DRK - AST/AST/AST - The frontline meta

Lazy dev, most imbalance PVP I've seen in years. Even 8v8 with normal skills bar was better than this.

What will it take for Yoshi P to have a meeting with the current PVP dev team and discuss the current NA/EU Frontline meta and its flaws :)

First of all, massive rant at you and anyone who feel the need to say "fire them" on every occasion you feel inconvenienced because the state of the game is not perfect:

Take a f***ing hike. I am so seriously fed up with your and anyone's hyperbolic bullsh** because apparently it is too difficult to constructively say that you disagree with the current game design and instead call for people to be fired - because this will CLEARLY result in you being heard.

You all work in jobs or have relatives working in jobs, how would you feel if on every f***ing occasion some outside twat calls for you to be fired because you delivered something they consider subpar but got greenlit by your boss?



...now for the topic at hand... cap AOE at 5 targets instead of the default 16 or make a sharp 80% drop-off after the 5th target. That should do the trick.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

...now for the topic at hand... cap AOE at 5 targets instead of the default 16 or make a sharp 80% drop-off after the 5th target. That should do the trick.

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That's not the problem, and capping AoE is especially dumb considering you can't choose who you're going to hit. I've seen groups of people use any type of combo before and they can be defeated with random groups. If you need a hard counter to that type of group, just grab a couple of SGE and use SGE LB when you see them using the AST using their LB. It's a direct counter to the combo and can easily allow your alliance to turn the tables after nullifying their burst.

From my experience, the problem isn't the combo but the sandbaggers. There's been a lot more people I've noticed who intentionally run in to die and let other alliances win. They would generally have a very imbalanced kill-death-assist ratio and a high heal amount from spamming recuperation after running it down 1v24 (or more recently 5v24). Even when you defeat the people using a strong team combo, if the people who are doing their best to lose run to the enemy alliance to feed them BH and reduce your score while bumping the enemy alliance's score, it's going to be much tougher to win regardless of what happens next.

Lately, it's been increasingly apparent when I saw the enemy third alliance run towards the base of the second alliance to stop the second alliance from reaching and stopping the 1st alliance from winning a match, even when there was no objectives in the enemy base.

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

That's not the problem, and capping AoE is especially dumb considering you can't choose who you're going to hit. I've seen groups of people use any type of combo before and they can be defeated with random groups. If you need a hard counter to that type of group, just grab a couple of SGE and use SGE LB when you see them using the AST using their LB. It's a direct counter to the combo and can easily allow your alliance to turn the tables after nullifying their burst.

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It very much is the problem here. Also, Macrocosmos is on a 30s cooldown, snapshots almost instantly, and hits any target in a 20 yard radius, more if the servers hate you. Meanwhile Mesotes takes longer to activate, even longer to actually apply the invuln to party members, only applies it to party members, only covers the area the size of a cramped elevator (which your party members may not even stand in anyway), and is on a 120 second cooldown. (Edit: I also forgot that it doesn't protect you from CC, so you can even be pulled out of the circle, which is a high likelihood in FL.)

That is not a direct counter...

If you're looking to try to straight up out-shield AST's dmg output, Scholar is a better choice if you don't trust your party to Guard, and even then there's only so much you can do against 2 or more AST's with damage buffs.

Not capped aoe at 5 targets is a mistake, but if you are there for roulette bonus, why care? You can just wonder aimlessly and have 0 on all your stats and still get it. Not so much different from watching cutscene when you get gaius in msq roulette

So whenever people are talking about an aoe cap of 5, and I agree this should be a think, how do you determine which 5 get hit in a group of say 15?

Just random 5 people for each seperate aoe, the 5 closest to the center, 5 with highest hp?

Been wondering about how to make it so it doesn't instagib 5 people everytime, but also not to where it makes aoe's completely useless if they get spread out on different people.

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Originally Posted by Llynethil

So whenever people are talking about an aoe cap of 5, and I agree this should be a think, how do you determine which 5 get hit in a group of say 15?

Just random 5 people for each seperate aoe, the 5 closest to the center, 5 with highest hp?

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I am pretty sure aoe effects stem from the center of where ever the source of the AoE comes from. From my experience whenever aoe buffs/debuffs I usually see the farthest guy in raid get any aoe raid buff last since they are the farthest. I feel like this same logic also applies to AoE attacks, I want to assume. This is purely just visual tells btw, and I don't know if its the most mathematically accurate.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

First of all, massive rant at you and anyone who feel the need to say "fire them" on every occasion you feel inconvenienced because the state of the game is not perfect

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Dude. the game has been released for 10+ years, and we still are yet to see improvement. Everytime they did something they deleted it... 10 years.

