Feedback: Class Balance in The Feast 4v4 (Tier List Included)

[Renault]

Hey everyone, my name is King Stefan from Balmung, Aether DC and I want to make a series of threads that cover the entire scope of my feedback for The Feast: Season 1. I'm going to be dividing my threads up by their topics, to give more concise and organized feedback so hopefully it can hit back to SE. My slight background: I have 800 matches played in The Feast and recently hit Gold today in Solo Queue. I main WHM and AST, so my point of view will be coming from that of a healer, though I feel like I have a good general understanding on the game and how it is, and perhaps should, be played. Now that introductions are out of the way...


Let me preface this feedback by saying I could very well be wrong, these are just my opinions. I will start this post off with a tier list, which is placing each class in a tier of viability for SOLO QUEUE MATCHES. I have not played Light Party post-patch, so I cannot give feedback.

S-Tier: Monk, White Mage, Machinist
A-Tier: Warrior, Astrologian, Scholar, Dragoon, Bard
B-Tier: Summoner, Paladin, Ninja
C-Tier: Dark Knight
WTF-Tier: Black Mage

S-Tier Reasoning: These jobs just do it all, and they do it the best.
- Monk has the highest sustained damage from all the melee, has the highest survivability, and has on demand burst.
- White Mage has Sacred Prism and Repose, alongside the highest healing output in the game. Need I say more? They have the strongest healing CD by far and also their own win condition
- Machinist is an absolute, unbalanced, monster. The amount of instant-cast damage it can put out is eclipsed by no class, and they can do it frequently. They don't need the DOT setup like bar, OR the cast time of Empyreal Arrow. Throw in hyper charge and BTE? OP.

A-Tier Reasoning: These jobs fulfill their roles very well. They go well with the meta, but are not overpowered like the S-tier jobs. These jobs are balanced and powerful.

B-Tier Reasoning: These jobs fulfill their roles adequately, however they lack the potential to carry a team by themselves when compared to their higher placed counterparts. What they do well, others can do better...Or in Paladins case, is just too reliant on a team to shine in Solo Queue.

C-Tier Reasoning: Dark Knight still does less burst than a WAR, mitigates and controls less than a Paladin. The new changes allows it to really shut down the burst of the enemy team, but it requires an AOE situation to really be super effective and overall I believe is just worse than the other two choices in every scenario.

Black Mage: It got it's own tier, and that's because BLM is either the worst or the best job in the game when it comes to PVP. You have the potential to be an absolutely worthless meat shield (common), or a CC demon with the destructive force of a fire tornado (there's like 2 people). The job is extremely challenging to play effectively, and it also requires your team members to not mess up your CC chains. I cannot place it low in good conscience because I know it have massive potential, but I've yet to see ANY of them succeed, nor do I think they will ever, on the NA Data Center.

Suggestions:

White Mage - Change Sacred Prism. It pains me to say this, as someone who has most of their matches played on WHM, but this needs to be changed. I would cut the duration, from 30s to 20s. I feel that it is a start and still allows the spell to have an impact.

Machinist - Straight up nerfs to potency in PVP. They just do absurd damage. Give them the summoner treatment.

Monk - This one is tough, because honestly even a small change could ruin the job. Reverting the buff to somersault is a good start, though, or remove its spell speed reduction. I'd also suggest the removal of fists of earth in PVP, as it creates a super obvious advantage for no tradeoff (as they have the highest damage an survivability).

Dark Knight - The need SOMETHING. What they have is lower burst than warrior, and worse utility than BOTH other tank jobs. A start, IMO, would be to have Tar Pit shield yourself AND nearby teammates.

[SaveTheSunF1R3x]

Imo i think sch and nin should be swapped. As much as i love sch it does still have some faults that i wouldn't quite consider it A tier (concerning soloq). All the top nins on my DC are pretty damn good and seem to hold their own quite well. They've definitely shown me their potential.

[Renault]

Imo i think sch and nin should be swapped. As much as i love sch it does still have some faults that i wouldn't quite consider it A tier (concerning soloq). All the top nins on my DC are pretty damn good and seem to hold their own quite well. They've definitely shown me their potential.

Could you state your reasons for those opinions, other than just that you have those opinions?

[xTysonx]

I'll have to disagree with nerfing MCH dmg and will echo the words rice said in this >post<

The lack of defensive skills/self-heals makes your avg MCH a literal "glass cannon", meaning you are VERY healer dependent if you get focused as well as kiting without ammo procs or GB is a loss to dps. The only things MCH has to defend itself (stun/slow/bind) is easily bypassed on a fetter ward, blank kb is easily countered by drg jump/mnk dash/ninja tele while Stun Gun has very long CD. Wildfire can also be purified , a big chunk of dmg lost while the single target bust gets nulled by a good healer.

