To all the flames on primal datacenter...

[Kurogaea]

snip

Oh my bad, never knew Exodus was apart of the primal server. So apparently your Rank 40 something on the Adders side, fascinating. I'm rank 50 on Flames and just transferred to Maelstrom. Why? Because Flames literally suck (this time around).

When we win, its because either Adders and Mael decided, "Hey, lets beat the crap out of each other and completely ignore other nodes and Flames!", which is exactly what happened when I reached rank 50 (5% chance of that ever happening). The other matches, well they went something like this:

A. When you get 2 nodes on your side and the 2 GCs literally sandwich you till there's nothing left and literally part ways. I'm dead serious.

B. When we're not winning, somehow we're still being targetted by Adders and Maelstrom even if we're below 100, literally using us as point fodder.

[Kurogaea]

C. 1 GC against us could be attacking (we may win the brawl or not) while the other literally relaxes watching as we get out teeth kicked in. The last time that actually happened is to my favor (for once) when I won my 3rd time this week after 30+ matches and I reached Rank 50. (last words was: "I'm outties")

Btw, I'm not saying Adders and Mael are always against us, but this is the life of a Primal Flames PvPer. We're targets for points. Like NPCs literally wandering around until someone on our alliance comes in with friends and gives orders, that is if they would even bother listening after so many unsuccessful matches. Sometimes even if we play smart by just guarding and attacking properly, somehow either Adders or Maelstrom would go at it and feed the hell out of the other team easily giving them 200 points while we just hold the nodes we have. Then someone speaks up and says "Destroy the winning side!"

[Kurogaea]

We go in and somehow get double teamed in the end by both teams. My speculations would be that:

1. losing team wants to push 2nd and the 1st place team wants to keeps us away.
2. losing team hates our guts from the last rounds and don't want us to win.
3. Infamously the ol' double teaming conspiracy

All is likely but the 3rd one, but one can never be sure with these horrible losses lately. Some guy told me he had 21 wins, 24 2nd, 27 3rd wins this week. I was friggen baffled and of course I think he was lying to spite me. So anyway, its my luck alone that gives me a 10% win ratio on the Flames side, my GC just sucks, or Flames have some sort of chicken fodder aura that draws in Maelstrom and Adders like crows to ripe fruit. Either way, its BS. There's no denying that. And grats to those with amazing scores on the Flames Primal server because I don't see it happening :/

[HylianBebop]

I know last night people in Flames/Adders were fed up with Mael winning all day, so there was a sentiment to just zerg Mael in one match, which Flames won in a route, like 800-200-20. It was worth it.

I've been in all 3 GCs now on Primal Cluster, and Adders have the absolute worst win rate since Seize was introduced. Flames, when they're on point, are very consistent and I had a winning weekly record with them. But they too easily get tunnel vision and get caught up in meaningless fights that a GC (Maelstrom...) can exploit, so lots of 2nd place finishes where a lead was blown. Maelstrom is the overall the strongest GC, it looks like they've gotten better since I've been away. The seem to win the most overall. They think strategically and give themselves the best chance to win. Usually they only lose when too many players are not on the same page (reset day filled with Eso cappers), RNG really screws them over, or a gamble by another GC (Flames) pays off for once and beats out the by-the-numbers approach of Maelstrom.

Anyway, once I get my 100 wins with Badders I'm back to Maelstronk to finish hitting rank 50. I might go back to Flames and hit 50 with them, too (and be with my CuC bretheren), but unless they add a new mount requiring it, I'm never going back to the Badders.

[C00KIE_M0N57R]

So anyway, its my luck alone that gives me a 10% win ratio on the Flames side, my GC just sucks, or Flames have some sort of chicken fodder aura that draws in Maelstrom and Adders like crows to ripe fruit. Either way, its BS. There's no denying that. And grats to those with amazing scores on the Flames Primal server because I don't see it happening :/

It really comes down to leadership; a gc is more likely to win if there is at least one person doing call outs. Not trying to brag, but my win ratio is usually 40-50% every week with an average of 30 matches. And its because I can get a majority of the people in my alliance to actually do sensible things. My suggestion is to try to make call outs yourself. Study the map more every match and you'll notice patterns of what does and doesn't work. You'll be able to tell when a pincer is coming or when to back off. Trust me, most people will listen.

[Februs]

Trust me, most people will listen.

Most people do listen; however, sometimes it takes a bit of nagging to get them all to pay attention. often, people just get too caught up in the fight to notice the chat box, and, there's always the "bad apples" in the group.

I find I spend a lot of time fighting against cowards and pacifists who are constantly shouting "RETREAT!!" in the chat box, or insist on camping nodes under the pretense of "defense," even when it is an awful decision and will clearly cost us the match. For example, people who insist on defending even though they are in last place. You will never gain enough points just sitting there, but somehow they are afraid to attack and take new nodes. Stupidity at its finest, unless your goal is 2nd or 3rd place. You also get the occasional person who is convinced you're going to lose even before the fight has started. It's mind numbing, and infuriating, and it can literally infect the entire Alliance and effect their performance if all they hear is negativity about their odds of winning... There's a lot of negative voices to outshout in the chat box sometimes.

