Please fix job matching when queuing for Frontlines! (No need for 4 healers)

When I do Frontlines, I often get in a group with 3 or 4 healers.
Today, I got in a 6 person party. 1 DPS (me). 1 tank. 4 healers.

In Seal Rock, this is manageable, somewhow, because we only have to capture and hold the Tomelith. But it's still terrible.
Even as healers, people can defend it long enough without dying.

However, in the new Frontlines, there is absolutely no need for 4 healers in one party.

In fact, is the almost impossible to win with this type of party because healers put out almost no damage to destroy the ice.

I asked at least 1 person to change, and for the first 10 minutes or so, no one would. Halfway in, one healer changed to black mage. (Everyone had other jobs at level 60)

Why is it acceptable for the system to match this type of party together?
Please fix this system.

In the new Frontlines, there is only a need for 1, maybe 2, healers.
Why is it acceptable to have a party of 1 DPS, 1 tank, and 4 healers, who cannot use cleric stance, in a Frontlines where the main goal is to deal damage?

Please do something about this. Thank you!

I couldn't imagine any other way of fixing this than by implementing role requirements for queues and preventing people from swapping jobs inside a match. Probably a deathblow to FL as queue times would go through the roof.

Or I suppose they could totally overhaul pvp abilities and have healers "heal" in the same sense that tanks "tank". Unfortunately, it looks like they're going in the opposite direction with composition requirements by making physical dps the dedicated crystal damagers.

There's so few people who pvp and now you want to be picky about job selection? ok then. If anything, they should give healers cleric stance back but balance it.

I guess the PvP wait times are very different on Oceanic servers. During prime time the wait time is only about 5 minutes.

Then let healers use cleric stance or let healers do damage just to crystals then.
I just hope something is done because it's really frustrating to be in a group of only 6 people and 4 of them are healers.

From a tactical standpoint, I've seen that used as a battle strategy. 3 healers, 1 tank (usually a WAR for the dps), and 4 dps

Tank/melee DPS scouts/marks targets ahead of the party, either the tank stuns, or the melee opens with a stun, then all engage that single target and neutralize. If the tank/melee is engaged first, healers set to work overhealing any damage done as they fall back to the healer line, while ranged begins to pick them off. If the healer is somehow targeted, the healers focus on each other as the melee flanks & stuns, and all DPS neutralize the attacker.

There's of course, variations of this strat, but it effectively covers both offense and defense in nearly any situation.

Except what is happening isn't 3 healers, 1 tank, and 4 DPS.

It's 4 healers, 1 tank, 1 DPS in a Frontlines where the main objective is to deal damage to ice.

Our strategy was to capture to empty enemy bases, but of course it was unsuccessful.

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Originally Posted by FinaSel

Except what is happening isn't 3 healers, 1 tank, and 4 DPS.

It's 4 healers, 1 tank, 1 DPS in a Frontlines where the main objective is to deal damage to ice.

Our strategy was to capture to empty enemy bases, but of course it was unsuccessful.

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You went the whole match missing 2 players?

Please no. You understand how truly broken the duty finder is. Please don't add more calculations to it.

I'm lucky if I get even one healer on my team in Frontlines. Having four healers would be very unusual. Having four healers who don't have a single alternate job to play on would be somewhere close to the same odds as winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning. It's not impossible, surely, but it's definitely not a frequent enough occurrence to warrant amputating the only leg that queue times are currently standing on.

You're being overly dramatic for a non-issue, especially on Elemental. I've not once had a Frontline match where there were 4 or more healers. Sometimes there's 3, but the majority of the time you'll have a couple of people do that awkward job switch dance until it's just 2 healers.

Adding job restrictions will only destroy Frontlines. Even if there was a restriction on the queue, people could just switch when inside. If you want to have control over your setup: roll a premade.

People jump at the chance over here to switch from healers to dps. I've had parties where we have 4 heals. Most times even before I say "2 healers need to switch to dps", two will have already switched anyway. Now asking people to switch from dps to heal on the other hand....

I can't tell you the number of times I've had 4 healers on one team. Definitely more than 10. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more than 20.

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Originally Posted by Dimitrii

You went the whole match missing 2 players?

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Almost the entire match before 2 people came in. All of the ice had already popped and been destroyed before they came. Not enough time for either of those two people to contribute to any kills to damage to ice.

Also, as I mentioned in the previous post. All 4 healers DID have other jobs at 60. I asked at least 1 person to change to DPS before the match began. No one did.

This happens so often that I actually made a macro that explains the odds of winning with 4 healers and asks people to change.
Rarely do people want to do this. It results in a guaranteed loss for the team.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FinaSel

I can't tell you the number of times I've had 4 healers on one team. Definitely more than 10. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more than 20.