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Like hs how hard is it to work on the game and stop trying to milk all the wage slave that literally worship daddy yoshi P. How can you even defend this.. like yes they need to get fired, they need to figure something out.

Frontline should of never been touched, it was fine the way it was just before 6.1, maybe even reworked, how long did it took for them to remove Carteneau to work on it... like what ? 10 Years ? yeah

The game is filled with cheaters and bots on top of it, gil sellers everywhere. like at some point some things need to be addressed if you want to keep farming these people. anyways..

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Originally Posted by maximesan514

Dude. the game has been released for 10+ years, and we still are yet to see improvement. Everytime they did something they deleted it... 10 years.

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I didn't know they deleted fantasias! Why didn't anyone tell me :O

my god we have to stop them, before they start deleting us!

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Originally Posted by AnotherPerson

That's not the problem, and capping AoE is especially dumb considering you can't choose who you're going to hit. I've seen groups of people use any type of combo before and they can be defeated with random groups. If you need a hard counter to that type of group, just grab a couple of SGE and use SGE LB when you see them using the AST using their LB. It's a direct counter to the combo and can easily allow your alliance to turn the tables after nullifying their burst.

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That would be a very good option if those defensive LBs affected the whole alliance, which they don't. Obviously, you can still get great value in defending your own party, but that doesn't compare to offensive LBs that are non discriminate.

Some of us play FL because we enjoy it and are trying to get better at it? Hence we care. That said, a poorly-balanced meta almost certainly encourages some people not to care and just wander around waiting for it to be over.

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Originally Posted by maximesan514

Dude. the game has been released for 10+ years, and we still are yet to see improvement. Everytime they did something they deleted it... 10 years.

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Like hs how hard is it to work on the game and stop trying to milk all the wage slave that literally worship daddy yoshi P. How can you even defend this.. like yes they need to get fired, they need to figure something out.

Frontline should of never been touched, it was fine the way it was just before 6.1, maybe even reworked, how long did it took for them to remove Carteneau to work on it... like what ? 10 Years ? yeah

The game is filled with cheaters and bots on top of it, gil sellers everywhere. like at some point some things need to be addressed if you want to keep farming these people. anyways..

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First of all, since you are clearly not aware, here some game development studio 101:

• A game with variety content such as FFXIV has a multitude of individual development and design teams with individuals specializing in certain content, others being more broadly skilled that can work between branches
• Income related to the game does not automatically correlate to development funding within a studio like Creative Business Unit III, nor are all development branches equally responsible for being the source of said income
• Different people may be available at different times when developing on projects, yet they generally go through a form of QnA, greenlighting or last check before pushing live, so SOMEONE in a managing position APPROVED

Regarding the income sources you mentioned, here is who is responsible or where you can most likely attribute the work to:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...58a240abb547c&

Fan Festival in particular is not a guaranteed source of income - it is a huge financial undertaking regarding renting the venue, support staff payment, IT setup, sound setup, management and much more, of which there is plenty of room to go wrong and cost an exorbitant amount of money. It can be considered finanically a success if they break even under the assumption that it provided positive PR, leading to more and consistent revenue mainly via subscriptions and occasional mogstation purchase.

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To summarize, there is a lot more to think about than your minor inconvenience played as absolute disgrace. I am not "defending" them as I regularly criticize the results they bring on occasion. What I do is trying to make people like you aware, that your minor inconvience played as absolute disgrace is not a valid f***ing reason for anyone at any company to get fired because you are medieval and essentially ask for the modern equivalent of rolling heads.

It doesn't matter how many years have passed, what has been lost forever, how many current issues are currently around - if the game is not in a "literally cannot play this game" state a la FFXIV pre 2.0 then grotesque feedback like "fire the dev responsible for this" will put your feedback at the absolute bottom of things to consider.

Sincerely, back off and stick to complaining about the game directly, this will net you better results.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Sincerely, back off and stick to complaining about the game directly, this will net you better results.

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I'm gonna be honest man, its just very sad to see the game just get worst instead of getting better.. the development is clearly overlooked because people are emotionally addicted. All these fetch quest and boring events.. all the cheaters... the bots... its just sad man.. anyways, I get your point on complaining about the game but its just getting a little bit much. Maybe its time for me to unsub but I'm addicted like everyone else. I never took my complaints to this forum until this year, I always had hopes but looking at it today its just.. idk...

