Disruptive Frontline Gameplay

[Nubrication]

There are groups running around as a DRK, AST, AST, AST in frontlines, and its very disruptive to normal frontline matches. When this team operates they can down a full alliance without much counter play, and there are several groups, on multiple Data Centers, that are abusing this to make other players have less fun. On Crystal, other players from Aether travel here to do it, and no one likes to see them in the game because of what they do.

This Class-Combo is actively making the frontline game mode unfun when they appear, and its personally irritating to see the same people doing the exact same menial thing and succeeding.

So, please nerf DRK and/or AST.
DRK's Salted Earth pull has always been problematic,
and AST's Macrocosmos has too big of an area of effect to be that good at dealing damage on top of the compiled damage returning as a heal in Microcosmos.

The '50% damage decrease after one target' can be added to AST, even just for frontline. Maybe even the same for DRG's limit break as it has been used to similar effect in the past, though in recent times it has been unfavorable compared to AST.

I know adding changes to frontlines exclusively may be seen as a slippery slope, but these would be a few the community could handle. There's already a flat damage reduction for most classes. And it wouldn't change how the abilities fundamentally function and cause confusion.

In conclusion, this method of running in to kill half the enemy team with a single button press is not conducive to a fun experience in frontlines. A reward as great as that should not be so simple to execute, especially coming from three healers.

An AST dies in like 2 hits. Just guard when you see a DRK jump in. Don't waste your guard at pointless times; or wait for it to come back up before you engage a large zerg. Have map awareness so you don't get caught unaware. Keep your map open. Easy day.

[Scintilla]

An AST dies in like 2 hits. Just guard when you see a DRK jump in. Don't waste your guard at pointless times; or wait for it to come back up before you engage a large zerg. Have map awareness so you don't get caught unaware. Keep your map open. Easy day.

As people have already said: Guard can be removed.

'Just use Guard' is not the magic solution that so many appear to see it as.

I haven't personally seen many DRK, AST, AST, AST teams, so I wouldn't want to say too much about those team setups specifically. But premades definitely are an issue.

In a classic DRK-DRG premade, Guard can help, but it's not a perfect solution. You have to be prepared and more aware of your surroundings to ensure you use it quickly enough. A slight delay will leave you still taking some damage after casting, and a single unlucky stun can be the difference between getting it cast in time or not. Not only this, but a notable proportion of your team will be infrequent players who may not be so aware of what's happening and will be too late or even overlook Guard entirely.
These premades are bad enough to vs and all you can really hope is that with warnings/marks, your team can weather the attacks well enough. This isn't often the case, so premades are regularly left with a significant advantage even in this workable setup.

The most troublesome setup I have seen so far has probably been DRK, RPR, DRG, DRG.
DRK vokes, RPR removes Guard, DRGs LB = a mass of dead alliance members, regardless of whether they used Guard or not. The only sure way of avoiding is to keep far away from your group to avoid the voke entirely - and even this isn't possible in all maps, particularly the centre podium of Onsal or the many bottlenecks of Shatter.

Reaper having such a short LB cooldown means a guaranteed Guard removal every single time. And RPRs teleport allows it to get into and out of position extremely quickly, making it almost impossible to stop before it gets chance to LB.

Seeing premades with consistent 350k+ damage, 40+ kills, and 80+ assists and a 90% win rate, shows just what an advantage they have. An advantage which quickly leads to defeatist attitudes amongst some within opposing teams which just exacerbates the issue.

[Mawlzy]

Seeing premades with consistent 350k+ damage, 40+ kills, and 80+ assists and a 90% win rate, shows just what an advantage they have. An advantage which quickly leads to defeatist attitudes amongst some within opposing teams which just exacerbates the issue.

Exactly this. Irrespective of balance and meta comps, the ability to synchronize LBs perfectly through voice simply gives such premades an advantage that is poisoning the mode. I would also hope that, rather than playing whack-a-mole, members of such premades would prefer a fair challenge and pit their evident skills against other premades.

