Give credit where is due: FL is fun

[Exmo]

Absolutely. Nothing's changed about Bard's kit, it's not worse. Just the environment in which Bard exists has changed.
When we had to whittle down every target, draining half their mana was massive.
But with burst being so high across the board, these tools aren't as relevant anymore. They're not needed to secure kills, since kills happen so fast regardless.

Since a large amount of Bard 'budget' goes towards team-buffs, cleanse, root, silence, mana-sap, the price we paid was having relatively trash damage.
This was also somewhat mitigated since being a 'safe' job, we could usually get and keep the battle-high buff.
But with burst being so high, our survivability is less, and so while getting battle-high is easier than ever, keeping it is a lot less reliable.

I would not say Bard suffers from any changes in burst. Bard was and is a hit-and-run class, staying well away from a concentrated high-BH front line except to ping squishy enemies and scare or kill them. Otherwise, stay behind your tanks and melees and support them with your buffs and by attacking their targets. Take the role actions that buffs your nearby allies and use it at the start of a push to give it more muscle. If you find yourself getting burnt down by enemy burst, you probably made a bad decision ten seconds so.

[Cidel]

Bard is fine in Frontlines. It's arguably the easiest job to rack up assists on next to Scholar, which means faster Battle Highs. I just came out of a Shatter match with 63 assists. It has a respectable burst that you can buff with Bravery and weaving in silence during bursts is actually lethal if you know what you're doing. So no, they don't have "trash" damage.

If you don't think Bard has enough "survivability," that's because A) You are over-extended or out of position or B) Your team folds like paper too easily. Bard falls into the noob trap that plagues all ranged DPS in that it attracts the lowest-effort players thinking it's some perpetually safe choice while actually just being free kills for not having the spatial awareness to take advantage of their range.

The only thing "trash" about it is it's basically non-existent AoE, which is two finnicky line AoEs, one of which has a built-in knockback which can mess-up the AoEs and targeting of your teammates, and it's LB MP-wiping attack which virtually nobody is holding onto for it's AoE property rather than it's MP wipe.

[Teno]

Absolutely. Nothing's changed about Bard's kit, it's not worse. Just the environment in which Bard exists has changed.
When we had to whittle down every target, draining half their mana was massive.
But with burst being so high across the board, these tools aren't as relevant anymore. They're not needed to secure kills, since kills happen so fast regardless.

Since a large amount of Bard 'budget' goes towards team-buffs, cleanse, root, silence, mana-sap, the price we paid was having relatively trash damage.
This was also somewhat mitigated since being a 'safe' job, we could usually get and keep the battle-high buff.
But with burst being so high, our survivability is less, and so while getting battle-high is easier than ever, keeping it is a lot less reliable.

It's actually the opposite, because of the new tools the mp drain is big, especially on rampart tanks. And bard's overall damage is actually decent now with bravery.

[Pyitoechito]

Give credit where is due: FL is fun

No, it isn't.

There's nothing redeemable about PvP. In Crystalline Conflop or Floplines. Health bounces around faster than a pinball game. There's no strategy or tactics. Every engagement is decided on a single death, with the one death leading to an instant steamroll for the enemy team. Server ticks being garbage means your health updates from 99% to 1% in one frame. There's no time to react to anything. There's no time to build anything. There's no time to do anything. Engagements are something like 3 GCDs tops. Win or lose, I never leave PvP feeling satisfied. I only go in to get tomes or free XP and I have zero drive to put in real effort because it will never be rewarded.

It needs to slow down by a lot. A whole lot. Reduce the damage output by a ton. Reduce the healing output (all sources) by a ton. Reduce the mitigation of Guard buy a whole ton (50% max instead of 90%). Reduce in-combat mobility to force people to stay engaged and not sprint away to heal up. CCs would be a lot less threatening if there was less of a chance of instantly dropping from full health to none from a 1s stun. And this is all just to make Crystalline Conflop tolerable, by the way (PvP being "balanced" around Crystalline Conflop is a joke and a half).

Floplines needs to let melees actually play like melees and not a poor man's ranged that keels over if they try to move in and land an actual melee hit. There's nothing quite as unsatisfying as playing footsies around the central oovo because you know if you actually try to play the game and fight you'll be instantly destroyed. If it's going to be a large-scale PvP battle, then might as well make everything bigger. Have all single-target abilities innately splash/split their damage among nearby targets, give all already-AoE abilities ~50% larger radius' (aside from abilities that are already supermassive), and have beneficial AoE abilities include alliance members. I could rant more but I'm tired and salty and bitter.

