Feedback: Things they did right

Alright guys, we will have plenty of megathreads with the complaints raining down. And complaints are GREAT for feedback, but there is another side to consider. We also want them to understand the changes they made we DO like so they do not take them away when they address the complaints. So in that spirit, what did they get right?

GNB rework: The loss of double down kind of sucks, but overall this job is MUCH better than it used to be. Draw and Junction was a callback to 8 and unique yes, but it was wonky and weak from a gameplay perspective. Now we have access to skills on demand AND the increase to basic damage makes GNB a threat outside of Blasting Zone. Lionheart combo, or a buffed as hell Double Down, instead of this weird as hell PvP specific Ulti and I think you have a real winner of a class.

Shield Answers: Oh man, nothing sucked more wind than watching people chain run into the crystal JUST to stall and stall and stall and dear heavens stall. It sucked, it was unfun, it wasn't big brain strategy and finally we have more answers. Shield Smash, RDM Melee combo, Perfectio all being added as a means to punish shields have been wonderful additions. IMHO, I want to see more of this in the future. Abilities that have a reactive bonus.

New Skills: Some jobs simply got more fun to play with new skills. WAR getting Inner Chaos after Blota...Great! Shield Smash for PLD...Amazing! Vice of Thorns for RDM...Stellar! They should have gone even farther IMHO. But many of the skills we got either opened up new play patterns, deleted old toxic play patterns or are simply additions to existing skills to give us a nice button to smash.

Again, no point in complaining here, there are MANY other threads for that. We need to compile the good so they don't mess the cool stuff up.

At the risk of annoying this forum to death since I don't shut up about it: Pictomancer.

The PCT tweaks are my personal winner of this update and I'm so, so glad they got at least that one right.
It went from a clunky, (sometimes too) slow job with a rigid rotation to a fast-paced, harder-hitting and more importantly very flexible and versatile job, giving you many options to chain together your skills for good damage.
And all that while keeping its unique identity.

Before 7.0 there was only really one way to play if you wanted to have proper burst damage, which is/was PCT's primary strength. Otherwise you'd just randomly throw your skill out without any coordination and risked having no real impact, except for very situational use cases where you could snipe low health targets here and there.

Now you have so many options to combine different attacks to deal impactful damage, making it much easier to adapt to different scenarios and still contribute meaningfully to the team. Also it's fun having all these different possibilities to play with instead of needing to stick to a rigid formula.


Now I'm praying that the devs will never touch it again and just leave it the way it is. Not because you couldn't add more fun stuff but because I have no more trust that they wouldn't just break it (again) in their attempt to "improve", "fix" or "change" it.
(Please devs, you did a good job! Preserve that good work!)

It's in a good place now. Solid, effective and unique without being absolutely overtuned, as far as far as I can tell.

(At least I have not seen many high-ranking players choose it post 7.1, so I guess it's still not super meta or anything but it's absolutely serviceable and competitive now. Although I wonder if one reason why it's still not picked as often is its pre-rework reputation of being bad and most people not expecting the job to actually have improved.)

Solid idea.

I like the additions to WAR. In addition to its previous role as a disruptive tank, it now has better tools to be a pursuit assassin.

Similarly BRD's additions make it more fun, and the knock-back is niche, but an interesting twist.

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Originally Posted by HyperSMB

Shield Smash, RDM Melee combo, Perfectio all being added as a means to punish shields have been wonderful additions. IMHO, I want to see more of this in the future. Abilities that have a reactive bonus.

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I would like to respectfully disagree to this point. Guard is one of the strongest lines of defense AND should be treated as such. It becomes moot when skills can pierce through it, especially when the main priorities of CC is to push the objective and as it was described, to "stall". Imagine the enemy team nearly pushing the crystal to the objective and you have teammates in the midst of respawning with only you alive. In order to hopefully save the match, you take the risk to stall long enough on the crystal until your team can fully respawn and back you up. Now that's nearly impossible because you'd just be razed to death by the enemy RDM, RPR, and NIN. Imagine that on a larger scale like Frontlines. People would be dropping like flies for the entire match.

Shield pierce on normal skills outside of LB has felt incredibly egregious to me-- and this is coming from a NIN and RDM main who has skills that are able to do that. CC has more or less shifted from strategic gameplay (e.g. the enemy guards, thus I use a cc skill to close in on the KO after their guard wears off) and shifted to something more reactive (e.g. player is at 30%> HP? Spam my entire kit to get the KO). It doesn't help the fact that these shield pierce skills are on relatively short CDs.

