FFXIV 5.0 PvP + Feast feedback

Below you will find issues regarding Tanks and other issues in Feast after a few weeks of playing. Many issues exist for all roles and I implore others to provide feedback so that the developers may gain a better understanding of how their game mode is operating right now.

Tanks

Tanks no longer feel like Tanks. The removal of Tank Stances and other important defensive actions and abilities absolutely gutted their natural base survivability and an element of skill that used to exist by managing it. Many Tanks feel and play like a DPS job now, which is fun for offense but incredibly frustrating when attempting to play defensive. Tanks can no longer safely or reliably pick up and hold medals in their current state, leading to games with massive kill and point swings. In addition, due to their new kits, the reliability of a Tank to be able to CC and control a fight, both from an offensive and defensive perspective, has been severely reduced. There are many instances now as a Tank where you truly feel like you cannot contribute to protecting your team or enabling/initiating an attack on the enemy. Inclusion of AOE abilities on every Tank feels forced and very poorly thought out, these abilities should be specialized into certain Tank jobs while the others have other unique strengths, as many of them currently conflict with some of the kits they are included in. Good Tanks no longer have the ability to impact and contribute to a game in a similar manner as they used to, leading to frustrating and confusing gameplay patterns for the role as a whole.

• Base survival severely lowered by removal of Tank stances, many personal and utility buffs were removed as well such as important old role actions like Recuperate. Layer of skill that was present in turning on/off your Tank stance to enable more damage at a risk is no longer available to skilled players.


•Access to Crowd Control (CC) abilities no longer reliable or readily available. A base 30s CD on stuns for 3 out of the 4 Tanks is atrocious in such a fast-paced game mode. This leads to situations where you feel like you cannot contribute to your team in a meaningful way when leading an attack or protecting from the enemy.



•Play too much like a DPS now, not enough utility or protection for their team to feel like Tanks contribute in a unique way other than damage.


•Utility abilities feel underwhelming aside from TBN and promote unhealthy or counter-intuitive gameplay patterns. Aurora feels underwhelming with no immediate impact. Cover ends up killing the Paladin more times than saving a teammate.



•Inclusion of AOE on every Tank is confusing and feels forced. Specialize AOE into certain Tank jobs and let others have access to other niches such as healing or debuffs.



•Tanks no longer feel like they have special purposes. PLD no longer feels like the defensive tank. Warrior no longer feels like the offensive tank. All tanks play in a similar aggressive fashion with minor differences and very few standout notables.


•Removal of utility weaponskill combos (Halone, Butcher’s Block, Power Slash) no longer present Tank players the option of applying their debuffs or building gauge based on the situation needed.


There are many other issues that currently exist outside of Tanks in regards to The Feast. This is just one small portion of the wider issue that many roles are dealing with in regards to playing the new PvP. Melee Limit Break is currently too powerful and not mitigated by anything. DPS jobs have terrible survivability with the removal of Safeguard and Recuperate from their additional actions, which in turn removes a layer of skill that used to exist in playing around these actions. Healers no longer have enough defensive tools or MP resources to deal with the unrelenting damage numbers being pumped out on their own. Cover now kills the Paladin more often than it saves a teammate. Scholar Seraph uses unreliable Pet AI in PvP to keep teammates “alive”. There are issues in all fronts that came from the massive amount of changes we received at once.

Conclusion

Too many levers and variables were pulled and adjusted in the transition from Stormblood to Shadowbringers Feast PvP. While some jobs play great in PvP now, others feel as if they are facing an identity crisis. Many jobs went from feeling smooth with well-defined burst patterns and gameplay options to now feeling clunky and unintuitive to play. Roles such as Tank and Healer have had many of their tools stripped away, making them feel hopeless in many situations when they used to be able to skillfully handle them. Kills no longer feel rewarding to obtain, as the coordination and planning that used to be required to obtain them by outplaying your enemy and their own defensives is no longer needed. The presence and frequency of these defensive options have all been severely reduced or outright removed, leading to a gameplay flow that encourages unfun, sloppy, and chaotic 10+ kill matches where neither team feels like they can stop deaths from happening.