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Originally Posted by maximesan514

I'm gonna be honest man, its just very sad to see the game just get worst instead of getting better.. the development is clearly overlooked because people are emotionally addicted. All these fetch quest and boring events.. all the cheaters... the bots... its just sad man.. anyways, I get your point on complaining about the game but its just getting a little bit much. Maybe its time for me to unsub but I'm addicted like everyone else. I never took my complaints to this forum until this year, I always had hopes but looking at it today its just.. idk...

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I agree, there has been a decline in various aspects of the game. Not necessarily from them doing nothing, but rather them chasing a vision doesn't align with what we the community actually want. Various job redesigns over the last two expansions attest to this for a start.

Anyways I am sorry I went all out with my last response. I fully understand your frustration as I share part of it. My main intent was to highlight why certain phrasing and knowledge matters if we want to bring criticism across and I simply got tired of ignoring the "fire them clause.

Personally I also think you should be fired and have you and the family that depends on you thrown out to starve into the street because I'm butthurt and think you're doing an awful job at your job.

( yes, this is sarcasm, but this is still as disgusting to read )

bro just press guard lol

As if they have time for a family, lol

I mean, this thread is assuming there is a team working on PVP. Given the state of it, I have doubts.

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Originally Posted by LonaCassio

I mean, this thread is assuming there is a team working on PVP. Given the state of it, I have doubts.

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There is, chances are they just don't agree with our vision or problems we have with the game because we play like plebs most of the time, therefore they don't make changes or decisions based on us.

Didn't they say they were planning more extensive changes for FLs for 7.0 or did I just mix it up with their last FLs revisions?

Okay - not some YoshiP worshipper here. I respect him for turning the game around, but that's beside the point.

Sorry - you lost me at "devs should be fired". No-one should lose their damn job/livelihood for inconveniencing some players in a game!

Here we go guys, I modified the thread ! Maybe that's better ? :)

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Originally Posted by maximesan514

Here we go guys, I modified the thread ! Maybe that's better ? :)

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A lot better. The question is completely justified, the approach was the only issue.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

A lot better. The question is completely justified, the approach was the only issue.

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I'm reformed

Beside the rant, which I can rely to with on a certain extent, I’m on the same boat when talking about the over frustrating general state of the PvP at this time.
FL are a generous b******t mess of people that cannot follow intructions when given to them. I have to cope with the fact that they don’t care about winning but I can’t absolutely dare to expect from them the bare minimum effort to try to even fight. For some reasons pvp went from 72 ppl, to 24, to 72 again. Like…why? At least an 8-men party is still carriable, but with 23 more people is just plain impossible. You can only queue with 4 people for literally no reason, since FL are not ranked or anything, still I can’t even dream to clear the Seal Rock achievement because lol. You can’t choose the grand company anymore because curse you if you want to stay with people that share your will to win. We have to stay in party with people that go wandering anywhere, like someone else said before, but cry if they encounter an alliance that genuenly wants to win and blast them.

Let’s not talk about CC. Cannot queue with friends in casual mode, cannot choose if solo-duo the ranked like every f****g MMO game. Just put this game offline since every change that is coming is promoting solo-playing.

The jobs balance is pure illusion btw. I don’t even want to enter in that endless abyss.

I bet the same people that complain about Frontlines the most are the ones that struggle to break 300k damage, has 5 or more deaths each match, and refuse to learn how to play.

Drk+Team Ast isn't even hard to counter. It takes two whole brain cells and a key press to use Guard when there is a dark knight that doesn't belong to your team in the middle of your own. If your Guard is down when this happens, that means you were overextended without your defensive cooldowns.

Drk+Asts are free BHs for my buddies and me. We flank the enemy and hoover up the ASTs to get +3 free kills since they're extremely squishy. But that seems impossible for most frontlines players since their definition of flanking an enemy is by running between two enemy teams fighting.

TL;DR: Git Gud and Frontlines wont suck.

frontline will always be a mess when cc/feast is the focus. this just how it is they wont make two different pvp playstyles

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Originally Posted by 4clubbedace

frontline will always be a mess when cc/feast is the focus. this just how it is they wont make two different pvp playstyles

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If every person who had that apathetic attitude instead gave actual constructive requests and feedback, I guarantee you Frontlines wouldn't be in the state it's been in for years. 8 years of engrained apathy, reactionary gamer moments, and forum pissing contests are the reasons it is what it is.

