Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Raikai]

That’s what a majority of the player base would like, but that would mean showing actual interest in FL. They’d rather focus on continuing to improve CC while leaving FL to die

I agree that there's not much of an interest lately, but since PVP got an unlikely revival, even if only focused on CC, I don't think it's completely out of the question to think they'll large scale pvp more consistency in the future.

[Aravell]

TLDR:
Yes, there are some classes which can be useful counters - WHM, RPR, DNC, WAR, DRK
But, unless used as part of a coordinated premade team yourself, many will only buy a matter of seconds (which would be a nuisance to premades, it's true, but not a gamechanger), and will have very high risk of repeatedly causing your own death in the process.

It actually doesn't take a coordinated premade to stop a coordinated premade. I've seen most people make the mistake of marking the DRK so they can see them plunging in, but when the DRK goes in, it's generally already too late to counter.

What should be done is marking the DRGs. If you see them jump up into the sky, the burst is coming and you can immediately disrupt the RPR to cause the burst to fail entirely.

It's very likely that the one calling the shots is the DRK. If you disrupt the DRK directly, they could call a halt to the burst. But if you disrupt the supporting cast (Meteodrive the RPR or Salted Earth their backline), it takes a bit longer to react.

I also want to point out that melee jobs are stupidly tanky and it would require over 10 people to wake up and focus fire on you to kill you. A single premade won't be able to burst you down, especially since they don't pack anything that goes through Purify (unless the DRK intends to waste Salted Earth on 1 person). So disrupting them with a MNK or RPR is generally free, especially early game.

[EvianYmir89]

Oh my god, I cannot believe im having to say this but Jesus Christ, if you see a bh 5 tank get stunned, please kill them

[Mawlzy]

It actually doesn't take a coordinated premade to stop a coordinated premade. I've seen most people make the mistake of marking the DRK so they can see them plunging in, but when the DRK goes in, it's generally already too late to counter.

What should be done is marking the DRGs. If you see them jump up into the sky, the burst is coming and you can immediately disrupt the RPR to cause the burst to fail entirely.

It's very likely that the one calling the shots is the DRK. If you disrupt the DRK directly, they could call a halt to the burst. But if you disrupt the supporting cast (Meteodrive the RPR or Salted Earth their backline), it takes a bit longer to react.

I also want to point out that melee jobs are stupidly tanky and it would require over 10 people to wake up and focus fire on you to kill you. A single premade won't be able to burst you down, especially since they don't pack anything that goes through Purify (unless the DRK intends to waste Salted Earth on 1 person). So disrupting them with a MNK or RPR is generally free, especially early game.

Couple of points.

1. I've literally never seen an enemy DRG marked, even tho it might very well be a good idea. Unfortunately the usual reaction to a known premade isn't for people to play better, it's to give up. Happened on my one-and-done on Shatter today when you-know-who and her minions appeared.

2. The purpose of the premade isn't for those four people to burst you down, because as you say it wouldn't work on melee/tank. They act as a nucleus for the rest of their team members who are somewhat awake to pile on top. And while I agree that for 12+ members of a team to get wiped out in a single dive likely shows a lack of observational skills, it happens quite regularly.

What really amuses me is these premades actually believe they are "doing PvP" and are good at it. I imagine they also think dropping a hand grenade into a barrel of fish is an extremely sophisticated form of hunting.

And I'm pretty sure that if SE thinks about FL at all, they never intended the presence of 4 people on a team to swing the win-rate from 33% to 80%. It runs completely counter to their philosophy.

[Scintilla]

snip

The marking isn't the issue. Marking the DRK will still give sufficient notice as you begin to see the mark come into view as they start to move through from the back of their alliance to the front - sufficient notice presuming you're paying attention to your surroundings, rather than being overly focused on your current target. This is somewhat where newer players or anyone trying a completely new class might struggle. Whether it gives more time or not (which I would greatly question given the DRGs won't use their LBs too early given the casting time window), marking the DRG is only going to be even more easily missed by 99% of players.
And 'focus the RPR', as I already said, is far easier said than done. While the DRK is making their way to the front, the RPR will be hanging back slightly. Try to stun them then (before the DRK jump/voke), and you're wasting your time - the DRK just won't jump in and voke yet. By the time the DRK has come within range and begun to jump in and voke, the RPR is also teleporting in to LB. By this point, it is over within milliseconds. Even in the event that you were incredibly fortunate with your timing and somehow managed to stop the RPR at the very last second, you'll be instantly dead from the barrage of AoE attacks. And this is assuming best case scenario. Anyone claiming 'just attack them at this point, problem solved' clearly doesn't appreciate just how exact this timing has to be in some circumstances. In poor or average premades who perhaps have the job meta but otherwise average coordination, it may be more feasible. But for any premade with good coordination, this goes from being manageable to an immensely difficult thing to time.

