ninja now unkillable in pvp

[Mistress_Irika]

SE literally did what they asked them to - melee made overpowered so they can just mindlessly leeroy in, SMN thrown into the garbage bin. I think FL is pretty miserable right now, but that just kind of reinforces that players often don't even know what they're asking for.

As a SMN main I find this patch to be beneficial. I can easily shrug off the 10% damage reduction. (I hope that other SMN mains can as well.) You can blame the defense increase that came with the patch.

I don't think the worry should be with the defense increase itself since chaining crowd control is thing. You'll have classes that can really either ignore defense or abuse it. SMN just happens to be one of those classes that can abuse it since we have the option to spam Phoenix early game. Will the trend go that way? I don't know...

[Ravenwatch]

From what I've tested in Frontlines, the melee damage reduction helps get me a little more involved when it comes to big team fights.

However, smaller scale fights have become a slog. Duels are also way more boring, especially melee vs melee as the longevity leaves little to no room for error on both sides. Without an LB, competent players will not be able to get a kill window unless there is a discrepancy in battle high.

Tanks are better off ignored unless focused in a zerg.

I'd really like to see the fast arcadey pace come back. While it may not be dynamic nor allow more complex fights, it is a better alternative to the pool noodle fights these changes enable

[Blinding_Awesomeness]

From what I've tested in Frontlines, the melee damage reduction helps get me a little more involved when it comes to big team fights.

However, smaller scale fights have become a slog. Duels are also way more boring, especially melee vs melee as the longevity leaves little to no room for error on both sides. Without an LB, competent players will not be able to get a kill window unless there is a discrepancy in battle high.

This is the opinion I've been leaning towards, as well. My K/D/A as a DRG hasn't changed, whether that's because of the damage reduction, lower LB generation, or all of the above. Even though it goes both ways, the changes have been dragging out fights rather than making them more fun.

I don't think we need to go all the way back, but we still need fine-tuning. I prefer faster-paced fights, too.

[Teno]

FL is in its worst state atm. These damage reductions make no sense for so many jobs, and everything takes forever to die. Some things needed tuning but that's going too far. I was a big fan of the mode before and after the rework but now it's the first time I find it very tedious and just not fun. Even big group fights, which these changes were clearly targeted at, feel inconsequential most of the time.

A single player has also way less impact on their own now, since damage is so low, and tankiness is nowhere near as good as ShB.

[KhudusQestir]

FL is in its worst state atm. These damage reductions make no sense for so many jobs, and everything takes forever to die. Some things needed tuning but that's going too far. I was a big fan of the mode before and after the rework but now it's the first time I find it very tedious and just not fun. Even big group fights, which these changes were clearly targeted at, feel inconsequential most of the time.

A single player has also way less impact on their own now, since damage is so low, and tankiness is nowhere near as good as ShB.

PvP in FFXIV revolves around only one tactic. Find the weakest link and gang up on him with your teammates. It's a very repetitive cycle.

[Gserpent]

Tankiness is off the charts. I can literally walk into 15+ players as NIN and methodically tab through them to shank each person in turn and they literally can't stop it because of how utterly absurd melee passive DR is on top of BH scaling your defensives. Like, I can eat an entire poly CC chain, be at like 30% afterwards and potion back up with a couple of recuperates and maybe add in a Huton for good measure. If they don't have a NIN with LB around, there's literally nothing they can do because they'll eventually run out of stuns and silences (especially since people in FL are garbage and will stack them instead of layering them) long before I run out of health.

But it's hardly a NIN thing. I can do it with MNK, WAR, DRK, pretty much any melee or tank. GNB is probably the strongest class in the game right now, honestly. Go tank and just be immortal and still get to produce decent damage thanks to thorns on Nebula.

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. 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 wonder if we'll see these changes reverted in favor of more precise and well-thought-out changes in 6.2. If nothing else, these quick fixes have indicated that melee didn't need nearly as much help as the whiners claimed they did. 40% DR is probably fine for them. If they reduced AOE damage spam sufficiently, 20% would probably be plenty too.

[KhudusQestir]

I insist that any competitive game must be balanced around the best players, not the majority of average-or-worse players..

