The absolute state of Frontlines

[Sigma860]

Hey, buddy, not a single FL match is played solely by the "very best". Note that you are referring to a hypothetical, nonexistent state of the game where people are much better than they actually are, and founding your argument upon what you THINK would happen if the game were that way. Not only are you relying on a state of the world that does not exist, but you are also making weak, unverifiable claims about it. That makes for a very flimsy argument.

On the other hand, you can join any FL game and most of the time summoners will occupy most if not all of the top-damage spots and will be the first to reach Battle High V. That is actual, solid evidence of the imbalance exists in the state of the game as it is, regardless of how you believe it would be in your hypothetical, nonexistent world.

The image is of course just anedoctal evidence, but it is a pattern we are all too familiar with.

That picture is so true. Then you click the HP Restored tab and it's all White Mages in the top 10 spots.

[Naphtha]

That picture is so true. Then you click the HP Restored tab and it's all White Mages in the top 10 spots.

Speaking of WHM, I tried to double-beam people to see if there's any potential for a one-shot, but unfortunately, the math just doesn't add up, you need 3x WHMs beaming the same target to 100-0 them. I would really like to see it, honestly.

[gioroggia]

That picture is so true. Then you click the HP Restored tab and it's all White Mages in the top 10 spots.

Yeah. You get high heal numbers with WHM without even trying. It just happens.

And Summoner... Well, it's not that other jobs can never match Summoner's damage in Frontlines. Dragoon and Black Mage, for instance, can do just as well. But with them it takes good judgment, skills, and precision to pull that off. Summoners can do it with very, very low effort. If a job makes mediocre or even bad players perform just as well or better than very good players on other jobs, there is a balance issue there. And that works not only at the individual level (ie bumping the performance of an individual player) but also affects the entire match more systematically if the number of summoners is very different across the three teams or one team has summoner pre-mades.

Scholar, on the other hand, can sometimes deal even more damage than summoners. But since 95% of it comes from a slow-damaging AOE dot, it just gets healed off and is not nearly as impactful as summoner. It would be a different matter entirely if the every job didn't have infinite instant heal capacity (recuperate + potion). But as it is, the AOE dot doesn't really "wear out" the enemy team as it's supposed to. People heal off and when MP gets slow they just pot it back.

[Naphtha]

Yeah. You get high heal numbers with WHM without even trying. It just happens.

And Summoner... Well, it's not that other jobs can never match Summoner's damage in Frontlines. Dragoon and Black Mage, for instance, can do just as well. But with them it takes good judgment, skills, and precision to pull that off. Summoners can do it with very, very low effort. If a job makes mediocre or even bad players perform just as well or better than very good players on other jobs, there is a balance issue there. And that works not only at the individual level (ie bumping the performance of an individual player) but also affects the entire match more systematically if the number of summoners is very different across the three teams or one team has summoner pre-mades.

Scholar, on the other hand, can sometimes deal even more damage than summoners. But since 95% of it comes from a slow-damaging AOE dot, it just gets healed off and is not nearly as impactful as summoner. It would be a different matter entirely if the every job didn't have infinite instant heal capacity (recuperate + potion). But as it is, the AOE dot doesn't really "wear out" the enemy team as it's supposed to. People heal off and when MP gets slow they just pot it back.

I wouldn't underestimate SCH's dmg, they can easily score a BH5 without really trying, and if you have a few SCHs with BH5 stacking DoTs you can easily do over 10k per tick of dmg, it's not something that is easily ignored. I've been the victim of ~14k dmg per tick from SCH dots, if you're unable to pot (Ongoing fight), it's a death sentence.

[gioroggia]

I wouldn't underestimate SCH's dmg, they can easily score a BH5 without really trying, and if you have a few SCHs with BH5 stacking DoTs you can easily do over 10k per tick of dmg, it's not something that is easily ignored. I've been the victim of ~14k dmg per tick from SCH dots, if you're unable to pot (Ongoing fight), it's a death sentence.

