Unwilling to balance jobs? Then limit jobs in Frontline.

[Kuroka]

Ive always said a start would make it dps only. while an set party would be nice, you will never get ppl to change jobs... at least make all about equal.

[Mistress_Irika]

For a long while now they have refused to balance jobs properly. I think people are sick of it at this point.

- Too many classes have a gap closer, making it nearly impossible to kite
- Melee has too many abilities with increased range/multi hit abilities
- The "shield" abilities is pretty much worthless, as you can still be crit for 25+K as well
as be knocked out of it.
- Too many classes have a pull in ability
- Too many classes have have higher mitigation, while still having high dps output.

Because of all of these issues and more are being neglected; and the strongest classes keep being made stronger, while others are being nerfed or just passed over; I think I have a solution to this.

Limit the jobs you can have in a frontline, similar to what Overwatch had with the multiples of heroes. You can only have 1 or 2 per job; forcing people to switch roles, in order to limit the shenanigans that keep happening with class combos or just overwhelming numbers of the flavor of the month classes.

With a restriction like that all that's going to happen is that queues will take longer for certain roles. Your pve content suffers from this. Feast extremely suffers from this due to there not being an incentive for queuing for non-popular roles back then. If folks are willing to wait 15-30 minutes for a popular role that will be fine. If not, good luck trying to enjoy frontlines if you're one of those that grinds endlessly each day.

Your shield abilities are fine as is. It's been made to where it's easier to pressure/kill and harder to defend. Everyone will just have to learn how to stack their defenses when needed.

I don't have a fix all solution to this, as it's obvious that the current kit is suited for crystal conflict. Here's where I would suggest starting from without destroying CC completely (this has been mentioned before): have drop off damage for the AOE attacks like they do in pve. Full value for your intended target (or closest), 50% for the 2nd person that is nearby, 25% for the 3rd person that is around, and 12.5% for whoever is remaining. If that's too much damage reduction it can be capped at 25% of the value at least. I think if that was done in the first place then everyone would not be needing so much of a defense buff for frontlines.

[AmiBeau]

It's ok, I do understand that people have repeated things; however ultimately it falls on the devs to actually do anything about. My suggestion is definitely more of a band-aid than an actual fix.

I will admit; in a perfect scenario; they would take the time and divide CC and FL into their own things. Then they could actually get and analyze feedback/data and adjust things while realizing how they interplay with one another and not just do blanket fixes that create a different problem/meta. Homogenization and trying to balance small scale vs large scale will ultimately leave the game with neither being meaningful.

[Valence]

To be fair I much prefer your solution than the similar other ones that have been brought up (trying to limit the amount of identical jobs after the queue by adding debuffs to duplicates, etc). I'm not totally sure that the benefits would overcome the drawbacks, notably that it would have to make people unable to swap jobs once inside unless it's not already taken by someone else, but credit to be given where credit is due, it's not terrible.

You'd still see local armageddons with solo players playing DRG, etc though. Or more creative premades stacking DRG/AST/DRK/SMN or whatever.

[Llynethil]

Limiting jobs is impossible as some people only have 1 job unlocked, what happens when they join and there are already 2 of said job on the team?

[Valence]

Limiting jobs is impossible as some people only have 1 job unlocked, what happens when they join and there are already 2 of said job on the team?

I think the original idea of the OP was to limit duplicates before the game, during queues.

[Sinstrel]

Even if they limited que to one player per job, DRK/DRG/AST can still 1-shot your alliance.

[Llynethil]

I think the original idea of the OP was to limit duplicates before the game, during queues.

So how does it work when you join a game in progress then?

[AmiBeau]

People with only 1 class unlocked would get the priority for using that class. I imagine the restriction part would happen before a game and prevent it from starting while people are in the barrier circle, and lock people to that class the entire game.

[Astralrisk]

People with only 1 class unlocked would get the priority for using that class. I imagine the restriction part would happen before a game and prevent it from starting while people are in the barrier circle, and lock people to that class the entire game.

That still punishes players who have multiple classes unlocked, who probably have a 2nd class not even because of PvP influences at all. Also I imagine you can get around that issue by making a new character to have 1 job and then get that front-of-the-line skip pass.