The Feast (4v4 Solo) Season 3 Patch 3.45 Tier List

[Slib]

If the JP servers were so good with BLM CC coordination, I'm surprised the counter effect of using purifies on each other and bard warden song didn't come into play to counter it. Also remember, the last nerf to which they said the JP community abused included AoE sleep to single target sleep. In my opinion AoE sleep spam is actually not beneficial in a coordinated 4v4 match. Too many spread DR's set up. The team afterwards would have a lot of free time to put out pressure.

In fact, I think the nerf to AoE sleep was more for Frontlines than anything else.

Edit: I could be wrong on the aoe sleep not being beneficial if they land 3 sleeps on a non kill target at once...more uptime for dpsing.

[Februs]

If the JP servers were so good with BLM CC coordination, I'm surprised the counter effect of using purifies on each other and bard warden song didn't come into play to counter it.

Purify is a 90s recast and can only be used once per player. Sleep can be cast 3x consecutively before resistance, and the resistance timer is 60s. Even with everyone on your team using all their purifies to save one another from sleep, the Blm could outpace it, although with very diminished results. This is especially the case if they had a Pld on their team. The common practice was to bait a purify use with either a stun or sleep, then follow it up with the other after the purifies are wasted. You're guaranteed to keep at leas one target locked out of combat for roughly 10s or more, depending on how many purifies they had at the time yous started your CC.

The AoE aspect of sleep is also supremely useful in Feast for when you bottle neck or bait the enemy team. In most cases, it's utility is for a single target lock; however, hitting multiple targets allowed for BLM's to be excellent chasers or blockers. Any time you were pursuing an enemy onto their bridge or vice versa, the BLM could effectively end the chase with a quick cast of sleep. Boxes and low Hp party members were also prime time sleep magnets, as they tend to cause players to rush in and clutter up. It was also a tool for forcing the enemy to waste additional purifies. Dps are not always the brightest pennies in the game. They hate being locked in place and often jump the gun. More often then not, if a Sleep hits multiple targets at once, the dps target won't even think to check the healer status bar before wasting a purify on themselves.

You also have to keep in mind that Sleep was not the only thing that was nerfed on BLM. Lethargy (6s heavy), Freeze (12s bind), and Swiftcast (now halves dmg of any Swifted damage dealing spells) were all nerfed as well. Individually, it all sounds quite small, however Heavy and Bind both outpace Fetter ward and could be used to completely remove War's from combat (not even exaggerating here). The nerf to swiftcast also essentially made it useless for any damage dealing spells, so sniping kills became a thing of the past.

Normally I'd agree that careful party play and tactical uses of purify are the best ways to counter this. I always advocate for smart play over nerfs, but, unfortunately, there is no doubt that BLM was a little overpowered in the CC department before they got nerfed down. The problem is that SE went WAY too far with the nerfs, rendering them almost useless in the arena.

[Slib]

Purify is a 90s...

I understand that the purify can be outpaced, but purifying a healer that's slept on the first 8 second duration and then having the healer save purify for the next sleep or stun thats going to cost him a members death could work well if the team only did 2 purifies per minute DR reset.

Purifying a 2 second sleep is a waste. Also purifying CC on a tank/dps is a waste 90% of the time.

My point is, save purifies for healer, 2 per set of DR's. There are, of course, times where the person wants to purify all the dots including full swing landed on them but again, with a Black Mage as the enemy, you won't see those summoner dots with full swing on you at the same time.

Aside from the rest of your post, I also see black mage being very weak when it comes to being LoS'd a lot. Sure, you can have the enemy who has a runaway DPS that LoS's their heals but if you were to have two good teams playing against each other, using pillars is a huge disadvantage to the BLM team. Especially if they have to be aggressive.

I don't know tho, this is just my personal feelings. I've never seen a black mage ever play even decently. As I said before, I hope someone can post a video of some matches or a stream of good Black Mage play.

