PvP needs real changes

[Februs]

Without the 4th dps it wont become a race to kill the healer due to the 4v4. Taking out the healer was the most viable option to guaranteed a win than to chase after any role ... how is feast any different from old wolves den?

You seem to predicating your entire suggestion on this premise, but, quite frankly, it's a false premise.

Taking out the healer first is most certainly NOT the only viable strategy. It may not even be the best strategy, depending on the circumstances. That is actually the main difference between Feast and WD. In WD, the kill order literally was fixed. You always killed the healer first. It was the only way to win. In Feast, it is not. The buff boxes at the start of the match make a huge difference in which target can, and should, make the priority. It's not always the healer, especially if they have the defense buff. In fact, more often then not, the priority target is the melee dps, because they stand to pose the biggest threat at the start of the match. Even if you do go for the healer at the start and score a kill, the priority immediately shifts. The entire concept of heavy medal stacks and available coins encourages you to chase other targets, because the dmg on those targets is higher and the reward is greater. The only time that purely prioritizing the healer is a viable strategy is if that healer is so good that they are carrying their team, and even then, that's only the case if the dps are too weak to score kills. Otherwise, thinking that killing the healer first is the best and universal kill order is a novice mistake that can actually cause far more harm than good, especially if the healer is good enough to carry themselves through a burst or CC.

The reason I mention the healer's personal skill is because healer's do, in fact, have the resourced to heal through a double burst. It's not easy, certainly, but it is possible. For one, they have an awful lot of emergency heal measures that they can take advantage of if they need to (such as big heals like Benediction, or PvP skills like Attunement, etc). The strongest healers I've seen in the Feast actually needed to be CC'd, otherwise nothing would ever die. That's how potent their heals can be, if used correctly. It's not uncommon, especially in mid-ranked matches, to see an LB fail to kill a target, or have a match get thrown into Culling Time. It all depends on how skilled the healer is at using the tools they have available to them. The problem isn't with those tools. They're strong enough. The problem is with the healer's ability to manage their healing while also dodging the CC attempts of their enemy. A lot of healers lack that skill, and a lot more tank/dps teams fail to give adequate support to their healers when they need it (such as with purifies, covers, stuns, etc). Reducing the number of dps in the match is not going to fix that problem. It would make CC easier to achieve, but most dps can't capitalize on that time with two people bursting, let alone one. The dramatically reduced dps would make it far easier for healers to breeze through the average dps burst. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised to see Culling Time become a lot more common as a result.

[Evangela]

I'd rather keep the gears synced. It's better to have smaller gap between veterans and newbies. Experienced PvPers already have more skills and experiences. Giving them better gears will make the newbies stop queing for PvP, nobody wants to get owned every match.

[Phantomsmile]

it seems as tho all you guys feel that even the slightest of idea to any sort of change to pvp is a break. yet you all sense that there are things wrong with it. yet you guys dont want to change it at all? how is any suggestion being shot down by all of you guys going to help pvp's future?

sure some of my suggestion would seem to break rather than fix but something is better than nothing.

regarding the morale my suggestion is tanks get more defensive, healer heals a bit more and dps do more dps. your guy's thought on this?

[Synestra]

Stuff like 2v2 and 3v3 would propably work with upcoming custom match as it doesnt have role requirement. I know custom match is supposed to be training/funzie mode but on hi-pop servers i could see some serious premade vs premade matches done via custom match option as it doesnt require que and has no role requirements + there is spectator mode.

I never really did old WD properly but was it really always "kill the healer"? did anyone tryed to CC healer(before sleep nerfs etc)and kill DD instead? that sounds pretty valid strategy imo. Also stuff like WD would propably be totally diffirent now that almost all jobs has some kind of burst that they missed back in lvl50 era.

[Februs]

regarding the morale my suggestion is tanks get more defensive, healer heals a bit more and dps do more dps. your guy's thought on this?

It's not that we're totally opposed to changes in general. We're just opposed to these specific suggestions. You have to remember that a lot of us have already been back and forth on these issues in the past (especially in the WD days). Even SE has wrestled with them, and us, over how this stuff should be handled. A lot of the things are the way they are for very good reasons. Change in itself is fine, so long as it makes the game better, not worse. Sadly, the majority of the suggestions here would have some very serious negative effects, some of which we've already lived with in previous game modes.

As for Morale, that's an interesting topic. I myself would love to see morale make a comeback of some kind, because I want the PvP gear to serve a purpose other than just vanity (I also would like SE to have a little more encouragement to give us more regular updates to the gear vendors). The problem is how to do it without making it too unfair to new players. Even SE asked us on our feedback on this in a previous thread because they, themselves, don't know how to get around it. They just know that they don't want a repeat of WD and early Secure, where rank 30 (at the time, this was max PvP rank) PvP players could basically face roll anyone in PvE gear. Someone once suggested opening the morale effect in brackets (lvl 1, 2, 3, etc) as you rank up, but Introductory players would need a way to get a low level set early on ... I suppose they could always give new players vouchers with the introductory PvP quest, so they could have instant access to at least a few pieces of PvP gear. It's hard to say if that would be viable or not, though.

[Februs]

I never really did old WD properly but was it really always "kill the healer"? did anyone tryed to CC healer(before sleep nerfs etc)and kill DD instead? that sounds pretty valid strategy imo. Also stuff like WD would propably be totally diffirent now that almost all jobs has some kind of burst that they missed back in lvl50 era.

Yes, this was the way it was. To this day, there are still a lot of die-hard WD fans who would defend it to the grave. I loved it myself, but there is no denying that it was flawed, because there really were very few exceptions to how the matches played out.

CC'ing the healer was a valid strategy for scoring a kill, but that strategy had a very big pitfall. So long as the healer was still alive, they could simply resurrect the player you nuked while they were CC'd. The match would then continue in a deadlock until one healer died. The ONLY time that changed was if the two competing teams were on equal footing, or had equally skilled healers. If that was the case, then the fight became a battle of attrition to see who could run the other healer dry on Mp. That was pretty rare outside of organized matches, though. Nine out of ten times, it was more efficient and expedient (as well as far less risky) to simply nuke their healer as quickly as possible in order to secure your victory, especially if you were CC'ing the healer long enough to score that kill. Once the healer was dead, the possibility of a comeback was reduced to zero. The one exception to that was if they had a Smn who had access to battle resurrection, but that was exactly why the kill order went: Healer > Ranged > Melee > Tank. Once the healer was dead, the Smn was the very next person to hit the floor, usually within a couple of seconds.

I imagine that this would only be worse as things are now. Even back at 50, all dps classes had access to a pretty hefty burst. There was never a time when they didn't. Blm's were rocking either items in their hotbars to score triple Flare burst rotations (quadruple, for a short time, until SE nerfed it). Dragoons had their jump burst rotation. Etc. Those bursts have only gotten stronger since HW, so nuking the healer in a perma-death match would only be easier.