Feedback on Frontline balance – tanks are too oppressive

[Esmoire]

I must be a minority among FL vets who is, for the most part, fine with the general state of role balance. I think it's a better game if supported melee who engage onto a team are able to take positions and give fights a tangible sense of taking ground having strategic advantages. They are the focus of a strong stack or general alliance composition, but at some point, it's better to have jobs like scholar or bard supporting them rather than more melee, which is good. Most of the roster has a place in a theoretically optimal team. Also, DRK? I really don't think it's a problem in FL. Not anymore. In EW, it was destroying most of the playerbase, but it's been reined in, and even needed a buff early DT. It's the best job to engage in really coordinated play, which is fine. It has a DR score comparable to RDM or DNC, it needs to peace out before its invul wears off, because without it, it's kind of brittle compared to other melee.

That said, there are a few outliers I am not fond of.

To start, I am so glad the majority of the NA playerbase doesn't seem to understand viper. There is no universe where any job that can push a button to basically heal back to full should have 60% damage reduction. It's the "I am going to stand here please hit me" job, which doesn't fulfill any part of its fantasy. It's not overpowered, but it's not a fun job to play against in FL or CC especially in coordinated play. I hope it's completely redesigned in 8.0 to capture elements of its lore as a hunter.

Another thing is I get this feeling they balance role actions based on usage statistics and maybe overall winrates, which is not always going to work. Bloodbath, for instance, is mid for the average player. That said, if you have a samurai player who knows their job at all, they're immortal. If they queue with a ranged with Bravery, they practically heal from damage taken with Chiten. If the institutionalized experience required to play this well was more common, FL would be a lot less fun, but it's kept in check more by ignorance, which feels unhealthy.

And let's talk about battle high. Some jobs definitely scale with it better than others. Gunbreaker is a great example. This job which already has high natural mitigations is basically always in a state of additional mitigation, barriers, and heals. I feel like all of this would be easier to balance if at least BH didn't grant more healing. Even as someone playing a lot of SCH lately (a job admittedly thriving because there are so many good melee on my teams), I don't think the healing bonus is justified on the healer role, nevermind the others.

I guess, in short, there's a small list of things I would like toned down and a few ranged jobs that should be buffed in FL (DNC, SMN, maaaaaybe RDM; PCT is good but LB is garbage), but it's a good place where for at least half the roster, I can point at them and say there's a reason I'd want them on my team, both in q sync and general Duty Finder player.

[Divinemights]

Frontline job representation is actually a good way to look at each job’s power dynamics.
If tanks were truly oppressive, then we’d be seeing alliance stacked full of tanks.
But is that what’s happening right now?
At least on Primal, every match I join is filled with BRDs, WHMs, and Machinists.
This feels more like a repeat of the old “melee apocalypse” than a tank dominated PvP
So I’m not sure the claim that tanks are too oppressive really holds up.
If anything, the job representation in Frontline suggests the opposite.

[TofuLove]

I think conceptually of jobs focusing on either of 2 things: sustain and burst.

Conceptually tanks are supposed to sustain damage for a period of time, but not have huge bursts. It's a support role.
Melee on the other hand should be able to produce a lot of damage and kill (insta kill abilities).

The problem with frontline is that it's quite difficult to balance for both of these things. To be able to withstand being in the front line, both roles need certain amount of sustain as a starting point.
Additionally, with introduction of bravery, some classes can sustain & pump out even more damage in coordinated scenarios. The problem happens when a melee has more sustain than a tank, or tank has more burst than a melee.

Lets have a look at current problem children within these 2 roles:
Gunbreaker, Paladin, Viper

Gunbreaker:
Has very good sustain, and very good damage with nebula even compared to some melee roles. There is a lot of gunbreaker stacking happening on EU these days.

Paladin:
Insane burst potential - easy to do more damage than other tanks jobs and even some melees, amazing utility and... god tier sustain. You can literally 1vs24 and still kill people and then walk away. It's lb is shorter than DRKs, and stronger (doesn't lose hp - does more aoe damage). You can literally drop aoes every sheltron bomb.
I think it was in OK place before the latest patch - not sure why it needed buff.

