So, when is VPR getting nerfs? (Frontline)

[UseYour]

That, or they're just too lazy to swap targets.

But wait, where have I seen this before? Oh right, there was another, "hot-button" job that benefitted from baiting auto-pilot players that was often brought-up around here:

I guess a lot of players just get it in their head that the first things to run-up to lead the charge must be the first things killed before anything else should even be considered.

keep in mind some of us are on console (or literally a freekn gameboy now) and we dont get access to the 3rd party apps that track who is healing and then click a macro to target them etc. Ive played MMOs on PC for years and i know how.. Lets call it what it is, a cheating arms race. PC players can and do cheat as long as possible then just use VPN, buy a level boost, and make adjustments to play longer without getting caught. Have i ever used aimbots or wallhacks? No. Have i used 3rd party addons and macros that auto target and raid marker rogues casting stealth or healers to be announced in raid chat? Yup better believe i did, because it made the game fair. Not fair in the traditional sense but fair in the "devs let everyone else use these cheats labeled as addons" sense. Id be at a severe disadvantage not using the same stuff. Which is what console is, we have zero access to the plethora of advantages a PC user has, and we also have to remove our hand from movement input to target select, and it is a long tab target process to target someone specific in a zerg rather than that solo enemy 4 feet away because we probably all use target closest enemy settings on console. Imagine not having access to a dps meter, you have to just take some guides word for it what materia and 2 minute rotation loop works best meanwhile a PC player using said bannable addon gets the blind eye until they call someones DPS bad. FF14 lets you buy prostitutes for dirty talk at casino mansions owned by people who bot nodes and market undercut 24/7 every 5 mins while server hopping spamming shout and playing a 10 person bard band in limsa with addon music sheet readers all at the same time and its unbanned unless you tell on yourself. Console players might look like bots but at least we have our integrity..

[ChrysOCE]

keep in mind some of us are on console (or literally a freekn gameboy now) and we dont get access to the 3rd party apps that track who is healing and then click a macro to target them etc. Ive played MMOs on PC for years and i know how.. Lets call it what it is, a cheating arms race. PC players can and do cheat as long as possible then just use VPN, buy a level boost, and make adjustments to play longer without getting caught. Have i ever used aimbots or wallhacks? No. Have i used 3rd party addons and macros that auto target and raid marker rogues casting stealth or healers to be announced in raid chat? Yup better believe i did, because it made the game fair. Not fair in the traditional sense but fair in the "devs let everyone else use these cheats labeled as addons" sense. Id be at a severe disadvantage not using the same stuff. Which is what console is, we have zero access to the plethora of advantages a PC user has, and we also have to remove our hand from movement input to target select, and it is a long tab target process to target someone specific in a zerg rather than that solo enemy 4 feet away because we probably all use target closest enemy settings on console. Imagine not having access to a dps meter, you have to just take some guides word for it what materia and 2 minute rotation loop works best meanwhile a PC player using said bannable addon gets the blind eye until they call someones DPS bad. FF14 lets you buy prostitutes for dirty talk at casino mansions owned by people who bot nodes and market undercut 24/7 every 5 mins while server hopping spamming shout and playing a 10 person bard band in limsa with addon music sheet readers all at the same time and its unbanned unless you tell on yourself. Console players might look like bots but at least we have our integrity..

What are you talking about? "we dont get access to the 3rd party apps that track who is healing and then click a macro to target them"

You know you can see what jobs the enemy team are, right? You can see who are the healers, the ranged, the melee. You can focus target a healer and have an in-game macro command to automatically re-target your focus.

Like come on. Yea, there is cheating in PVP but jfc. Stop with this BS.

[Valence]

From my own experiences, this didn't happen anyway. And, if it does happen as often as you say (given you said you've lost count of the times), what was the reason for the many complaints about premades before the change?

If roulette teams were often able to flank them, wiping the BH5 alliance of nasties, why was there such an issue over them existing in the first place?

