3.2 PvP: Feast Game Mode Discussion Thread.

[Ultimatecalibur]

The question shouldn't be "What do we do with Morale?" but "What (non-overwhelming) advantage should PvP gear have in PvP over PvE gear and how do you prevent it from being must have for PvE content?"

The original implementation of Morale was originally intended to balance PvP and PvE gear without making PvP gear BiS for PvE content. Morale's combination damage boost and damage reduction was supposed to make up for the the difference in HP and Weapon damage that 15 to 20 ilevels generated, a gap that existed to prevent PvE gear from becoming must have for PvE progression. Morale was supposed to allow those in i55 PvP gear effectively fight opponents in i70 PvE gear equally and those in i70 PvP gear fight opponents in i90 PvE gear equally. In "balanced" matches between characters geared i70 PvP gear and i90 PvE gear the players in PvP gear had a slight (but not completely overwhelming) advantage due to better inherent itemization (all PvP gear had Det, Skill Speed, Spell Speed or Crit in addition to Morale) and materia slots (intended to hold anti-status materia in order to meta CC effects). The current version of Morale would do roughly the same thing but is limited by all PvP being under an ilevelsync make increased ilevel mostly meaningless.

Problems occurred because level 50 pvp matched players in i50 PvE gear against players in i70 PvP and i90 PvE gear. An undergeared newbie facing fully geared vets is not a fun introduction to PvP. i80 synced PvP modes pretty much solved the balance problem when introduced, but the damage inflicted on Wolf's Den was so great that there was no real way for it to recover and so it was mostly abandoned.