Can the Maelstrom Ever win?

I don't know what happened, but wow.

I have been playing Frontlines a decent amount since the update. I was trying for 4 or 5 games a day on my days off. (But that was before the cues got really bad) And the Maelstrom was pretty decent. Winning slightly more games than we lost.

But now it is pretty much an auto-lose as soon as the match starts.

And everyone in my party and alliance is so beat down and resigned to it. it is kinda sad. It is like a bunch of wounded soldiers being thrown back into a battle that they know is lost. No comradery, no enjoyment, just quietly marching to our death for a handful of tomes.

What can be done? I want to like it but it is disheartening when you see us almost instantly be behind by 20 or 30 points at the start of the game.


I'm a White mage. I cant get any kills in slaughter. I can just keep people alive and hope to get enough wins for a mount. But now that seems eve like it is beyond my reach.

I personally don't even queue for Slaughter, there's nothing fun in it, and as a healer/melee it's just raising people until MP drained or running after people and having limit break interrupted.

Playing only Secure has been quite fruitful this week, actually. Was just aiming to do my challenge log, but then this happened:

http://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/...al/3108479.jpg

I've always queued alone, so the groups were never premade. But they seemed to work. :)

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Originally Posted by Haprimac

I personally don't even queue for Slaughter, there's nothing fun in it, and as a healer/melee it's just raising people until MP drained or running after people and having limit break interrupted.

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Pretty much sums up my experience,

I'm on Maelstrom and I noticed more people in general join them due to the detail of the vanity hunt gear, the pvp veterans know this and join adder or flames. Its also the reason why queue times are hell.

I was going Roulette.

But if the cues are faster and a bit more fun for secure I am there.

You're on the Aether data center, and what I can see from here: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...=&match=&gcid=
Many players have 80%+ win rate so there appears to be some kind of premade on the Adder/Flames. Looks like you need to either switch GC's, server transfer, or make your own premade.

Maelstrom has been better this week on aether. I know a few flames that have switched to maelstrom you have better ques. In 24 man secure the teams are about equal. In 72 I have rarely seen Maelstrom win. The only matches I have seen is when I see ex adder and flames on that side.

Problem is you guys never play for first. It just seems like you are always content for some hope of second. This is just observational from flames side. But a lot of matches you never push in hopes of first. The ones I have seen you guys win you always help the other team push the first team at the end. Mages can only cometeor one team. Yet time after time I see maelstrom trying to get kills from second in hope to reach second. Which also forces second place to push back against you.

I think Aether Maelstrom doesn't actually have a premade. So it is non stop Pugs.

And you know how pugs can be if things start going even slightly bad:

"The Sky! It is Falling! Abandon All Hope!"

It is like a super ugly every man for himself.

I am kinda thinking that I need to jump ship. But that feels like I am just giving up.

As to not pushing for first I don't know. I really don't.
I just move around and heal everyone as well as I can and contribute some Areos and try to knock somebody off the edge when I can. But healing that madness doesn't leave much time for any damage dealing.

Aether has a bad group for Maelstrom I hear.

We are fine on Primal, however. I started in about October and my first two months were a bit rough since I was new to it all.

My record at the moment is...

All Time -
329 1st
337 2nd
229 3rd

Weekly -
30 1st
13 2nd
12 3rd

Many of my 2nds were close. :(

on OUR datacenter, Adders have a massive remade linkshell on the server stragaerias while Flames have a massive linkshell on Gilgamesh while storm has.....well nothing.

the aether data centre is plagued by premades basically farming flames for instant wins

Yeah, I've heard about Aether woes. I wonder why it is that way, to be honest. :(

We use to be decent in Secure. Slaughter however was named for our attempts with it lol. I think with time we will get better we always seem to have new comers and im not seeing any of the old names I was accustom to seeing in my parties or Alliances.

The flames on aether usually have no healer, So it kinda forced us to be better pvper's. As far as premades, in secure it's almost always a pug group of people who know how the play. The reason marl never wins is because they focus on kills instead of points, I can run down the ramp durning nodes and pull 4-5 of them. 1 death vs and extra 40 points is always worth it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Santherelle

I think Aether Maelstrom doesn't actually have a premade. So it is non stop Pugs.

And you know how pugs can be if things start going even slightly bad:

"The Sky! It is Falling! Abandon All Hope!"

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Agreed. Queing for Mael is like gambling when you know the house always wins. At this point, the only thing we have control over is the kind of lube we want to use on ourselves. There's no way a PUG full of clashing egos and solo-heroes can compete with the precision and coordination of a premade group.

When I que alone (99% of the time), I can only hope I get paired with the best of the best (big shout out to Avesta, Litz, Shoji, Tete, Teddy, Goffard, Zok, Belius, Wyu, Drunk History and many more) because then I know sh*t's gonna get done. Most of the people I like are from different servers. On my server (I can't speak for the whole Aether data center), Adders and Flames have damn near full linkshells of premades. I struggle to find good players to que with. I'm in a Mael PvP LS and all of the members are very good players (imo) that mesh well together, but we are a small group and very rarely are we all online at the same time (time zone differences)...but those rare moments are the best.

I actively try to recruit for my PvP LS by looking at the leaderboards when the round ends, identifying repeat players and seeing who's doing the most damage/healing/kills from my server. I know it's not a very good way to judge individual skill, but at least I can get an idea of their effort and reach out to see if they're interested in joining. I encourage others to do the same if you'd like to build premades.

TL;DR - We have to fight premades with premades if we want more wins.

After some soul searching and pressure from friends I have *choke, sniffle* abandoned the ship that was the Maelstrom for the drier environs of the Immortal Flames.

I may fight for Uldath for the moment, but my heart will always belong to the sea.