[Akimitsu]

Not only this, but a notable proportion of your team will be infrequent players who may not be so aware of what's happening and will be too late or even overlook Guard entirely.

This is the main issue, people being too pvp casual to even think of countering the premades, or worse, unwilling to even try to work with the rest of their alliance. Those people just deserve to lose, and they don't care, since they are only here for the XP. If people realized that -since a lot of them do the FL roulette at least once a day- they should take 10 minuts to figure out a burst and the rest of their skills at the Wolves Den Pier, things would go differently. This is also SE's fault, some tutorials might be good.

Reaper having such a short LB cooldown means a guaranteed Guard removal every single time

It does make it very bad to counter the DRK thing but let's not exaggerate, not every single time. I'll give you one thing though, no LB should work through/remove guard.

An advantage which quickly leads to defeatist attitudes amongst some within opposing teams which just exacerbates the issue.

I fail to see how the people who queue 1 time a day for their XP roulette could care, they get a reward whatever the outcome of the game is. For the people who queue multiple times a day solo, I'm not saying it's ideal, but with a little effort no premade is unbeatable. When I face one I usually try to lead a bit, or play jobs that can support the team to minimize the casualties.

through voice simply gives such premades an advantage that is poisoning the mode

They don't need to use voice, and most don't. They just pay attention to calls. Synchronizing things suprisingly only requires 2 things: being able to read and be willing to work with a shot caller.

Having played a lot of solo and premade both, I can also tell you premades usually aren't after a particular display of skill, this is FL after all, a mess. They're mostly interested in achievements or sometimes topping the weekly FL standing on Lodestone. Or just playing with friends.
And what makes them good, even above the DRK factor, is decision making and leading.

[Scintilla]

This is the main issue, people being too pvp casual

Taking time to learn the extent of their skills would help in a sense, not least by making some aware that Guard even exists, but by making them more aware of the full capabilities of their classes. True, it will allow you to focus more on your surroundings, more aware of defensive buffs/skills to help support your team in regular FLs (though this is not remotely enough to vs some premades). And, with practice, it can make you more aware of how these skills may be applied to better defeat classes regularly used by premades (use of MNK stun and knockback vs DRKs on Onsal podium etc). However, this not only requires a knowledge of your own class, but of other classes too. And the application of these skills in such a way will often only come with practice - just knowing the skill exists doesn't necessarily mean that a player will consider such applications. That will come more from practice than basic Wolves Den training.

But this still only applies to classic premades. Knowing your class means little when you are dragged into a DRK voke, instantly sent into Hysteria to cancel Guard and prevent actions, and then flattened by a spam of LBs. Where is the benefit in knowing your actions, when you can't actually use any of them

Standard RPR cooldown is 75s. Faster than most other class LBs, including DNC and WAR (two other classes who's LB removes Guard). Also, the use of Plentiful Harvest gives the RPR a buff to speed up the LB cooldown even further. With that used, it is more around a 60s cd.
By the time the LB has been used and the opposing team killed, the retreat, reheal, and the movement of the team to a new location to prepare another attack, it will be ready to use again.

I fail to see how the people who queue 1 time a day for their XP roulette could care, they get a reward whatever the outcome of the game is.

I feel it is precisely because they don't care that this defeatist attitude comes about: "get it over with", "just die to them and end this faster" etc.

Basically: No point trying, lets just get our reward and get out. It's an attitude that I hate to see. Premades can be beatable, but in the worst cases it often needs an unsaid mutual agreement between the two random teams to focus down the premade's alliance 2v1. Sometimes it happens, but not often.

My point is: this shouldn't be the case at all. If it comes to this, clearly premades are too abusable. I enjoy PvP, I don't want to see new players turned away from it because of this.

They don't need to use voice

This I cannot disagree with more. You get excellent coordinators in random teams who make a very strong team. But they never compare to good premades. If these teams are comparable to the premades you've seen, you can't have seen very good premades at all.