The absolute state of Frontlines

[Gserpent]

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.

I agree, but you design competitive games around the best players - you assume that everyone is playing as they're supposed to be playing. Balancing around the lower end of players is a stupid design choice, because the lower end of players are just going to scream that you should nerf/remove anything that they can't handle (which would be literally everything, if we're talking about viewing them as a large group) and that's an impossible task if you want to have a game that's still actually fun to play. Fuck's sake, dude, there's probably people trying to get things nerfed or changed in Fall Guys or something.

And, no, competitive doesn't mean sweaty esports. A game where you put two teams of players (or two individual players or whatever) in direct competition with each other is, by definition, a competitive game. If you don't build the game by assuming people will be playing the way they're *supposed* to be playing, you're going to have a rotten mess of a game. Imagine if Starcraft was balanced around low skill players that can't handle a 12pool or proxy rax reaper opening. It'd be terrible.

If the issue is a PEBKAC error, it's not something you need to make balance or design changes for. SE could certainly do a hell of a lot better at teaching people how to play their game, though. Maybe that's a good starting place. Most people in FL have absolutely no fucking clue what they're doing because there's no "safe" place to practice (thumping target dummies doesn't really count and duels are meaningless in a game not designed to have meaningful 1v1 combat), much less any kind of effective way of talking things over during or between games.

Like, imagine if DF was the only way you could do savage raids; no pre-formed parties, no way of determining who gets into your party or if you'll see them again next lockout, etc. Can you imagine how much of a fucking dumpster fire that would be? Except that's what PvP is right now. So is it any wonder there's such a pervasive "why should I care?" attitude?

[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.

[Gserpent]

WHM pops off a powerful regen in a huge AOE every time they ult. It's a lot like SCHs that just sit in the back and do nothing but spread dots. It's stats padding.

[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.

[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.

[Odessium]

I've been playing FL on and off since Heavensward. I started playing mostly on Mana DC back in 2020 because I was tired of the kindergarten that is EU FL. I've played around 4200 matches on Mana and I know how they play. Since 6.1 FL on Mana has been absolutely atrocious. If you think JP players aren't abusing SMN and WHM, you're delusional. Let me tell you that every game consists of atleast 20-30 SMN and 20-30 WHM. I'm not even joking.
The only time there is some sort of normality is when I queue up with the PvP veterans because they at least mix it up somewhat, be ready to get absolutely destroyed by DRK and AST.

[Bergfinn]

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.

As someone who play as WHM a lot on FLs, and managed to do 3,5M+ healing several times with it, you'll also active heal and shield a lot and healing wise often people outside your 8 man group. While I agree that WHM naturally heals a lot just due how fast their LB charges (and said LB deserves a good nerf on it), those big numbers usually means you had to work your butt for it, principally if you have jobs on your team that require some heavy "babysitting" to shine on your team like GNB, WAR and MNK.

Now as someone who also plays SMN and SCH lot: SMN wise, people usually underestimate the damage and utility of all other SMN actions + outside Ruin and Fester, everything deals AoE damage. Like, yeah Bahamut is broken not only due the damage but also the size of the damage area + range you can use it for a instant LB that recharges ridiculously fast (aka need to be nerfed), but also a lot of those big numbers are from the rest of it's toolkit.

For SCH, damage wise you really need to be opportunist and pray the rest of the team will not delete the target you threw the dots bf spreading, and then pray the people doesn't notice the dots till is too late - it's a good way to farm battle high tho. All that said, people underestimate the shields a lot about how versatile they are and how much burst healing you can do.