I've always said it was overblown before the role actions and the more recent change. But I still argued that some job combos were problematic and centered around DRK and have been a proponent of adding a limit to 5 affected targets for AoEs in FLs. And I'd still back this up today, especially in the current ecosystem of FL.
You could destroy a premade team by sandwiching their alliance, which happened a lot in my experience when my team was listening to calls, but it was far from a given. I have also lost count of the probably way more numerous times the team just was deaf to anything, often with only 5 people following.
This required usually the full strength of 2 alliances vs one, and a well executed flank, because usually the first targets to escape were the premade members using their team as a meat shield to survive.
I have however had a lot of cases where even a 2 v 1 ended up with the premade(s) mowing down both alliances at once. Thus why I already used to complain about AoE combo abuses back then.

Today though? With role actions AND this BH change? Hell no. This raises the bar to ludicrous levels of effort. I ain't bother anymore, but good for you if you still have it in you. They keep removing stakes for anything in this game, whether in pve or pvp, so is it such a surprise that nothing feels worth it attempting anymore?

Oh yes, there's no doubt that it's failed in the reason it was implemented. That said, if we are to assume that they revert BH back to how it was because the change wasn't being utilised by casual players in the way it was intended, what would be the purpose to making pretty much any system change?

I'm not talking of skill changes/adjustments, I'm talking of FL system alterations (changes to score/BH/objectives etc.)
Whatever change is made, the players who will take the time to work out how to twist it or use it to their advantage the most are the veteran players. Regardless of what the change is, they will continue to work through it. Rouletters, having less care, interest, and experience in PvP are likely to let any change intended to favour them pass by, as they have done with this one.

So what purpose is there to complaining and calling for change, when they refuse to do anything with it when it comes?

It's never been about forcing the casuals into taking their own fate in their hands.
It's always been about designing around the different populations of players in the mode and ensuring that the whole works.
This new BH change, only half of it works.

So I'd be for increasing even further the BH gains when getting rid of high BH players, and decreasing it further when killing players of lower BH than you are.
BH loss needs to come back. I could even accept a compromise where one can't drop below 50.

Worqor needs to be fully reworked so that it stops encouraging people not pvping. It's worse than shatter in that regard, which is something of a feat to achieve.

Duty Finder queue should try to split premade groups between different alliances.
Duty Finder should also use a hidden elo system like in casual CC to balance teams better.

I'm sure there is a lot of other options that I haven't thought about.

[Divinemights]

Does everyone just need to stop to play around the job because is a viper on the enemy team? What if there are multiple of them? That's too much.

I understand what you’re trying to say, but Frontline discussions have historically been terrible at separating “solo queue chaos” from an actual organized meta.
People constantly theorycraft scenarios like:

“What if everyone stacked X job?”
“What if 24 VPRs queued together?”

We’ve seen this cycle repeatedly before:

• DRK pull meta panic
• SAM Zantetsuken complaints
• PLD Cover complaints
• SMN ranged AoE complaints
• WAR disruption complaints

But actual matches rarely function that way consistently because Frontline is still fundamentally 72 random players with wildly uneven skill levels and attention spans.
Outside of organized premades, true alliance wide stacking almost never happens

The bigger issue that’s been haunting NA/EU Frontline for years is the massive population of passive ranged players who got used to free damage uptime, low punishment, and melee jobs dying before they could ever reach them
Like I said, the meta has changed.
Aggressive melee jobs are now punishing that behavior much harder (New Battle High), and Viper is simply the most visible example of it right now.
Yes, VPR will probably get toned down eventually and I agree with that.
But the larger issue is that the old “ranged superiority” environment is collapsing.
Their free ride is ending.
And even if VPR gets nerfed, another job will eventually take its place because the underlying shift in Frontline pacing is still there.

