PCT PVP

[SeaJae]

Hello, as one of the very few paint sniffers in NA right now who only played the job to climb to 2500 credit so far in CC, getting up to even rank 2 this season early on with it (before the buffs (btw)))... tldr; a lot of players suck at the job, and a lot of players suck at CC.

There's some jobs that just don't play well when your team doesn't play the objective well. PCT is one of them. If your team isn't playing around the point and/or you have no point sitters, you are going to have a hard time and basically play in a COMPLETELY different way than you normally would. Comets turn into holies, grassas turn into coats, smudges for rotational bursts and chasing turn into smudges to live.

But the objective stays the same. You are a point roach. You crystal sit, you support, and you become a slippery insect that soaks damage and never dies while also getting and tracking purifies (it's a very good job to make calls on). Your LB is game changing if your team (just fight in it lol) AND their team allows it to be (just don't fight in it lol). If you are more of a macro-game oriented player, this is one of the jobs for you. It just may not be the job for your team (as is the case with many support jobs).

The buffs they gave this job are honestly a big joke, mainly because they cited an overall problem with stall meta and over-sustaining, yet they buffed all the PCT things that contribute to the problem when it was already good at those things. Again, do the 2 PvP devs play their own game? (no).

Anyway, I find the job really fun and have since the kit came out. Most find it really boring. That's fair, I can't argue that - it's very different from all the other jobs. It's powerful and has a lot of benefits that don't show up on the post-game board. The job isn't a lost cause. As an aside... it is, in fact, very strong in Frontline (contrary to what some FL vets say), and has been since its very first version.

Below are some of my suggestions for helping it out that shouldn't break anything in any of the modes:

[SeaJae]

1) LB. Currently you are animation locked for an eternity while also not receiving any of your LB benefits during the animation lock. It takes 3s for the benefits and the knockback to apply. Either shorten the animation lock or provide the DR + Healing up on cast. It won't break the game, I promise. I couldn't care less about the knockback timing or even the fact that the LB is placed on me and not on my cursor, like I thought it was when I first read its kit on patch day... oh well.

2) Recast timers. Smudging motifs puts your elixir and sprint on the same recast timer as painting. This is annoying (the kindest way to say this). This has also made me just run away from PLD covers because I literally cannot elixir on time. Why is this a thing?

3) Cooldowns and what they mean. Black comet hit duration is fine IMO and it adds flavor to have different things take different times across the game. Most people just use it wrong. It's used to damage stack people who don't have guard or who are coming out of guard. If you didn't know, you can cast a comet first and then a motif and the benefits of the motif will apply to comet. You get the stack and the benefits. Because of this interaction (that I like and would like to see stay) I wouldn't buff the potencies of motifs or comet (kinda crazy to be hitting for more than DRG in a frame), and instead look to reduce cooldowns of both (but not by too much, see 5).

4) The other comet. Holy in white on the other hand, the almost 2s delay is just bad enough that I almost never rely on it to heal me without also recuperate weaving. It's fine when I'm being sent but it'd be nice if I'm gonna spend my damage opportunity cost on living that I get a little more responsiveness on it. This isn't the same balancing issue as MNK's RoE. We lose damage using this and 99.9% of the time use it to live with the rare exception of the faster damage application over comet to secure kills.

5) Casting. The basic GCD combo needs help and where I think the majority of potency buffs should be introduced without being overly bursty like buffing comet + motif potencies or making the game less fun with more stall + sustain buffs. Your hardcasted final combo spell of magenta does the same potency (9K single target) as a WHM's instant cast AoE glare combo that they constantly get 3 charges of. In the spirit of also acknowledging palette swap is a skill that exists (like BLMs changing stance), they could even introduce a buff system where completing a basic GCD combo on one palette buffs the potency of basic GCDs on the other palette. Again, the job wants a front-to-back play style, reward this by making it nearly as dangerous as a BLM to freecast the person on the point. It's a caster. Let its casting be more tactful for constant pressure and support capabilities while keeping its cooldowns for burst calls. As an aside, this buff would also have a negligible effect on its Frontline mode balance and wouldn't make it too crazy.

Edit for 5: Loggos mentioned a CDR mechanic for the basic combo and I actually was thinking of this right after sending the post. It'd be interesting and is also worth highlighting as an alternative to potency buffs.