Yeah stacking dot changes things a little since it makes each tick actually somewhat threatening and help take down players who are not very attentive, or at least force them to retreat which in turn gives your team numerical advantage. But 4 scholars stacking coordinated dots is still not nearly as impactful as 4 summoners stacking their LBs. Not to mention other matters that make that type of coordination harder with scholar - it's more difficult to coordinate the dot cast than bahamuts, and it's quicker and easier to reach bh5 with summoner since scholars get few kills and rely mostly on assists. Point being, it's not like scholars are useless, just that the damage numbers we see at the table at the end of the match do not reflect their actual impact on the game. If we go solely bu that, we end up vastly overestimating them. On a side note, I just wish using deployment tactics on buffed party members (or yourself when buffed) would extend the buff to alliance members as well. Because party members don't really tend to stock together, that decreases the utility of adloquium + deployment compared to CC.

[Naphtha]

Yeah stacking dot changes things a little since it makes each tick actually somewhat threatening and help take down players who are not very attentive, or at least force them to retreat which in turn gives your team numerical advantage. But 4 scholars stacking coordinated dots is still not nearly as impactful as 4 summoners stacking their LBs. Not to mention other matters that make that type of coordination harder with scholar - it's more difficult to coordinate the dot cast than bahamuts, and it's quicker and easier to reach bh5 with summoner since scholars get few kills and rely mostly on assists. Point being, it's not like scholars are useless, just that the damage numbers we see at the table at the end of the match do not reflect their actual impact on the game. If we go solely bu that, we end up vastly overestimating them. On a side note, I just wish using deployment tactics on buffed party members (or yourself when buffed) would extend the buff to alliance members as well. Because party members don't really tend to stock together, that decreases the utility of adloquium + deployment compared to CC.

Yeah, I mean there's a reason why I made SMNs the target of my video, no stack even comes close to the raw potential of a SMN stack, which could easily wipe a big chunk of an alliance in an instant with only 4 or even just 3 SMNs working in tandem, which is nothing when each alliance has 24 people.

I wasn't trying to fluff up SCH too hard, it's just being slept on IMO considering how funny it can be to watch someone's HP bar slowly melt away while they struggle to pot it back up (Assuming they ran out of MP to recoup).

[gioroggia]

Yeah, I mean there's a reason why I made SMNs the target of my video, no stack even comes close to the raw potential of a SMN stack, which could easily wipe a big chunk of an alliance in an instant with only 4 or even just 3 SMNs working in tandem, which is nothing when each alliance has 24 people.

I wasn't trying to fluff up SCH too hard, it's just being slept on IMO considering how funny it can be to watch someone's HP bar slowly melt away while they struggle to pot it back up (Assuming they ran out of MP to recoup).

Lol and I love when I get an unexpected kill from someone who escaped my team only to die to my dot

[Sigma860]

Scholar, on the other hand, can sometimes deal even more damage than summoners. But since 95% of it comes from a slow-damaging AOE dot, it just gets healed off and is not nearly as impactful as summoner. It would be a different matter entirely if the every job didn't have infinite instant heal capacity (recuperate + potion). But as it is, the AOE dot doesn't really "wear out" the enemy team as it's supposed to. People heal off and when MP gets slow they just pot it back.

Not to mention Scholars have to put themselves at risk to get a good spread with their DOT a lot of times. Summoners can just sit back and cast and save their rush-down combo for enemies that dive in or stragglers that get left behind when the enemy team breaks.

[Naphtha]

Not to mention Scholars have to put themselves at risk to get a good spread with their DOT a lot of times. Summoners can just sit back and cast and save their rush-down combo for enemies that dive in or stragglers that get left behind when the enemy team breaks.

Honestly I would respect SMN players a lot more if dashing into melee range was their greatest way of dealing damage, but as it stands, the best way to play SMN is queuing with 3+ other SMNs and using LB at the same time for easy wins. It's pretty common to see SMN premades on Light DC, which is kinda the reason I made the video(s).

As imbalanced as it might be, having the LB become some sort of point-blank AoE that you can stack with the dash combo for big damage might be pretty entertaining to play. And would at least require more brainpower than the current iteration of SMN.

[gioroggia]

Not to mention Scholars have to put themselves at risk to get a good spread with their DOT a lot of times. Summoners can just sit back and cast and save their rush-down combo for enemies that dive in or stragglers that get left behind when the enemy team breaks.

I agree. And it's also worth mentioning that scholars have an astounding number of mobility tools - NONE. Your options to escape danger if you mess up your positioning, get pulled by a warrior or get shoved/kick-locked by a monk are non-existent. The only tool you have beyond the basic guard, recuperate, and purify is the measly adloquium heal/shield.