3.2 PvP: Feast Game Mode Discussion Thread.

[Nalien]

Grit is worthless, Dark Knight has MP to worry about and losing Blood Weapon is going to do more harm for your DPS than anything... In Grit, you cannot sustain MP for Dark Arts and that does far more to nerf Dark Knights DPS than the -205% damage dealt.

Warrior wins out in that regard, it can stance dance as needed. What really matters here though is survivability; Paladin has an easier time getting Clemency off, Warrior has Second Wind and Equilibrium. Dark Knight? Grit Souleater is pathetic. In reality though, this adjustment doesn't make tanks tank, it encourages people to spread medals across their party... Everyone is out right easier to kill because of this, and that just highlights Dark Knights utter lack of any meaningful self healing capabilities, the Job is nothing more than a liability. Paladin and Warrior can take care of themselves somewhat (Clemency even helps other party members, as does Thrill of War, which now helps casters too) while Dark Knight cannot. So not only does it lack any meaningful utility whatsoever, it also requires more attention from its healers...

It's no utility, no stopping power, and requiring extra attention from healers, versus utility, stopping power, and actually being able to heal your healers... The balance here is absolutely abysmal... Being able to chase and spam ranged skills to interrupt was all Dark Knight had going for it, but the interrupt changes burned that away...

[Hanayumi]

Sounds more like Drk's need a MP Regen if anything, they do have like 3 or 4 self heals, but yeah all tied to damage with 1/2 of them being tied to Dark Arts anyway. So... with sprint out of the way I think Drk should really get Mana Draw or Mch's Report instead of Enliven, now something like that would make things a lot more fun for Drk when they can toss out a few Dark Arts in quick succession with little consequence.

[Nalien]

Mana Draw instead of Enliven was the first thing I suggested when the Sprint changes hit. I'd even argue Paladin could do with it...

Self heals though, are utterly pathetic. Abyssal Drain will net you 400~1,600 HP for 1~4 targets hit (spoilers, usually that's 1 target and usually it wont do 400 if you're against an Astrologian), and Grit Souleater wont heal enough for the windup on the combo... Meanwhile Clemency is in the 4,000 HP range? Plus 50% if cast on an ally... Warriors heals are stuck on cooldowns, but the important thing here is that they're burst heals... If either are in trouble, they have a fairly substantial self heal to give their healer some time... Dark Knight only gets that from Sole Survivor, but that is far from reliable... Heck, it's a massive red flag even... Oh, and Dark Knight has Tar Pit, but we don't talk about Tar Pits healing capacity... It's on a freakin' long cooldown and it heals far worse than Abyssal Drain... That skill is a bloody joke...

Additionally, I'd ideally like (and some of these are general PvE changes too);

A Cover/Clemency/Thrill of War equivalent. A skill that damages me for 20% of my overall HP, and restores 20% of my overall HP for an ally. Would stack nicely with Living Dead and maintain Dark Knights current persona...

Delirium to reduce Mind as well.

Gladiator/Lancer instead of Gladiator/Marauder for cross-class... Feint and Keen Flurry would be nice... Blood for Blood provides more DPS at a price, again maintaining the Jobs persona...

Blood Weapon/Price to have Dark Arts effects which provide HP instead of MP... Essentially a Bloodbath replacement, not too powerful...

Living Dead (but not Walking Dead) to double up as a persistent Dark Arts effect.

Tar Pit to be an Aura effect. Keep the Heavy, though reduce the duration now that Tar Pit is a status effect. Likewise, change the damage to over time. Keep the drain and maybe improve the percentage back as HP. Alternatively this could work as a Dark Arts Blood Weapon/Price effect, rather than that adjustment (but I want that adjustment for PvE, more so if you swap Marauder for Lancer).