[SeaJae]

6) Honorable mention: Motif selection. Some players I respect who've tried to like PCT have suggested something that allows you to more deterministically paint the motif you'd want for the situation. This is akin to some MCH players wanting the ability to skip (to?) certain tools in their cycle. I do not know exactly how you'd implement this for PCT. If I understand one friend's more detailed suggestion correctly, they'd like a button with a long cooldown (60s or whatever) that allows you to press it numerous times to cycle to a "free use" of any muse, that probably wouldn't apply to your mog sketches. I'd imagine it would cycle your current motif button and just highlight as a "proc" to consume, and upon consuming it, the 60s cooldown would start and you'd have to repaint your next motif as normal, but consuming the proc wouldn't use one of your two charges, probably? I also don't know whether it should skip you to the one after using the proc or if it should return you to your cycle or restart your cycle. I just figured I'd mention it because again, these are nebulous desires from some players who want to like PCT, who I consider good PvPers, but they aren't necessarily well thought out. For me, it's not too important. I understand it, though. I personally like lining up pom muse with my LB. That's not always possible. It'd be nice if it was.

I think most other commonly suggested buffs to this job would make games unfun or would make it a little too crazy. The job is very close to being very good. I've tried to suggest things that genuinely improve QoL, and tried to identify avenues for making it more of a threat (while keeping its strong support capabilities) when it comes to being left alone as opposed to bursting people who are vulnerable/making them vulnerable, which it is already good enough at. As mentioned in my first post, the job is at the mercy of the players and the jobs of those players. It's not as resilient to soloQ aspects as other jobs. It is also less forgiving throwing your damage into guards or padding your damage than pretty much every other job. Throwing away your comets and your muses hurts. Your targets have to be purposeful. For LP play I've heard there's some PCT compositions to apply massive vulns and global your call targets. I don't do LP but that sounds about right.

[Loggos]

There's some jobs that just don't play well when your team doesn't play the objective well. PCT is one of them. If your team isn't playing around the point and/or you have no point sitters, you are going to have a hard time and basically play in a COMPLETELY different way than you normally would. … It just may not be the job for your team (as is the case with many support jobs).

Yeah, that’s a good point. When it comes to team dependence picto sits in the same boat as supports/ other ranged-DPS.

3) Cooldowns and what they mean. Black comet hit duration is fine IMO and it adds flavor to have different things take different times across the game. Most people just use it wrong. It's used to damage stack people who don't have guard or who are coming out of guard. If you didn't know, you can cast a comet first and then a motif and the benefits of the motif will apply to comet. You get the stack and the benefits. Because of this interaction (that I like and would like to see stay) I wouldn't buff the potencies of motifs or comet (kinda crazy to be hitting for more than DRG in a frame), and instead look to reduce cooldowns of both (but not by too much, see 5).

Ah, I didn’t mean to trivialise the usefulness of Black Comet’s delay. Sorry if it came across that way. I wouldn’t want to remove it completely because I agree, you can use it for many strategic plays like pre-casting when somebody’s guard is about to fall off or having the comet “track” enemies that run around corners.
And I completely agree on stacking comets and muses.
(To expand on this a little for those who don’t know: You can cast black comet and then immediately weave muse. Not only will comet and muse hit at the same time, giving you condensed 20+k hits, but the muse’s buff/effect will also apply to black comet. This is particularly useful if you weave pom muse/clawed muse right after black comet, because the latter will still receive the damage buff.)

I’m definitely not saying the damage should register as soon as you press the button but I do like the speed of black comet under winged muse. You can still stack comets and muses as mentioned above (I just tested to double-check) and need to keep the delay in mind while choosing your moment to cast. But it also feels a bit more responsive. The current speed is just a tad to sluggish for my taste.

But I agree, the forced cool-down after swift-casting muses is the biggest cooldown-related problem.

… and instead look to reduce cooldowns of both (but not by too much, see 5)…
…they could even introduce a buff system where completing a basic GCD combo on one palette buffs the potency of basic GCDs on the other palette...

