The Fields of Glory (Shatter)

[Kai_Lee]

But seal rock was the same thing, there are matches with just endless fighting all over and then there was matches im won doing not much but watch the other alliance fight while we steal their nodes. I enjoyed them all regardless of what kind of matches im in.

[Thekk]

But seal rock was the same thing, there are matches with just endless fighting all over and then there was matches im won doing not much but watch the other alliance fight while we steal their nodes. I enjoyed them all regardless of what kind of matches im in.

I'd argue the biggest difference is that Shatter feels way more static than Seal Rock. In Shatter, crystals are always in the same spots and spawns are somewhat predictable. Small crystals die way too fast too, so you don't even bother going for them when they spawn at the other end. It leads you to defending the same position over and over. In Seal Rock, you can't know where the next tomelith will spawn, and you also have the A/S ranks to keep you on your toes. Going after tomeliths in other areas of the map is also possible. Overall, that leads to less standing around.

[Eorzean_username]

But seal rock was the same thing, there are matches with just endless fighting all over and then there was matches im won doing not much but watch the other alliance fight while we steal their nodes.

I've seen others claim this too, so I guess personal experiences in Seal Rock varied a lot:

All I can say confidently is that for me, personally, the vast majority of my Seal Rock matches involved a lot of contesting nodes, skirmishing, and conflict. Even if I landed in a team that wanted to avoid fighting, it didn't work, because:

• Nodes would spawn in dangerous territory, where they needed to be claimed and held (a simple zerg could not drain it of all points)
• Our own nodes could be contested at any time (even by sneaky NIN, etc), necessitating a return home and more conflict (a simple zerg could not secure all of our nodes' points at once)
• Doing anything to a node required fighting off anyone else present, swatting away anyone attempting to switch its identity, or dodging anyone trying to stop you from switching the node for yourself — there was no taking anything in Seal Rock without direct contest and wiping out the immediate competition first

In Shatter:

Yeah, you can definitely disrupt the enemy team, annoy their DPS, or even score a handful of kills while opponents try to focus Ice.

But I usually see this as a failed strategy unless one team is overwhelmingly more powerful or coordinated than the opposition, because the GCDs diverted away from attacking the Ice just is not made up by the kills scored, nor does that disruption stop enemy DPS enough to edge out your own team.

At the very least, it requires way too much planning and coordination to work out well or feel fun in a PUG full of uncertain strangers. "Zerg the Ice" is a lot more reliable in that situation.

For my personal experiences, Seal Rock was majority hard conflict, small minority waiting games. Shatter is increasingly the inverse.

Another thing that continues to frustrate me is as PLD, my ability to CC and defend strongly feels like a pointless gimmick at Shatter Ice pops.

Yes, I can run around Stunning DPS blowing CDs or Aegis Boon the random Bind+Cometeor on the melee pack, but better results come from just blowing FOF and tunneling the Ice as hard as possible.

In Seal Rock, my personal DPS felt far less important as long as my team could defend our node or push the opponent out of theirs. Aegis, Testudo, Cover, Stunlock, off-heals, Silence, all of this felt like it made a huge difference at the most important points of Seal Rock matches.

words in post #271

I completely agree with everything you said here, these are good observations and reflect my own experiences as well.

[Thekk]

Another thing that continues to frustrate me is as PLD, my ability to CC and defend strongly feels like a pointless gimmick at Shatter Ice pops.

The same kind of point could be made about healers. With the constant fighting going on plenty of heals were needed and you could harass people trying to capture nodes.

In Shatter, if people tunnel on the crystal and no healing is required (sadly, that happens pretty often) the only thing I can do is attack it myself with my pitiful damage (no cleric stance) that is only about to get worse with the increased magic resistance.

[Februs]

The same kind of point could be made about healers. With the constant fighting going on plenty of heals were needed and you could harass people trying to capture nodes. In Shatter, if people tunnel on the crystal and no healing is required (sadly, that happens pretty often) the only thing I can do is attack it myself with my pitiful damage (no cleric stance) that is only about to get worse with the increased magic resistance.

Agreed.

On the few matches that I've been forced to play as Whm whenever there was a crystal up, HoT's were more than enough to keep people alive. I hardly had to worry about stray players running out of range either, because they are hardly ever attacked. By the end of the match, I usually end up casting a lot of sleeps just to troll enemies, cuz' why not? I'm a pretty crummy healer; so, it's still enough to keep me entertained, but I imagine that seasoned healing veterans might find Shatter to be pretty boring.