Almost the entire match before 2 people came in. All of the ice had already popped and been destroyed before they came. Not enough time for either of those two people to contribute to any kills to damage to ice.

Also, as I mentioned in the previous post. All 4 healers DID have other jobs at 60. I asked at least 1 person to change to DPS before the match began. No one did.

This happens so often that I actually made a macro that explains the odds of winning with 4 healers and asks people to change.
Rarely do people want to do this. It results in a guaranteed loss for the team.

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Still stupid complain I doubt that this is happening often. Im glad if ppl heal complaining about the amount of healers is just meh maybe they wanted to troll ?

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Originally Posted by TiaHariberux3

Still stupid complain I doubt that this is happening often. Im glad if ppl heal complaining about the amount of healers is just meh maybe they wanted to troll ?

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Let me try to explain it another way. It's like queuing for a trial with a DPS check and getting 4 healers. And it happens every week. It's not a stupid complaint because the content clearly can't be completed with this group. You can't win, and you know it as soon as the trial begins. But, you have to do it anyway for 30 minutes.

If anyone was getting this type of group for a trial with a DPS check, they would justifiably be upset.

This new PvP content is not designed to have 4 healers in 1 group. So why does the system allow this? To say it is not flawed to put 4 healers in a group where high DPS is the key to victory is silly.
There is a much higher probability to win the new Frontlines content with no healers than with 4 healers. Especially 4 healers, 1 tank, and 1 DPS.

I made another topic about this a long time ago because it was happening so often then.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...2824-person%29

The problem is still ongoing. Using the advice in the other post, we did manage to win once or twice in Seal Rock. But it's basically impossible to win with 4 healers and only 1 DPS in the new Frontlines.

At that time, my only level 60 class was WHM. I was so fed up with having so many healers that I decided to level BLM to 60, just to help DPS.
And now that I play BLM in PvP, someone else fills that 4th healer slot.

Maybe the grass is always greener on the other side.
Some people say they want more people to heal and there aren't enough healers.
In my groups there are too many healers and I want more DPS.
Maybe it's different on my data center? But there are so many healers in PvP.

Would you not complain if you have 4 healers, 1 tank, and you were in only DPS? And you asked others to change and no one would, even though they could? And keep in mind this is in Fields of Glory where the outcome of the match is largely decided on damage output? And this happens at least once a week? Please think about it this way and maybe you will agree that this is not a stupid complaint.

There must be something the developers can do.

I have to admit I'm guilty of this, though it's not for the lack of trying.

I used to switch to dps when there were too many healers on the team, but nearly all of those ended really badly. Experience has shown me not to trust a 8k HP healer to keep a team alive, and there's always one or two in that situation. No vitality accessories/extra attributes clearly shows they are new to PvP and will most likely have a hard time handling the pressure.

It is most likely they queued PvP as a healer because they are most familiar with it when it comes to PvE. It shouldn't take them long to realize PvP is a different beast and either adjust to it, change class or simply stop. Them having other jobs at 60 doesn't mean they did more with them than reaching to the cap. It is very possible they are unfamiliar with them or have never bothered setting them up for PvP, and that's not something you can do in under a minute (have to fit all those additional skills somewhere and adjust bindings). I have everything at 60 and I haven't played over half of them since, much less have I took the time to set up more than a few for PvP.

In the end, they have their mind set on healing just as much as I do and that's why you end up with nobody switching. Does it suck? Sure it does. I can't say I've seen it happen nearly as often as you have mentioned however. I'm pretty sure the opposite situation where nobody wants to heal happens a lot more and I would argue that is worse.

There isn't much that can be done about it. The only thing that could would be to enforce roles, but I feel that would have a bigger negative impact than it would do good in the end.

• As Feast has shown us, some roles (namely DPS) would get longer queues, especially if you combine it with the current Grand Company restrictions that already make the wait pretty long for some people. You cannot compare this with how it works in PvE simply because the population isn't there to support it. The PvP community is way smaller.
• You lose a lot of flexibility when it comes to composition. Each map has it's particularities that make a global enforced composition unpractical. There are situation where a single (good) healer is enough, others where you'd rather have 2 or even more. You can absolutely do without a tank in Shatter to get a bit more damage on crystals. It would also prevent you from switching from a melee to a range in an attempt to balance your team. People rarely change job in the middle of a frontline to adapt to a situation (e.g. switch to a more defensive composition to hold an outpost at the end of Shatter), but it remains an option.

TLDR version: I don't think anything should be changed.