Why does battle high exist?

[RyuDragnier]

After playing more matches, I feel like the intent of battle high was to give a dominant team a fighting chance if the other teams wise up and decide to gang up on them. The key issue is the "if" part, though.

The fact that's there's nothing enforcing how much of a given job type is on each team is another problem as I find the battle highs tend to spiral out of control on those teams that are packing three or more healers in each party which make all but the most vicious attempts at focus-firing futile. Even if your overall DPS output is lower from having more healers the sheer amount of burst a bunch of LB-spamming melee players can put out is a lot more game-changing when they can easily focus down a healer on their own if they're packing battle high.

It's also pretty bad because it's possible for an entire team to have Battle High or Battle Fever, and it's very likely if they're a premade and all of them are focusing down the same targets. Just had a match like that, and you can't heal through it, you can't tank through it, you can't do anything about it because they're doing 20-40% more damage than you can heal/tank through. I'd prefer if you also took more damage along with inflicting more damage. It would prevent these kinds of steamrolling scenarios because while yes, you can kill enemies faster, you're also taking more damage so it's easier to kill you. That or put a duration on it so it'll wear off after about 1 minute, so you have to keep killing to keep the effect going, which gives a counter in the lines of "waiting it out."

[Aiph]

After playing more matches, I feel like the intent of battle high was to give a dominant team a fighting chance if the other teams wise up and decide to gang up on them. The key issue is the "if" part, though.

The fact that's there's nothing enforcing how much of a given job type is on each team is another problem as I find the battle highs tend to spiral out of control on those teams that are packing three or more healers in each party which make all but the most vicious attempts at focus-firing futile. Even if your overall DPS output is lower from having more healers the sheer amount of burst a bunch of LB-spamming melee players can put out is a lot more game-changing when they can easily focus down a healer on their own if they're packing battle high.

Would be funny if your role is randomized (queue only effects what the XP goes on) so that all party compositions are about the same (2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 DD) but you better know how to play your job!

[JanVanding]

It's also pretty bad because it's possible for an entire team to have Battle High or Battle Fever, and it's very likely if they're a premade and all of them are focusing down the same targets. Just had a match like that, and you can't heal through it, you can't tank through it, you can't do anything about it because they're doing 20-40% more damage than you can heal/tank through. I'd prefer if you also took more damage along with inflicting more damage. It would prevent these kinds of steamrolling scenarios because while yes, you can kill enemies faster, you're also taking more damage so it's easier to kill you. That or put a duration on it so it'll wear off after about 1 minute, so you have to keep killing to keep the effect going, which gives a counter in the lines of "waiting it out."

Battle High/Fever is a bad mechanic because it discourages playing for objectives and instead farming kills, that in itself should see it gone.

Just finished a match against one of those Battle High farming premades, fortunately it was a to 500 map so they were punished by being too far behind to win, still if it isn't encouraging all the worst habits (chasing kills, ignoring objectives, attempting to spawn camp, etc)

Honestly it feels like Arathi Basin all over again where players completely go off and ignore the objective but in this case they're encouraged to do it.

[Rhais]

What is wrong with farming kills? It's PvP. It is a good thing you can win via multiple methods, it makes things far more interesting than if you were just restricted to one win condition.

Battle highs aren't some sort of instant win condition either, with a little bit of teamwork with your party you can deal with battle highs, it's not nearly as overpowered as some of you people make it seem. The thing is though if your party is getting farmed that had to have started before anyone had battle high, and battle high or not you never had a chance.

[JanVanding]

What is wrong with farming kills? It's PvP. It is a good thing you can win via multiple methods, it makes things far more interesting than if you were just restricted to one win condition.

Battle highs aren't some sort of instant win condition either, with a little bit of teamwork with your party you can deal with battle highs, it's not nearly as overpowered as some of you people make it seem. The thing is though if your party is getting farmed that had to have started before anyone had battle high, and battle high or not you never had a chance.

Several people have pointed out how ridiculously strong it is, 20-40% increase is a LOT, we're not talking 3-5% which is what I'd consider a fair increase.

The game mode is also objective based, if you're chasing for kills and completely ignoring the objective, that is not playing the mode, that's playing Team Deathmatch.

