The PVP experience

[Aarik]

In recent months me and my FC have been trying out the pvp scene, and there are several things we very quickly found out, which I would beg you take heed if you decide to enter this part of FFXIV.

First rule: do not enter lvl 50 pvp matches. Ever. Unless you are rank 30+ in pvp. If you do not have full direwolf or greater, expect to become a greasy stain on the ground, no matter how good you are.

Second rule: If you have SMN or SCH, use them. They are the gods of pvp. On the other hand, Paladin is useless. Completely. Do not.

Third rule: If you are a close-range DD, you may now cry. You need your tp; mages do not. Mages sprint. You cry.

Forth rule: Yoshi-P does not care; he loves sleeping people too much as a BLM; this is not conjecture, he fully admitted it.

For those who say pvp is balanced, I simply point to cold hard facts; I now recognize the names of everyone who does lv30-40 pvp. There are about....40 of them that consistently do it. 40 people. On all servers.

[Kuwagami]

1) became true because of R30+ win trading for i100 gear. It was a non issue before as noone was PvPing so people were expecting to get ravaged by R30

2) WHM can outshine SCH on certain team comps. paladin is far from useless.

3) close range DD crying because the ranged run is a bad melee.

4) Too bad for you that SE announced balancing on sleep because 22.5 seconds sleeping was too much. Also, BLM are far from as useful as beginners see them.

and well. There are 40 people at R30+ on Chaos maybe. At YOUR time frame, and on Chaos only (you're not Qed with other datacenters). Also, they are that few because like 99% of the playerbase do not care at all about PvP, cause reasons (mainly, boring stuff and grind)

[Tashigi]

PVP in this game is trash anyway.
I would just sub to another MMO on the side and PVP there instead TBH.

[rappa]

First rule: do not enter lvl 50 pvp matches. Ever. Unless you are rank 30+ in pvp. If you do not have full direwolf or greater, expect to become a greasy stain on the ground, no matter how good you are.

--- You have reason, if you are a rookie or low rank, your best option is queue in bracket 30s and 40s, you will be more useful fighting in a balanced combat. (morale is not affected).

Second rule: If you have SMN or SCH, use them. They are the gods of pvp. On the other hand, Paladin is useless. Completely. Do not.

--- Paladin is not useless. The best combo to destroy a healer. Just attack the healer, force him to use purify, and after that, stunlock at 60% when your mates are near to kill him.
--- Cover and Testudo, can keep alive your healer, use it.
--- Enliven will give you that tp when you are empty


Third rule: If you are a close-range DD, you may now cry. You need your tp; mages do not. Mages sprint. You cry.

A caster runs, you use weapon thow and if you are lucky (20%) he will be affected by heavy.
You are bind and see how the whm, blm is casting a sleep, use Fetter Ward.
As monk you must use fist of the wind, as drg, you can jump, throw your spear to stopcast the caster. A caster running is a caster who don't do anything, unless he is a sch or smn who can cast miasma I, because is instant.

Forth rule: Yoshi-P does not care; he loves sleeping people too much as a BLM; this is not conjecture, he fully admitted it.

Teach your healer to cleanse. Tunnel vision is not a great skill in pvp.

For those who say pvp is balanced, I simply point to cold hard facts; I now recognize the names of everyone who does lv30-40 pvp. There are about....40 of them that consistently do it. 40 people. On all servers.

Well, i am near rank 22 and think the pvp is balanced. It's balanced because there are not a party configuration who can win 80%-100%.
Maybe, you are a low rank, you joined to pvp match and a high rank smash your body against the floor.

Pvp requires a proggresion, unless you wintrade, but then, you need a learning because the gear can provide you damage and defense, but not the enough skill to defeat to skill player in same rank

[Nicobo]

I think SE should make a class dedicated for PvP but not using existing class/job with another set of gears and skills.

Moreover, the level of this new class = PvP rank
And this class should be swtiched to tank/dps/heal job role (if there must be 3roles for pvp)
By this design, we even can have 1vs1 PvP.

