Slaughter... What do you think?

[Hyrist]

I can respect the perspective (although I don't agree with all of Synnovus's points) and I've already agreed that more incentive can be made. But the commentary about defensive and offensive cooldowns doesn't really make sense - as it takes multiple Cometeors to outright kill a player - As opposed to Raw Destruction which can outright kill a non-vit geared or non-buffed squishy.

And you can't use those skills to prevent Raw Destruction on an alliance member either (Stun works equally on both types.)

Again, I did mention that I was more of a problem with people stacking, Cometeor than it is the skill itself. Attacking Cometeor on the basis of the fact that it's an AoE skill is attacking AoE Damage vs AoE healing in its entirety. You can make the exact same argument for Flare, Fire II, Sleep, etc. The problem only becomes profound once you start talking that second and third Cometeor coming down without any ability to evade it due to being CCed for the first. I think the ease of that discouraged class diversity.

[Atreus]

sofullofsnip

I mean... you don't have to agree with him, but I'm pretty sure he is part of a premade that's run Slaughter more frequently and successfully than anyone lol. He'd know more than any of us where the incentive is and what works.

What exactly doesn't make sense? It taking more than one to kill someone isn't the point. CC'ing a crowd (which there are many of) and using them all isn't exactly rocket science. Just saying Cometeors don't care what party the targets are in, so why does Aegis Boon have to?

[DividedSky]

Warrior Lb should be AoE Holmgang/invincibility for 10 seconds ... because it would be insanely fun and epic.

Paladin LB Should Be AoE Knock Back that has the same area range as caster LB to counter any melees trying to LB your team or to really mess with the other team.

Healer LB should be invincibility for 5 seconds to all allies to counter casters LB.

Bard LB should be HUGE frontal cone AoE that does 1/3 damage to all enemies and knocks them back.

Caster LBs can stay the same.

Melee LBs should instantly one shot if not interupted.

[Synnovus]

- Snip -

As Atreus said, I run a Gilgamesh Frontlines premade that has been queuing exclusively Slaughter these past two weeks (though there are a few other teams aside from my own) and these are just the impressions we got playing the game.

Before I launch into my analysis of the current Slaughter dynamic I want to preface this with what I said earlier: the current interaction between Adrenaline and Battle High / Battle Fever is imbalanced. I think removing the Adrenaline generation from Limit Breaks would go a long way towards reducing the amount of meteor showers currently seen in Slaughter. I also believe that the objective timing and/or buffs should be tweaked in some fashion (current opinion as to exactly what is still pending). Having said that...

Cometeor and Raw Destruction really aren't that bad to deal with. If you spend 12 points into bonus Vitality (PvP Traits), equip a tanking accessory (more than one if you're feeling frisky), and use some 2-star food you can easily survive 2 Cometeors or a single Raw Destruction. A lot of the active PvPers on the Aether data center have caught onto this and it's rare for 2 coordinated Cometeors to wipe out a party. This brings the total to 3 Cometeors in order to successfully guarantee a kill on your targets. That is quite a lot of resources to dedicate to a single instance of damage. Currently there is zero repercussions to dropping this combo on 2 players are you're likely to get the majority of your Adrenaline bar back.

In the hypothetical situation where you don't get it back, a 3-Cometeor trade for 2 people starts to look a bit wasteful. Teams that spread apart pose a lot of difficult decision making because there are no obvious targets to pick. It makes landing multi-target crowd control more difficult and has less returns if it does succeed. An errant tank with a stun-happy trigger finger, a keen eyed melee with a well timed Shoulder Tackle / Overwhelm / Spineshatter Dive, a Bard with a well placed Blast Shot, or even a well timed counter-sleep from a BLM goes a long way to preventing a team wipe. You only have to interrupt 1 of 3 Cometeors to be successful. All of this is before you start to consider additional shielding, AoE heals, or defensive Limit Breaks from tanks and healers.

As you sort of touched on, defensive Limit Breaks brings me back to my initial problem with Alliances in general: you are not playing as a single 24-man team but rather 3 individual 8-man teams, this is true for both PvE and PvP. So for tweaking purposes it is easier to approach the 72-man version as either 3 sets of 8v8v8 or 2 sets of 12v12v12, the latter of which I think should be disregarded because of how sloppy Alliance interaction is. If you were to blanket Alliance-wide effects through the Limit Breaks you would probably be looking at a full system redesign.