If you actually look at many of the previous Frontline complaints, a lot of them started when ranged superiority was being challenged, not necessarily because the job itself was truly broken.
A good portion of the outrage historically comes from jobs or mechanics that suddenly punish passive ranged gameplay: DRK, WAR, PLD and SAM are all examples of this.
The pattern repeats constantly.
The moment ranged players lose their safe free casting environment, complaints immediately spike even when the job in question isn’t actually dominating matches consistently in real gameplay.
And people also conveniently forget how hard some players defended Summoner when 7.0 launched, despite how absurdly oppressive its ranged pressure and AoE value were at the time.

[Ankhira]

I’m not sure how this thread shifted into third‑party tools accusations or ranged meta arguments, so I’d like to bring it back to the original point: in my opinion, VPR is simply doing too much right now.

I also want to address this comment:

So first the issue was that it deals too much damage, now the issue is that it tanks too much? Personally, I think we're just looking for issues because it's a class you don't like going up against.

I don’t understand why my feedback is being reduced to "you’re just looking for issues."
At no point did I say this thread was only about VPR’s damage. I opened by mentioning the 7M damage loadout, you said the loadout means nothing, which is fair, then I responded that I also don’t think a DPS should be tanking that much on top of doing that much DMG. Those aren’t contradictions they’re both part of the same problem. If my post SPECIFICALLY stated "VPR does too much dmg, everything else is fine." I'd have agreed with you saying this.

Even without the many factors, which I even put most of them in the head of my post, tanking that much damage AS A DPS on top doing 7 million is INSANE and shows something needs to be toned down. Either bravery or bloodbath.

It feels like parts of what I’ve said are being taken out of context or minimized, and I’d appreciate if my points weren’t reframed that way. I’m not asking for VPR to be gutted, I’m not asking for a ranged meta, and I’m not asking for any job to be made unplayable. I just want Frontlines to feel fun and balanced, and right now outliers like VPR make that difficult because people naturally gravitate toward the strongest option, especially in premades. That’s fine for them, but it makes the match miserable for everyone else.

Across all of the PvP changes since EW I’ve only raised frustration about three things: DRK pull (Mostly with premades) GNB spam, (tanks in general tbf, also with premades so overall I think they're fine, just tired of premade tank spam.) and now VPR. I fully understand that some jobs will be stronger or weaker at different times, but VPR is currently a serious outlier. A DPS with higher DMR than a tank, 25% bonus damage, and 100% HP restored from damage dealt on top of Bravery was always going to create imbalance.

I’ve already acknowledged that maybe the issue isn’t VPR itself, and that Bravery/Bloodbath might need adjustments more than VPR. But that doesn’t change the fact that, right now, VPR is overtuned compared to most other jobs and making the matches completely unfun.

[Esmoire]

Speaking of, don't even think DRG having a -15% damage penalty is justified anymore. It looks so great if you have a DRK or DNC buddy but it's honestly child's play compared to the other melee. It was valid back in EW when DRK pull snapshot at the start of the animation, Sky High didn't have team-coloured markers, and HP pools were smaller, but the game has changed a lot.

VPR and GNB should be down to 50% DR. WAR doesn't need a damage penalty anymore. Double AST into DRG + DRK was busted in 6.1 but AST's penalties can also probably be reduced. Just a handful of these I think they should look at, especially because it lets them tune these jobs in FL without affecting CC performance.

[Ankhira]

Speaking of, don't even think DRG having a -15% damage penalty is justified anymore. It looks so great if you have a DRK or DNC buddy but it's honestly child's play compared to the other melee. It was valid back in EW when DRK pull snapshot at the start of the animation, Sky High didn't have team-coloured markers, and HP pools were smaller, but the game has changed a lot.

Actually agree with this, tbh, most Dragoons I see nowadays almost die instantly, I think the -15% damage penalty can be removed from them for sure. Like, I often play WHM in FL and most Dragoons I can just ignore as they just tickle me.

[Scintilla]

I don’t understand why my feedback is being reduced to "you’re just looking for issues." At no point did I say this thread was only about VPR’s damage. I opened by mentioning the 7M damage loadout, you said the loadout means nothing, which is fair, then I responded that I also don’t think a DPS should be tanking that much on top of doing that much DMG. Those aren’t contradictions they’re both part of the same problem. If my post SPECIFICALLY stated "VPR does too much dmg, everything else is fine." I'd have agreed with you saying this.

