DRK - AST/AST/AST - The frontline meta

[AnotherPerson]

...now for the topic at hand... cap AOE at 5 targets instead of the default 16 or make a sharp 80% drop-off after the 5th target. That should do the trick.

That's not the problem, and capping AoE is especially dumb considering you can't choose who you're going to hit. I've seen groups of people use any type of combo before and they can be defeated with random groups. If you need a hard counter to that type of group, just grab a couple of SGE and use SGE LB when you see them using the AST using their LB. It's a direct counter to the combo and can easily allow your alliance to turn the tables after nullifying their burst.

From my experience, the problem isn't the combo but the sandbaggers. There's been a lot more people I've noticed who intentionally run in to die and let other alliances win. They would generally have a very imbalanced kill-death-assist ratio and a high heal amount from spamming recuperation after running it down 1v24 (or more recently 5v24). Even when you defeat the people using a strong team combo, if the people who are doing their best to lose run to the enemy alliance to feed them BH and reduce your score while bumping the enemy alliance's score, it's going to be much tougher to win regardless of what happens next.

Lately, it's been increasingly apparent when I saw the enemy third alliance run towards the base of the second alliance to stop the second alliance from reaching and stopping the 1st alliance from winning a match, even when there was no objectives in the enemy base.

[Mayhemmer]

That's not the problem, and capping AoE is especially dumb considering you can't choose who you're going to hit. I've seen groups of people use any type of combo before and they can be defeated with random groups. If you need a hard counter to that type of group, just grab a couple of SGE and use SGE LB when you see them using the AST using their LB. It's a direct counter to the combo and can easily allow your alliance to turn the tables after nullifying their burst.

It very much is the problem here. Also, Macrocosmos is on a 30s cooldown, snapshots almost instantly, and hits any target in a 20 yard radius, more if the servers hate you. Meanwhile Mesotes takes longer to activate, even longer to actually apply the invuln to party members, only applies it to party members, only covers the area the size of a cramped elevator (which your party members may not even stand in anyway), and is on a 120 second cooldown. (Edit: I also forgot that it doesn't protect you from CC, so you can even be pulled out of the circle, which is a high likelihood in FL.)

That is not a direct counter...

If you're looking to try to straight up out-shield AST's dmg output, Scholar is a better choice if you don't trust your party to Guard, and even then there's only so much you can do against 2 or more AST's with damage buffs.

[Valence]

That's not the problem, and capping AoE is especially dumb considering you can't choose who you're going to hit. I've seen groups of people use any type of combo before and they can be defeated with random groups. If you need a hard counter to that type of group, just grab a couple of SGE and use SGE LB when you see them using the AST using their LB. It's a direct counter to the combo and can easily allow your alliance to turn the tables after nullifying their burst.

That would be a very good option if those defensive LBs affected the whole alliance, which they don't. Obviously, you can still get great value in defending your own party, but that doesn't compare to offensive LBs that are non discriminate.