In the end, I attribute a lot of the complaints about these abilities to be a result of a developing meta game. People are new to the game mode and they don't know what to look for. In times of panic the default reaction is to huddle together for safety making for crippling Cometeor play. Yes, this is Team Deathmatch but that does not mean your should be tunnel visioning on a single target because you want that kill. I spend a lot of my time calling and marking targets, setting up combos, or throwing out defensive crowd control when a dangerous situation arises.

Having said that, this all comes from the perspective of a person who is leading a group. I'll be the first to admit I don't know how solo queue games play out as I've never entered Slaughter with less than 2 other teammates and we usually have a very large impact on the games when we are present. If you have any additional insight, especially from a solo queue perspective, I'd love to hear it as it's not something I'm very familiar with. I mean, as an idea I don't think I've ever made a trek down to the Manor/Market/Temple to see the +Damage nodes more than once or twice.

[Hyrist]

In the end, I attribute a lot of the complaints about these abilities to be a result of a developing meta game. People are new to the game mode and they don't know what to look for. In times of panic the default reaction is to huddle together for safety making for crippling Cometeor play. Yes, this is Team Deathmatch but that does not mean your should be tunnel visioning on a single target because you want that kill. I spend a lot of my time calling and marking targets, setting up combos, or throwing out defensive crowd control when a dangerous situation arises.

Having said that, this all comes from the perspective of a person who is leading a group. I'll be the first to admit I don't know how solo queue games play out as I've never entered Slaughter with less than 2 other teammates and we usually have a very large impact on the games when we are present. If you have any additional insight, especially from a solo queue perspective, I'd love to hear it as it's not something I'm very familiar with. I mean, as an idea I don't think I've ever made a trek down to the Manor/Market/Temple to see the +Damage nodes more than once or twice.

Actually you and I are in complete agreement, especially in the bolded part. Cometeor only becomes a problem when it is stacked, as seperate entities ,theyre managable.

Solo queue has its benefits and its problems right now. In terms of queue times, those who are complaining about long queues, I can't duplicate it. A solo queue time for me hasn't exceeded 35 minutes as a solo tank in Frontlines. Most often much shorter than that.

More than anything, what is lax in solo-que is co-ordination. This may simply be a Maelstrom trait, but even bringing one friend from my FC into PvP I noticed a significant difference in performance of my full party. Helps that I also raid with this individual.Willing healers for Maelstrom is a premium and we often suffer third place finished due to not having any healer in one of our parties.

Limit Break wise, I was unaware that using LB contributed to Aderenline generation, then again I don't play a DPS of any sort so I wouldn't notice. If this is true, the removal of it should greatly balance its use across the board.

On objectives, each of the Alphas and I believe the Beta in the center are all worth 15 points a piece, and can sway that phase of the fight. It can easily sway back once the Interceptor comes out, but the team that capture the most of these objectives clinches the game. In games in which these objectives, including the side nodes are successfully controlled (with at least one side node captured) clinch the game before the timer expires. Games in which these nodes are more distributed wind up exhausting the timer or being close.

So it's not so much the buff but the point value that matters in these side nodes. However, to clinch two of them, you'd need 16 people to successfully co-ordinate and control a neutral objective on two fronts - while at the same time not sacrificing your presence in the middle. That requires thee at least semi-organized teams - not something you're going to accomplish in such a wide open mode. In trade, an organized group holding middle is going to be more sucessful over all because the teamwork is more succinct. Middle holds more point value overall than the sides, and if you can keep the other two teams on tilt, then you can mitigate the effect of the sides.

What would counter this and provide better incentives to divide the forces into their intended 3 8 man teams would be to have a second wave of side objectives of the same point value a bit before Interceptor spawns.

The reason for this is the Interceptor is powerful, and teams that are left isolated on the center trying to take it down will be weaker compared to the teams who leave to take the sides. What happens is the side fights, depending on how successful they are will overflow into the center fight. Fresh troops in large groups will pour into a weary battlefield and try to capitalize on the situation. Likewise, the team with more buffs or more points out of the two situation have already mitigated the effects of the additional points this center objective provides.

But that's just one idea. Right now I'm considering trying to start a Maelstrom LS on Balmung in an effort to organize their grouping effort together. However, from the sound of things it seems like premades are suffering from a longer queue time.

[Atreus]

Can't help with the pug perspective, but I can give one from the perspective of my team's tank. It's not the worst thing trying to gauge roughly when the Cometeors are about to start. With a little bit of timing and sometimes luck, you can pop off Aegis Boon and/or Testudo in time for damage control. The disappointing part is that awareness and response won't save the rest of the alliance as I touched on earlier. As you said, alliances are together yet separate. We can't replenish our adrenaline nearly as fast as casters can either.

