Thoughts on the new meta?

Personally, I think it's garbage. Too much LB, too much stack hiding from said LB, ranged are now eclipsing melees in damage dealt, still relies too heavily on 2 DPS pounding out an enemy through Adlo, Cure II, Aspected Bene spam, also the opening fight is way too important now because if you get boxed out of middle you give up the first LB...which is going to be used to snowball the game further...until you get your LB and try to make a hero play with melee LB. Nothing feels good. Every game is down to the wire regardless of which team is better. Someone on here mentioned that it's just hot potato until the clock hits 0. Perfect explanation.

Saddest part? The first iteration of The Feast still eclipses all of these changes easily. The first Feast was 80% skill/teamwork and 20% game mode cheese gimmicks. Now it feels more like 50/50 at most.

Agreed with everything but the ranged comment. Ranged dps comes nowhere near competent Melee. They just completely trash the bad melees damage. The current iteration basically forces every match to 8min which is awful. Melee LB has way to much pull in every match and cheese is deciding 80% of matches

Really, all they need to do to fix the overuse of the melee limit break is to make it do static damage, with no increase in damage if the target has stacks of medals. I see this too much as a tank. Instantly dying when at full HP and with a stoneskin because the LB does 20,000 damage due to 7 stacks of medals.

Could argue that I shouldn't have 7 stacks of medals, but you should have to work to kill me instead of getting an easy one shot.

The feast was fine pre-season, a little fine tuning woulda been great but after the changes they definitely made it worse

They wanted to make the matches shorter, so they decreased the time limit and added more adrenaline, more attack buffs, decreased respawn time
this actually made the games longer, 70-75% of my matches in solo queue out of nearly 200 games so far end up being the entire 8 minutes, where the last 30 seconds is MOST of the time decided by a limit break and people running around kiting with medals.
They made it less competitive and cheesier than Wisconsin

They also have little clue on what they're doing with job balance

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Originally Posted by Rhode

Really, all they need to do to fix the overuse of the melee limit break is to make it do static damage, with no increase in damage if the target has stacks of medals. I see this too much as a tank. Instantly dying when at full HP and with a stoneskin because the LB does 20,000 damage due to 7 stacks of medals.

Could argue that I shouldn't have 7 stacks of medals, but you should have to work to kill me instead of getting an easy one shot.

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No one should be able to go above 4 stacks. Anything higher is personal error

I hated the old metagame before, and i hate this new one even more. It's just LB spam and whoever can burst who first or best. There is no nuance, no strategy, no alternative methods of winning.

IMO cut out LB's from the game and give new pvp skills to the players and go from there.

Just curious but how does these recent changes affected 4v4 light party? is it still good or does it play like solo in terms of meta? To be honest they should balance Feast around light party instead solo as solo is not even close to be competitive, i have said it before but i say it again, arenas are made for pre-mades and not for PuG's because if you want it to be truly competitive it requires proper communication and you simply cannot get that with randoms w/o voicecomms.

Sure its nice that there is option for solo play but i cannot see it as an competitive mode for above reasons, hell i am solo player myself when it comes to PvP but i simply cannot enjoy arena mode unless its pre-made(not big fan of arenas in firstplace but if i would do it seriously it would be with premade).

PS: I still dont kinda get it why they even made new mode instead fixing old WD, atleast there wasnt any coin gimmicks thus it was true and original TDM arena.

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Originally Posted by MinhSa

The feast was fine pre-season, a little fine tuning woulda been great but after the changes they definitely made it worse

They wanted to make the matches shorter, so they decreased the time limit and added more adrenaline, more attack buffs, decreased respawn time
this actually made the games longer, 70-75% of my matches in solo queue out of nearly 200 games so far end up being the entire 8 minutes, where the last 30 seconds is MOST of the time decided by a limit break and people running around kiting with medals.
They made it less competitive and cheesier than Wisconsin

They also have little clue on what they're doing with job balance

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Yup. I really don't think they know what they are doing.

They wanted the matches to end faster but about 4 out of 5 matches runs the clock out. And all of those were probably decided in the last minute and probably by an LB. I don't even enjoy winning by an LB in the last ~10 seconds. It feels hallow and like we didn't even earn it. Not to mention as a healer its literally 8 minutes of stress match after match after match and I'm starting to not want to queue up any more.