When the luster of the new PvP kits wears off, many Feast players will find competitive matches increasingly frustrating and unfun to play. In addition, the new system is less new-player friendly than Stormblood, which will only encourage more players to avoid PvP due to poor initial reactions. There is no one single culprit to point towards in regards to improving Feast and PvP right now. Our issues stem from a combination of many factors and variables that were changed simultaneously that has lead to our current status of messy gameplay. A lot of work needs to be done and needs to be done soon. Simple potency adjustments are not adequate in fixing our current situation. Entire kits, game-mode mechanics, and gameplay patterns must be adjusted with abilities being changed, removed, or added. Feast, and PvP in FFXIV in general, has always had massive potential to be a truly successful pillar of the game. However, over the years it has been curated in a way that is baffling to many dedicated players, and one that has caused many people to question the direction the game developers are intending for PvP to go. Frontlines, wolf marks, wolf collars, PvP GC level, rewards, datacenter PvP populations, etc all are in need of adjustments and have been for years now. Shadowbringers is no exception to some of the questionable changes PvP has had over the lifespan of the game, but players still remain optimistic. There is still great potential in Feast and PvP, but changes must be done with an expert’s touch to foster a healthy, competitive, and fun system for people of all skill levels to enjoy and appreciate.


Despite many flaws, there is still fun to be had in Feast. Some of the actions we received in the update open up a lot of new avenus of gameplay that are interesting and were not available beforehand. However, it is important to balance these new additions by not removing too much of what made the old version of the mode fun and balanced.

Specific job feedback

I'll be using this section to give mine and other veteran player's thought on jobs we have experience with, providing examples or potential solutions to any balance problems.


• Gunbreaker
Overall I think the design of the job is actually very good. The debuffs from draw and burst strike/fated circle are nice, they give cc options to tide one over until they can stun again and use the same resource as your high damage combo, so one must make the choice if it's more important to lock someone down or rip them to pieces.

The main issue I find is that offensively they are very strong but defensively they lack a ton. Heavy and bind are nice cc, but they're short duration, they don't last long enough to stall much until your stun is off cooldown. I propose that the cooldown on Lightning shot be heavily lowered to 10 or 5 seconds, but make it cost a cartridge. That way, if you're not presently concerned with dealing damage or providing pressure for your team, you have multiple short cc options that you can throw out all on the same resource, so you must build to use them instead of just being able to keep throwing it out. Once your stun is out, you can build a cartridge to stun another enemy or keep peeling for your team with a bind/heavy until stun immunity wears off, and it comes at the cost of damage so it's still a choice one has to make.

Another big issue is the strength of Aurora. For something on a 30 second cooldown, it's very low impact. The transferring of the brutal shell shield is nice, but the heal itself is very weak. It's 2500 potency in total, and in pvp where burst is generally king, both in the form of damage and healing, it's very lacking. In the past when WHM had Regen, the strength of it came from its availability and MP efficiency. Beacause it was always available, you can throw it out during downtime to smooth damage intake but it was never an option to save someone when they were actually in danger. Presently Aurora has two pretty lackluster effects thrown together that don't really make up for the individual weakness of each. I propose that the strength of the cure potency go up higher to reflect its longer cooldown. Not enough to completely negate the damage from a coordinated team, but enough healing to make the enemy second guess whether or not they can burn through the extra healing. Heal over time effects should be stronger in total potency than burst healing effects, to make up for the fact that immediate healing is generally more important than sustained.

Paladin

Paladin right now is not in a confusing spot when it comes to Feast. Offensively it plays fine, but fills too much of the same purpose as all of the other tanks and no longer resembles the defender role that it used to have. You are promoted to spam your Holy Spirit / Holy Circle spells immediately to reduce your MP to zero which removes your resource management. I would prefer to have more power shifted back into the defense and healing of the job. There are multiple ways to do this, but I believe two major changes are needed to help Paladin.

First, the 20% increased damage on Cover must be removed or significantly reduced. This ability is already on a 30s cooldown which is long enough. Cover is no longer able to be canceled by the Paladin either, and more often than not the 20% increased damage serves as a detriment more than Cover helps as a benefit. The ability is too risky in the current state, and usually just kills the Paladin because of the damage increase.