We have gone after the Market and Sun Temple nodes a few times. It's... a tough call on whether they are worth it, but we're believing that they are most worthy if the whole alliance commits to it, including B team. Leaving B team at the top alone is just kill-feeding, and they just end up losing the buffs we got for them. So yeah... seems like either you all go for them or you don't.

EDIT: I do remember a match we were in with your guys. We went to Temple, cleared it out, and noticed you guys and party B were cleaning up everyone at the top. I guess that right there is testament to how worthwhile the side ones really are.

[Synnovus]

- Snip -

Queue times are very volatile and seem to be a feature of a poorly optimized queuing algorithm. We've run multiple groups of the same size (from 4-8 people per group) and always have mixed success. Sometimes the groups alternate queues (as expected) and sometimes they end up in different games simultaneously (good queues). Other times one group will sit AFK for 45 minutes while the other group inexplicably hits back-to-back queues. The only thing I can tell you in confidence is that the Aether data center has an over saturation of Flames and they see extremely long queue times when compared to the other Grand Companies.

As far as Adrenaline goes, it's a bit difficult to gauge as there are a number of factors that influence it. We estimate the values at 6-8 kills unbuffed, 3-5 kills with Battle High, and 2-3 kills with Battle Fever to go from empty to full. You hit the lower end of the estimation if you land the killing blow and the high end if the kill was picked up by another party member. You seem to generate less Adrenaline if the kill is picked up by someone in an allied Alliance versus your own party but it could also be a damage contribution thing. It's hard to say.

Strangely enough, some of our hardest fought games are where the opposing Alliances (and perhaps our own) are completely objective focused. The initial Alpha Node (+Haste) is quickly killed and both the opposing teams scatter to the outskirts before we have a chance to get things going. This puts us in a situation where we don't have many, if any, kill streaks going and all the potential Limit Break targets (if we have it) are gone. We then have the choice of camping the center to secure the Beta Node and hope we are able to get things rolling once everyone returns or attempting to pursue an outer node ourselves. This also keeps the scores within competitive distance (30-60 points per team) as there are not usually many 'kill' points on the board. I'm not sure whether it's the unique dynamic of the game progression or simply stronger players in these scenarios but most games that follow this progression end in a closer score (20-60 point differential).

After giving it some thought I'd like to see the Beta Node's (+HP) spawn time pushed back by 45 to 75 seconds. I feel that this would promote the value of the outer nodes as there is less objective worth in the middle. This also give the opportunity for players who pursue the outer nodes to make it back to the middle to contest the Beta Node. A decisive victory over an outer node, either through excellent teamwork or another Grand Company's choice to ignore the objective, should allow a team enough time to take the objective and make it back as (or slightly before) the Beta Node is spawning. This also gives a team the option to stay in the middle in order to get a head start on the Beta Node but with less free time before the other teams return to contest the node. While there is less objective worth, there is still some strategic worth as you can get the initiative on teams who are coming up the jump pads and/or ramps.

Personally, I like the Interceptor Node as it is. The pulse AoE brings a new dynamic to the fray as it messes with crowd control and puts a bit more (though not much) strain on healing. It really brings out the feeling of a Team Deathmatch as you have a bloody battle over the final objective with every team using their full force. I also find the Object 130 enrage (if you ever see it) to be hilarious.. but maybe that's just me.

[AntiSocialPanda]

snip

Yes ... this is a common solution I\\'m hearing (nerfing caster dmg to fix interrupts). But honestly, as things are now, nothing can be "fixed" without breaking something else. No, what we need is a complete restructuring of classes in PvP, but I seriously doubt thats gonna happen.

Also, even if a mage or any other caster is caught alone they should be able to defend themselves regardless of this being a team based game or not. Melees getting free kills isnt biased at all ...

Yes, but you see, the way the game is now it\\'s like, "Uhp, a melee is on top of my face, might as well throw in the towel without trying because I\\'m dead." Even with cds up you\\'re only delaying the inevitable.

There are very few ways for casters to peel, excluding BLMs with their op sleep, to create distance again.

Basically, a lot is broken. And fixing it is no small task.

[Potatoes]

So what does everyone think?

[AntiSocialPanda]

Maybe everyone that's having a bad time in Slaughter should que with me so we can have a good time