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With season 3 of the feast starting up, many new players are joining with hopes of getting the mount. This is great, however many people do not know much about the feast and can rush in blindly causing many problems and struggling to understand what is going on. This aims to help that, i will cover mostly the basics and add some more advanced stuff at the end of the guide, i do not know most roles or how to handle them effectively so i will not go into detail of them.
The Feast
The feast is 4v4(normally, but theres 8v8 that no one enters) arena style pvp mode. Each player starts with 100 medals and will loose half when they die(50,25,12,6,6,6...(can get funny later on say 75 if the tank dies with 150)). You can get these medals by walking over them to pick them up. The team that gets 600 medals total(including the 400 they start with) wins, or whoever has the most at the end(will draw if both have 400). There are 3 types of crates, attack buff, defence buff and adrenaline(personal LB).
Before game you have a little bit of time to prepare, make sure you all know your plan, that you have the right gearset on and other things.
At the start of a game each time gets 1 attack buff crate and 1 defence buff crate at their side of the map. Hit them and walk over them to receive the buff. Normally it will be the ranged that takes defence so that they do not get burst and the tank that takes attack(sometimes it will depend on how good your DPS is or the strat you decide). You will then go to the centre to fight.
Medals
After a while someone will be killed and drop(on first death) 50 medals. You will want to keep track of how many you have in the top right(or by using the popup). The tank wants 200(100 extra) medals, DPS and healer at most 150(50 extra). Sometimes you might need to go over slightly like when someone dies and its a strange number that they had. With these situations be careful, you gain a debuff when you gain so many so that you take more damage from hits. Thats why tank takes 200 total and gains 4 stacks because they can probably survive it while DPS wont be able to.
Culling time
If no one dies for a while you will get a popup saying 30 seconds til culling. This is where everyone gets stacks of culling so people die faster and the stacks will increase til someone dies. It is best in this to target someone with lots of medals(but not tank unless above 200 medals) or the healer.
Adrenaline
This is your personal LB bar, it does the same as a tier 1 LB basically but you get 1 each and sometimes multiple in a game. Healers will want to use when there is large aoe healing to do, tanks to try and shield people(from say an enemy LB), melee on a focussed target and make sure your team is hitting them as they wont die from it at 100% HP, ranged a similar thing but aoe so less damage so it might be used to stress the healer or to get a kill on a weak and targeted enemy.
Ranks
There is a rank and rating to the feast. A win will get you +25 points(can change based on balance) and a loss will change depending on rank. Unranked gives -0, bronze -5, silver -10, gold -15, plat -20 and diamond -25. Ranks can also only play with other ranks that are +2 or -2 ranks around them(so gold say cannot get unranked, or bronze cannot get plat.). At the end of each season rewards will be handed out(check here ) an accessorie based on rank. Top 100 getting things(this season it is a mount), top 10 getting 100's things and more(a minion) and 1st in the entire data center getting a trophy also with the rest. There might be glamour but we dont really know til later on when they fully announce it.
Roles
Each role has a specific job to do and will want to do this as best they can.
Tank
Tanks will want to mostly focus on DPS and protecting the healer so like cover and clemancy on PLD or thrill of war on WAR. They can still do decent burst but want to make sure they get 200 medals also(preferably the first 2 kills in the game).
Healer
Heal your team as best as you can, use buffs when needed. You will get targeted and have to handle that by getting away fron people by using skills such as stuns, binds, sleep and knockback but also skills like surecast so you can heal through damage easier. Its also best to save your instant cast skills for when you do have to heal on the move.
DPS
DPS should try to get kills, use burst to get kills. Sustained damage is worse than semi-frequent burst as healers can heal damage more than burst. You also will want to try and help the healer sometimes with things like stun, bind, slow and purify for when they need help.
Strats
There are a few strats used that you normally discuss at the start of the game so try to get talking about it. You will talk about who to kill first and it depends on how skilled they are and what the role is. You normally want to go for the healer or the melee first, if the melee takes damage buff then they want to be killed first. Sometimes you will also decide to put the tank on the healer while the DPS kill melee so that the tank can wear down or kill the healer making it easier to kill a DPS as the healer has to worry about themselves also. If there is a good ranged in the party or a BLM you might want a strong DPS or tank to keep them busy so they cannot DPS as well.
Situations
There are many different things that will change in each game and it is not structured like in Pve
Healer death
When your healer dies it is very important THAT YOU GET BACK TO YOUR SIDE AND BASE there is no one now to heal you and you will get stuns and binds and killed if you do not get away fast. Sometimes there might be medals, if it can get you the win and there is not much time then get them and run asap, it it isnt many or you already winning then dont bother its not worth it.
