7.35 Highlights the Inadequacy of this Update Structure

Patch 7.35 is highlighting how inadequate the quality and frequency of PvP updates has always been.
今回のパッチは、長年にわたり私たちが感じてきたPVPアップデートの「質」と「頻度」に関する課題を、改めて浮き彫りにしたように感じています。


Quality
調整の「質」について


The PvP changes shown in 7.35 look like they were done with AI. Someone punched in winrate numbers from solo queue and decided that was that. It's an unfortunate mix of meaningless changes vs. the harrowing list of things they left untouched.

今回の調整は、失礼ながら、個々のジョブが持つシナジーや戦術的な役割への深い理解に基づいているとは言い難い、と感じております。まるで、ランクマッチの勝率データだけを参考に、機械的に数値を変更したかのような印象を受けてしまいます。結果として、本質的ではない変更と、多くのプレイヤーが改善を望んでいるにも関わらず放置された問題が混在する、少し残念な内容になっているのではないでしょうか。


The warrior change is ultimately meaningless. If you get pulled, then the extra second of heavy is kind of irrelevant. You either pre-purify, purify, or just die with no MP anyway. Gunbreaker dash is cool, but kind of hilarious when you think that competitive teams who run GNB use them as point pusher. White mage just partially got back what it lost. Ninja and Summoners aren't exactly celebrating right now, and what they got doesn't even begin to address the issue DPS face right now.

* 戦士の変更は、引き寄せられた後の展開を考えると、状況を大きく変えるものではないように感じます。
* ガンブレイカーのチャージ数増加は興味深いですが、試合ではクリスタルの搬送役として採用されることが多い現状を鑑みると、根本的な役割に変化をもたらすものではないかもしれません。
* 白魔道士は、以前失った性能が一部戻ってきた形に留まっています。
* 忍者と召喚士への調整も、現在のDPS全体が抱える厳しい状況を覆すほどのインパクトはなく、手放しで喜べる内容とは言い難いのが正直なところです。


They failed to address SCH, and guard shatters, and double heal down, and how quite literally the competitive meta is stacking supports with occasionally the support-adjacent ranged. The design philosophy of Dawntrail is completely crashing, making people like me sorely miss Endwalker.

その一方で、多くのプレイヤーが問題視しているであろう以下の点については、今回も見送られる結果となりました。
* 特定のヒーラージョブ（特に学者）の影響力
* ガードブレイクをめぐる駆け引きの問題
* ヒーラー2枚構成の優位性

「黄金のレガシー」で示されたデザイン方針が、少なくともPVPにおいてはうまく機能していないように感じられ、個人的には「暁月のフィナーレ」時代の多様な編成が懐かしく思い出されます。


Frequency
更新の「頻度」について

The frequency of these updates is not acceptable. Our next "hope" for change is going to be 7.4, which I can only assume is in another month and a half to two months. We're going to be playing ranked and scrimming in the slop we've been dealing with for the last two months. It's difficult when you look forward to each update finally being the one to address something and being met with a ChatGPT feed.

率直に申し上げて、この更新頻度では十分とは言えません。次なる調整に期待できるのは、おそらく2ヶ月半から3ヶ月先のパッチ7.4になるでしょう。それまでの長い期間、私たちは課題の多いこの環境でランクマッチやカスタムマッチをプレイし続けることになります。 アップデートのたびに今度こそはと期待を寄せても、提示されるのが表面的な数値変更のみであった時の落胆は、非常に大きいものがあります。

The abysmal quality and frequency of these updates gives me very little hope for CCRC in FanFest, because if things aren't truly looked at with a critical eye, then all you're going to see on stage is 4-5 support comps. Really riveting gameplay on the horizon for anyone who was even remotely interested in seeing what it's all about. I almost feel like it's too late for NA CCRC, but maybe the other regions will get to play in a better gamestate.

この現状が続けば、ファンフェスティバルで開催されるCrystalline Conflict Regional Championship (CCRC) でどのような光景が繰り広げられるか、少し懸念しております。もしゲーム環境がこのままであれば、サポートジョブに偏った編成ばかりになってしまうのではないでしょうか。PVPに少しでも興味を持ってくれた人がそれを見た時に、果たして魅力的と感じてくれるでしょうか。

I realize I may be speaking into a void, but I needed to write it all out and hope that the communities that continue to support CC actually show their faces here over this.