The next point: you're limiting this solely to consider the premade and totally overlooking the existance of the rest of the alliance. The premade are not entirely on their own. Yes, they will have some go-off-solo players who will remain so committed to prioritising objectives that they and a couple of others may try to run off alone to vs an entire alliance over some b-rank node or an ice somewhere. But, after the first two successful attacks on previously unawares teams (because not everyone is going to live in MNK for every single game just on the chance they meet a premade), a notable proportion of the alliance will stick with the premade to farm what kills they can. With the premade at the front, it wouldn't even take a majority of the alliance to make that choice for it to make a difference. The premade may not have anything directly able to override your Purify (not without pointlessly wasting their RPR LB on you alone which isn't going to happen), but can the same be said of the rest of the alliance?

[Aravell]

Couple of points.

1. I've literally never seen an enemy DRG marked, even tho it might very well be a good idea. Unfortunately the usual reaction to a known premade isn't for people to play better, it's to give up. Happened on my one-and-done on Shatter today when you-know-who and her minions appeared.

2. The purpose of the premade isn't for those four people to burst you down, because as you say it wouldn't work on melee/tank. They act as a nucleus for the rest of their team members who are somewhat awake to pile on top. And while I agree that for 12+ members of a team to get wiped out in a single dive likely shows a lack of observational skills, it happens quite regularly.

1. It's because, like I said, people think marking the DRK is a good idea because you can see the DRK coming in. While a good idea in theory, in practice the DRK jumping in means it's already too late to counter.

Meanwhile, if the DRGs actually use their LB, that's a burst commitment already. Disrupting the RPR at that point with a Meteodrive, a Miracle or simply knocking them out of position with Enlightenment/Blota will throw everything off.

2. That's assuming the premade actually calls for the team to kill you. If the team follows the DRK like sheep, they're not going to be focusing on anyone unless told to. And nobody is calling a burst on a solo target. At most, you'd get some people attacking you, but that's not enough to kill any half-decent melee.

But as you said, the DRK premade is the nucleus, so they usually mark the target they jump on, the team will then focus on that marked target. This opens them up for a disruption from a solo player. The result will usually be some people following the premade while some try and kill you and some of the jumpier people run away.

My point being, whatever causes the well-oiled machine to break is going to help your team.

[Mawlzy]

My point being, whatever causes the well-oiled machine to break is going to help your team.

All I can tell you in this doesn't happen in practice. It requires the premade machine to be rusty or lose a wheel or something.

Let's take another look at that premade 80% win-rate. Let's imagine the ways in which a premade might lose.

1. Bad spawns. Likely has the strongest impact on Seal Rock where matches tend to be closer and it's not that uncommon for two nodes to pop at the end where only one team can get them. The large map may have an impact.

2. Premade simply gets stuck on a bad team. While ineptitude in the long-term is random, variance demands that sometimes one team is loaded with weak players.

3. Acts of dog. E.g., DCs, cat pukes on DRKs foot, commander drops soup in her lap.

I used to view it as hubris that shot-callers on Discord would take credit for all their victories, then typically blame their bad team, unlucky spawns, and occasionally the soup thing, when they lost. I've since re-evaluated. Given 1-3 happen at some frequency, I think it's plausible that when those misfortunes don't occur, the intrinsic win-rate of a well-coordinated premade may be close to 100%.

And people wonder why players only care about rewards and the XP. Honestly, doing anything else is tantamount to lunacy when your presence is essentially irrelevant to the outcome. Unless you can somehow have a long-range impact on a bowl of soup.

[Scintilla]

Meanwhile, if the DRGs actually use their LB, that's a burst commitment already

Contrary to what I said above, this bit now makes more sense if used solely as a personal guide. I would still disagree that it's a sufficient attack warning for the reasons I mentioned above. Marking the DRK will give yourself and the wider team more notice of a likely attack incoming, giving you time to start spreading out (if the map allows), but I agree that the full and final commitment would be the DRG LB. It wouldn't give you enough time to escape (the DRK will already be at the front of the group), but it would be a final commitment sign for an individual player wanting to counter.