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Originally Posted by Exira

Agreed with everything but the ranged comment. Ranged dps comes nowhere near competent Melee. They just completely trash the bad melees damage. The current iteration basically forces every match to 8min which is awful. Melee LB has way to much pull in every match and cheese is deciding 80% of matches

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Originally Posted by MinhSa

The feast was fine pre-season, a little fine tuning woulda been great but after the changes they definitely made it worse

They wanted to make the matches shorter, so they decreased the time limit and added more adrenaline, more attack buffs, decreased respawn time
this actually made the games longer, 70-75% of my matches in solo queue out of nearly 200 games so far end up being the entire 8 minutes, where the last 30 seconds is MOST of the time decided by a limit break and people running around kiting with medals.
They made it less competitive and cheesier than Wisconsin

They also have little clue on what they're doing with job balance

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I pretty much echo both of these. Right now, the games flip-flop way too much, and it has nothing to do with skill. It is really less of a game of PVP, and more a game of "Who can LB the person in the last 30 seconds to win the game". I'm going to do a feedback write up soon detailing what I think they should do with Heavy Medal, Limit Break, etc, so I won't detail it too much here. Just wanted to say I agree with both of you.

There is no such thing as Job balance in this game.
SMN sucks. MCH and DRG burst rapes and is at ridiculous levels.
Damage dealt isn't a good way to show who is strong or not (unless you're unnaturally low for the duration of the round) since the whole game is based on Burst.

And I agree, this mode is the reason for starvation, world wars and rape.

Pretty much echo everyone else's sentiments here. The first version of The Feast was the best, it was actually fun. Now it's 7 and a half minutes of trading medals until the team with the most gets limit breaked in the last few seconds. Joy.

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Originally Posted by Cherub

Damage dealt isn't a good way to show who is strong or not (unless you're unnaturally low for the duration of the round) since the whole game is based on Burst.

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You can thank the existence of healers for that - if non-lethal damage doesn't stick, burst becomes king. Without healers or other sustain options, poke and kite strategies would rule supreme. As with most things, the middle ground is where things become really interesting. Alas, with the game's design, no middle ground will ever be had >_>

To take is a step further, I noticed last night that NONE of my 11 games ended by someone obtaining maximum medals. That's just unheard of now of days. I like that there is LB in the middle, because I think centralized objectives can work..but this is too much. Not to mention, melee LB is far better than any other ones. They need to tone it down a little bit, make the cast time longer so you can feasibly maybe drop a tank LB right before hand.

Also, I wish medals didn't drop as as full stack. You wanna carry 10 stacks? Fine, but now I have to do it because you did? Also, the medals for each icon are stupid. It's like coin for 5 medals, bag for 10, and treasure chest for 20. So you can't even get a good reading, while in the moment, of how much you're gonna pick up. Sometimes I'm at 1 stack, pick up a treasure chest and I go to 5..sometimes I go to 10 and I'm like well fuck me.

It just seems they conceded so much to healers with the casting change, and the wall change..but then they were like "whoops now nobody dies, what do we do? Let's put artificial power on the map so people still get kills!"
I don't know, the casting change should have been 5% HP for healers and 10% for DPS. 5% was enough so that auto's and tomahawks didn't cancel casts. Either that, or add a cast canceling affect to Heavy Swing (even though now that's putting way too much power onto a CD). They wanted to get rid of the Wolves' Den style of "everyone pound on one guy" but then they made it the same away again.

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Originally Posted by Exira

Agreed with everything but the ranged comment. Ranged dps comes nowhere near competent Melee.

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Is this a joke? It's so much easier for a ranged to keep up with damage, even while being focused and forced to kite, than a melee. If a melee is focused then their damage is going to suffer severely, and if they get focused hard enough to have to kite then the problem is even worse. Ranged have it way better off atm.

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Originally Posted by Koltik

Is this a joke? It's so much easier for a ranged to keep up with damage, even while being focused and forced to kite, than a melee. If a melee is focused then their damage is going to suffer severely, and if they get focused hard enough to have to kite then the problem is even worse. Ranged have it way better off atm.

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I haven't seen the two top monks on aether have a problem with that. And I KNOW they get focused. Everyone's damage suffers when they're focused. You can't make an argument for it when you apply a condition to one role vs the other. There's a reason melee can carry trash tier ranged but not the other way around.