I wonder if you could merge these ideas/do something similar as with bard and have completing your GCD string reduce the cooldowns of comets and muses (in a way that’s appropriate and not overtuned of course. Also I'm suggesting both comets and muses getting CD reductions at the same time to ensure that they still align for combos. If only one had CD reductions, comets' and muses' timings might desync). You’d be incentivized to use your GCDs and would also have an interaction with the rest of your kit.

When it comes to white/black palette I’m not sure what the best interaction would be.

Either:

1. The CD reduction is the same irrespective of palette
   
   
2. Casting a Cyan/Magenta/Yellow string gives you more CD reduction than a Red/Green/Blue string (to reward hard-casting)
   
   This would be my preferred option. Just throwing out random numbers but e.g., RGB could reduce it somewhere between 0.5-1 seconds per completed string and CMY could reduce it somewhere between 1.5-2 seconds per completed string. (Of course the actual numbers would have to be balanced. This is really just an example.)
   
   
3. RGB gives you more CD reduction (with the argument being that you trade your immediate damage for more damage later via an earlier burst, and with the side effect that you get white comet back faster when you defend in RGB palette mode.)
   
   But tbh I really don't like this because I think nobody would ever hard-cast again. That would just completely undermine the CMY combo.
   And if sustain/stalling is already a big problem in the current meta then this would play into this problem too much. After all you would already get a bit of CD reduction in RGB mode, even if it’s balanced like in point 2. To balance the sustain problem I’d rather have the devs revert the heal back to 8k but have the heal come out (much) faster.

6) Honorable mention: Motif selection. A lot of players I respect who've tried to like PCT have suggested a new button that allows you to more deterministically paint the motif they want for the situation. I do not know how you'd implement this. I figured I'd mention it because again, these are suggestions from good PvPers, just not PCT mains. I understand it though, I personally like lining up pom muse with my LB. That's not always possible. It'd be nice if it was.

Personally, I’m not sure if it would be good to remove the limitations completely.
It might be a bit too strong if you could stack pom muse and claw muse whenever you like as long as you have two charges (esp. if you pair it with star prism). Or pair pom muse’s buff with the fanged muse dot.

I’d have two ideas:

1) Either you have a pool of the four muses and you can use them in any order you like but once you have used a muse it becomes unavailable until the pool refreshes. However the latter only refreshes once you have used all of your muses. So basically like the PvE astro cards but without the buttons for umbral/astral draw to manually refresh your pool.
You could still occasionally stack pom muse and clawed muse – that’s a problem that will always be there if you allow players to choose muses – but at least you wouldn’t be able to do it every 32 seconds.

The down-side of this idea is potential button bloat because you might need a button for every muse.
Alternatively you could have a “circle through muses” button in addition to the paint button that lets you instantly change your active muse by circling through the ones still in the pool.


2) My second idea would be an “overwrite” system. Basically it means that you can overwrite your current muse by painting again which is not possible at the moment. Since smudge is on a 12s cooldown it would create a trade-off because you’d have to hard-cast once, twice or even three times to get to the muse you want so you’d have to evaluate if it’s worth it to hard-paint vs. attack in any given moment.

It would also make comboing certain muses harder.

For example, if you want to combo pom and clawed muse you’d have to pre-cast pom muse, smudge, cast pom muse, instant-cast winged muse and then hard-cast clawed muse to overwrite winged muse. By that time you probably only have 2ish seconds of pom muse's buff left, so the buffs of pom and clawed muse would only overlap/stack for a very short time. Combining pom and fanged muse might be impossible so even with this overwrite system you’d never be able to buff your dot with pom muse.

This would give you less liberty (and that might still be dissatisfying to some people – I do admit, stacking muses at will does sound very tempting lol) but might retain some important balance.

[Valence]

Another idea I had was that with picto being rather niche your team mates might not always know your about your kit's utility so it ends up being underused. Many may not be aware of clawed muse's debuff or chocobustion's healing buff & damage reduction and star prism's damage buff and heal for example.

It's generally not on other players to try and keep track of everything of the four other players do at all times unless you're literally a machine. It's the same thing with MCH chainsaw for example: you cannot expect people to immediately notice as soon as the vuln debuff goes up on enemies to take advantage of it, and even if they had noticed, perhaps their attack options aren't ready yet. Generally you just want to use those either for yourself and your own benefit to buff your own following attacks, or you want to use it on primary targets called for burst because odds are that allies are going to burst down that target and take advantage of the damage vuln for example. It's not that different from a stun move.