Edit: I also don't consider gank trains interesting, maybe it's the years of RvR in DaoC that killed all that kinda thing off for me, but nowhere does it specifically encourage you to "Go out and farm kills for Battle High/Frenzy to win", it's because the mechanic itself is busted that the gank train style even exists.

[Rhais]

The goal of the game mode is to win, if the game gives you multiple viable options to accomplish that goal any of them are valid options to choose, one is not more right or correct then the others. It may not be your personal preference, but all valid options are in fact playing the mode.

When parties or alliances are getting decimated by a party with battle high it's generally not because of the battle high itself, but rather because they don't focus targets, don't focus the the correct targets (like trying to take down battle high targets while 3 healers are right there completely untouched spamming heals on them), not using CC, choosing poor times and places to engage the enemy with battle high and so on. It is completely possible to deal with if your team is using common sense and coordinating with each other.

[RyuDragnier]

The goal of the game mode is to win, if the game gives you multiple viable options to accomplish that goal any of them are valid options to choose, one is not more right or correct then the others. It may not be your personal preference, but all valid options are in fact playing the mode.

When parties or alliances are getting decimated by a party with battle high it's generally not because of the battle high itself, but rather because they don't focus targets, don't focus the the correct targets (like trying to take down battle high targets while 3 healers are right there completely untouched spamming heals on them), not using CC, choosing poor times and places to engage the enemy with battle high and so on. It is completely possible to deal with if your team is using common sense and coordinating with each other.

Assume there are only 24 players in total in a map, a party gets wiped once by a premade, and the premade team farming kills immediately goes to the next party to wipe them. It is possible for 1-3 of them to already have Battle High, or 1 to have Battle Fever while another has Battle High.

Now assume it was 3 people, and all 3 of them were DPS. That's a 20% increase in damage for 3 DPS. Now assume all 3 of them focus a healer, and that healer is only one of two in your party. That healer is most likely already dead, despite your team focus targeting, because their healers are healing whoever you aim for, and 3 of those 4 DPS are doing 20% more damage. Getting 1 Battle High is fine. The second there are multiples on an enemy team, you've already lost, because it starts a snowball effect due to the amount of power and adrenaline gain increase, and the fact that the only way to get rid of it is to KILL the person who has it. You can't wait out the duration, there isn't a negative aspect you can exploit. There is nothing you can do at this point, and all it took was a single wipe of both opposing teams to cause the snowball effect.

[NessaWyvern]

When one team as battle highs, that's when the other two need to sandwich them.

This doesn't happen though, as for some reason, the other losing team likes to hit the one that's being farmed, rather than the battle highs.

Also battle highs tend to only happen if you don't focus down the healers, as dps need healing to not die so they can get the consecutive kills needed to get battle highs.

[KageTokage]

Coming from WoW, I'm used to a PvP system where killing players has little to no benefit outside of getting them out of the way so you can claim objectives.

It worked out better because it discouraged people from farming the other team save for the odd event where they're dominating enough to be occupying every single objective simultaneously and thus are able to focus entirely on defense. It also made people a lot more willing to engage when there was little to lose from death outside of a respawn time if you're already in a disadvantageous situation.

Losing engagements in XIV is doubly punishing due to giving your points to the other team AND making them get battle high to give them an advantage in future engagements. It's the main reason why people are reluctant to even try to fight a superior team if they don't have to, even though it usually comes back to bite them in the butt when the dominant team shifts their focus to them.

It's really not just the player mentality in PvP that's the issue, the mechanics are also questionably balanced. I think a start would be making it so you lose more points from dying with battle high so it actually functions as a proper double-edged sword because half the time the team with a significant amount of highs is so far in the lead already that the extra points people gain from killing them really isn't enough to level the playing field. If they actually had a shot at turning things around from depriving them of their highs people would be less prone falling into a defeatist mentality and "playing for second".

[BloodRubyXII]

Coming from WoW, I'm used to a PvP system where killing players has little to no benefit outside of getting them out of the way so you can claim objectives.

Clearly you've never been GY camped by Russians in AV/IOC.