You began with a screenshot of a single VPR's FL score, all other team members damage cropped out, context removed, with the complaint that VPR deals too much damage. It was pointed out that context means a lot and that that particular VPRs damage was inflated due to premade team support (PLD cover, PLD debuffing the enemy, DNC partner, Bravery etc.), duty map, and, just being a good player... To which the argument then suddenly became that it's the combination of high tanking and high damage. This wasn't mentioned at the start, purely when someone provides a reasonable challenge against your original point.

The main argument remains: this is a good player who was receiving buffs and support through a premade. It does not represent 99% of VPR players out there, as shown below:



I'm seeing 3 VPRs there, all having tanked less than a SAM and a MNK and all dealing less damage than a SAM and a PLD. I will add, there were more further down the rankings of that game.

The two examples used to try to claim VPR is broken in this thread have both involved a very experienced player playing as part of a premade. Nerf VPR too much and they will still do relatively well with it, but you will then pretty much close off the class to solo and casual players, as it will need it's hand-held to be of any use - as has been the case for DRK.

VPR does lend itself well to padding, it's true, so getting decent damage numbers is somewhat easier with it than with some other classes. There's no denying that. The issue comes in that complaints often make it out to be a far bigger issue that it actually is most of the time. Most VPRs aren't much of a problem. Skilled players playing VPR with team support become more of a nuisance, but then they will become a nuisance with any class you give them - it's more the player than the class.

It feels like parts of what I’ve said are being taken out of context or minimized, and I’d appreciate if my points weren’t reframed that way. I’m not asking for VPR to be gutted, I’m not asking for a ranged meta, and I’m not asking for any job to be made unplayable. I just want Frontlines to feel fun and balanced, and right now outliers like VPR make that difficult because people naturally gravitate toward the strongest option, especially in premades. That’s fine for them, but it makes the match miserable for everyone else.

Except players will often complain something is unbalanced whenever it's something that doesn't directly benefit them or makes their game harder. Personally, I don't tend to play DRK much myself in FL. Do I find it annoying to vs? Absolutely. Does it make my game a headache when it's being utilised by a premade to coordinate a game? Yep. Am I going to complain that it's imbalanced because it makes my life difficult and makes my games harder? No. It's just a strength of the class being applied well by a team of skilled players and it's on me to try to counter that, rather than just ask for it to be nerfed so that I don't have to adapt and can continue as I am with a nice easy game

Across all of the PvP changes since EW I’ve only raised frustration about three things: DRK pull (Mostly with premades) GNB spam, (tanks in general tbf, also with premades so overall I think they're fine, just tired of premade tank spam.) and now VPR.

I will add, each of these examples kind of support the post made by Divinemights just above...


Edit: If you like, I can go out an collect a list of poor VPR scores, then post it here claiming it's evidence that VPR needs buffing. Obviously (and rightly so), the first response I would get is that I've very biasedly selected these scores to make a point and that those scores are just players who clearly aren't trying and, therefore, don't represent the class as a whole. Except, that's pretty much exactly what you've done, albeit at the other end of the scale to try to make the opposite point.

[Scintilla]

You could destroy a premade team by sandwiching their alliance, which happened a lot in my experience when my team was listening to calls, but it was far from a given. I have also lost count of the probably way more numerous times the team just was deaf to anything, often with only 5 people following.

It's definitely possible, I don't dispute that at all. What I do dispute is that it happens as often as you seemed to suggest in your previous post. This new post seems far more realistic and true to my own experiences: while it's possible, the vast majority of the time it doesn't happen due to the team's ignorance to anything beyond their current focus. On the very rare occasion I've seen it happen (which hasn't been for a very long while now I come to think of it), the decision to focus the dominating team down was made out of spite, as opposed to a desire to win ("I don't care who wins as long as it's not them")

I have however had a lot of cases where even a 2 v 1 ended up with the premade(s) mowing down both alliances at once. Thus why I already used to complain about AoE combo abuses back then.