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Originally Posted by MisterNublet

Drk+Team Ast isn't even hard to counter. It takes two whole brain cells and a key press to use Guard when there is a dark knight that doesn't belong to your team in the middle of your own. If your Guard is down when this happens, that means you were overextended without your defensive cooldowns.

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Please. Reactionary alone isn't enough. I can press shield while DRK is in mid-air, and still watch my HP drain to 0 under shield in 3 seconds.

Premade DRK+AST is invincible. No reputable game would design two out of the 17 available jobs to effectively destroy over half of its opponents, not in such a short CD, requiring little skill and coordination to execute.

Don't mistaken it as "skill". Everyone who abuses it knows it's a joke how easy it is to pull that combo off.


TL;DR: No skill to execute combo, yet lots required to avoid dying, hence it's ridiculously imbalanced.

If you get oneshot by a single DRK LB on its own there is probably something you're leaving out of the picture.

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Originally Posted by 4clubbedace

frontline will always be a mess when cc/feast is the focus. this just how it is they wont make two different pvp playstyles

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Exactly, this is the real problem here, not everything else other talk about here, they balance the game around a PVP mode that has nothing to do with entire Alliances against each other, if they want any improvement, it needs to be the other way around, or do balancing separately for them, how they do now is just dumb, even CC has massive problems with balancing, so they obviously have no idea how to do that right either, making every job a Damage dealer was a mistake, giving them shields and way way to much HP recovery is another one... makes PVP feel like garbage.

At this point, group queuing should probably just be disabled in frontlines.

The real problem is the awful balance and how ridiculously well certain jobs synergize together with other jobs or even themselves, but it's abundantly clear that SE doesn't care to do proper balance passes for larger scale pvp.

And yeah, yeah, you don't need premade groups to pull off the cheap combinations, but it's significantly easier to when you queue in a premade group to do it than not. So much so that when a well coordinated premade will absolutely stomp random groups. It's just straight up not fun ending up in grossly uneven matches.

Of course, if SE does actually do anything, it will probably only be to throw a -10% damage debuff at AST.

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Originally Posted by Valence

If you get oneshot by a single DRK LB on its own there is probably something you're leaving out of the picture.

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Not sure whether you were replying to me, but this entire thread is talking about DRK + ASTx3. I don't think anyone is talking about getting one shot by DRK lb.

I had a few games where the AST-crew pressed Macrocosmos while the DRK jumps in. Even though I hit Shield immediately (literally saw DRK charging in), I still watch my HP slowly drained and died, 3 seconds after I casted the bubble. Server lag is messing with the priority of how damage is registered.

Corroborated the findings with other online friends residing in different parts of North America, and we come to the same conclusion that by the time you see the DRK launches above ground, the bubble is already too late.

Perhaps there might still be some leeway if the execution of the combo is communicated through in-game chat, but it is absolutely deadly if it is coordinated through voice-chat or other means.

Aside from that, you need to allocate all your attention to that one DRK and those 3 ASTs. If there's more then one DRK, then it becomes a nightmare. Even one mistake is costly.

Asking other players to "git gud" is an impossible ask. The few that knows how to pre-emptively mitigate the effects of this combo, cannot possibly overcome the large amount of casualty it causes to the rest of the alliance. It isn't just the kills, it's also the BH that quickly generates.

For all the aforementioned reasons, it shows that this combo in the current FL setup is broken.

A rant. The most laughable game I had just now was people saying DRK + AST combo on maelstorm was broken when in reality...
Our team kept on focusing flames and ignoring the actual threats that were killing them. Then they go "Wow, that's broken!" Even worse, they weren't "focusing" on the threats, they weren't even trying at all. The scoreboard at the end went as expected as well. Half the team was under 200k dps for a 15 min+ match. And this was them "fighting" for majority of the time, against flames too... No shit the combo looks OP when half of the players are just standing there doing nothing. I literally had 5 to 6 people follow me to do a pincer attack. We literally killed the BH 5 AST and other members from maelstorm by flanking them from their blind spot before getting out. It's not hard, people just don't try.

Next game, I had the DRK + AST combo on my alliance and the DRK was trying to coordinate with other ASTs in other alliance parties as well. A bunch of calls were made for capturing / maneuvering and were ignored. Unsurprisingly, we were in last place for majority of the game until the other two alliances forced a skirmish with each other. We got lucky with the 2-3 A and S rank ovoos spawns being uncontested on the opposite side of the map afterwards. Scoreboard pops up at the end. Lo and behold, a bunch of people on our alliance with a ton of deaths and less than 100k dps/healing. Yeah, it's not a surprise why fights were so one-sided - half the players aren't even trying to win. They're just there to make up for the body count, and not even for your alliance but for the enemy's BH score. >.> I understand the desire for wanting to queue into Frontlines for exp, but when it's literally this obvious, you're making it hard to not report for lethargic play.

