How do I get better at Crystal Conflict?

...Beyond git gud scrub? This is a sincere question.

I'm a casual but long-time PvP player, mostly Frontline and Hidden Gorge. When I first started Frontline, I had -no idea- what was going on, but I read my tool tips, figured out the powers, saw what worked, and followed the crowd. When zerg-rushing wasn't giving me the info I needed, I wandered the map for a while looking for smaller fights so I could see how my abilities worked. Eventually figured out that I loved WAR in PvP for their survivability and ability to yank a foe to me (often a healer), hold them there, kick-stun them, and hopefully my allies are helping me burn them down before all that wears off. Was fun! And I'm actually pretty good at calling out tactics for my team nowadays, when I want to.

Hidden Gorge, went in blind my first time: had a blast, but wtf was even going on here? Eventually figured out the mechanics the trains and mercs and mechs and turrets and towers and all of it, slowly but steadily got better. Still a bit salty I can only play it nowadays during the first week or two of Moogle Treasure Trove events.

Crystalline Conflict: played my first match, ran in with my group, flashies! Damage everywhere! I'm dead! Repeat a couple times! Match over! Oooookay. Read my tooltips more carefully, get a vague idea how they interact, rearrange them a bit, try a few more matches.

Basically, I've lost every match, and I just feel rather lost and overwhelmed. What was even happening? Senses overloaded with bright flashies, sometimes my HP bar would go down and up depending (presumably) on my self-heals, sometimes I would just...get deleted. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, not sure how to improve...because I can't filter out what's happening. In Frontline I could seek out smaller packs to fight, in Hidden Gorge I could just sort of watch what people were doing, follow that, and eventually start figuring things out. For both, I was enjoying myself right from the start, even as I bumbled around, I think in part because I could at least vaguely see a path to understanding and improvement.

In Crystalline Conflict, my only option seems to be to keep throwing myself into the middle of things, hoping I'll eventually start magically figuring stuff out. I don't know, through osmosis or something. There's no hook, no path I see to clarity and improvement.

Am I missing something? Am I the only one feeling this way? Honestly curious.

I have played over 12 hours the past 2 days and im still bronze 3. I refuse to believe everyone is having this experience so I can improve on some things but I do think being on Crystal is making it an extra special layer of hell. Im not saying we dont have good players, but historically and you can see the data for this, Crystal is not tryhards by any stretch of the imagination, nor do they aspire to be so the struggle is immense.

Some matches are pure RNG if you win or lose due to the nature of there being no role restrictions, you are also stuck as the class you queued as, ontop of how fast games can swing back and forth. I've had a game where we had 3 Tanks and 2 DPS and somehow won against a more balanced composition. I don't think the game mode has had too much thought put into it in the grand scheme of things past being a quick casual muck about, so it works well as a casual PvP experience but I don't think it should have a Ranked gamemode in it's current state until they've balanced it out properly and got more player feedback first to adjust the systems and matchmaking to account for any shortcomings the gamemode may have, so it can provide a better experience for competitive play (at least for ranked).

I've reached Plat 4, almost hit Plat 3 before going back and forth on stars struggling to climb up.

Generally most of the time, the team which wins is the one that focuses on which target to burst and doesn't waste all their oGCDs on a target that is guarded and try to snowball whilst maintaining kills so the enemy team is unable to push them off the objective whilst gaining as much ground as possible.

I think right now, there is not really any measure of "getting good" since there's too many variables within CC that are out of your control as a solo player due to how it currently is, I mean after you've gotten to grips with how your stuff works, that's kind of it, in MMO PvP, the "getting good" part would be the teamplay aspects and the problem is, that's hardly a thing right now since roles are unlocked and the system is just matching whoever with whatever together, so it's a complete and utter chaotic mess just like how Frontlines can be but at least in Frontlines however your communication isn't limited to just callouts and games last a bit longer so there is some strategy involved to some degree! CC is just far too fast-paced in my opinion.

As for which classes are pretty strong right now, I'd say it'd be Warrior, Dragoon, Red Mage, Summoner, Samurai and Ninja.

Warrior has an AoE engage stun and lots of AoE in general, it's LB also disables Guard so if you have a damage heavy team, that basically wins fights if your team is prepped to take advantage of it.
Dragoon currently does the most melee damage in burst if left unattended, it's LB is also very strong for both killing and warding people away from the objective depending on how you use it.
I've seen a lot of successful RDMs and SMNs, though I haven't played them myself.
Samurai has a very strong kit for both 1v1s and teamfights. It's LB can insta-kill people.
Ninja can chain executions with it's LB and is generally a big nuisance if left unattended and is the only melee DPS class with a ranged attack currently.