Dee Lo didn't you use to be flames. Some of the names i am sure used to be flames. I solo que. If there is some great flame premade I aint seeing it. I might be in one of the larger shells on Balmung. There is no coordinated chat that I know of going on.

Just look at the top 15 Flames and top 15 Adders. While this proves nothing it can allow for some conclusions. Some Adders on this forum have claimed that they are not premades and not using chat to spam cometeor. I am sure they wouldn't lie, to make themselves look better. The Flame wins are spread out. You may also be suffering from just a lack of tested players. Quick scan of your list shows what seems to be less rank 40+. So you are bound to suffer.


Something else on maelstrom side. You never seem to have at least 6 healers. How do you expect to win that way? I like to see the healing stats at the end. You guys consistently have the least amount of healing. It is not the best to heal but you need them to anchor the team. Unless your dps is pure awesome.

Stormrider: I think I switched from Adder to Mael but that happened way back before Frontlines was in the picture. I am 100% sure that I've always participated in Frontlines with Maelstrom as my GC. As far as you not seeing flame premades, I believe you, but that just tells me even your PUGs seem to outperform ours, haha. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we're ALL bad or stupid or whatever, nor do we lose ALL the time...just most of the time.

Isn't there a Balmung Storm team on Aether? I know Adder has a Gilg premade recently transferred over from Flames. I don't know if Flames has a premade anymore, although I see some strong individual players. Someone said there is a Sarg adder shell, but I don't think that is true. It's just my FC mates and a few other people like me on our Adder alts queueing together. We do really well but don't queue often enough to impact the scoreboards much.

What might be affecting storm wins is that Adder on Aether has recently moved to some strat where 2 groups go to Manor, and no groups go to Markets, which started happening when the premades insisted on going Markets no matter what team they were on, but often didn't leave the center. Which is fine for a premade because if you have a premade you can't really lose no matter where you send the teams, but I think it's a horrible strat in general when the 3 sides are balanced for many reasons. It's only my alt's GC so idc and I just follow the flow.

Note that Adders on Aether has Collision, D&T, and Modified FCs playing on their side, so they really can't lose. Since I don't queue premades as much anymore, I just queue on my adder chars when they are queueing and queue on my non-adder chars when they are not.

This game could really benefit from a cross-server friends list. Frontlines is a prime example where you see the same people on different servers and it would be great to be able to communicate and queue with them, especially for a GC like storm here.

Side note - Momo, have you guys been able to put a group together to fight gilgamesh yet?? I'm having a tough time getting people to want to do slaughter with queues potentially 30+mins =/. We've found it's especially bad if you queue as a partial group, had one friday night that took 100 mins to pop (we forgot we even queued at that point) when we queued as 4 people. I've been mostly solo queuing as it seems to be a bit faster and I don't have to worry about someone having to bail 50+ mins into the queue.

Nah, my flames group has kinda stopped when slaughter took over. The queue times were also pretty bad for us, but we were queueing when the gilg team was on flames still so that might have made it worse. We haven't tried much since then, just some of us solo queue from time to time :c

I'd like to join or help start a Maelstrom Group on Balmung, but I really don't have the time to really lead. My attendance times are kinda irregular right now.

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Originally Posted by Blubbers

snip

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We aren't interested in it lately. When the team's together again we're gonna queue up for Secure. In the meantime some of us have been doing Wolves' Den with our friends from Balmung.

Mana Maelstorm always get bullied whenever they are 2nd or 3rd rank. Funny that some match Alliance A and C always ambush flame node and they don't care with Adder node lol.

Crimson Slayers! your Premade, Maelstorm Pvp HQ here in Zalera. Apply to <UNITY> today and enjoy Maelstorm wins on Aether!

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Originally Posted by Deelo

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When I que alone (99% of the time), I can only hope I get paired with the best of the best (big shout out to Avesta, Litz, Shoji, Tete, Teddy, Goffard, Zok, Belius, Wyu, Drunk History and many more) ...

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<3

For those wondering what it's like being Maelstrom/Flames in Aether atm:

http://i.imgur.com/MHdISW3.png
http://i.imgur.com/2Ivph6y.png

A month ago they were flames, maybe they'll switch to Maelstrom next month (probably going for all 3 PVP ponies)
http://i.imgur.com/A2jHbvD.png

..Edit..

They usually are always rocking 1 smn, probably for tri-disaster CC.

I've faced them as healer. I had a melee in my party before at 4.1k full health, with Stoneskin buff - get killed instantly.

Not just bursted down. I mean 1 second they are 4.1k health & buffed, next second 0 hp - dead.

Absolutely nothing can prevent a full focused/coordinated Fire1 salvo (in AF3). They get battle highs before the first node is dead, and cometeor spam begins.

Fun stuff... 24man slaughter is where it's at anyway, I try to avoid 72man, if I get matched against them, it's Secure only for the rest of the night :)

Yeah, 2 wins this morning in the 24 Man Slaughter.

Its Maelstrom Mornings in Aether methinks. But honestly what Aether Maelstrom needs is some good Premades. That's usually what causes any of the other teams to dominate.

Adders have multiple PvP Linkshells on Balmung, I'm sure the Flames do as well, not sure about Maelstrom ... lol

I'd be all for it, I've got 3 seperate Mael PvP Linkshells, but mostly everyone I know all agreed the queue times just doesn't justify it.

With one, we sat inqueue as 8player full pt premade for 90 mins before pop.

If these Gilgamesh folks are lurking on these forums, don't be shy ;3 what's your queue secret?

If it were an FC doing Treasure Maps / (The Hunt) Party I can imagine having FL queue active while doing so is nice multitasking, not sure who really wants to invest that many hours for just 1 or 2 matches though..