Rival Wings: remove soaring and remove mid

Rival Wings: remove soaring and remove mid. And in general nerf healers. I don't give 2 craps about feast diamond and platinum. Frontlines and Rival wings needs some balance too.

No, the removal of soaring will makes Machina more OP.

Mechs are hardly OP currently. Players however make the frequent mistakes of trying to engage them in choke points, not flanking them, or trying to avoid them altogether. Best thing you can do against a Chaser/Brute is close the gap. Easier to avoid their cones, and they have to try and reposition to hit you, which is time and opportunity to attack them. It's not uncommon that I force Chasers to back off of me.

Soaring needs readjustment, definitely. I get they wanted to create a better Battle High/Fever mechanic, but 20% better everything shared across a team only really lends well to imbalanced practices.

From Q&A it sounds like they do have substantial Rival Wings balance changes coming in patch, including some kind of change to mid. Attempting to balance by adjusting the rules more so than adjusting the job roles. Will see how it goes.

If anything the healers need to be nerfed first and foremost because right now they are far too overpowered and it's ridiculous that two healers and hold off multiple alliances.

I always though they should get rid of player locations on the map, it would be far more strategic having to actually have people scout and keep an eye out. It would vary the game play more instead of just "OPP north" and everyone spamming north. This could also alleviate the whole losing mid = loss because 3 healers are standing there. It would give teams with less mechs more of a chance and let's be real the team that loses the middle will almost always lose minus the odd lucky match.

That or they should make mammets worth some cerulean when killed, like 5 or something because right now 99% of matches come down to having the middle or at least that's how it's been in the numerous matches I'm in every night.

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

20% better everything

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It's actually not 20% for all, the damage taken reduction is only 1% per stack. I do think that the healing potency bonus should probably also be 1% per stack, though... I'm kind of conflicted since I'm a career healer who's played Frontlines for so long and now they've finally added a buff that's tied to KOs that benefits healers. But even I'm kind of tired of seeing legions of healers guarding mid every game; it's not even fun for me as a healer!

Hopefully the generator is altered or removed since I feel like that's mainly where the stacking of healers is overpowered, and maybe with mammets, also. I think someone on the forums here suggested that mammets should have a healing received reduction (maybe it could be -50%?), that would probably help a lot!

Soaring needs readjustment for sure. But instead of removing mid can we just remove all the players who think its the key point of the game??? I kid....mostly....but really, mid is fine. Theres enough tanks people just need to collect them!

Nerf mid - I'm so sick to death of mid, hearing about mid, fighting over mid, etc.

Lose the ability to heal mammets

Speed up the time it takes to gather CE - sick and tired of one healer being able to stop anyone from gathering because they can spam Stone on you faster than you can gather

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Originally Posted by Eight

If anything the healers need to be nerfed first and foremost because right now they are far too overpowered and it's ridiculous that two healers and hold off multiple alliances.

I always though they should get rid of player locations on the map, it would be far more strategic having to actually have people scout and keep an eye out. It would vary the game play more instead of just "OPP north" and everyone spamming north. This could also alleviate the whole losing mid = loss because 3 healers are standing there. It would give teams with less mechs more of a chance and let's be real the team that loses the middle will almost always lose minus the odd lucky match.

That or they should make mammets worth some cerulean when killed, like 5 or something because right now 99% of matches come down to having the middle or at least that's how it's been in the numerous matches I'm in every night.

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Actually, mammets give 1 CE per kill. It's really not much, but if you're steadily pushing mammets and a teammate grabs CE tanks, it can all add up.

And removing player locations on the map would actually do far more harm than good. Simply reading the map has allowed for the most simplistic strategies to work, and this has been true since Frontlines. When you know where they are, you know where they aren't, and can use that to your advantage. People really ought to read their maps more.

As for healers, I'd like to see how Soaring adjustments might help first before it would come down to actual job/role adjustments. I do agree however that even just more than 1 healer in a given area can effectively block almost any kind of progress. Mammets take sigificantly less damage from mechs than healers can restore, and while players can arguably do more, it's no good if 2 healers are pretty much pocketing a mammet.

With regards to Soaring, I did look at the notes again, and at 10 stacks, it's 20% damage increase, 10% less damage taken, and 20% restored, but when you factor that healing potencies already generally sit well above both single hits and full combos, that extra 20% puts DPS at an even further loss. And with faster cast times it's a race most people just can't finish.

Lastly, for mid issues, I'll just quote what I said in a different thread:

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

Part of that is largely due to the fact that players continue to operate on the mistaken impression that capturing and holding mid will win the match for them.

