Battle High

What are the community's thoughts on Battle High?

Are players satisfied with the mechanic as is? Would you describe it as a positive or negative aspect of PvP? If you think it should be adjusted, would you like to see it changed in a minor or major way? Do you think Battle High should stay or be removed entirely? Let's get a discussion going.

It's complicated.

- I like that it rewards good play.
- I don't like how it snowballs for the winning team.
- I like that it pushes competent teams to go for kills in order to build BH in order to secure victories.
- I don't like how it goes completely out of hand with the current kitchen sink / DRK meta.
- I don't like how it doesn't come with drawbacks, like decreased innate DR.
- I don't like how it relies on kills, the system is way too unstable and inaccurate to properly calculate when to land the killing blow, turning it into a gigantic lottery, and it also rewards kill stealing, or specific jobs that have blessed damage OGCDs to weave/spamm in order to leech kills.

I do like the battle high system as a way to push players into engaging in PvP and rewarding those that do engage in PvP. But I think the system is outdated in the current format.

The battle high system was built for a time when jobs had little self-healing and often required dedicated healers to keeping them alive. But in the modern format, battle high is entirely too easy to get and maintain, so I do feel it should have drawbacks.

Since the biggest criticism of battle high is that it allows the team that's ahead to get even farther ahead, I'd say the damage up from it should come with negatives as well to balance it out.

My personal suggestion is to remove the healing received boost and add an 8% vuln up on every stack of battle high, so you'd have a whopping 40% damage taken increase at max battle high. Also, the healing received boost is overkill now that everyone can spam self-heals up to 4 times with no CD. These 2 things would make battle high a riskier thing to have, and it would also allow the teams that are behind to have a fighting chance since the team with stacked battle highs would do more damage but also die a lot faster.

It should definitely see its adjustment. Easiest (albeit laziest) would be increasing damage taken the higher your BH gets. Alternatively, have BH affects differently depending on jobs played in FL since every PvP balance patch has always been to cater to CC situation. Since they won't make a frontline-exclusive kits, why wouldn't they use the outdated BH that purpose? That might be a balancing nightmare on their end though.

I think they can afford to eliminate the healing perk. Everyone is sitting on several self-heals and a massive full HP/MP restore elixir by simply excusing themselves out of the fight. Before they tack-on vulnerability/defense-decreasing modifiers, I think a less scorched-earth drawback that's actually sorely needed would be to nerf the Limit Break gauge speed the higher your BH level is. Limit Breaks are where things in FL start to get ridiculous. Things like BH5 AoE LB nukes from DRGs, SMNs or WHMs become less of an issue when they can't happen as often and BH5 DRKs not having their Limit Break to fall-back on and God-mode out of an alliance focus-firing them at almost every engagement would keep them from being as oppressive as they are now.

0 BH players can keep their regular Limit Break gauge speed, with percentage modifiers slowing down the rate the higher you go. Quite frankly, at BH4-5 you shouldn't need (or get) constant Limit Breaks as a crutch, especially when your LB can floor entire alliances when you're at BH5 damage levels.

In a mode where the winner is frequently determined by the team with a premade, BH gives solo players something to strive for. The heal boost seems too much though.

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Originally Posted by Blueyes

What are the community's thoughts on Battle High?

Are players satisfied with the mechanic as is? Would you describe it as a positive or negative aspect of PvP? If you think it should be adjusted, would you like to see it changed in a minor or major way? Do you think Battle High should stay or be removed entirely? Let's get a discussion going.

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A 1.0 player eh? I think it's fine. If it gets removed, tanks and melee will be absolutely OP because of the innate dmg reduction. People tunnel vision already, imagine FL where the tunneling lasts even longer because nobody is dying.

Also, BH5 gives decent players something to work towards when their team is bad. There are times when an alliance just can't get anything done, so the least the individual player can do is get BH5 from kills. Imagine if your team is bad but you can't even secure kills because everybody seems tankier due to no BH. So you know you're going to lose because of subpar alliance, and you can't secure kills cause no BH - I think that's gonna get boring real fast.