Second, Clemency should be added back to the Paladin job kit to replace Holy Circle. Holy Circle feels like a confusing addition to the job kit, and is worse than Holy Spirit in almost every situation. Paladin already has a powerful AOE spell in Confiteor, and Holy Circle just feels unecessary right now. It would be better for Clemency to replace Holy Circle so Paladin has the option to use their MP and spellcasts to heal their teammates instead of only doing damage.

Tbh I kinda like that it's easier to get kills. Actually I like it alot. It's more fun this way.

As for tank survivability, rampart is pretty much mandatory now if you're rolling a tank. So, tank mitigation is fine imo.

As far as self sustaining in general, I think self healing could use some improvements. Wars NF not useable on self and requiring a party member is overly restrictive, and is not fun. Especially in frontline scenarios where a healer in the group is not guaranteed, and where one can often find oneself in a situation without party members nearby.

I agree that tanks having access to aoe seems kind of weird. Im still investigating its uses so ill refrain from judgment for the time being.

But overall, I find ShB pvp much more fun than stormblood.

While it's easier to get kills in the Feast now and while it makes games more interesting it also comes with a layer of frustration when it comes to tanks, I agree.

Tanks do not feel like tanks they absolutely feel like DPS. They need to have some higher damage resistance or increased usage in their CC abilities. Rampart doesn't even feel like it helps at all from the amount of damage that gets thrown out now, I feel I get more usage out of just using Low Blow and Full Swing. If we had shorten cool-downs to our CC abilities this might change the way it feels an give a more defensive play-style for tanks.

Now that I think about it, i think maybe aoe was added to tanks to allow for a "bleed mana" strategy alternative to "burst." Since tank aoe against even just 2 enemies is efficient in pvp, and healers have very limited aoe healing, i can see maybe sustained aoe will drain healer mana and make it hard for the healer to keep up. Only it doesn't seem to work out this way in practice, because as you said, tanks die pretty fast now to really have time to aoe.

Maybe they should add a mitigation buff to tank aoes to allow them to aoe without being focused down. Like a short duration high mitigation buff that lasts as long as the tank is aoe-ing.

I noticed that paladins have an aoe that heals. Maybe it should be buffed and something similar given to all tanks.

I'm hesitant to deliver comprehensive feedback until I see exactly what their "vision" is, hopefully starting in 5.1, because right now Feast is completely incompatible with the changes.

That being said, GNB and PLD seem to have the best self-sustain of the group, and I don't agree with directly upgrading Aurora in a way that benefits the GNB. I would instead enhance the shield when it gets passed to a party member while under the effect of Brutal Shell.

The other elephant in the room right now is Cover. Sits at a 30 second cooldown, yet only worth using every 90 seconds when Hallowed Ground is up. You can kind of swing pairing it with Rampart in Frontline, but in Feast it's completely unserviceable.

Gunblade seems really strong from what I've seen so far.

Warrior self sustain feels really off because of how long the "burst phase" is for it and having literally no healing during this long phase if your partymembers died or is not around.

For instance, you may:

Infuriate > inner chaos > inner release > fc x 3 > infuriate > inner chaos > infuriate > inner chaos

This all takes around 15 seconds to do, and you have no healing at all during this phase.

Then you may get in a few path combos before infuriate is back up or you need to fc.

And path is the ONLY self heal you have.

So without a party member nearby for nascent flash, a warrior pretty much has NO self heal whatsoever.

At least a paladin has self heal during his burst phase WITHOUT needing a party member.

Gunbreaker seems to be required to do their 3 hit combo a lot more often, and therefore benefit much more greatly from the heal. They also get a bubble from brutal shell which path does not have for wars.

Not sure about darks, but war self sustain definitely looks far worse than paladin and gunbreaker.

But this could be fixed if nascent flash was self targetable or useable without a target.

Lastly, on the issue of tank mitigation, I've been playing some scholar, and it looks like protect is a must have role action for healers as it reduces target damage by 20 percent. Seems like the design is give healers more power to mitigate damage. If the healer and tank couod coordinate rampart and protect, tank self mitigation should be okay. Kind of hard to pull off, but it is possible. And I'm sorta okay with this.

War needs to have nascent flash be self targettable or not have a party requirement though.