[Februs]

I understand that the purify can be outpaced, but purifying a healer that's slept on the first 8 second duration and then having the healer save purify for the next sleep or stun thats going to cost him a members death could work well if the team only did 2 purifies per minute DR reset ...

You're underestimating how steep the nerf was. The problem is that it wasn't just 8s. If I remember correctly, the original sleep duration was 12s. Nightwing was also an additional 10s (now 6s). Blm CC actually accounted for roughly 15 full seconds of downtime by itself if left alone, but that wasn't the real problem. The real problem was how easy it was to chain CC together. Even if the party tried to space their purifies by doing a 2 purify per minute reset, that would only cover 2 out of 3 sleeps (sleep always got purify priority because of a much longer duration). That would leave one short sleep and 3 full Pld stuns with a duration of 7s (4s>2s>1s). That's more than enough time to guarantee a kill or two during the downtime, assuming competent dps. Conversely, if you tried to purify the total CC duration of stuns and sleeps, then not only would you fail, but you'd be leaving the healer completely exposed to CC for ~25s come resistance reset. There was no way to win here. Assuming equal skill levels across both teams, you were either guaranteed one kill every 60s or a full party wipe every 2 minutes. The team without the Blm would lose.

You also have to take into consideration that it is infinitely easier to to coordinate CC than it is to coordinate CC resistance. There is no voice-chat in Feast outside of organizing 3rd party services, and those only work for party-queue. The only way a healer can ask for purifies in solo-queue is to set up a maccro or type in the chat box, but even then, there is no guarantee that your party will notice it. They could miss it, or they could simply ignore it, or they could assume that someone else would take care of it, or, worst of all, they could ALL take notice and blow all of their purifies at the same time, essentially wasting 2/3rds available purifies (and yes, I have seen this happen). By comparison, chaining together CC is far easier and there is less margin for error. Hence, it was abused in JP, and subsequently nerfed.

[Slib]

You're underestimating how steep the nerf was. The problem is that it wasn't just 8s. If I remember correctly, the original sleep duration was 12s. Nightwing was also an additional 10s (now 6s). Blm CC actually accounted for roughly 15 full seconds of downtime by itself if left alone, but that wasn't the real problem. The real problem was how easy it was to chain CC together. Even if the party tried to space their purifies by doing a 2 purify per minute reset, that would only cover 2 out of 3 sleeps (sleep always got purify priority because of a much longer duration). That would leave one short sleep and 3 full Pld stuns with a duration of 7s (4s>2s>1s). That's more than enough time to guarantee a kill or two during the downtime, assuming competent dps. Conversely, if you tried to purify the total CC duration of stuns and sleeps, then not only would you fail, but you'd be leaving the healer completely exposed to CC for ~25s come resistance reset. There was no way to win here. Assuming equal skill levels across both teams, you were either guaranteed one kill every 60s or a full party wipe every 2 minutes. The team without the Blm would lose.

I understand that the timers were hit too, but it wasn't that big of a deal after DR's are considered and they did follow the two purify strat I mentioned. 12 6 3 (1 more second of sleep on the final sleep). If a paladin is going to stun the healer then, that leaves the BLM and Melee DPS to burst down the target. When I played with coordinated teams back in old wolves den, we saw this coming and as a melee (assuming they were trying to burst down me), I got out ASAP and survived just fine.

You also neglect to mention that the team with a non BLM has a PLD that could Clemency heal, stun the Melee DPS off if not fettered, Cover the ally in danger after healers in the 10 sec lockdown + knock back. There are so many countermeasures to this. Holding Gap Closers and kiting is another good example of just self surviving... especially vs a BLM and needing to get to LoS asap.

It basically boils down to your melee having to chase the target, Black Mage could me LoS'd, your healer gets knocked back by a MCH and bound, then they just do a burst setup on the melee chasing the team thats getting their healer locked down by BLM + PLD.