I like the soaring High in rival wing better than this.

It's been through at least one adjustment since I've been playing. I do miss when players were rewarded additional points for killing players that had a bounty (Battle Fever) on their heads. However, it's balanced for the most part. I would like to see one minor adjustment, and it's what everyone is saying thus far: remove the personal healing increase for battle high. The extra damage I'll leave that up for debate. The extra sustain from the heal increase is overkill and somewhat broken. BH5 melees and tanks with a 50% dmg reduction (preset), 50% dmg increase, and a 50% personal heal increase? Umm....

I'm more for remove [Battle High] in FL.
I pref more skill-rewarding PvP play;
that rewards skill/experience/teamwork over BH farming and job stacking (ability)abuse.

Revert it back so battle high can be seen on the map and minimap at all times.

Revert it back so that people with battle high reward more points when killed depending on battle high tier. So with more dmg comes more risk when dying.

And nerf heals from BH yes, but I think they should make healers more about healing again and dps/tank less about healing - but that is kinda a dead end discussion rn.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I do like the battle high system as a way to push players into engaging in PvP and rewarding those that do engage in PvP. But I think the system is outdated in the current format.

The battle high system was built for a time when jobs had little self-healing and often required dedicated healers to keeping them alive. But in the modern format, battle high is entirely too easy to get and maintain, so I do feel it should have drawbacks.

Since the biggest criticism of battle high is that it allows the team that's ahead to get even farther ahead, I'd say the damage up from it should come with negatives as well to balance it out.

My personal suggestion is to remove the healing received boost and add an 8% vuln up on every stack of battle high, so you'd have a whopping 40% damage taken increase at max battle high. Also, the healing received boost is overkill now that everyone can spam self-heals up to 4 times with no CD. These 2 things would make battle high a riskier thing to have, and it would also allow the teams that are behind to have a fighting chance since the team with stacked battle highs would do more damage but also die a lot faster.

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Horrible idea no thanks.

If you are NIN/MNK you can easily take down a Max BH even as a MCH with just High BH.

BH rewards you for doing good and playing without dying, smart players tend to focus max BH players because they are already marked as a treat.
Removing BH from FL will make premades a MUST.

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Originally Posted by AnnRam

Horrible idea no thanks.

If you are NIN/MNK you can easily take down a Max BH even as a MCH with just High BH.

BH rewards you for doing good and playing without dying, smart players tend to focus max BH players because they are already marked as a treat.
Removing BH from FL will make premades a MUST.

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Literally where did I say I want BH removed?

The self healing being tied to it is silly (recuperate). The healing abilities power however, needs to stay: it's a full part of the kits of some jobs and it wouldnt make sense that BH doesn"t affect it.

I understand where people are coming from suggesting a +damage taken modifier, but I don't think it would turn out as expected. All it would do is bring us back to the ranged meta; a melee job with BH5 would not be able to get close without getting blown up. I can also foresee people using Return to switch jobs then switch back to reset their BH and get the target off their back. Scholars would become broken too, because 1) their spread DoTs would benefit from both types of damage increase (imagine a BH5 SCH spreading off a BH5 target, whew), and 2) they only need to be in range for 1 GCD to do all of their damage, so they are never in danger of dying.

The inherent danger of having two enemy teams turn against you for being a threat should be the negative to balance it out. It is possible for BH5 teams to collapse and ultimately lose to a well-coordinated pinch - ask any premade and I'm sure they have plenty of stories like these. Though most of the time people lose confidence when they see BH5 on the enemy team--and if they had the game sense to coordinate a pinch, they probably wouldn't have let the winning team build so much BH in the first place. I don't know. I can see the issue, but nerfing or outright removing BH isn't my most favourite idea because I feel like a lot of its issues could be mitigated if people in general put more thought into their gameplay (not a dig at anyone here; I really mean that the wider community and their mindset towards PvP needs to change, but that's a topic for another day).