The Generator is NOT a main objective.

Sure, it's nice to have, and it can allow for near continuous spawning of mechs later, but during the initial rush, I've won many matches purely from building momentum against the other team pushing mammets and attacking their towers early. If a teammate grabs CE tanks, we can get an Oppressor out early and drop a tower while people are still trying to contest mid. If this happens on both lanes simultaneously, you've just put the other team in a VERY bad spot, whether you have mid or not.

This is what people continue to fail to understand, and a large reason everything feels so "decided" early into the match. If all you do is try and fail to capture mid right away, you've made no progress. But if you try and fail to capture mid, but had teams attacking their towers already you've made progress, gained momentum, and are in a position to pressure the enemy offensively. This, THIS, is how you win in Rival Wings.

The generator is NOT a main objective. You can however attack and destroy main objectives - towers and cores - whether you control the generator or not.

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If you remove searing, killing players is even less rewarding. I would rather make 30% damage, 20% healing and 10% damage reduction.

I would make killing more rewarding. Make every player death suffer 1% from current tower/core hp max hp.

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Originally Posted by Sunako

I would make killing more rewarding. Make every player death suffer 1% from current tower/core hp max hp.

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That would be abusable by the headless chickens who give up early, or bots/alts throwing matches.
Killing was never a problem or a reward, personal objectives don't do well in a team mode.

edit: I agree soaring needs to be changed. Focused killing need to be rewarded, random/aoe kills no.
Instead of damage buff by percent, why not give vulnerability debuffs to targets.
Amount of soaring stacks sets how many targets we can put those debuffs on.

Incentivizing player KOs would only increase people queueing as/switching to healer in order to try and better avoid it.

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

Incentivizing player KOs would only increase people queueing as/switching to healer in order to try and better avoid it.

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It's always going to be a problem for the masses/general public. Balancing roles can take either from devs making it fixed like Feast, or from the players like Seal Rock. I'm more of the latter since I don't see that problem in older or more stable modes.

Keep in mind, at the height of Seal Rock's popularity (which I hope may rise again with the coming of a new Seize map) healers were healers. Their damage abilities weren't terribly potent and healing vs damage values weren't nearly as skewed as they are now. Having multiple healers then came with the expense of low damage, but that's not quite the case anymore.

In one of the recent interviews where Yoshi P was on some of the servers (Ramuh, Gungnir and another one I can't recall), someone told him to nerf healers in Rival Wings, and he responded that if they did that -- no one would want to play healers in PVP.

So I think what they will do is increase the damage output or otherwise balance other classes to be on the level with healers.

Their damage isn't particularly that high though, just south of 1k a GCD. The healing values were just as skewed then, too; you just didn't feel it as much because you could shut their heals off a lot easier, and there really never was a reason to defensively stack healers, since holding territory alone wasn't as advantageous. Mostly the problem is that there's a lot higher focus on defense than offense in RW for certain key areas, and they didn't rebalance potency when they lessened CC and the LB damage. TBH, they really should just nerf and alter them anyways.

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Originally Posted by Stormfur

In one of the recent interviews where Yoshi P was on some of the servers (Ramuh, Gungnir and another one I can't recall), someone told him to nerf healers in Rival Wings, and he responded that if they did that -- no one would want to play healers in PVP.

So I think what they will do is increase the damage output or otherwise balance other classes to be on the level with healers.

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The way RW is set up makes healing as healing really stupidly inefficient anyways; 4 man parties + having one out of your four players in a mech makes actual healing not even exist. Healing in it is soft tanking, really. If you took healers completely out of the mode, you actually wouldn't miss that much in real play.

I think he is thinking of Feast, but ugh, that mode has been an albatross around our necks since it first came out.

"No one would want to play healers" is not only false, it's an insult to every career healer that learned to play well and became known for it before 4.0. It's either a weak handwave of an answer, or a complete misunderstanding of PvP and its playerbase. For all that I've done, for all I continue to do, I'm able to because I had dedicated, SKILLED healers backing me up.

Healers don't need a nerf, they need proper balancing. I strongly doubt anyone who does it willingly would hold issue with that. I'm sure however anyone holds issue with being told a blatant lie.

With the nerf to class specific skills for lame PVP actions, can they really afford to change healers up that much? We already can't DPS as well, can't AOE heal and lost most CCs. If we can't even hold our ground without dying against DPS that aren't even playing skillfully (not CCing, not using strategy or working together) then what would healers do in RW?