In order to solve old problems in PvP, the devs tried resolving them only to create new ones.

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Originally Posted by HyperSMB

Oh man, nothing sucked more wind than watching people chain run into the crystal JUST to stall and stall and stall and dear heavens stall. It sucked, it was unfun, it wasn't big brain strategy.

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This is just an unfortunate case of players not knowing the general play of CC and how to properly regroup. It's just something that can't be helped but only with enough experience and exposure to the gamemode. We have to roll with these punches we're dealt with in these types of matches.

I tend to agree. Even though I see HyperSMB's point, with so much more CC and damage, and with purify having a shorter duration guard feels even more important to me than before tbh.

I can sort of see what they were going for with MNK. Previously MNK had to wind up to Phantom Rush and this forced MNK to keep advancing and retreating since it was a melee-only PVP job. Back then, the devs doubled down on this concept and nerfed Enlightenment and extended the duration of the weaponskill combo.

Now, MNK can front load or back load its damage using a combination of its new ranged weaponskills. Personally speaking, I believe that the ranged attacks are a godssend for MNK. After playing a few dozen games, MNK is now a threat at the start and at the end of a round of battle. The burst might seem weak at first, but it is instant cast and long range; and for a team, having more players being able to focus one target is always more advantageous than players needing different timings to land their more damaging attacks. Even better is how MNK gains 2 area effect ranged attacks.

The devs must have decided that to have these new tactical options, MNK must give up something and so Six-Sided Star and one charge of Thunderclap had to go. MNK is still not able to root or slow anyone, but since it has ranged attacks now, it can just shoot the player running away rather than run after them like an idiot.

I like that while I'm still thinking about who to target, I can just launch a couple of ranged attacks. I like that I can save one Riddle of Fire for the end of the weaponskill combo and use one at the start, or use both at the start, or use both at the end. I like that if you use Riddle of Fire on Phantom Rush, you still get one more attack to do, and since it is ranged you can use it on who you're still fighting, or if you have situation awareness, you can instantly switch to a lower health opponent and finish them off.

Centralizing ranked pvp in one datacenter per region was the perfect change to make ranked more active. Ranked queues are SUPER quick since now there's like triple the ranked population, it's like when CC was first released. Got from bronze 3 to gold 4 in 1 day.

Now the next best change for ranked is to make more rewards for ranks below crystal and diamond. Maybe a new ranked weapon reward (like Augmented Tropaios Weapons with effects) that uses a new, different currency than commendation crystals (like Tropaios Crystals) that you can get even from bronze rank. The amount you get increasing based on rank.

I think the whole job roster besides a few misses is solid.

I think 7.1 WAR's kit is really fun, and should be the golden standard for job updates in PvP. No old skills were removed, the new skills fit nicely with the job fantasy, and its gameplan is intact.

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Originally Posted by SomeGuy22

I think 7.1 WAR's kit is really fun, and should be the golden standard for job updates in PvP. No old skills were removed, the new skills fit nicely with the job fantasy, and its gameplan is intact.

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Yeah agreed. It's unfortunate you can't use it 80% of the time due to the CC.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

As a MCH main in particular, uh, I'll get back to you when I can think of a positive change they made with the update.

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I do not like what they did to MCH (to a point where I stopped playing it since when it was my main job) and I definitely counted it under the "few misses". Which also includes VPR and BLM. And AST.

I forgot to add but one thing they nailed right and I was already hoping for before DT is the HP pool increase overall. Instant stun death at high level or especially in scrims/LPs, was just too much imo. Not that it's very different now unfortunately since damage also followed, but the idea behind increasing it was right.

The removal of range penalty for BRD was nice, hated that any melee fight would lower the dmg of the basic filler attack.

Fixing the ultra vacuum that is DRK and making it much easier to kill in FL.

Pld and Gnb are frigging beasts now, sooo good for squishy ranged killing. Mch, brd, and blms so yummy targets to sit on/bully. Sam got funner, but the reduction of range for Sekki-w/e sucks. Blm’s loss of insta-cast nukes during lb phase took its fun aspect down 50%. Just not the same experience any more. Monk is just. ..super Mario now. 6k fireballs is lol. Drg’s full burst now is nice but feels slower, sky being a weaponskill for god knows what reason instead of an ability. Reaper got . . .cute, but still suffers from the same slow 0-60 locomotive build up.