I do agree that Recuperate being tied to BH is ridiculous. That is the one thing I would change - other than that, I'm mostly fine with BH. Though I'm all for removing it if the PvP devs can think of something more interesting to replace it.

Slippery slope mechanics (the more you win -> the more you are empowered -> the even more you win) are trash in pvp. Battle high is bad.

(see https://www.sirlin.net/articles/slip...etual-comeback for a more in-depth article on the topic)

That PTSD when a lone ninja with BH4 can kill a group of losing team easily, where that said team cant even kill that ninja

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Originally Posted by Taliriah

Slippery slope mechanics (the more you win -> the more you are empowered -> the even more you win) are trash in pvp. Battle high is bad.

(see https://www.sirlin.net/articles/slip...etual-comeback for a more in-depth article on the topic)

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I would agree if it was just 2 teams, but we have 3...I would say something about sandwiching, but I think we all know how majority plays the game. I'm a bit conflicted with that statement of yours.

I hate it, always did.

As pointed out it snowballs easily and while im all in for a rewarding system, the chance of others feeding our enemy and reducing our chances to 0 just sucks.

IMO change it so you cant have it within the first few minutes of a battle, increase the needed amount of kills the higher your teams rank goes and finally, limit how many battle highs you can have at once.

What if we introduced a time limit to Battle High? Picture it as a dynamic buff, where each subsequent kill or assist extends its duration. This adds a layer of strategy and urgency, as players must continuously prove their prowess to maintain their advantage. Without securing kills, the effect naturally dissipates, encouraging active participation and fostering a more dynamic, competitive environment. Expanding on this idea, I propose incorporating objective-based gameplay to further enhance the Battle High experience. Alongside kills and assists, securing strategic objectives, like claiming nodes in Seal Rock, could also prolong the duration of Battle High.

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Originally Posted by Silhart

I understand where people are coming from suggesting a +damage taken modifier, but I don't think it would turn out as expected. All it would do is bring us back to the ranged meta; a melee job with BH5 would not be able to get close without getting blown up. I can also foresee people using Return to switch jobs then switch back to reset their BH and get the target off their back. Scholars would become broken too, because 1) their spread DoTs would benefit from both types of damage increase (imagine a BH5 SCH spreading off a BH5 target, whew), and 2) they only need to be in range for 1 GCD to do all of their damage, so they are never in danger of dying.

The inherent danger of having two enemy teams turn against you for being a threat should be the negative to balance it out. It is possible for BH5 teams to collapse and ultimately lose to a well-coordinated pinch - ask any premade and I'm sure they have plenty of stories like these. Though most of the time people lose confidence when they see BH5 on the enemy team--and if they had the game sense to coordinate a pinch, they probably wouldn't have let the winning team build so much BH in the first place. I don't know. I can see the issue, but nerfing or outright removing BH isn't my most favourite idea because I feel like a lot of its issues could be mitigated if people in general put more thought into their gameplay (not a dig at anyone here; I really mean that the wider community and their mindset towards PvP needs to change, but that's a topic for another day).

I do agree that Recuperate being tied to BH is ridiculous. That is the one thing I would change - other than that, I'm mostly fine with BH. Though I'm all for removing it if the PvP devs can think of something more interesting to replace it.

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In my opinion melees innate DR is completely bullshit and it should be a lot lower. It's piss easy to just go in, go out with barely a scratch and I'm not even talking about the fake melees like NIN or DRG that can just play at range perfectly fine.

But yes, a diminution of DR (or % vuln) would need to be really, really small, which would already be big on its own. If a BH5 melee gets a 10% vuln, that's already plenty enough to me and it still makes them tougher than a base DNC. I do agree that it's a tool that can go wrong very fast. But what's best, a melee meta or a ranged meta? Cause currently it seriously looks like a melee meta to me.