Follow around other players like a walking regen? You'd just as well always jump in a mech since there's not much use otherwise.

This is why I point out Soaring. Healers aren't nearly as bountiful, nor tanky in other PvP modes. It speaks in volumes that suddenly they're an issue when they gain killstreak buffs that they didn't get kills for, or when they can easily heal and push mammets and self sustain unless taken out with numbers or a mech.

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

Actually, mammets give 1 CE per kill. It's really not much, but if you're steadily pushing mammets and a teammate grabs CE tanks, it can all add up.

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It's actually much more than this I believe. The amount of CE you get is proportional to how much damage you/r group dealt to it. I want to say it's actually as high as 10, but it's hard to tell since your own team's mammets do a decent chunk of the damage usually, and I have no idea how healing impacts it.

As far as healing goes.. given I've been leveling AST the last week or so, all I can say is lol. Those times where I'm running around kiting 4-5 players plus mechs that are having difficulty trying to kill me are situations that really, really shouldn't be something that happens. They might not be coordinated on cc or burst, but the sheer HPS vs DPS is redonkulous. 1v1, 2v1, you're practically a god. I don't even have to pay attention to the situations I'm walking into most of the time.

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Originally Posted by saucyshortcake

I don't even have to pay attention to the situations I'm walking into most of the time.

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And THIS is the house that 4.0 PvP and Rival Wings built. But hey it's all fine and well for the Feast and people wouldn't be a healer otherwise, so. . .

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

Actually, mammets give 1 CE per kill. It's really not much, but if you're steadily pushing mammets and a teammate grabs CE tanks, it can all add up.
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That's true I guess I never thought of some of that. I still think the mid needs some kind of changes to it because as soon as one team claims in they pretty much have it most of the game because once mechs start coming out it's too hard to send multiple players in to take care of the 2-3 healers holding it down. Maybe the middle should be on a timer from when it activates and after the timer runs down it has a down time period meaning people would actually have to leave and farm other ways. I guess if that were to happen though other things would have to be buffed to keep CE coming at a steady pace.

That's a great idea actually. It already works like a Seize node. So having it deactivate would encourage players to actively search for tanks, which still promotes PvPing (contesting tank grabs) and solves the problem of people just parking healers in mid all match

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

[...] and solves the problem of people just parking healers in mid all match

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And instead reinforces the problem of healers interrupting CE grabs.

The real issue is that even a BLM with an unlimited Astral Fire, unlimited Enochian and unlimited Mana hack barely reaches a consistent 1195 DPS while a Scholar can consistently deal 434 DPS and negate 1080 DPS in the same time, leading to the team with the two button SCH gaining a net 319 DPS advantage. WHM isn't much better - Regen and Cure I spam result in roughly 1580 HPS (Regen is 500, Cure I 1080), so the 1195 DPS of the hacking BLM get entirely negated and there's still room for additional DPS from other sources before the team with the WHM even has a net loss of health. And this is with a BLM that flat out hacks to considerably increase his DPS and healers that don't even use half their base kit. The discrepancy gets a lot worse when you remove the hacks and actually account for more than 2 healer buttons.

To balance this discrepancy in sustained throughput out, the BLM has 2,5k health less and his burst is appropriately weaker than the healer's burst healing. Because it makes sense to compensate someone's shortcomings in one area by giving them more shortcomings in other areas. Soaring really is just the icing on that giant cake.

Healers are playing in an entirely different power league than the common rabble, that's the real issue. Hence, the sentence "We got no healers, avoid PvP unless it's stragglers" is a thing inside a PvP instance and even the most delusional Feast players have realized by now that the healer is the most influential role in there. And thanks to their popularity statement, the culprit is confirmed: They are tuning jobs by popularity, not by power. I avoid the term "balancing" in that context.

The solution is obvious: Drag healers down to the power level of other ranged characters, somehow. Nerfs, reworks, whatever.

But that can't happen with popularity being a factor. So what I surmise SE is going to do is to give mammets a small (25%) infirmity debuff on their attacks, nerf mid CE generation, do 'something' random about tanks, nerf soaring a little for everyone and call it a day. They supposedly have a lot of changes planned, so you can try to be optimistic, but I'd keep that optimism in check and mentally prepare yourself for people, to quote our adaption specialist of the forum, "avoid the circumstances which frustrate them" by simply not queuing up or using a bot.

Don't worry, by the time any changes are made to Astragalos, 95% of the people queueing will be bots anyway, since SE has pretty much confirmed that they don't care if people use them 24/7 instead of actually playing the game.