この投稿が、開発・運営の皆様の目に留まるかは分かりません。しかし、同じように感じているPVPコミュニティの皆さんと想いを共有し、より良いPVP環境を築く一助となれば幸いです。

It's hilarious how they keep repeating this mistake with the obnoxious cores of PLD/AST sustain and DRK/SCH dampen while also providing every single piece of necessary utility all at once (Why does Chain Stratagem exist?) There's no reason to not take them, especially when you factor that they have respectable damage and crowd control. 20% down to 10% should've happen long ago and it's further proof they are not properly documenting and learning from their lessons in Shadowbringers and Endwalker balance, especially the former that innovated the obnoxious 20% heal down stacking that, spoiler alert, DRK and SCH provided at the time (double spoiler, PLD/AST meta followed it right after and games lasted til overtime permanently at high rank).

Please, just show us that you guys are taking the explanations you give us about balance decisions seriously so we can stop retreading the same ground every expansion over and over again.

I do think I mostly agree, although saying that older CCRCs in Endwalker were more comp free than today sounds misleading to me. They were all almost exactly the same at the meta level, with the occasional variant.

Meanwhile what I'm still waiting for them to actually address is the hard stuff, the stuff that you can't just balance by turning up or down some potency knobs. The stuff related to absurd delays, unresponsive abilities that just ping error sounds when you press them when they shouldn't (looking at you, purify and guard), and all the classes that have been left in an awkward spot after the hit registration changes that affected some of their specific mechanisms.

Still, +1 anyway

What was really painful to read was the reasonings on the changes. The patches so far to PVP have been a major disappointment, not just this patch but overall with the constant reverting of changes and just the overall approach to "balance"

VPR is not struggling because its damage window is short. It is struggling because it is less likely to live long enough to use it. Extending Noxious Gnash on World-swallower does not fix that. Give Viper a survivability lever during First Generation, restore some of the safety Backlash used to provide, or cut its exposure time to burst. Damage uptime without durability does not move it into viability.

If the goal is variety and playability, then a few places they can start: clean up Guard interactions, Guard breaks should not have damage amps associated with it, and reduce one-job kit overload.

If not gonna change that, then okay, give melees/tanks more options for survivability. Bring more classes up to par. Warrior absolutely suffers from their lack of self-mitigation and sustain if playing in organized pvp and it does not have support classes babysitting it. Yet you have Black Mage that has Mitigation, CC, Self-heals, Debuffs. Really?

I also agree that they really need to set a predictable cadence for PvP balance if they have any intention on making it a "competitive" experience in any form. There needs to be light numbers passes every few weeks. This is better than waiting for another major patch while everyone plays the same support-stack mirrors. And instead of looking at Solo Q win-rates they have plenty of data in their own tournaments and externally ran community tournaments. Instead of just throwing numbers, things need to be looked at in regards to synergy and more so approached with testing and observation, involve the community for feedback as well.

With how things are being done, it really gives the impression that whomever makes these changes are just looking at numbers and not actively testing their own changes or play the mode.

The game has big ass glaring issue where Ranked has randomized jobs, you often fighting 2 tank 1 healer or 2 healer 1 tank while you have to play with no stun, 1 melee 4 ranged
you got chugged 4 CC nonstop into your arse. There is no skill ceiling or even floor, you just hope you paired with proper team composition.
The netcode is awful, the job is oversimplified, the game feels fast but slow and clunky at the same time
Then the game be like "Please do your best!" "Sportmanship" "Have fun !" while the whole system freaking awful, it was never in your favor or anyone, it builds for you to play more.
Its all carrot on a stick, the more you grind the more you get but you dont get better, just luck.
Awful balance and balancing, why the hell the hero shooter game mode is in MMORPG Tab targetting pvp ? why the hell this game needs more accessibility?

As a frontline enjoyer it's painful every time to watch them adjust for CC "winrates", then frontline adjustments follow in the next patch after it becomes extremely obvious it hasn't been looked at all.

Makes me want to qup CC and start throwing games as my favourite frontline class, so that I can finally have agency over what jobs get buffed/nerfed. It feels so arbitrary.

[edit]
And by the way PVP patches is not content. I know SE doesn't remember this - but it just isn't. It doesn't take 3 or 4 months to adjust some sliders.

I don't often engage in the forums but this patch had me thinking of writing something very similar to this just this morning; I'm glad Atreus beat me to the punch in much more eloquent terms than I could produce.

Some people here already know I produce patch note overview videos every single time PvP is updated. Last night, as I was digesting the notes and producing the overview (which you may watch here for some of my opinions) I thought this is the very first patch where I thought basically no change at all would have amounted to exactly the same. I ended my video with a hopeful remark that this is not a misfire but rather a breadcrumb for a shake-up in 7.4, as I'm the kind of person for whom hope dies last, but still, I'm very disappointed with the rationale for these changes.

