in PvP, and even with that Farshot buff, BRDs still lack the umph to interrupt anything. It's a plus for bursting but something really needs to be done to gain back our role as a harasser.

The problem I see with the BRD changes is that it doesn't really resolve the problem with far shot, at this point its practically another oGCD damage. The range gimmick comes off as pretty redundant in consideration with WM. At the same time though, there's no reason for WM/GB to keep the damage penalty beyond 15 yds, especially when casters can do that without a problem (and they've adjusted the walls for LoS).

No adjustments to interrupts or CC duration in relation to free casting becoming even more accessible with the wall adjustments.

I don't see the reasoning behind monk buffs. They were pretty strong to begin with if you stuck them on a caster, now it's straight up ridiculous with how frequently they can somersault

Dork Knight.

@BRD/MCH mains : Your new job is to claim boxes for your team from a range and prevent the enemy team from claiming them while adding burst/ CC to help your melee best friend secure kills and interrupt other ranged jobs.

As funny as that sounds.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cynric

@BRD/MCH mains : Your new job is to claim boxes for your team from a range and prevent the enemy team from claiming them while adding burst/ CC to help your melee best friend secure kills and interrupt other ranged jobs.

As funny as that sounds.

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I do this already xD. And BRD has about two CC skills: Blast Shot -> Shadowbind or just pure Shadowbind. Now, healers can unbind themselves with Esuna/Leech so thats pointless on them. And while I can burst, it's something that's hard to setup correctly if you have a melee on your tail. I have to make sure that my Bites tack on, make sure the target's life is below ~80%. And if I go into WM and pop barrage, there's no going back. "It's do or die."
And if my target is smart, they can purify my bites once I go into WM and pop Barrage readying EA. That makes Sidewinder useless. At this point, I've already popped all of my buffs. There's no going back. And I can't do anything unless I stand still or x-class Feint for 20 secs. So unless my melee partner is very well coordinated with me, BRD is a detriment to the team. They're squishy as well, so an easy target. Dmg is still penalized outside of WM. Staying in sweet spot range makes you vulnerable to a melee chasedown.
As BRD is right now, they're the bottom tier class of all the ranged classes. And I mean severely outclassed.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DxWings

snip

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I don't think either Bard or machinist are able to really be considered "Good". That was a slight joke based on the truth of the situation, effectively there is no reason for BRD/MCH to have a ranged penalty when the other ranged classes (especially SMN) do not. However BRD does have really good burst if it can get it off, same with MCH, however that's a really big IF. Procs and buffs can be dispelled, DoTs and debuffs (such as wildfire) can be cleansed , the CC required for skills like Between the eyes can be cleansed as well.

Brd and MCH are in about the same situation, Hypercharge while valuable will also replace full swing making a badly timed Hypercharge more harm than good.

They do have the benefit of helping healers in drawn out fights with mana, however these situations will happen less as the feast picks up in match speed.