Though all of this information is truly subjective and until they make adjustments to both the systems and the classes, take it all with a grain of salt.

Not a whole lot, you can mark a target and your randos will ignore it. There's no quick command that says "kill the healer" or "wait for everyone to respawn completely before you charge in." Just saying "regroup" isn't enough. A button that says "let's give up and get this match over with" would be useful to now that I think about it.

Wait for SQ to fix it.

honestly make use of the quick chat stuff. ive noticed that when i use it to say im attacking the healer, people will follow.

New PVP mode is good, don’t get me wrong. Wins are up and down because allot of players zone in and play as individuals and not as a team. I’ve seen entire teams die and then 1 person will run back in by themselves to fight 5 full health people. That’s not smart at all. I’m not sure if they are throwing the match at that point or if they are very serious and think they can win. I made it to silver and honestly I’m just over people who refuse to play as a team. I’m just over it.

They say keep trying but when you honestly keep getting the same type of people then it just kills the enjoyment. I can take a L if i see everyone really tried. If we lose I can say “hey we tried our best, just the other team was better or had a better comp”

These games are just downright bad. Some people just refuse to work as a team.

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Originally Posted by Qeilos

I have played over 12 hours the past 2 days and im still bronze 3. I refuse to believe everyone is having this experience so I can improve on some things but I do think being on Crystal is making it an extra special layer of hell. Im not saying we dont have good players, but historically and you can see the data for this, Crystal is not tryhards by any stretch of the imagination, nor do they aspire to be so the struggle is immense.

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Think that's everywhere. First day I ran into a loop that I'd get a good team that worked together and I won a match, then next one I got some team that acted like they didn't want to be there and almost afk and lost. Then this rinsed and repeated. You're simply running an rng of how good your team is, no matter how good you are or not.

Losing is a natural part of progression!

Just keep it up :3

The best way of getting gud, is trough Trial and Error.

If one thing doesn't work out for you, maybe you need to change your overall approach on the Situation as a whole. Keep in mind that most FFXIV Players are rather fond of a "rush metagame" for which we can blame Frontline Roulette, Feast and even Savage Raiding to a degree.

Depending on what you play, you can use this to your advantage. Get creative and dont fear losing, if one thing doesnt work out, another will. The current Job design in PvP is alot more flexible than one might think.

I also recomment recording some matches you play (or watch Streamers play), that way you can also gain great insight on how People play during a match.

I had this exact same conversation in my FC.

From the 4 days I’ve been playing, it truly seems to be 89% random. The one point where you can actually apply any strategy is by using markers on a target and hope that your teammates follow along and attack the marked opponents.

In the cases where I’ve won (which has been very few), this was the way.

The other thing that I found to be useful was changing my targeting to ‘closest’ so that I’m not flustered with targeting while being pummeled with enfeeblements and debuffs.

Personally, I think the enfeeblements are the primary issue. If you’re targeted by more than 1 person, you’re pretty much dead because you’ll have a weight or paralysis enfeeblements and no way to get out of it unless you’re lucky enough to have a healer who actually tries to support the team.

Hopefully this gets better in later patches.

Good luck!

- Doing calls every 10-20 seconds on the most apropriate target, usually starting with the healer and proceed to wipe the whole party at start
- Getting 4 kills every match on average, up to 11 kills sometimes
- Spamming recuperate and guard when I'm focused
- Tell my party to push crystal when they are chasing kills in Afghanistan
- Still losing almost every match because enemy has spam limit 'much skill' break comeback

I'm still Bronze 3 after 20 wins. How people got diamond in one day? Tell me what I'm doing wrong here?

