ninja now unkillable in pvp

[Cidel]

Tankiness is off the charts...

This in a nutshell. For non-ranged DPS/casters anyway.

I mentioned it before in that 1 thread that got deleted (presumedly) for OP making rude remarks about what they thought about the 6.18 changes- but with the FL adjustments to melee/tanks defense, good melee players essentially got buffed to Dynasty Warriors-lite levels of survivability in a crowd.

they swung the pendulum hard in the other direction and over-corrected the issue of 2 ranged (healer/caster) jobs stacking their oppressive LBs by nerfing all ranged jobs' damage in addition to nerfing said 2 job's damage across their entire skillset. And melee DPS (especially tanks) need nothing short of an entire party dogpiling on them to secure a kill (unless said party is full of ranged dps trying to tickle them to death with their feather dusters, then you need the whole alliance). Like really, the best ranged DPS right now is NIN by dint of enjoying melee's defense bonus and sheer survivability and versatility with an LB that can be triggered at a respectable range that subverts the tanky nonsense of non-ranged jobs by dropping them if they're at least under half HP.

Melee weren't in need of any help before. But they dramatically buffed them (literally 50% increase to their passive DR...) *in addition to* nerfing the things that were typically troublesome for melee players to deal with, and as a result the game is just a boring, uninteresting slog...

Melee players just needed to not be complete garbage, before. It wasn't *that* hard - most melee and tanks have shields and heals that scale with BH, so it was a simple as being patient and racking up some BH until you were able to be aggressive. I do agree that the poly bug was a big issue for them, though.

I agree with this, though I think tanks kind of deserved to be this "tanky" across the board so they can actually maintain some momentum in larger skirmishes. Knowing when not to be a Leeroy Jenkins on melee though, separated the good and average melee players from the 5-deaths-a-game-no-Battle-High mindless fodder complaining how they'll never get the Garo mount. Though with these changes, if you're playing melee now and can't get above Battle High 1... yikes.

Ironically though, the one melee DPS that didn't get this buff that really needed it was DNC. *rimshot*

People will sometimes ask why I insist that any competitive game must be balanced around the best players, not the majority of average-or-worse players. Well, this is why.

Now if this was true, ranged DPS would have gotten a 90% defense buff when they stand at point blank range out in the open. Hah! No, but I agree. Unfortunately, all the alliances filled with less-skilled folks bringing BRDs, MCHs, DNCs and SMNs thinking they'll just coast by standing back and spamming "1" are in for a rude awakening when tanks, DRGs and SAMs run up in their faces as they futilely backpedal getting taken out one at a time... I mean that would always happen before, but now it'll be exacerbated. The Frontline meta was always to pick-off ranged jobs before others, but now it is almost always the only correct answer.