[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.

[Ransu]

Tankiness is off the charts. I can literally walk into 15+ players as NIN and methodically tab through them to shank each person in turn and they literally can't stop it because of how utterly absurd melee passive DR is on top of BH scaling your defensives. Like, I can eat an entire poly CC chain, be at like 30% afterwards and potion back up with a couple of recuperates and maybe add in a Huton for good measure. If they don't have a NIN with LB around, there's literally nothing they can do because they'll eventually run out of stuns and silences (especially since people in FL are garbage and will stack them instead of layering them) long before I run out of health.

But it's hardly a NIN thing. I can do it with MNK, WAR, DRK, pretty much any melee or tank. GNB is probably the strongest class in the game right now, honestly. Go tank and just be immortal and still get to produce decent damage thanks to thorns on Nebula.

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. 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 wonder if we'll see these changes reverted in favor of more precise and well-thought-out changes in 6.2. If nothing else, these quick fixes have indicated that melee didn't need nearly as much help as the whiners claimed they did. 40% DR is probably fine for them. If they reduced AOE damage spam sufficiently, 20% would probably be plenty too.

Frontlines isn't competitive. It is the most casual of casual pvp in this games already barely competitive pvp from CC. They are going to balance things in frontlines around the fact there's 72 players and its a casual mode.

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.

Kiting on BRD is insanely easy, what are you on about?

[Gserpent]

Competitive doesn't mean it has to be an esport. Checkers is a competitive game. Any game where you are directly competing against other players is, by definition, a competitive game. Frontlines aren't "competitive" like Starcraft or something, but you still need to design and tune them around the assumption that everyone has at least some level of baseline competency and that everyone is playing to win. I don't think SE does remotely enough on those latter bits, and I wish to hell they had the huevos to actually do something about it - dramatically reduce 2nd and 3rd place rewards, and pile them into 1st place. Then add in tutorials and maybe "custom game" options (minimum 8v8v8) so that we have the option to actually teach players that genuinely want to learn how to play the mode. A lot of FL, at the simplest level, comes down to being able to fight effectively... but how are you going to learn without practicing? And how can you ask questions, receive feedback, etc in DF? There's no pausing, no option to re-queue with the same people, etc.

SE needs to get off their asses and work on that. They put all that wasted effort into Fellowships or whatever, but they can't bother to make it so that we can actually train people in PvP? Imagine if the only way you could raid was through Duty Finder and lockouts were 30 minutes instead of 90 minutes, it'd be a complete shitshow. But that's what Frontlines is.

I do think tanks should have higher DR. I'd do 15% melee and 30% tank and see where that gets us. No DR for ranged or casters. No global damage penalties. Double LB charge timers (1.75x for 2nd, 1.50x for 3rd.) Purify and Guard both reduced to 20 sec. Gain LB charge for kills made within 20yd of an objective (*active* ice, tomelith, etc), for participation on objectives (1 point of LB charge for every X% of damage dealt to ice or robots, etc), and for being within 20yd of objectives when your team secures them. Killing someone with Battle High should give you 1 point of LB charge per rank of Battle High they possess, with assists giving half of that value rounded down (so +1 to assists on BH2-3, +2 for BH4-5.)

You'd also need to add AOE damage fall-off. I'd start with 40% damage reduction for LBs after the first target ("the first target" being the closest target to the center of the AOE or the closest to your position when you used the LB, for ones that do not have direct targeting), and 20% reduction for normal skills.

Understand, I think that if you run at 15 enemy players, you should die in short order. I don't care what class you are playing. No one should be able to tank 15 players for any meaningful amount of time without *serious* assistance from their team. At best, they should hope to live long enough to soak some spells and distract enemy players so their team can get a good initiation on them. I think that FL maps might need an overall rework to increase the number of active objectives somewhat, to discourage clumping and zerging. I think AOE should be powerful and it should be a strong deterrent to zerging in a big blob, but in many cases the map designs *enforce* clumping. I don't mean chokepoints, I mean that there are typically only a few active objectives at any time, which means that splitting up often isn't feasible.

I think fixing the maps might fix FL as a whole without even needing a lot of balance tweaking, to be honest.