Less likely given that it would take a fairly drastic skill difference between the two random alliances and the dominant team, but certainly not impossible, I admit.

It's always been about designing around the different populations of players in the mode and ensuring that the whole works. This new BH change, only half of it works.

Yet there is something of a limit as to how much you can adjust to work around someone's complete lack of effort. I mean, can I start requesting PvP elements in PvE duties now because I can't be bothered with running that same dungeon again for the millionth time for my exp bonus? Of course not, and I wouldn't expect such a change. So where do we draw the line with objective-focused players trying to drag these PvE elements into PvP duties?

Yes, the BH change hasn't worked to how they intended it. But, again, is anything really going to work? Whatever change is made, veteran's will always find a way to use it to their advantage and casuals will usually ignore it. In the future, if community attitude changes, perhaps. But, until then, I don't really see many changes working out.

Duty Finder queue should try to split premade groups between different alliances.
Duty Finder should also use a hidden elo system like in casual CC to balance teams better.

The other two points I can't say that I have any particular objection to (especially the mind-numbing setup of Worqor!). And, while this one I wouldn't exactly say that I object to, it's just referring to a scenario that doesn't really happen anyway?

I'm not denying that there are occasionals games in which rng has stacked the odds heavily against you

There are those one-off games where I'm seeing a load of regulars stacked on one alliance, meanwhile myself and maybe one or two other regulars are heavily outnumbered by rouletters. No reason to give up - it may turn into a miracle game somehow, but you know it would take a mountain of luck to turn the tables.

But, personally, I really don't find these games happen too often. From my own experiences, solo regulars tend to be well spread across the three alliances already and the chances of getting two meta premade teams on one alliance isn't high. In fact, I tend to find that having 2 premade teams in one game can sometimes work in the casual teams favour, as both premades are busy focusing each other down it can happen that the casual team slips under the radar for long enough to snatch the win.

Games involving a small number of solo regulars spread across the three alliances and one single meta premade on one alliance tend to dominate the most: few counters, few regulars to challenge, large numbers of rouletters following each other blindly. The fewer regular voices to challenge it or try to lead a change, the less likely the sheep are to listen. All working in the premades favour.

In this case, Duty Finder queue changes, wouldn't really change much aside from maybe eliminating those very occasional stacked games.

[Divinemights]

I don’t understand why my feedback is being reduced to "you’re just looking for issues."
At no point did I say this thread was only about VPR’s damage. I opened by mentioning the 7M damage loadout, you said the loadout means nothing, which is fair, then I responded that I also don’t think a DPS should be tanking that much on top of doing that much DMG. Those aren’t contradictions they’re both part of the same problem. If my post SPECIFICALLY stated "VPR does too much dmg, everything else is fine." I'd have agreed with you saying this.

It’s because you don’t actually understand why people say “7M damage loadout means nothing.”
If you did, you would understand that high damage numbers in Frontline often don’t reflect meaningful impact.
A large portion of that damage comes from inefficient AoE padding into groups rather than decisive, fight winning pressure.
In other words, inflated damage totals frequently reflect ranged players spamming into clumped targets, not actual control of engagements or successful target elimination.
That’s why raw damage alone is a poor metric for evaluating performance in Frontline, especially when most of it is generated through low impact, high uptime AoE rather than focused, lethal pressure.

Your own example already demonstrates this.
You took 2.47M incoming damage but healed 6.75M of it back.
Yes, Snake Scales and damage reduction play a role, but it still shows the incoming damage wasn’t remotely lethal or well coordinated.

Now take your 7M damage output as another example.
That number alone doesn’t indicate meaningful impact either.
If that damage were actually applied in effective kill pressure, you would expect either a significantly higher kill count or a much lower total damage due to targeted bursts instead of prolonged padding.