Uncapped AoE is ruining PvP Frontline/Rival Wings

[Aubrey_A]

You're kidding right? Guard isn't just about reacting, good players will be able to preemptively pop guard before DRK even does anything. It's so obvious too, especially in FL. If you see a DRK plunge into your group and he has his team behind him, 99.9% of the time he is going to succ your alliance. Solution? Pop Guard as soon as he is mid cast of plunge. Can't do that? Git gud. They key is to be situationally aware, which is hard for like 70% of people in FL.

Not gonna lie I resonate with the git gud attitude, seeing as we should be trying our best in FL. And while you can "git gud", your team may be that "70% of people in FL" who don't have that situational awareness required to perform well in FL. What then?

Guard is a solution for the 5 seconds you can use it across its 30-second cooldown, which leaves 25 seconds for another crowd control attack from potentially 48 other players in FL (I won't comment on class-specific defensives, because of the quality of each class defensives being wildly different. I don't expect MCH's Bishop Auto-turret to save me from a DRK Meta attack, but I would for RPR's Hell's Ingress). Maybe you can avoid those attacks, but not everyone can. When we rely on 23 other teammates to win a round, this can make the DRK meta unfun to play against, and why would we play FL if it was unfun in the first place?

[Mawlzy]

Not gonna lie I resonate with the git gud attitude, seeing as we should be trying our best in FL. And while you can "git gud", your team may be that "70% of people in FL" who don't have that situational awareness required to perform well in FL. What then?

Guard is a solution for the 5 seconds you can use it across its 30-second cooldown, which leaves 25 seconds for another crowd control attack from potentially 48 other players in FL (I won't comment on class-specific defensives, because of the quality of each class defensives being wildly different. I don't expect MCH's Bishop Auto-turret to save me from a DRK Meta attack, but I would for RPR's Hell's Ingress). Maybe you can avoid those attacks, but not everyone can. When we rely on 23 other teammates to win a round, this can make the DRK meta unfun to play against, and why would we play FL if it was unfun in the first place?

Quite so. We'd all like the quality of play to improve, or at least a higher level of active participation, but what is the point in offering "Guard + 'git gud'" as a solution when the author acknowledges it doesn't work for 70% of FL players, while simultaneously ignoring the severe limitations of Guard, including those you mention?

Let's examine the best-case git-gud scenario. Two full teams are slogging it out. A DRK emerges, ready to dive, with some devilish combo in tow. (Better make sure that combo doesn't include jobs that remove guard or pierce it.) The 10 players in the succ zone have all recently gotten gud and pop Guard. Hallelujah! Bubbles abound like some celebratory scene at a West Ham United football match. But what now? The remaining 14 members of the defending team notice they are suddenly outgunned 24-14. They may or may not have gotten gud, but being somewhat rational they realize they are on a hiding to nothing with those kinds of odds and back away. This is unfortunate for the 10 gud players all surrounded by their bubbles, since their only hope was to back into their own lines which are now racing away at 10x the speed permitted by the bubbles! And then suddenly, pop-pop-pop! Beans! No frickin bubble. I haz a dead.