I do not vibe much with the idea of sandwiching the winning team. I've seen it work, but usually it does vs winning teams full of solo BH5 players, not teams full of premades. Every time I've seen it happen, or actually field commanded it, both attacking teams got kitchen sunk and annihilated completely, even with the winning team having some casualties. it just fed them even more than if we hadn't attempted anything. Every, damn, time. You need premade tools and tactics to deal with premade teams.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I do not vibe much with the idea of sandwiching the winning team. I've seen it work, but usually it does vs winning teams full of solo BH5 players, not teams full of premades. Every time I've seen it happen, or actually field commanded it, both attacking teams got kitchen sunk and annihilated completely, even with the winning team having some casualties. it just fed them even more than if we hadn't attempted anything. Every, damn, time. You need premade tools and tactics to deal with premade teams.

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It kind of depends on how organised each team is. I've seen 3 outcomes happen when a team gets sandwiched:

1) The team that's getting sandwiched backs up and the 2 teams that are trying to sandwich end up slamming into and fighting each other instead.
2) The team that's getting sandwiched just backs up and lets the 2 enemy teams flow together and then annihilates them.
3) The sandwich actually works and the team being hit gets wiped.

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Originally Posted by Valence

In my opinion melees innate DR is completely bullshit and it should be a lot lower. It's piss easy to just go in, go out with barely a scratch and I'm not even talking about the fake melees like NIN or DRG that can just play at range perfectly fine.

But yes, a diminution of DR (or % vuln) would need to be really, really small

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I still see 2.x 3.x frontline as standard what they should aim for. The modifier existed back then too, just way smaller. The difference was that our dmg ouput was a lot smaller too, and our big gamechanging buffs (that were part of our rotation, not limit breaks) had high cooldowns. So you slowly died and had time to counter it, this aspect is gone now, and it is more a "you better die before you can click your heal and get out of the stun".

So I advocate to reduce healing and dmg ouput a bit, but! give PvP jobs skills/buffs to increase and mitigate dmg on a higher cooldown, 40s-2min I am thinking. But that would mean adding 1-3 new skills, something I am afraid is against their design philosophy.

Then you wouldn't have to care about these DR as much, instead of passive DR factor to even it out, it should be an active factor - pressed by the player at the right time, to even it out - similar like Guard, but not so restricting...more like old safeguard. Guard with 5s is not long enough for frontline. Which again boils down that PvP for 5vs5 and 24vs24vs24 should be treated separately.

Battle High is fine as it is imo. It is true that the bh team can snowball, but there is a 2nd thing in factor that balance bh buff, a thing that basically in every bh forum post I read I never saw mentioned: limit break charge time.

If a team has lot of high bh players, they are probably the winning team, thus their lb charge slower (x0,75); meanwhile the 3rd team lb charge faster (x1,25). And if you can use more lb during a match, you can deal more dmg.

The difference is pretty big: 3rd team can use 66% more lb than the 1st team, giving a way to the losing teams to fight against the bh team.
Let's make an example: dragoon. Drg lb takes 132 secs to charge if you're winning, but only 79 secs if you're the 3rd team. If the match is let's say 16 minutes, a drg that is winning can use its lb only 7 times, while a drg in the 3rd team can use its lb 12 times.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

It kind of depends on how organised each team is. I've seen 3 outcomes happen when a team gets sandwiched:

1) The team that's getting sandwiched backs up and the 2 teams that are trying to sandwich end up slamming into and fighting each other instead.
2) The team that's getting sandwiched just backs up and lets the 2 enemy teams flow together and then annihilates them.
3) The sandwich actually works and the team being hit gets wiped.

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I'll add a 4) that is actually pretty frequent in my experience, while 3 almost never happens: both flankers attack at the same time, the premades wipe one side out while their solo casual players serve as meatshields on the other side, and then either they withdraw and bail out, or they just kitchen sink the second team once they're ready again.