There are only a handful of MCH I'd consider playing the class excellently (on primal at least), and to be fair I still see more SMN/BLM. But frankly if it was as bad as it seems we'd see more threads about it. Outside of an excellent burst, the ammo procs are the only thing you can count on and those don't bring much to the table since both brd/mch lost their interruption roles.

If you give MCH the nerf hammer, you might as well bring BRD back down with it since they rock similar boats, just different solutions to the same problem.

[RiceisNice]

As I mentioned in another tier thread, everything should be looked comparatively to their peers (melee to melee, ranged to ranged, etc etc) because you can't take a ranged dps over a melee dps with the forced team compositions.

That being said though,

- Monk has the highest sustained damage from all the melee, has the highest survivability, and has on demand burst.

As it stands now, MNK has the capacity to desync burst from both melee and casters (to an extent) through pacification and spell speed (which doesn't work on oGCDs), especially when it comes to butting heads at the start of a match. To be fair though, all melees are relatively on close terms with each other (excluding things like ninja stealthing with heavy medal) but small things like reverting somersault would tone them down a bit, especially when their biggest weakness attributed to their dps is maintaining uptime...which is rendered entirely moot when GL has a duration of 28 seconds.

- White Mage has Sacred Prism and Repose, alongside the highest healing output in the game. Need I say more? They have the strongest healing CD by far and also their own win condition

IMO, only repose really needs a change in lowered reduction. Sacred Prism is stationary and can be removed by skills such as OIP, retrogradiation and the like. Their healing output comes from cast times (which is a separate issue) and it starts to dwindle when they come under fire. However, I won't argue their placement compared to the other two healers; their CC and self-preservation is just too good.

- Machinist is an absolute, unbalanced, monster. The amount of instant-cast damage it can put out is eclipsed by no class, and they can do it frequently. They don't need the DOT setup like bar, OR the cast time of Empyreal Arrow. Throw in hyper charge and BTE? OP.

I would like your explanation in this, especially in regards to them already nerfing BtE when they previously have less survivability and arguably less utility compared to BRD/SMN. They don't have a DoT setup, but they do have proc setup to prepare hot shot and clean shot+reassemble. The cast time on empyreal (like every other cast time, especially in regards to the adjusted arena) really isn't much of a hinderance when it's <1.5 seconds.

If we're doing a direct comparison, we're looking at BtE, GR, ricochet, cleanshot+reassemble (450+200+300*+350~=1300~) compared to Empyreal Barrage, far shot, bloodletter, sidewinder(660+240+150+275=1325). They're not that far off until you factor in debuffs (and hypercharge is on 120 seconds, so it's not going to line up unless you want to delay your burst, which at that point it's not as frequent as you're saying). Empyreal can't crit, but the other skills can, and BRD gets a 20% crit chance just from themselves (internal release and straight shot) And the other thing with ricochet is that it's potency can be diluted if they're grouped, which includes egis, faires, or even supply crates. There's much more conventional counterplays to MCH's burst (grouping to dilute ricochet's damage for example) and they still have to set up with weaponskills before hand (whereas BRD's can be cleansed, but beyond the burst that can also be a healer pressure because more DoTs means more bloodletter procs)

At the least, I wouldn't pass them off to the point of being OP relative to their peers (SMN and BRD), especially when you look at SMN's AoE bind options and BRD's paeon, longer duration bind, and arguably better sustain/pressure outside of bursts.

Black Mage: It got it's own tier, and that's because BLM is either the worst or the best job in the game when it comes to PVP.

The point of a tier list is to discuss the potential, with player still not being a factor in their placing. That being said, in relation to interrupt changes and the removal of LoS walls, BLMs have absolutely so much power to not leave them alone, but at the same time you can't do the same to the enemy WHM who can easily heal up damage dealt (as mentioned above). Even with the adjustments to sleep, the first DR is still a bit too long for something like feast (same for repose)

[Renault]

Snip points on WHM

Snip points on MCH

Snip points on BLM

1: You don't understand how Prism works.

It's a placed AOE that cannot be removed like a debuff. Also, WHM gets most of their healing done through preparing HOTs, not from casting. Repose doesn't need to be changed, as the nerf has already made it much more difficult to use than before.