But as you said, the DRK premade is the nucleus, so they usually mark the target they jump on, the team will then focus on that marked target.

Perhaps this is DC differences as I can't remember seeing a premade DRK mark their target. There are occasions when focus targets are marked, but I haven't seen it used in the situation of a premade.
Waymarker use, the premade DRK marking themselves, Salted Earth cooldown updates, sometimes burst countdowns. But not a target mark.

Sadly 'just attack xxx job at xxx time' is fine in theory, not so good in practice. It needs very specific timing and an element of luck. It's not remotely as straightforward as it sounds. And even if luck is on your side for one attack, it might not be the same for the next one, or the one after that.
Not to mention how few players in a random match will even try the counter job. You'll be lucky to get more than one.

All of this because 4 players made the decision that a dynamic, competitive game isn't important.

[Mawlzy]

Perhaps this is DC differences as I can't remember seeing a premade DRK mark their target. There are occasions when focus targets are marked, but I haven't seen it used in the situation of a premade.
Waymarker use, the premade DRK marking themselves, Salted Earth cooldown updates, sometimes burst countdowns. But not a target mark.

I've never seen a DRK mark their dive target on Aether, but this is actually consistent with the premade mindset. In addition to the joy of curb-stomping, they place great stock on padding. (Source: Discord as per.) In this worldview, the DRK doesn't need to mark the target since it's standard for their premade partners to use the "target-the-target-of-focused" macro. They don't want the bit-player randos stealing their kills.

I genuinely think I disappoint them when, using the same macro, I get a couple of KOs and a handful of assists when I manage to get the timing right.

The only effective counter to selfish egotists has to come from SE.

[AnotherPerson]

All I can tell you in this doesn't happen in practice. It requires the premade machine to be rusty or lose a wheel or something.

Nah, I've done it plenty of times and can vouch this works in practice. It's not so much reliant on luck than it is on knowing what to look for. Main issues I've seen is people can't catch the obvious wind-up signs of the combo and can't read the timing to CC because of tunnel vision, lack the foresight to do it even if they notice the combo, or just don't have enough experience to reliably pull it off every time. From what I noticed, positioning is probably the first issue people have (most people can't even attempt to start it because they put themselves in a terrible location, thereby never able to find the timing even if they understand how to do it, unlike the DRK combo in which the premade tries to ensure their positioning and timing isn't too far off during coordination or it won't succeed). Just forcing them to purify a CC can break their sprint and disrupt the DRK combo's rhythm immensely to be unable to close the plunge gap. If they sprint ahead of time with Purify up, it means they used their purify and will be open to CC in the next 5s (which will be ticking down), but it doesn't prevent them from being miracle'd, displaced, MNK LB, RPR LB, DNC LB, etc. A Draw-in and a bind lasts for at most 3s if you don't purify yourself out, which is more than enough time to interrupt the combo if they can't sprint. On a 'rusty wheel' bad day for a premade, the DRK straight up dies because the enemy team responds too slowly to save the DRK who decided to 1v24.

If they're also busy ignoring you to sprint and activated purify ahead of time, it can also open up specific counters and you can just send them to death because they're trading purify time for rushing the combo (thereby preventing them from using recuperation or they break sprint, and thus be open to CC). If two DRG LB, it means they hard committed and you just need to disable the DNC/RPR who can break guard as DRG LB can't be delayed after activation, so just messing up their timing will break the guaranteed combo quickly.

So yeah, there's at minimum, 3-4 points of failure depending on when/who you choose to disrupt, and regardless of how good a premade is, it's harder for them to block all of those points of failure individually as you only need succeed in one to ruin their 'guaranteed' strategy.

I've done it a lot of times to AST/RPR/DNC/SCH alike to the point they specifically try to bait me or kill me before going all in after 2-3 times from losing the skirmish once they catch on. One time, they sent an entire alliance to chase me down just to keep me occupied lmao. It once got to the point that I just showed up, stood there, a bit away from my alliance, and the DRK who was running up just paused before turning back because they knew if they couldn't kill me, it would be a waste of time (BH strat not able to farm BH is basically their lose condition). It's kind of funny in that way. People mark premades, but premades go and mark me as a priority target when they realize I'm becoming a problem.