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Originally Posted by Valence

It's complicated.

- I like that it rewards good play.
- I don't like how it snowballs for the winning team.
- I like that it pushes competent teams to go for kills in order to build BH in order to secure victories.
- I don't like how it goes completely out of hand with the current kitchen sink / DRK meta.
- I don't like how it doesn't come with drawbacks, like decreased innate DR.
- I don't like how it relies on kills, the system is way too unstable and inaccurate to properly calculate when to land the killing blow, turning it into a gigantic lottery, and it also rewards kill stealing, or specific jobs that have blessed damage OGCDs to weave/spamm in order to leech kills.

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Exactly this. In the End i would be fine if they removed it though and instead balanced the entire Game mode towards the Numbers of players it has. We play a PVP Game mode with a big amount of players balanced towards small scale pvp.

It's dumb and should be removed or at least modified.
Increase damage but do not increase HP and defense. 1 person should not need an entire party to kill. That is a very flawed design.

Adding drawbacks or adjustments to it seems like the most reasonable option. This and making some of the melee classes actually killable...

As others said BH is a good thing to strive for, so you're not completely helpless when your alliance is underperforming.

People are saying that it "rewards good play" but that's redundant: good play is naturally rewarded because it lets you achieve victory. It doesn't need an extra reward on top of that.

That's fair.

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Originally Posted by Taliriah

People are saying that it "rewards good play" but that's redundant: good play is naturally rewarded because it lets you achieve victory. It doesn't need an extra reward on top of that.

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Maybe a better way of saying it is that it rewards people (successfully) engaging in combat. Which is one reason I like the idea that the LB cooldown timer should only tick if you're either targeting or being targeted.

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Originally Posted by Taliriah

People are saying that it "rewards good play" but that's redundant: good play is naturally rewarded because it lets you achieve victory. It doesn't need an extra reward on top of that.

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Let reward people who queue for frontlines as a DPS and end up with 5k damage 0-2 with the excuse of " Im here for the exp bro"

BH is a double edge sword, if you do good then rest of the alliances start focusing you and if you die then your alliance loses more points than usual.

Having Max BH doesn't even mean you're a good player, most of times people get lucky kills or KS.

Remove the gains in DPS about it and the likes and instead make it a reward for you actually is doing well and dying very little instead.

Battlehigh currently now more seem like an unfair advantage over the opponent who has none and also show if you win over one with max, that you may possible actually struggle if it was equal ground.

It should be gotten rid of. It's way too one-sided. Obnoxious as h3ll that if you don't have any battle high like, a minute into a FL that's it GG you're going to KEEP DYING OVER AND OVER to people with battle high and never get any. Absolutely infuriating.

I like Battle High.
I like that it gives a game a different dimension. Not only you need to see the score, but also you need to remember which team is the strongest, and act accordingly. The interplay between those is what sets the winning team apart and makes frontlines fun. If you can get good battlehigh and good score - the 2nd and 3rd should make your life a living hell. Of course as some mention 1st would opportunity to retreat and strike back, but 3rd and 2nd also have that opportunity to counter.

Additionally if the strongest team is actually in 3rd and spent the whole game farming BH, you also need to be mindful that they can turn the game around by strength. This is the fun bit!

I like that it serves as a kind of a memory of your performance within a game - if you and your team are doing well - you get rewarded within the game. It encourages PVP and without battlehigh you could just all sit still and wait for nodes - and it would basically be the same. Without BH - there is no frontlines, IMO.

What would I change in BH?

Hm, I think BH system is fine overall, but it's just a multiplier on the effects that were broken to begin with.
What isn't fine is the amount of burst damage and crowd control we have in the game now, which seems to be what a lot of commenters complain about. In burst focussed AOE gameplay your health can go from 100% to 0% within a split second, and I guess that's not fun for a lot of people, as with good BH that can happen with less effort. The skill effects aren't balanced for frontline - they are balanced for a mode with way less players - CC. This is the problem I hope they will address in 7.2 (cope?)