Viper:
It's got the most sustain out of any class and most burst potential out of almost any melee class. It's truly broken and needs a redesign. Melees should not have more sustain than any other tank.


I don't agree that all tanks are currently equal, and I think DRK is a shadow of it's former self in the current patch.
It's got less sustain and less damage than I think any other melee or tank. If you play it solo without any support or marking yourself, why?
Is it so nerfed because salted earth? Then nerf salted even more, and buff the job...
It's still amazing if played in a coordinated group or premade, but without it - it's really really sad.

Not sure about warrior, I rarely play it at the moment, and barely see it played well, but it doesn't seem over powered right now.

P.S.
Overall though I agree with divinemights. The overall balance is currently tipped towards ranged jobs.

[Sunhwapark]

If tanks were truly oppressive, then we’d be seeing alliance stacked full of tanks.

Not gonna happen, the majority of players are too scared to play melee classes in general, hence we end up with 500 bards in matches.
But yeah, GNB is a strong bully it only lacks a hard CC that isn't tied to LB, and then there is VPR having more DR than any tank which is laughable.
You can dive, eat everything and walk (or dash) away, but they are sort of designed to be able to do that.

[Valence]

GNB's LB is fast enough that odds are it's gonna be up for most engagements, or all engagements period if your team isn't leading.

Frontline job representation is actually a good way to look at each job’s power dynamics.
If tanks were truly oppressive, then we’d be seeing alliance stacked full of tanks.
But is that what’s happening right now?
At least on Primal, every match I join is filled with BRDs, WHMs, and Machinists.
This feels more like a repeat of the old “melee apocalypse” than a tank dominated PvP
So I’m not sure the claim that tanks are too oppressive really holds up.
If anything, the job representation in Frontline suggests the opposite.

Because you're putting casuals and organized groups into the same bag. Casuals will always pick ranged because they can't play melees. I've seen alliances full of premades and half of them were tanks, as they should.

[jesseleewelch]

Honestly, the best way to improve Frontlines is to remove it from the game.

[jesseleewelch]

Also, we tanks are not so oppressive as you surmise.

Secure is my most unlucky map, and i had a match earlier where i was the only tank on the entire team. We won. It wasn't a huge win, i think second place was only 60 points behind or so, but even so.

To me, this suggests that tanks are not so gamebreakingly op as some on here suggest.

[Esmoire]

Honestly Shatter usually ends with two or three teams within 100 pts of each other. It's a fun map purely for fighting but strategically, it's not very satisfying. Even full flank rotations around the edges of the map have been falling flat lately. It's good from a purely fun perspective but I think it was better when all three teams had an easier way of getting both in and out of the side ice, not just two teams. Just my opinion, though.

[pecorino]

Frontline job representation is actually a good way to look at each job’s power dynamics.
If tanks were truly oppressive, then we’d be seeing alliance stacked full of tanks.
But is that what’s happening right now?

This right here. If tanks were so strong right now, there would be way more tanks playing, but often you will end up with few to no tanks in a given Frontline. Plenty of melee contrary to what I'm seeing in these replies, but maybe the people on Crystal are simply more fond of SAM and MNK. The meta during Endwalker was a lot heavier on tanks, largely due to the DRK/AST pairing's dominance, but tank/healer combos in general were way stronger.

I think the misconception here is that a lot of people don't realize which jobs are actually putting out cc and other annoying stuff, and tanks get blamed for everything. Crowd control is not a tank-exclusive thing, most jobs have at least one devastating cc ability. It's kind of like how everyone blamed DRK exclusively for all of their problems, even though AST was functionally how everyone was dying. This is why AST was nerfed repeatedly, while DRK's nerfs were quite minor by comparison.

[Kahnha]

The only invuln in pvp should be the guard, VPR needs a nerf too peps should not feel comfy yeeting themselves in the middle of the enemy team xD