You're right though. Winning requires strong leadership. Every man for himself does not work. For anyone who has a bad winning %, I'd recommend paying attention to the chat box and honestly evaluate if there is clear and solid leadership or if there's just a lot of negative comments. If it's the later, consider trying to lead yourself (if you have a mind for tactics) or finding someone else who can do the job (if you don't personally have a mind for tactics). Just be aware that if you take up the role yourself, it requires that you take a certain distance from the fight.

I have to pull myself out early from combat a lot of the time to check the map, node spawn timers (focus targeting a node is a good trick for doing this), and enemy positions, so that I can accurately plan the teams next move. Then I have to make my decision clear to the team in a simple to understand manner and make sure they listen (which sometimes requires multiple shout-outs). It also requires good map awareness, and knowing which direction is the best to approach from. Most people charge in head first because it's the shortest path, but that's usually leads to a stalemate or putting yourself in a position to get pincer-ed easily. Sometimes it's better to take the long way round, which means convincing the team to not get too far ahead of themselves. You gotta be quick in your instructions. Because of this, I spend a lot less time being directly involved in the fights than the grunts when leadership falls to me. Some people might find that not nearly as fun, especially since it comes with a lot of responsibility, but someone has to do it if you want to win.

[Kurogaea]

Btw, here's something to give you an idea about the victory rates and differences of the GCs PvP stats on the Primal servers. Maelstrom has more wins, Adders have less wins (more than Flames), but have a better win ratio than Flames, and Flames have more matches (they get in more often) so they Rank Up pretty fast.

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...hly/?sort=rate

[Kurogaea]

I also noticed something as soon as I switched GC's (Maelstrom). The queue times are HORRENDOUS. I now see why people complain about that crap, and I kind of see the point of calling the df for frontlines flawed. Even if you queued and 100 before you also queued, your still going to be waiting for a 72 man fight, just because there's multiple players on your GC queuing at the same time. It assumes more players are just going to join and leaves you waiting for Flames and Adders to pop in (Mostly Flames).

Going to say this now, Flames have a reaaaallly bad reputation. So bad that most (to my perspective) have moved to either Adders and Maelstrom which is why Flames have so many matches. Maelstrom and Adders are constantly waiting for them to start up the df. My guess is maybe 300 on maelstrom, 250 on Adders, and 75 on Flames, I dunno.

[Februs]

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...hly/?sort=rate

If this is supposed to prove anything... it doesn't.

The fact is that the loadstone standings are there for personal stats. There is no way to filter results to find out how many matches were won in total for your GC. All it does is show you the top ranked players, or the most prolific players, and how they rank against one another in a list of 100 depending on victories, win rate, or number of matches played.... that really doesn't say much about how the 3 GC's compare to each other.

If you wanted, you could try to compile your own list by counting the individual stats of the players from each GC and than average them for comparison, but that would still give you a wildly skewed result, because the pool being sampled is not even close to being equal or comparable.

For example: this week, on my server, with a sample pool of 93 players in the Victory rate tab, Mael had a total of 75 players represented with a average victory rate of 66.5%. Adders had 3 players represented with an average victory rate of 53%, and Flames had 15 players represented with an average victory rate of 46%. Based just on the victory rate alone, Mael wins the most with the highest average. However, notice that they took up 80% of the listings and not all of the players, including some of the ones at the very top of the list, played an equal number of matches. The top Mael only played 40 matches, but the 5th place Mael had almost 100. Between the two of them, which do you think had an easier time maintaining his win ratio? Obviously the guy who played less matches, since he didn't have as many opportunities to fail as the 100 match guy. The same logic can be applied to the GC's as a whole, and is proved by the Adders/Flames results. Adders "beat" Flames in win rate 66% to 53%, but their sample pool only has 3 players. How is this a fair comparison? It's not. It tells us absolutely nothing in regards to which GC preforms better in terms of win's and losses. Keep in mind that if I had limited the sample pool to the top 10 players in win rate, Adders would not have even been represented at all, meaning Mael would have still won, with Flames trailing just barely behind them... and Adders would be at 0% by default because, according to the listings, they weren't even "good" enough to be there. I'm pretty sure those 3 players who scored above a 50% win rate would beg to differ, but, hey, that's what the standings say, so it must mean Adders totally suck right?

Obviously not.

The only thing this data does tell us is that, on my server, Maelstrom have FAR MORE players queing for PvP than either Flames and Adders combined, but that's literally all we can surmise from this data. It is impressive that they maintained a high average, but there's nothing to say that if Flames and/or Adders had an equal number of players that they couldn't do the same. This tells us nothing about GC performance, only personal performance. To know how the Gc's stack up against one another, we'd need to know the total number of matches played in each GC (which is impossible to calculate because we don't know how many of the players in the listings overlap in matches), and the average win rate of each GC over the course of their total number of matches. That data is not made available to us. So trying to compare which GC is "better" or "worse" using the standings is pointless.

[Farrell]

Btw, here's something to give you an idea about the victory rates and differences of the GCs PvP stats on the Primal servers. Maelstrom has more wins, Adders have less wins (more than Flames), but have a better win ratio than Flames, and Flames have more matches (they get in more often) so they Rank Up pretty fast.

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...hly/?sort=rate

Unless you are one roulette from hitting rank 50. Then duty finder decides to eat itself