You could say that the whole team is being CC'd, but at that point having to spend a 2+ sec GCD to sleep 2 additional targets THEN set up the cc chains on the healer so you get max pressure in damage as a black mage would require time lost in the initial CC you put out and not allowing you to CC them again unless you plan to do 0 damage. Also this would require your Melee to pop CD's to land the kill within the few seconds he has to do so mostly alone when a MCH can solo someone down from full without even the help of a melee dps it he catches someone with their pants down for a few seconds.

My point is that Black Mage is complete garbage right now compared to other ranged choices unless you fight an uncoordinated team or do 8v8's where you can literally be a turret half the time and not worry. In 4v4 they need more love when it comes to damage output on the move, or some type of team utility that's useful against every team makeup (I'm talking about you Apocatastasis).

Right now, WHM has better CC than Black Mage when it comes to PvP...just by having Fluid Aura. It's sad, but true.

[Slib]

You also have to take into consideration that it is infinitely easier to to coordinate CC than it is to coordinate CC resistance...etc

Sure it is easy to coordinate CC, but is it easy to coordinate CC in time when your dps are ready to burst? Not so much...many factors can come into play like the third sleep going off and enemy PLD decides to stun lock your PLD down. Enemy Bard uses Wardens Paeon on the second sleep breaking it, preventing third if you attempted to use again right after, and then leaving the second purify open to the first stun.

Pressure alone from the enemy team with a ranged dps outside of Black Mage could also cause it to break your setup to kill someone and require you to have to wait a minute for DR's to reset...

It could easily go both ways tho... in Solo que I've had good and bad times with ccing a healer only to be still attacked by a paladin because he wants to stun after I told him I'd sleep first. It's like asking someone to purify your first sleep before the match starts and they don't do it. Both times you are basically looking for cc going out and in the higher end brackets, I'd expect the most seasoned pvpers to be up there who play constantly and eventually get this natural coordination down, just like they do with CC.

[Slib]

I don't mean to be rude or annoying or anything of the sort Februs, but I would really really love to see Black Mage played like that in a team landing kills against a team like the top Balmung team that I know of that runs MCH PLD MNK WHM.

Nothing should be balanced around solo que...I guess they did that because it is the most popular at the moment and Party is not.

[Vaeria]

Guess its just the time for mnks and plds at last (Like the blm era in slaughter/ smn in seal. As brd, having a pld who will only stun you when about tio burst is a nightmare beyond compare...at match end, makes it look like ya didn't dew shiz. As for mnk and that 10% phy- (I have no right to complain whatsoever and say this is OP) you can almost feel it in your hits as any other melee job. Hard times ; ; I'll simply say its gonna be nailbiting how the devs decide to screw things up next major patch. (in b4 FoE loses 5 -pdt >_>)

[NoelNoel]

(I have no right to complain whatsoever and say this is OP)

Except we should absolutely complain about that considering it's a very unfair advantage on top of the mountain of advantages MNK has over the other 2 melees. Fists of earth has no place in PVP, especially in Feast where it makes medals carrying a lot easier.

[Februs]

I don't mean to be rude or annoying or anything of the sort Februs, but I would really really love to see Black Mage played like that in a team landing kills against a team like the top Balmung team that I know of that runs MCH PLD MNK WHM.

Nothing should be balanced around solo que...I guess they did that because it is the most popular at the moment and Party is not.

Not at all. I wasn't trying to turn this into an argument or anything, and I hope it didn't come across that way. I was only trying to explain to you why SE made the decision that they did, based on the explanation that they provided us. The last thing to add to it is that it wasn't a decision made purely on solo-queue. To my recollection, SE didn't actually specify one game mode or the other. They only made reference to the players in the top of the Jp rankings and how they deemed sleep to be too effective. That would include party-queue compositions, as well. I can imagine that it would have been much worse in party-queue, as they are typically far more coordinated.

In regards to NE/EU, I mirror your sentiment. I can probably count on 1 hand how many Blm's I've seen that I would consider "good," or even capable of preforming at the level that was being reported out of Jp. It's just not a thing on this side of the puddle, so it's hard to see the nerfs as justified here. That said, I don't think it would have been reasonable to expect SE to provide separate patches for different play regions, either.