Then you've got a tank which is all about sacrificing HP/defense for a pay-off. Even with the extra self healing, it would still be somewhat of a liability, but it's now making up for that by being able to heal allies or deal more damage. It would hopefully be a high-risk but high-reward Job when played well. When played badly it would just be an easy target. I'd rather double down on the chase/DPS aspect of Dark Knight, than build too much on the utility Paladin and Warrior has... I don't mind having no note worthy stopping power with Stun-lock, dealing damage and keeping people in their toes should be how Dark Knight achieves that... Paladin stops a healer healing, Dark Knight makes a healer heal themselves... That's the meta I'd like...

[Evangela]

SMN can do high damages in the match results and people use that as a proof to say the job is OP but SMN dots hardly kill anyone except for the one who got focused by the SMN and eat the follow up Fester-Painflare-Deathflare. All you have to do is Purify and if it's on CD then you just need to pop your self heal such as Second Wind or Recouperate. If you can survive Deathflare the SMN can't do anything about it because all of their reliable attacks are on cooldown and most SMN will stop following you because they'll get killed eventually as people said, SMN has little to no tool to save their life.

For other jobs, if their burst couldn't kill the target, they can use other attacks to finish them off but for SMN if Deathflare didn't kill the target, it's done. I think this nerf is way too overboard. Not only for SMN's offensive skills but they even nerfed the only defensive tool that SMN can rely on, Tri-bind. Now SMN is heading back to their Frontline Secure state: useless.

[Fuma]

SMN can do high damages in the match results and people use that as a proof to say the job is OP but SMN dots hardly kill anyone except for the one who got focused by the SMN and eat the follow up Fester-Painflare-Deathflare. All you have to do is Purify and if it's on CD then you just need to pop your self heal such as Second Wind or Recouperate. If you can survive Deathflare the SMN can't do anything about it because all of their reliable attacks are on cooldown and most SMN will stop following you because they'll get killed eventually as people said, SMN has little to no tool to save their life.

For other jobs, if their burst couldn't kill the target, they can use other attacks to finish them off but for SMN if Deathflare didn't kill the target, it's done. I think this nerf is way too overboard. Not only for SMN's offensive skills but they even nerfed the only defensive tool that SMN can rely on, Tri-bind. Now SMN is heading back to their Frontline Secure state: useless.

They went from OP in every match to... balanced? I fail to see how that makes them useless. While their dots spread from bane may not kill its still added pressure on the healer. Also a 12 second CC in PvP is insanely long, no CC should persist longer than 6 seconds to keep action flowing. 6 seconds gives you enough time to get clear away from that target. Although I will say the potency nerfs are a bit high, it should've been reduced to 180 for painflare and 360 for deathflare instead of 150 and 300 respectively, IMO.

[Exira]

They went from OP in every match to... balanced? I fail to see how that makes them useless. While their dots spread from bane may not kill its still added pressure on the healer. Also a 12 second CC in PvP is insanely long, no CC should persist longer than 6 seconds to keep action flowing. 6 seconds gives you enough time to get clear away from that target. Although I will say the potency nerfs are a bit high, it should've been reduced to 180 for painflare and 360 for deathflare instead of 150 and 300 respectively, IMO.

I still think it's funny that people thought no adjustments were necessary. These were probably not the right nerfs but something is necessary. People using frontlines to judge balance in feast just blows my mind. The only thing seal rock taught you about balance was how to purify a bad smn's tridisaster. Smn's were borderline in need of nerfs all throughout 2.x but because the fold wasn't popular it didn't get exposure.

[DxWings]

Oh? Thought they were getting rid of the 15 yalm thing altogether while you have WM and GB on, but when you don't have it on you'll get the penalty, or am I reading things wrong?
Quote from Yoshida earlier today from tthe 3.2 PvP: Feast Game Mode Discussion Thread
To address this issue, from patch 3.22, players under the effect of Wanderer’s Minuet or Gauss Barrel will not suffer damage penalties due to distance. However, please note that these penalties will still apply when these abilities are not in use.