[Mawlzy]

No, it isn't.

There's nothing redeemable about PvP. In Crystalline Conflop or Floplines. Health bounces around faster than a pinball game. There's no strategy or tactics. Every engagement is decided on a single death, with the one death leading to an instant steamroll for the enemy team. Server ticks being garbage means your health updates from 99% to 1% in one frame. There's no time to react to anything. There's no time to build anything. There's no time to do anything. Engagements are something like 3 GCDs tops. Win or lose, I never leave PvP feeling satisfied. I only go in to get tomes or free XP and I have zero drive to put in real effort because it will never be rewarded.

It needs to slow down by a lot. A whole lot. Reduce the damage output by a ton. Reduce the healing output (all sources) by a ton. Reduce the mitigation of Guard buy a whole ton (50% max instead of 90%). Reduce in-combat mobility to force people to stay engaged and not sprint away to heal up. CCs would be a lot less threatening if there was less of a chance of instantly dropping from full health to none from a 1s stun. And this is all just to make Crystalline Conflop tolerable, by the way (PvP being "balanced" around Crystalline Conflop is a joke and a half).

Floplines needs to let melees actually play like melees and not a poor man's ranged that keels over if they try to move in and land an actual melee hit. There's nothing quite as unsatisfying as playing footsies around the central oovo because you know if you actually try to play the game and fight you'll be instantly destroyed. If it's going to be a large-scale PvP battle, then might as well make everything bigger. Have all single-target abilities innately splash/split their damage among nearby targets, give all already-AoE abilities ~50% larger radius' (aside from abilities that are already supermassive), and have beneficial AoE abilities include alliance members. I could rant more but I'm tired and salty and bitter.

Interesting. I'd suggest you have everything backwards. Except I agree CC and FL need independent balancing.

You state: " I only go in to get tomes or free XP and I have zero drive to put in real effort because it will never be rewarded." In that case, please stop playing. You're the problem here.

In other news, Secure queue died 2 hours before Onsal/Seal do, despite being Friday evening. Some people like it. The vast majority don't.

[ThreeBeastSmile]

<stuff>

First of all, breathe. It really isn't that bad, but also.. you're making contradictory remarks. "It needs to slow down by a lot. A whole lot. Reduce the damage output by a ton." but then... "Reduce the healing output (all sources) by a ton. Reduce the mitigation of Guard buy a whole ton (50% max instead of 90%)."? If things really were as blindingly fast as the first statement implies, wouldn't you want MORE mitigation? That'd be a survival issue, so therefore you'd need some bulking up, no?

Also if people are even managing to "sprint away and heal up", they must have worked something out to not die in 1 sec, yeah? Maybe pre-purifying or something like that. Some jobs also can layer up a further layer of anti-cc'ability. You might want to check those out (there's also the role ability Swift for melee).

Spammable AoEs are a thing the past, you missed that boat. It'd take another revamp to change all that up again, not to mention it'd ruin jobs like SAM... whose dash modifies each of their ST combo hits into an AoE. Anyway it'd just need a full-on revamp again. Don't think the devs are ready to pull one of those off just yet...

Friendly reminder once again to just breathe. Netcode is trash, yes, but the system isn't nearly as unplayable as you make it out to be. It's posts like these that almost makes me think I should record some footage to show what is possible from a loner's perspective, but really, just give it a little bit more quiet thought and you might find it's not as horrendous to navigate as you might think. If you are just treating this as an xp dispenser though then... nothing I could add here would change your mind.

[Mawlzy]

First of all, breathe. It really isn't that bad, but also.. you're making contradictory remarks. "It needs to slow down by a lot. A whole lot. Reduce the damage output by a ton." but then... "Reduce the healing output (all sources) by a ton. Reduce the mitigation of Guard buy a whole ton (50% max instead of 90%)."? If things really were as blindingly fast as the first statement implies, wouldn't you want MORE mitigation? That'd be a survival issue, so therefore you'd need some bulking up, no?

Also if people are even managing to "sprint away and heal up", they must have worked something out to not die in 1 sec, yeah? Maybe pre-purifying or something like that. Some jobs also can layer up a further layer of anti-cc'ability. You might want to check those out (there's also the role ability Swift for melee).