1. Your main job may not be the best job for you. I'm a warrior main for pretty much everything and it has always been my only pvp job of choice. It's my favorite job and I spent the whole first day playing warrior in CC. My issue with warrior was that I didn't feel like I could swing matches with it. Day 2 I swapped to playing Ninja and i's incredibly versatile and offers different playstyles and adaptability. Ninjas limit break alone can swing matches if used correctly. You can stay at range to apply safe pressure and sneak in to finish off players or to gang up on players. You even have access to double stun from across the map to secure kills and stop people from reacting with cure spamming themselves. Ninja also has a lot of defensive options with a teleport, suiton to heal, or huton to shield yourself.
tl;dr- LOTS of options.
2. Basic math. This is where most people are messing up from what I've seen. 1 vs 2 is not good odds. You should assume that 1 vs 5 is much worse... But you would be surprised how often this happens. Don't be that person that rushes in and dies the whole match because you are doing several things: wasting your time and not building limit break, feeding opponents limit break instead, and making it at best a 4 vs 5 for most of the match. Not a good idea.
3. Use the map to your advantage. There are 2 main things here. Bomb explosions and tornadoes. Stunning, pulling, or knocking people into bomb lines is massive damage. Same applies to tornadoes with the added option that you can apply enough pressure to force them to shield early so they don't have shield available for the tornado. Warrior is very good at doing this :)
4. Call out what you can. On ninja I mark and call out my target any time I plan to stun lock and have mug available for the increases burst damage. Never assume people are on the same page as you. I can't stress enough how many kills should have happened and people drop the ball. Marking opponents at least shows teammates that maybe they should aim at the big 1 marker in the air.
5. Stay with your team. If a team fight happens and people start dropping then you need to check if you are on the winning side. If not, then back up and wait for respawns. This ties back to the 1 vs 5 mentioned earlier. Should be obvious enough, but again... You would be surprised.
6. Limit break usage. LB are very strong options on all jobs. Don't waste them!
7. Shields are not only there to block damage. Consider the option that shielding also allows you time on your ability recasts. This can be used to hold off long enough to get a stun or silence back off cooldown while you cut down damage received.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Qeilos

I have played over 12 hours the past 2 days and im still bronze 3. I refuse to believe everyone is having this experience so I can improve on some things but I do think being on Crystal is making it an extra special layer of hell. Im not saying we dont have good players, but historically and you can see the data for this, Crystal is not tryhards by any stretch of the imagination, nor do they aspire to be so the struggle is immense.

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Crystal had the most Platinums after day 1 in the world. Looks like top 100 is roughly the same as aether.



The first days would also been the worse if you think you are of a certain skill. I had certain Diamond and Platinum in my Bronze match.Since we all started same rank this time. So we were feeding ground as they worked their way up. Now that they have moved on most people in Bronze and Silver should be closer to that skill level.



Also how many matches does one think they should win? 50% seems high unless you are past top 50 per data centre. No job is so broken they guarantee a win yet so you don't have that in your favour. The party make up is random so that also doesn't help. I find numbers interesting and hope after6.1 is over SE releases numbers on win %, win streaks, loosing streaks, job most kills, job most wins, job most losses. Then we can have an even deeper discussion about the mode.

here are some tips that can work for everyone from what I've experienced.
Watch the enemies LB bar, if a WHM or DRG has full LB you're not going to want to be stacking on top of each other.
Every class has some form of CC (crowd control) and knowing when to use it is important.
try to focus down a single target with your team, if you can get a numbers advantage then its pretty huge.
Guard to an amazing spell that can really give your time enough time to come and save you.
Always regroup after getting wiped, if you trickle in one by one you're going to lose without a doubt.

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Originally Posted by SuperZay

- Doing calls every 10-20 seconds on the most apropriate target, usually starting with the healer and proceed to wipe the whole party at start
- Getting 4 kills every match on average, up to 11 kills sometimes
- Spamming recuperate and guard when I'm focused
- Tell my party to push crystal when they are chasing kills in Afghanistan
- Still losing almost every match because enemy has spam limit 'much skill' break comeback

I'm still Bronze 3 after 20 wins. How people got diamond in one day? Tell me what I'm doing wrong here?

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I feel you so much, seen people getting crystal 2hr after patch.. dunno how it is humanly possible..
also everything you wrote..

-Double healer tends to win more often than not.
-Do not be afraid to target tanks. You will find your win rate go up a lot when you do this. They are extremely squishy
-Save your IMP or CC for when a SAM or NIN use ults.
-When enemy team has a warrior or a drg with LB do not stay close to your team, don't be tempted to go in for aoe, heal or use your charge, bait out the stun and then use your charge to move somewhere else.
-When you're healing or range attacking and it is safe to do so, always go in the objective.
-If you have defensive abilities up, always go in the objective and contest it.
-Dragoon and Samurai are deceptively tank.
-Summoner is obnoxious if you let them free harass.

Play Samurai

Just wanna chime in again if I may? I did make it to gold. I have seen a huge difference in games. Teams are more coordinated and willing to follow what you ask. You win some you lose some and it’s okay. I definitely enjoy the gold rank games a bit more tbh.

A lot of tricks from other PvP MMOs apply here. Being aggressive, knowing how to get picks, knowing how to position, don't hesitate if you think you need defenses, you can tell there's a lot of folks with WoW BG and Arena experience messin' about.

If you don't have that experience, you'll simply need to play and watch. Absolutely watch good players, nothing will educate you more.

As for random, well, that's matchmaking and this game is largely filled with casuals. There's almost always 1-2 people in a match doing a fraction of what they should be doing.