Lots of medals
If someone takes lots of medals(like tank 6+ stacks or healer/dps 3+) and it is very close to the end of the game(1:30 or less sotof end) then run back to base, hide, use cooldowns and keep yourself alive. If you have a long time remaining then get yourself killed and loose half, it is a waste for the healer to spend loads of MP and cooldowns because there isnt a high chance you will live, get rid of half and then probably kill whoever got them and then let someone without many medals take them.
BLM
BLM can be deadly, you leave them to attack and they can just do like 3 F4's very fast and kill you before you know what is happening. You will want to try and keep someone on them so they find it hard to attack or at least do things such as sleep and stun so they cannot attack.
Enemy melee takes LB box
The enemy is probably close to an LB, try to kill them if you can or at least when it looks like they are going to LB start to stun, silence, sleep and prevent them from doing it. You can even stun a melee during the LB and they will stop it(but with delays it has to be near the start).
Your melee takes LB box
Work togther to burst a target so that they are not full HP and the melee can then LB them to kill. Try to talk if you can or use a marker so people know to attack them.
Enemy healer isnt very good
Dont just farm the enemy healer because they suck, you wont get many medals for it anyway and they wont learn if they are constantly dead. Its better for everyone to kill others and can even help the healer learn a little.
Your healer isnt very good
Try not to rage at them, see if you can give them tips that you know of, point them to guides, tell them to try grab a friend and 1v1. People are more likely to improve if they know how in a way that isnt someone just shouting at them. In the case they dont seem to want to improve, dont respond to your feedback or are a dick about it if you are nice. Well suck up the loss and i guess and your probably going to rage at them no matter what i say.
Gear
Gear is quite often overlooked when you go into pvp because many do not understand how it works.
"But its sync, so stats dont matter"
Thats very untrue, its because it has a sync that stats are very important. Its not the values of them, but what stats they actually are. You dont want say a bunch of gear with stats that are not good for you because they will not be good for you in pvp either. PvP best in slot is accuracy(about 400ish) > your best stat > your second best stat. So for WAR it would be crit > det and BLM ss > crit. Materia does nothing in pvp either.
Pvp ranks and skills
This is what gives long time pvp players an advantage. As you get pvp rank up's you will gain a point. Every 4 points you can put in a skill to upgrade. Remember, you already have these skills you just have to put them on your bars. Read each skill and each upgrade and see what is worth getting.
How to sortof play
Im not going to go into each job or roles. This is just a handy(for DPS and tanks) method to do some decent damage and get kills. Best method is to ask someone who does pvp in that role (any WAR's want their rotation let me know) . Look at your PvE rotation and see where the higher damage burst is, then look at your PvP skills and see what goes well with that burst. Put it together and you have a way to use your pvp skills with your main damage. Its also good to part way through your burst throw in a stun or something so they cannot escape or heal themselves if healer.
So, important dots and debuffs first, burst+pvp skills, some sortof stun or something, rest of burst. Its not the best way and i advise speaking to someone that knows what they are doing to tell you more.
To train for feast
Going into feast for your first time can be rough(especially healer) but there are ways to get some practice first. Going into frontlines can help a little and learn how to use skills however theres much less burst involved. 1v1 i would say is the best way, practice rotations, when to use CC, what to do as a healer when your taking damage. 1v1 is a place you can be comfortable in with no problems for a loss so you can learn easily to be a bit better.
Common Words
Burst
Large amounts of fast damage
Box/crate
One of the buffs like LB or damage up.
CC
Crowd control, things like stun and bind and sleep that prevent people from doing things.
Back
Get away from something normally their base or to your base as healer died or has no MP.
MP
Healer has no MP, get back or give them some if you can.
Mid
Middle of the map
role of an enemy
Most likely they are the one to attack next.
LoS
line of sight, basically you cant get/give heals if your not in LoS as the game does not let you use attacks on things your char cannot see.
Purify
Use purify on them if the need it.
Tips and tricks
Sprint doesnt use TP, dont go away from low HP healer just because they sprint.
Use macros, a back macro to tell people to go back, a <t> macro to easily point things out like crates and enemies, medal macros to say who needs to get medals and for DPS that have blood for blood get a macro that turns the buff off so you can press when targeted so you dont die.
Use markers, 1 and 2 normally and sometimes the bind one also to show to CC a role.
Dont use blood for blood if your getting targeted, get it off you asap if you are.