You can also say it's a skill issue, and be somewhat right, because you can definitely watch for the burst and try to counter burst it.

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Originally Posted by TofuLove

I like Battle High...

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Agree with your points. I'd add that BH is an antidote to unfavorable spawns, which also appear to upset many people.

I do like the suggestion made in other threads that the defensive advantage/buff of BH is not needed. And perhaps that KO'ing someone with BH should reward more points.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

I do like the suggestion made in other threads that the defensive advantage/buff of BH is not needed. And perhaps that KO'ing someone with BH should reward more points.

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Problem with nerfing the defensive buff and reducing health recovery bonus, is that the other teams might have BH also. I think in this thread people go to extremes and compare BH5 and BH0 engagement. What if it's BH5 and BH5 engagement. If this is the situation it's basically who is the first person to have pressed the button because the other team just won't be able to handle that much damage or recover from it.

[edit]
And i have no opinion on BH5 kills rewarding additional points. Additional points usually mean the games get sped up. It seems unnecessary to me. BH5 enemies should already be on priority list in order to win the encounter. I just don't know...

[edit 2]
If you do give additional point for killing enemies with BH, it should be proportional. Let's say [BH0] = 10 points; [BH1] = 11 points; [BH2] = 12 points;...and so on with [BH5] = 15 points. Because frankly BH4 isn't hugely different from BH5 from perspective of BH0 enemy.

You can see how this can snowball into super fast games.

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Originally Posted by TofuLove

Problem with nerfing the defensive buff and reducing health recovery bonus, is that the other teams might have BH also. I think in this thread people go to extremes and compare BH5 and BH0 engagement. What if it's BH5 and BH5 engagement. If this is the situation it's basically who is the first person to have pressed the button because the other team just won't be able to handle that much damage or recover from it.

[edit]
And i have no opinion on BH5 kills rewarding additional points. Additional points usually mean the games get sped up. It seems unnecessary to me. BH5 enemies should already be on priority list in order to win the encounter. I just don't know...

[edit 2]
If you do give additional point for killing enemies with BH, it should be proportional. Let's say [BH0] = 10 points; [BH1] = 11 points; [BH2] = 12 points;...and so on with [BH5] = 15 points. Because frankly BH4 isn't hugely different from BH5 from perspective of BH0 enemy.

You can see how this can snowball into super fast games.

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Yes, that sort of scaling of bonus points would make sense. If it proves to produce games that are deemed too short, you just rescale the points required to win.

I'd also suggest the people who react most negatively to BH are doing so for the wrong reason. Yes, if you run into a coordinated premade all sitting at BH5, and your positioning is poor, you're going to die very quickly, but you were going to die anyway under those conditions even if the premade had BH0.

BH5 players should indeed be prime targets. In the visual mess of FL, it would help if they were more easily identified. Make their names/job title flash or something.

But all of these ideas require that people actually want to be there and are trying to win.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Yes, that sort of scaling of bonus points would make sense. If it proves to produce games that are deemed too short, you just rescale the points required to win.

BH5 players should indeed be prime targets. In the visual mess of FL, it would help if they were more easily identified. Make their names/job title flash or something.

But all of these ideas require that people actually want to be there and are trying to win.

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I am still not sure about scaling points scored via kills with BH. I am not a mathematician, or whatever, but just thinking about battlehigh distribution. I imagine in many cases it takes more people to kill a bhv enemy, it means more people get assists from it which in turn helps the enemy teams.

The other thing that it emphasises is importance of kills - which encourages playing high/easy kill jobs like ninja. Additionally it can make gameplay too defensive once you progress with BH.
I just don't know if it would skew the game too much.

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Originally Posted by AnnRam

BH rewards you for doing good and playing without dying.

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And punishes you when you have bad teammates.

If you want to reward skill, you dont want a system that can feed on the weak, which is exactly what it does now.