Hm, could you elaborate on the emphasised parts? Because I'm not sure if we actually disagree or if we might just misunderstand each other. Perhaps I just phrased my original point badly.

A hard counter means that it will shut down something so completely that it makes it 100% ineffective, or even a detriment.
DNC before using LB has not only to care for positioning and stealth (if it's too obvious you're going to get bursted down), but it also needs to keep track of the state of every ally and enemy and especially their LBs. Spite, Seiton, Zantetsuken, Meteodrive, Sky Shatter, Tenebrum, Phalanx, Living Dead, Celestial River, Southern Cross, Mesotes, Contradance, are all hard counters to Contradance (the ones in bold the most unforgiving).

[Loggos]

It's generally not on other players to try and keep track of everything of the four other players do at all times unless you're literally a machine. It's the same thing with MCH chainsaw for example: you cannot expect people to immediately notice as soon as the vuln debuff goes up on enemies to take advantage of it, and even if they had noticed, perhaps their attack options aren't ready yet. Generally you just want to use those either for yourself and your own benefit to buff your own following attacks, or you want to use it on primary targets called for burst because odds are that allies are going to burst down that target and take advantage of the damage vuln for example. It's not that different from a stun move.

Ah but that's not what I wanted to say. Of course I don't expect people to track everything (I can't do that myself even remotely) but I think knowing what a class does in general can still have an impact. If I know how bard's buff or PLD's LB work for example I can stick closer to them (esp. if they call out their LB is ready) since I have some general awareness of what they do. Even if I don't track their party buffs meticulously there's a chance I'll benefit from them more often. Or if I know how SAM's LB works I can try to track their LB status and chiiten. Even if I don't manage to do it all the time I might still avoid it more often.


So if people know what chocobastion does for example they might stand in it more often or run in there specifically for healing. And if they know picto's LB comes with a damage buff they might stick closer to me if I call that my LB is ready/if they see chocobastion is up.

As for clawed muse I also don't think it's on people to track it of course. Rather, if they happen to notice the icon here and there, knowing what it is might benefit them because then they can decide if they want to capitalise on it (e.g. switch targets). If they notice it but don't know what it does then that option isn't even there.

A hard counter means that it will shut down something so completely that it makes it 100% ineffective, or even a detriment.
DNC before using LB has not only to care for positioning and stealth (if it's too obvious you're going to get bursted down), but it also needs to keep track of the state of every ally and enemy and especially their LBs. Spite, Seiton, Zantetsuken, Meteodrive, Sky Shatter, Tenebrum, Phalanx, Living Dead, Celestial River, Southern Cross, Mesotes, Contradance, are all hard counters to Contradance (the ones in bold the most unforgiving).

Ok, I see what you are getting at. I think I made my previous point badly because I really don't mean to undermine all the considerations dancers have to make.

I would argue some of these considerations picto has to make too (for example I also want to keep track of my allies' and enemies' LBs so I can buff as many of my team's LBs but also potentially counter enemy LBs with star prism's heals - or not waste it when the enemies are phalanxed or celestial-rivered).

But I understand that even if I don't track these things and/or my team is not in reach I can still get some utility out of the buffs and attack on my own in a way dancer (probably) can't.

What eases the burden on picto a lot compared to dancer is the fact that I have a "two part" LB. The thing I bemoan (having to "throw" half of my LB away) is also what allows me to get at least something out of it in situations that might be impossible for dancers. So whereas dancers always have to go all in I can reduce my personal risk if I decide not to use my LB at its full potential.

So I agree, whenever I choose the "weaker" route I can be a lot more lenient with positioning (while also saving purify) and need to take fewer variables into account because I can cast my LB behind corners or some steps away from the point.

-
However the downside of this (and that is what I was trying to say) is that this results in you rarely (if ever) using your LB at its full potential.
Whereas to my understanding, as tricky as it is for dancers, they do manage to cast their full LB within enemy groups now and then.

My theory/assumption was that while pictos have a much easier time with their “partial LB”, trying to go for their full LB might be slightly more punishing for them than for dancers.