Spammable AoEs are a thing the past, you missed that boat. It'd take another revamp to change all that up again, not to mention it'd ruin jobs like SAM... whose dash modifies each of their ST combo hits into an AoE. Anyway it'd just need a full-on revamp again. Don't think the devs are ready to pull one of those off just yet...

Friendly reminder once again to just breathe. Netcode is trash, yes, but the system isn't nearly as unplayable as you make it out to be. It's posts like these that almost makes me think I should record some footage to show what is possible from a loner's perspective, but really, just give it a little bit more quiet thought and you might find it's not as horrendous to navigate as you might think. If you are just treating this as an xp dispenser though then... nothing I could add here would change your mind.

Bravissimo!!!

[Exmo]

Have to laugh at "Crystaline Conflop and Floplines", Like to got so bored of your own criticism you just immediately reused the same already-weak joke.

[MisterNublet]

Health bounces around faster than a pinball game. There's no strategy or tactics.

After the Battle High changes lets everyone and their dog obtain BH5 without any effort, recuperate needs to be changed.

-Cooldown between usages. No more panic spamming.
-Recuperate no longer receives increased healing from Battle High.
-Reduced potency for P.Range, M.Range, and Healers. Increased potency for Melee, and Tanks.

It needs to slow down by a lot. A whole lot. Reduce the damage output by a ton.

Frontlines T.T.K is already painfully slow.

Reduce the healing output (all sources) by a ton. Reduce the mitigation of Guard buy a whole ton (50% max instead of 90%).

Agreed on the healing output. Guard is fine as is.

Reduce in-combat mobility to force people to stay engaged and not sprint away to heal up.

If the devs are adamant about giving Ranged jobs all the CC in the game while giving melee jobs scraps, then the current version of sprint needs to go. Sprint needs to be canceled upon taking damage.

CCs would be a lot less threatening if there was less of a chance of instantly dropping from full health to none from a 1s stun. And this is all just to make Crystalline Conflop tolerable, by the way (PvP being "balanced" around Crystalline Conflop is a joke and a half).

CC needs diminishing returns in Frontlines. There is nothing more cancerous than fighting against a team with a dozen bards. Getting silenced, knockbacked and rooted half a dozen times each makes playing any melee job aggravating.

Floplines needs to let melees actually play like melees and not a poor man's ranged that keels over if they try to move in and land an actual melee hit.

Melee getting ranged skills is a symptom of the Developer's garbage balancing by making ranged jobs too strong.

That would require them to stop creating crutch jobs for trash players in Frontlines with bloated kits (bard and white mage).

[Pyitoechito]

In that case, please stop playing. You're the problem here.

Ah, then you see the solution, problem person. Just remove the Frontline Roulette. Then it'll be only the people who want to play PvP queueing in, just like Rival Wings (I do miss when they put that on the Moogle tomes list and it actually had people queueing into it; I know there's Rival Wings weekends or something but I'm too lazy to find that and actually do it with no other reward involved). However, I'm getting off topic, because you, problem person who is indeed a (or the) problem here, have clearly misinterpreted "zero drive" as never putting in effort, which is incorrect. I try every time I queue in. It just feels empty and unrewarding. But it's okay, please keep telling people to "please stop playing." It makes them feel so, so welcome.

I might have everything backwards. I just know I've never really enjoyed PvP and but I choose to do it for a decent chunk of daily XP and collecting things. I usually enjoy team-based PvP like Overwatch or Marvel Rivals over one-on-one stuff like Smash or fighting games, but XIV PvP is just a sour note on an otherwise good game, and I think it has something to do both with GCDs and poor server ticks making it hard to react to rushdown (making rushdown king over any other potential tactic), melees getting the shortest end of every stick in PvP (especially in frontlines), and frontlines in general exaggerating all the issues of PvP. I'm not sure if mass-team PvP is ever not going to be a hot mess, but something like distributing damage taken between nearby allies could at least allow group tactics to maybe be a thing (like a group of melees and tanks diving together to share damage and push through an enemy team).

I was just very peeved at the title of "giving credit where it's due," and I feel strongly that is it not due because frontlines (subjectively) is not fun. For me, if the opinion-based nature of my statement was not obvious.