I have friends and viewers that asked me for my expectations for this patch before the servers went down. It was painful to tell them that truthfully I expected nothing consequential to happen, but somehow it was even worse to see patch notes miss the mark THIS badly. If they want PvP to have any sense of longevity, the devs cannot keep relying on arbitrary winrate data to make all-encompassing adjustments that aren't often not only a bad fit for all modes, but sometimes also harmful to the health of the mode. They need to find a way to engage and communicate with your primary testers and users for this mode, meaning your players (and respectfully, I think a good majority of us don't feel heard even if we try to communicate our grievances through the official forums).

I dont get why the balancing based on winrates instead of how the job perform in capability.
It feels like "random bullshit changes go" whenever patch notes happens, its so weird that there is no thought or knowledge about the pvp given in this changes.
How the devs dont know about things they create and just go with the generalize data that doesn't reflects.. Atreus might be right, they might just put AI into this and call it "experiment"

Unfortunately for some time now, a lot of the patches have made no real sense, they provide an explanation on the class adjustments in the job guide, and I think every single time I have been left confused with the way they went about changes, or I didn't really see whatever they were seeing on adjustments or changes to things. There's an odd disconnect between what they adjust vs what is actually making a class strong and impacting the game.

A good example of this would be under patch 7.31 Adjustment Overview, "Scholar excels at managing resources such as MP, and therefore boasts high win rates. This time, we have reduced their maximum HP to temper their overall influence on matches." I would personally like to know how reducing their max HP by a small amount will impact the fact that all tools within its kit is extremely strong and none of that has even gotten touched yet. I feel the balancing team is starting to lose touch with the mode, and are forgetting the fact that you have to test and play the mode to get a grasp of what is going on and what is strong and why it is strong. Winrate does NOT tell the whole story of what is going on within the mode, so balancing around ONLY that is kind of insane to me.

Even in competitive meta of Light Party play has just devolved to GOATS slop meta where everywhere you look there is 4-5 supports and a choice of 1dps. NA/EU/JP/CN/OCE are all running relatively the same comps, the exception being some of the teams trying 3 support and getting not much value out of it and getting steamrolled due to the difference in comps.

This leads to another point of, why do Supports have so much utility and damage tied to them? It makes sense that they want to keep the game mode role-lock free so they can't absolutely remove all the damage from them, but I think we are starting to get into the point where the powercreep to keep no role-lock viable in Ranked/SoloQ/Casual is impacting the other jobs and roles.

Another big issue is Moderation within the game mode.
Moderation across the past few seasons have been completely awful. Players have taken to Twitter or Community figures to try and get something done about the rampant throwing and griefing within the mode, which leads to players not very inclined to post on the forums (where we are told the balancing team will look) because why would they? They see daily either through their ranked matches or twitch streams, that the problem players are still playing and doing the same things, and all their reports just get sent to the void leaving these problem players off the hook despite everyone's efforts to bring attention to the matter.

I sincerely hope that a balancing devs/community manager or anyone from SE see's these posts, even holding a poll or discussion just to show they care or are present gives the community more hope than anything that they are being heard or seen and that their efforts amount to something.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Crizhalid

It's hilarious how they keep repeating this mistake with the obnoxious cores of PLD/AST sustain and DRK/SCH dampen while also providing every single piece of necessary utility all at once (Why does Chain Stratagem exist?)

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This is exactly right. We already learned the lesson of double heal down during a very long, sad period in the Feast. We're not showing progression in our development.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valence

I do think I mostly agree, although saying that older CCRCs in Endwalker were more comp free than today sounds misleading to me. They were all almost exactly the same at the meta level, with the occasional variant.

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I'm sorry, but the people who have been playing it aren't going to agree with this sentiment. Yes there were balancing opportunities then (MCH and GNB were very unloved), but back then more roles saw use. If we continue this way into CCRC 2026, you're going to see 3 tanks 2 healer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrFakestar

I also agree that they really need to set a predictable cadence for PvP balance if they have any intention on making it a "competitive" experience in any form. There needs to be light numbers passes every few weeks.

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100%. I understand there's a corporate SOP that can slow things down, but I can make these number adjustments by myself in an hour. The caliber of changes 7.35 brought should be a weekly adjustment. For a month-long stretch, this is just nothing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ILovePVP

This leads to another point of, why do Supports have so much utility and damage tied to them? It makes sense that they want to keep the game mode role-lock free so they can't absolutely remove all the damage from them, but I think we are starting to get into the point where the powercreep to keep no role-lock viable in Ranked/SoloQ/Casual is impacting the other jobs and roles.

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1000% everything you said, but this really gets me. I want the freedom for any type of comp to thrive but times like this do make me miss role-locking.