The real way to grow is to realize you are the sole constant in your matches. If you are personally doing well there's no way you won't climb, even if it involves some friction.

Focus on learning instead of winning. Ask how you could have played better when winning or losing. Team mates may play a role in losses but don't get too focused on that.

Read your tooltips and practice on a training dummy. Class skills are more complicated than they appear and likely differ from their pve counterpart.

Work on situational awareness. You need to be thinking about positioning and where everyone is, who has LB on bothe enemy and ally side. Target and mark people with no mp who cannot heal.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SuperZay

- Doing calls every 10-20 seconds on the most apropriate target, usually starting with the healer and proceed to wipe the whole party at start
- Getting 4 kills every match on average, up to 11 kills sometimes
- Spamming recuperate and guard when I'm focused
- Tell my party to push crystal when they are chasing kills in Afghanistan
- Still losing almost every match because enemy has spam limit 'much skill' break comeback

I'm still Bronze 3 after 20 wins. How people got diamond in one day? Tell me what I'm doing wrong here?

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why are you still asking people to start with the healer? That's not necessarily the most dangerous opponent, for one thing.

I could write a small novel for you. But I'll cribnote it :

Stay alive. Period, the longer you stay alive, the longer your LB charges, maintaining that timer is needed near the end game. If you're opponent dies, that's 11 seconds you're ahead of them.
Don't focus TOO hard on the crystal, it's required to win, but when one player can stop it using Guard when all 5 are in there, then don't put it as your main focus, instead focus on killing/moving it slowly. Even when the opponent is pushing into your space, unless they are right on the doorstep, don't bother.
The "Progress Bar" on top that is jank mind you, dictates what'll happen in OT. If you're ahead in progress and no one is in the crystal range for 5 seconds, you instantly lose.
Ignore most damage dealers in most matches and focus on ANY class that can "Crowd Control" you. Like Sam stuns, Warrior Stuns, BLM Sleeps, Ninja Silence, Monk garbo etc etc.
If the enemy team has weak crowd control and has a dragoon, mark him as a target, the second he disappears off your screen, he's LB'ing, so use guard.
Don't be afraid to run away to use your potion either. If your team mates want to stay in and feed, that's on them not you. It's infuriating, yes. But...it is what it is

A) Hope you get some good jobs on your team.
B) Don't commit to all-ins unless you are absolutely sure the rest of your team will follow.
C) Mark priority targets for your team with markers to help with focus, usually focusing down the healer, especially with healer is SGE(It has massive damage), when it's SCH I try to focus down the ranged DPS or Caster since SCHs take a really long time to die.
D) Play a job you are comfortable with. I find Dragoon much stronger than Ninja but my best results are always as NIN since I basically work on pick offs.

That's what works for me at least. I am Gold 1 right now but steadily climbing. Some matches are just guaranteed losses though, depends a lot on party composition because the balance is awful right now since it just came out, so don't stress over that.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

why are you still asking people to start with the healer? That's not necessarily the most dangerous opponent, for one thing.

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It's not a bad call overall, Healers have a lot of utility, SGE is more of a DPS for instance(A pretty damn good one, I might add), WHM can be a constant annoyance, SCHs heal a lot, etc, if your entire team go for an all-in, destroy the healer at the very start of the match, you can bet you are going to win the first fight.

Scholars can only really "heal heal" when they are in their LB. Their Galvanize isn't too good. I screwed around in it with casual for a bit just to see [I main it, wanted to see] and Galvanize's shield not buffed in LB is legit garbage. All they can really do is Broil for weak damage and Bio/Bio+ you and expediant. When Seraph aoe comes out though, yeah. Dope. Why they decided to give them a "Get in their face" conal aoe is beyond me though...It's like SE hates the class lol

Wait for the classes to be balanced by something other than a monkey on crack.

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Originally Posted by Eskuire

Scholars can only really "heal heal" when they are in their LB. Their Galvanize isn't too good. I screwed around in it with casual for a bit just to see [I main it, wanted to see] and Galvanize's shield not buffed in LB is legit garbage. All they can really do is Broil for weak damage and Bio/Bio+ you and expediant. When Seraph aoe comes out though, yeah. Dope. Why they decided to give them a "Get in their face" conal aoe is beyond me though...It's like SE hates the class lol

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Yeah I think I've seen 1 SCH so far. I have no idea how it feels to play but they're just non-existent. Sage on the other hand, I am loving. I'm regularly dealing the highest damage of any player per game while also making my party nice and tanky with Pneuma and Mesotes. It feels like a good tradeoff for a job that lacks CC.

Frankly i went from one match to win to get silver back to bronze 3, losing rank while not being able to party with people is absolute bs and infuriating.