Yoshida did post that, BUT that's not what the patch notes are saying.

[Fuma]

I still think it's funny that people thought no adjustments were necessary. These were probably not the right nerfs but something is necessary. People using frontlines to judge balance in feast just blows my mind. The only thing seal rock taught you about balance was how to purify a bad smn's tridisaster. Smn's were borderline in need of nerfs all throughout 2.x but because the fold wasn't popular it didn't get exposure.

I couldn't agree more. I do also appreciate how SE has setup PvP in this game where they can make changes to it without it effecting jobs in PvE like it does in WoW. That always killed me in that game since so much of it like FFXIV is instanced.

[RiceisNice]

Yoshida did post that, BUT that's not what the patch notes are saying.

It's exactly what he said. There will be no damage penalty while you have WM/GB up. There will be damage penalty whenyou don't have it up. Don't read too much into it. However, I don't feel it's so much of a buff either since the MCHs that know what they're doing tend to sweetspot their burst anyway. Their damage is honestly still rather piss poor in GB that I'd rather turn it off and stick to auto attacks/instant casts for harassing (when it was still a thing anyway).

Edit : after testing it for a bit, you still get a damage penalty if you're beyond 15 yards (previously was the sweetspot range). You have no damage penalty between melee and 15 yards. But at this point with the changes to interrupt, you have to wonder just how much of an advantage our attacking range really is if it's going to hit for rather low damage.

[Cynric]

@Fuma : While I agree with your line of thought the problem translates to me as, Why was Tri-bind nerfed and sleep left the same? Sleeps are by far the longest lasting form of CC and just as easy to break as bind.(Accidentally and purposefully) I don't feel like Tri-bind deserved to be touched if sleep will remain the same. They don't have a keen sense for balance in this regard. The potency nerfs are fine and the job will function the same as before just not as exceedingly powerful.

If they were going for real balance then first and foremost DRK should have been fixed this patch not next patch. They changed out one dead job(BLM) and helped newer players on for the most part an already well functioning role (healing) while making one already not so great job (DRK) even worse at doing a job it was already not that great at.

They nerfed SMN potency which was good. However they nerfed Tri-bind while leaving sleep alone(while giving the ability to freecast), If their intention was to balance a very powerful CC tool, then they didn't do that very well,it'0s not balanced now(Tri-bind) it's just worse than it was before. SMN wasn't exactly the king of CC, BLM/WHM are.

If they were thinking CC shouldn't be more than 6-9 seconds then they didn't look at balance as a whole and just rushed to nerf one job. The only reasoning I can find to change what they changed so soon instead of in the next patch, is that they already had these assumptions before we started giving them data. Even so,they still did not balance things very well.

This is what the problem is currently with PVP in terms of balance, they don't seem to have any set vision for what to them is balanced or a way they intend things to go when a match starts and ends.

SMN was indeed extremely powerful compared to other jobs. But if they were going for this quick burst meta they referenced, then they should have brought other jobs up. If they felt summoner was too strong compared to what they intended they should have nerfed it back when it originally was a problem in frontlines, instead they changed purify.

They changed sprint yet they left enliven the same. Enliven is useless now and should be replaced with some other skill for the jobs with it. Why does Malmsight exist? Why does Machinist have Mana draw?

They have a lot to look at which should have been fixed a while ago or at the same time as other nerfs/buffs.

All in all they have to stop looking at things individually, and look at the big picture if they really want to balance PVP. Decide what they want the matches to play like, decide what their base for a balanced job, balanced skills, and the amount of damage/utility/CC they want each job to have and then actually nerf/buff/change/add/remove skills/traits they need to.

Honestly that's just getting into the balance among the jobs, this doesn't even go into the way PVP queues up players, the way rating is being handled, and the terrible idea they have for the seasonal rewards.

In my honest opinion, I don't want to see them even think about starting the first season till they get a handle on how to balance things properly.