So my (perhaps flawed) point was dancers can’t “choose” their risk and always have a high risk but also a (somewhat?) realistic chance to cast their full LB. (Though I completely understand that dancer LB is probably in a very frustrating and unfair state nonetheless, esp. after 7.1, and I don’t want to downplay this at all.)
Pictos on the other hand can choose their risk but it’s either relatively low risk with considerably less pay-off or it’s so high that the chance of successfully pulling off your full LB might be even lower than dancers’, hence in the high risk case you also have considerably less – or no – pay-off.
-

If I were to cast my LB within the enemy team (e.g. if I try to place it on the crystal) then I would argue at least some of the things you have mentioned above would also counter picto in their own ways. In fact (though I assume this is something picto and dancer share to a degree) the animation lock is so long you don't even need an LB as a hard-counter in that case. A coordinated team is enough and you lose everything without a single gain.
At the same time the only thing your enemy team would need a hard counter for in the first place (since your passive chocobo field just dies with you) is star prism (big aoe damage + heal + buff). But since it's so easy to kill a picto with regular attacking before they even get to casting star prism you rarely even need to think about hard-countering picto LBs if they are daring (or silly) enough to cast chocobastion in close/immediate enemy range.

So even if I do manage to cast chocobastion on the point it's very easy to be taken out right afterwards - so you still lose everything, even if you are successful, because now chocobastion is gone and you lost starprism too.

I might have this wrong so please correct me but if as a dancer you die late in your animation/after your animation does the charmed status persist? Or is it immediately removed with your death?
Because I was under the (wrong?) assumption that enemies stay charmed if you die, so if you get killed after LBing your team might still gain something from the remaining charmed debuff.

Of course you are right, dancers are still exposed to many risks after successfully LBing but even if you don't catch every enemy, I assume catching some of them will still result in somewhat less damage received and in some team benefit (provided your team is coordinated around you)?

[Loggos]

Very happy to see activation changes to Holy in White and Chocobastion. I hope the former is a meaningful speed boost to the heal and I'm praying the LB mention means the animation lock is not as long anymore.

Curious to see what the Black Comet changes will bring. Whereas I did say I want Black Comets to be just a bit faster/snappier I hope it doesn't mean they can't be comboed with muse oGCDs anymore.

But all in all, on paper it looks like the changes could be promising.

[SeaJae]

Curious to see what the Black Comet changes will bring. Whereas I did say I want Black Comets to be just a bit faster/snappier I hope it doesn't mean they can't be comboed with muse oGCDs anymore.

It's probably donezo if they sped up comet even a little bit. I think the gimmick was already ping-dependent. That being said, it only matters for 2 of the 4 muses. You can still stack the damage on the other two and not "lose" benefit since they don't give things to buff the comet. I'm curious how all the speed ups will affect the 'lower winrate" of the job they have been seeing. Depending on the actual changes they made to the LB animation, that might be the most impactful yet.

Edit: I'll be honest, I cannot tell on first glance the difference of any of the hit detection changes this patch. Everything feels and works as it did before the patch for PCT.

[Loggos]

Edit: I'll be honest, I cannot tell on first glance the difference of any of the hit detection changes this patch. Everything feels and works as it did before the patch for PCT.

Oh ok that is kind of unexpected. O_o
No changes to Black Comet may be a blessing then, but no changes to the LB and perhaps Holy's healing is kinda sad.

It's probably donezo if they sped up comet even a little bit. I think the gimmick was already ping-dependent. That being said, it only matters for 2 of the 4 muses. You can still stack the damage on the other two and not "lose" benefit since they don't give things to buff the comet. I'm curious how all the speed ups will affect the 'lower winrate" of the job they have been seeing. Depending on the actual changes they made to the LB animation, that might be the most impactful yet.

That's a good point. Perhaps I have bad ping because the combo still worked for me even when I buffed black comet with winged muse's speed buff (speed buff --> black comet --> clawed muse --> black comet + clawed muse hit simultaneously and black comet is also buffed by clawed muse). That's pre 7.2 though, I haven't tried it out yet today.

Was it possible to align clawed muse and black comet like this with good ping?

[Loggos]

Ok, I've tried picto now and I don't notice any changes either. It's a bummer wrt the LB and white comet but all in all perhaps this is for the better because if they don't change anything they also can't make anything worse. So with picto being in a decent state already I don't think the non-update is really bad.