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Originally Posted by Exira

I haven't seen the two top monks on aether have a problem with that. And I KNOW they get focused. Everyone's damage suffers when they're focused. You can't make an argument for it when you apply a condition to one role vs the other. There's a reason melee can carry trash tier ranged but not the other way around.

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You sound clueless. A ranged can't carry their team? Man, you must be telling another joke. Does Aether really have no good MCH over there? Come over to Primal and play with Curty Ballistar, you'll see just how much a MCH can carry their team.

Then there's the BLM Accelerator Xiv on Mana, you're telling me he got Plat without carrying his team? get real.

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Originally Posted by Koltik

You sound clueless. A ranged can't carry their team? Man, you must be telling another joke. Does Aether really have no good MCH over there? Come over to Primal and play with Curty Ballistar, you'll see just how much a MCH can carry their team.

Then there's the BLM Accelerator Xiv on Mana, you're telling me he got Plat without carrying his team? get real.

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Not sure why you're getting so aggressive. You literally can't carry like a melee can with lb. It's just facts I'd appreciate it if you toned down the hostility. No there's 5 or less ranged in the top 50 in aether. We have a ton of bad melee who can't kill people. Your data center =/= mine. I didn't say you couldn't carry I said you couldn't carry a bad melee. Please take the time to read

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Originally Posted by Exira

Not sure why you're getting so aggressive. You literally can't carry like a melee can with lb. It's just facts I'd appreciate it if you toned down the hostility. No there's 5 or less ranged in the top 50 in aether. We have a ton of bad melee who can't kill people. Your data center =/= mine. I didn't say you couldn't carry I said you couldn't carry a bad melee. Please take the time to read

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Except you can, and I've seen it happen. I've gone against MCH and BLM who have completely trash melee on their team, but since those two classes have so much burst potential and pressure then it doesn't matter. 90% of the healers who queue just don't know how to handle the burst that ranged classes and DRG's bring to the table.

And I can apply a condition to one role vs the other. If a melee is forced to kite, their damage drops to 0. They can't hit back if they're trying to kite / stay alive. A ranged DPS can still attack whoever they are kiting, and lose no damage in the process. It's much easier to kite as a ranged while keeping pressure up on the enemy team.

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Originally Posted by Koltik

Except you can, and I've seen it happen. I've gone against MCH and BLM who have completely trash melee on their team, but since those two classes have so much burst potential and pressure then it doesn't matter.

And I can apply a condition to one role vs the other. If a melee is forced to kite, their damage drops to 0. They can't hit back if they're trying to kite / stay alive. A ranged DPS can still attack whoever they are kiting, and lose no damage in the process.

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Ranged dps loses no dps while kiting? Yea tell that to my cast times. Having to drop wanderers to kite is the definition of a dps loss

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Originally Posted by Koltik

Come over to Primal and play with Curty Ballistar, you'll see just how much a MCH can carry their team.

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This guy is probably the closest guy we have here in primal to that monk beast in Aether. Literally the only person in the entire primal data center who when I see is on the other side I feel like I already fking lost lol. No other player on primal makes me feel this way save for him. Thank god he doesnt PVP nearly as frequently as others do so I dont run into him as much. I mean dont get me wrong its fun to go against him and challenge him but he can really fk up your record if you face him too much. There's a reason he ranks #2 despite the relatively few games he's played compared to others and why he's only one of two guys atm among the top 100 with that absurd 80%+ win rate.

I don't see why a Ranged can't carry a bad melee, having a cast time doesn't automatically make them bad at carrying (especially with the interrupt change). Effective use of CC and keeping their team apart can change the flow of battle just as drastically as raw damage, given a BLMs power to pump out Fire IVs and IIIs and a MCH utility belt with their fast burst with procs/wildfire, it's not hard to see why either class can't do both. You can even throw SMN in there with the mass DoTs putting on healer pressure.

Also, for all intents and purposes, saying a Melee's LB has a better carry rate in the current state of feast you might as well admit it is a push to win button on anyone with a medal stacks (which is just a flaw of how the mode work). If they null the medal effect on LBs and/or reduced the dmg, then that argument flies out the window as quickly as it came.