You want to know how our alliance won with over a 800 score difference on the third game as maelstorm even though there was the DRK + AST combo showed up again on the Immortal Flames in the third game? We had most of the people playing and trying to win. People listened to shot calls. The team with the DRK + AST combo? When the score came out, they had at least 6 sandbaggers dragging their team down. The result of the DRK +AST Combo? Immediately got destroyed by our alliance when they fought against us for nodes. We didn't need any fancy combos, we just had people willing to play as a team. We had plenty of people doing above 300k to 500k damage and it was enough, provided that calls were being listened to. People retreated on time, regrouped towards different nodes and focused on specific targets. The difference was enough to help the entire alliance gain BH and be able to win any skirmish for the node even if two alliances ran at us at the same time.

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Originally Posted by eeto

Not sure whether you were replying to me, but this entire thread is talking about DRK + ASTx3. I don't think anyone is talking about getting one shot by DRK lb.

I had a few games where the AST-crew pressed Macrocosmos while the DRK jumps in. Even though I hit Shield immediately (literally saw DRK charging in), I still watch my HP slowly drained and died, 3 seconds after I casted the bubble. Server lag is messing with the priority of how damage is registered.

Corroborated the findings with other online friends residing in different parts of North America, and we come to the same conclusion that by the time you see the DRK launches above ground, the bubble is already too late.

Perhaps there might still be some leeway if the execution of the combo is communicated through in-game chat, but it is absolutely deadly if it is coordinated through voice-chat or other means.

Aside from that, you need to allocate all your attention to that one DRK and those 3 ASTs. If there's more then one DRK, then it becomes a nightmare. Even one mistake is costly.

Asking other players to "git gud" is an impossible ask. The few that knows how to pre-emptively mitigate the effects of this combo, cannot possibly overcome the large amount of casualty it causes to the rest of the alliance. It isn't just the kills, it's also the BH that quickly generates.

For all the aforementioned reasons, it shows that this combo in the current FL setup is broken.

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I think I misunderstood your earlier post, my apologies.

I personally have never advocated for more casual players to git gud, and I loathe that gamer idiocy. There is counters to everything, but their ease of use, accessibility, and effort required isn't always obvious or accessible for the majority of FL players. I'm not even sure if a DRK is actually needed when stacking AST tbh, considering the ludicrous range of macrocosmos.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I think I misunderstood your earlier post, my apologies.

I personally have never advocated for more casual players to git gud, and I loathe that gamer idiocy. There is counters to everything, but their ease of use, accessibility, and effort required isn't always obvious or accessible for the majority of FL players. I'm not even sure if a DRK is actually needed when stacking AST tbh, considering the ludicrous range of macrocosmos.

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No worries. You are quite right, macrocosmos does have a ridiculous range, but having a DRK charging in probably help divert enemy's attention towards the DRK rather than the AST that is more squishy.

Just finished another game... DRK+ASTx3 all over 15 kills. I was on the winning team, but there's no joy in the win--one that exploits a design flaw. The other two team finished with less than 300 points, surely they didn't find it fun either. How many out of the 72 players were actually having fun in a game like this...? (we know the answer...)

Honestly, they need to cap the AoE to X number of players OR divide the damage amongst all players in the AoE.

I'm sorry but seeing DRG get 1.8m damage (2~3x higher than average), absorb 600k damage (about the same as Paladin), and come out with a 0 death count is ridiculous. They're a glass cannon and tank mixed into one, add in a DRK and Warrior and you have yourself a perfect nuke.

https://files.catbox.moe/c9j66q.jpg

It's a joke

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Originally Posted by Yegu

https://files.catbox.moe/c9j66q.jpg

It's a joke

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Is infinitely more scary than a Bahamut ICBM squad, not gonna lie.

Macrocosmos memed me in Crystalline Conflict many a time without being the intended target - the range is silly for the damage output it can provide, it is actually bullsh** that it does 12000 base damage (6000-9000 at BH0 in FL) at a 15y radius around themselves.

I would not be surprised if they reduce macrocosmos to 8000 base damage and maybe compensate them in a different way (faster CD on Draw perhaps).

Since it can't happen in CC, do buffs from identical LBs stack? I'd assume not since standard buffs?