2: How can you discount Hypercharge? That's an absurd way of thinking..."Oh, my 10% damage increase doesn't count!" It absolutely counts. Not only for you, but for your melee and tank as well! Also, you can SPOT the bard burst incoming, you cannot spot the MCH burst incoming. If I have both bard dots on me, I know I am in trouble and can LOS. You cannot say the same for a MCH.


3: When it comes to black mage, I gave it a comedic tier because it simply cannot be placed currently in the NA meta. In my opinion. Your reasoning you gave following your disagreement is poorly based and untrue. You cannot leave BLM alone, true, but if you're being focused you are essentially useless. You are a hunk of meat that absorbed damage. This makes the game a 3.5v4, as your team is not free to do stuff, but you're down and effective player. I'm not really sure what else to say, because even a WHM free casting cannot heal through the burst of three other players. In over 800 games played, I can say I have never once lost a match because of an enemy black mages, but I have lost 90%+ of the games I have a BLM on my team. I think the difficulty of the effective use of a job absolutely needs to be considered in a tier list.

[xTysonx]

2: How can you discount Hypercharge? That's an absurd way of thinking..."Oh, my 10% damage increase doesn't count!" It absolutely counts. Not only for you, but for your melee and tank as well! Also, you can SPOT the bard burst incoming, you cannot spot the MCH burst incoming. If I have both bard dots on me, I know I am in trouble and can LOS. You cannot say the same for a MCH.

A BRD only need 2 dots to make full use of Sidewinder, that doesn't mean hes going to use it or that the triple empy arrow from out of nowhere, for all you know you could just be a dot sponge to give him more bloodletter. A MCH turret glows a noticeably bright neon green and gives a unique phy up (different icon/text compared to ninjas vuln up) meaning you need to break LoS quickly unless you want 30s of taking free dmg (hypercharge is a valuable cd and most mch wont desummon it early for a chase). Wildfire is also a good indicator that you're a target for a burst as well, meaning you disable him, break LoS, prep heals to take the hits or just purify it off so he wont get a free 4-6k.

[RiceisNice]

1: You don't understand how Prism works.

It's a placed AOE that cannot be removed like a debuff. Also, WHM gets most of their healing done through preparing HOTs, not from casting. Repose doesn't need to be changed, as the nerf has already made it much more difficult to use than before.

The AoE on the ground is present because of a buff. Much like shadowflare, sacred soil, and such. Regen also doesn't help against focus fire. It helps against damage that's spread apart, but being able to get cure II off undoes a lot of incoming damage, espesically since they removed the healing debuff reduction.


Also the nerf made it "more difficult to use"? It's execution is the same.

2: How can you discount Hypercharge? That's an absurd way of thinking..."Oh, my 10% damage increase doesn't count!" It absolutely counts. Not only for you, but for your melee and tank as well! Also, you can SPOT the bard burst incoming, you cannot spot the MCH burst incoming. If I have both bard dots on me, I know I am in trouble and can LOS. You cannot say the same for a MCH.

You can predict it just as much as a BRD burst because they're both going to be using cooldowns. A burst without cooldowns like raging strikes and hawkeye is a huge damage loss and you more than likely will not be killing anything.

I didn't discount hypercharge's debuff for their damage,

They're not that far off until you factor in debuffs (and hypercharge is on 120 seconds, so it's not going to line up unless you want to delay your burst, which at that point it's not as frequent as you're saying)

But in context, it's not going to stack with full swing (which is stronger and is a given because of tanks), which is more than likely going to be coordinated for a burst. You could say that you won't be able to predict whois going to be burst, but in all consideration, all 3 melees have fetter ward which means they're going to be out of the question, leaving the ranged and healer. You could wait it off, but at that point you're not getting the first hit and most likely lose momentum over the middle arena.

Not to mention a BRD is going to be applying DoTs on everyone anyway for bloodletter. It's going to be just as predictable on whose going to get hit when a tank or melee comes up to your face.

Please tell the whole story before you start listing numbers.

I already pointed this out in the very same post you quoted.

[Exira]

....Meanwhile, Machinist's Between the Eyes has a strict CC requirement...

You must be kidding right?

[Renault]

Snip

1: Repose is now more difficult to use because the duration is halved, meaning it has half the effectiveness. You have to make tougher decision and use it at key moments, as the duration is halved. So you half the time of sleep. It's cut in half.

2: You don't understand what I mean when I say "see the burst coming". EX: Bard can only burst when dots are up. DRG burst is inc when you see Vorpal thrust. Warrior burst is inc at 5 stacks of abandon. Just because a MCH has their buffs up, that burst could come, on ANY target, in a 20+ second period. That is not "seeing it coming".