But I don't know dev team how to explain to the company, PvP has a lot of spcae to improve bcoz the design is bad. ^^;

[Illya]

Well, i am near rank 22 and think the pvp is balanced. It's balanced because there are not a party configuration who can win 80%-100%.

If this were true, then the PvP would not have been patched to enforce 1 ranged DPS and 1 melee DPS in any party. Tank + SMN/BLM + SMN/BLM + Healer was such a hilarious stomp comp in the early weeks of PvP that it was literally the first thing patched. Nobody had Purify back then, so the team which slept the whole other team won 100% so everyone brought 3 jobs which had sleep. This doesn't sound balanced to me, why does it sound balanced to you? The second patch was to take combat raise away from SMN, which was also hilariously broken.

Maybe, you are a low rank, you joined to pvp match and a high rank smash your body against the floor.

Um, fighting as a rank nothing against a rank Gurren Lagann means you lose 100% of the time is the definition of unbalanced. Gear weighting is crazy in this game, if you have the PvP gear and the other guy is in PvE gear it's like you're playing Dynasty Warriors. This is what absolutely killed Tera's PvP.

Pvp requires a proggresion, unless you wintrade, but then, you need a learning because the gear can provide you damage and defense, but not the enough skill to defeat to skill player in same rank

Too bad I've been told by the experienced PvPers I know that I'm supposed to stay in 30 and 40 cap until I can get i90 PvP gear, how am I supposed to learn and progress in PvP if I don't even have many of my skills most of the time because I automatically lose in 50 as rank nothing PvPer so I have to stay in 30/40? What kind of progression is this supposed to be?

[Gormogon]

The PvP experience isn't all that new for me.

Though it's pretty fun seeing a Limit Break tide turner. Though I felt bad for that lalafell healer.

[Yumi_umi]

I really dislike smns because they r a 2 way street.
They will always be either super fantastic pro or plain awful.
There is no in between.
Pvpers always do that smn 1st or caster 1st then ranged then healer.
I also dislike how dps can't defend themselves. Jesus lol! It's so annoying when
1) dps breaking your LoS cuz they r just running everywhere ranging from running behind walls or going out of range.
2) i believe they have almost no defensive pvp skills available to them.
3) they just can't seem to escape a bind or stun.
It's lile healers gotta babysit dps while tanks r just going like " yep, " to each other.

[Liselsia]

Honestly I really love 30 and 40 bracket pvp. Its just a fun experience. Main flaw is people arent playing it so matchmaking is both long and unbalanced.

If I had one complaint its how Melee skills operate. They have such a long animation and dmg isnt landed till the animation ends. So often when being kited you will have your animations constantly cut off. Can take 5+ tries to land a single attack even if your right behind your target.

Of course I can easily admit this issue is more of a problem of my own skill then anything else. I see other melee pulling double my numbers and I aspire to learn to do as good as they do.

For me FF14 Arena experience (30s and 40s) is a 8/10.

[Garlyle]

I really dislike smns because they r a 2 way street.
They will always be either super fantastic pro or plain awful.
There is no in between.

To be fair, that's basically every healer. And this comes from someone who mains WHM in PvP - there's just a point at which you 'get' how to play your role in PvP, instinctively, and until then you're literally about as useful as a training dummy for the enemy team.

Too bad I've been told by the experienced PvPers I know that I'm supposed to stay in 30 and 40 cap until I can get i90 PvP gear, how am I supposed to learn and progress in PvP if I don't even have many of my skills most of the time because I automatically lose in 50 as rank nothing PvPer so I have to stay in 30/40? What kind of progression is this supposed to be?

Kind of a crappy one, but I'd stay in 40s anyway. You still have the majority of your skills, and the class balance seems a lot more evened out at 40s than 30s. It also takes the entire Morale factor and the overwhelming majority of gear factor out of the picture to boot, and it comes down largely to skill.

Arguably 40s is the better PvP scene than 50s, even if all your wolf marks go to gear intended to play in 50s.