Pros and Cons of The Feast

[Skeet]

A Detailed Look into The Feast

The Feast 8v8 is more of a casual PvP.

-That's the whole goal of the 8v8. Just to have fun. And maybe try out other classes.
-Although it annoys the hell out of me when 2 bad healers don't know how to evade other players and don't even use their damn PvP skills. Then they talk shit when you call these idiots out.

Now that we're done talking about the casual section of The Feast. Let's talk about the real PvPer's Paradise. Aka Group 4v4 Feast.

-Solo 4v4 Feast is too random and luck based to comment on. So everything past this point will be talking about Group 4v4 exclusively.


The Feast 4v4 takes strategy and skill. It's pretty much Wolves Den but with a few new additions. This is where the real PvPers shine. This is where strategy and teamwork come together to lead you to victory. This is the place for many joyful victories or crushing defeats.

THIS. IS. SPA- THE FEAST!!!


*Pros*

-Strategy and teamwork. 4v4 Feast requires a lot of strategy and team coordination compared to pretty much every other PvP mode. This lets players who have a good sense of how to PvP really shine as they can change strategies on the fly.

-Infinite lives. Now unlike Wolves Den, this mode has infinite amount of lives since the main goal is to get more coins/medals/whatever you wanna call it than the other team. So if you die once, you aren't permanently dead (unless you get raised). This leads to more play time overall.

-Offense/Defense/Medical kits. Now good players realize how much this changes how you approach this mode. Offense kits makes a player much more dangerous than they already are. For example, add an offense kit to a summoner or any melee class and you might just find yourself dead in a matter of seconds if you play carelessly. Defense kits makes your 'key' members last longer and may persuade the other team from focusing them and thus might change their original strategy.

-Potential comebacks. Even if you have a bad start and 1-3 of your members die, you can still recover and take back the game. There's been about 10 games out of my last 50 matches where we had a fairly bad start. But with a bit of recovery time, we were able to manage a glorious comeback.
______

*Cons*

The ONLY bad thing about The Feast is that there is a HUGE difference in potential with some classes over the others. Namely Summoner and Astrologian.

- *Note* The whole Cons section will mostly be about classes and their advantages and disadvantages compared to other classes.

I know people don't like tiers in games but let's face it. SMN's and AST's are the King of the Crop in this PvP mode. SMN's can potentially do double the damage of any of their ranged class counterparts.

-SMN's burst damage is also about 3-5x faster and stronger than any other ranged class

-AST's can run around and heal without any worry unlike WHM's/SCH's. SCH's can do this to a point until their barriers run down, but AST's can pretty much insta-cast a barrier and with Lightspeed instacast any heal move while running.

~ Ranged DPS Classes ~

-The ONLY viable ranged class in a 4v4 Feast mode are SMN's. As stated above, they can potentially do double the damage of any of their other ranged counterparts.

-Black Mages have a couple "get off me" moves to stall time, but ultimately become useless compared to Summoners. Let me put it this way. If a Black Mage is free casting at any point of time (minus during Equilibrium) then the other team is doing something wrong. Yeah, the sleep and bind thing is cute and all. But it really just pales in comparison to raw damage.

-Bards are somewhat viable on the hands of a good PvPer. But as stated above, Summoners simply do more damage overall and much better burst. If you're trying to seriously PvP for ranks or e-glory, and you are going to queue as a ranged dps, then there's no reason to not go SMN.

-Machinists...Yeah I don't need to say anything about them. They still bad.

~ Healer Classes ~

-Now, unlike ranged DPS's, the healer category is a bit different. Personally, I think all 3 classes are viable. But this HEAVILY depends on the healer's skill level. Every good group knows Astrologians have a bigger advantage than White Mages and Scholars. But that doesn't mean WHM's and SCH's are useless. It just takes A LOT more skill and effort to use them over AST's. Especially WHM's.

-Astrologians. They can insta-heal. And spam barriers on themselves which allows them to take damage while being safe to cast uninterrupted by physical attacks. I REALLY don't need to say much more about this class. They're just better.

-Scholars are pretty much in the same boat as Astrologians. Except that Astrologians just do their job better and easier.

-White Mages. Easily the most challenging class to play. This class's only barrier to nullify damage and allow them to cast uninterrupted is stoneskin (which all healers have). Medica II and Regen must be kept on all members at all time but even then, this can easily be neutralized by a focus burst. They have fewer instant-cast heal spells compared to the other two as well. So in short, no barrier skills and a much tougher time to heal their teammates, and themselves, while under pressure.

~ Tank Classes ~

-Paladins are great in support and can easily save your team's lives with their damage mitigation skills and defensive support skills.

-Warriors can act as a potential 3rd DPS with how much damage they do and how quickly they can burst.

-Unfortunately, Dark Knights fall short on both ends of the table. They can't do as much damage as a Warrior and they for sure don't have the defensive capabilities a Paladin has. What makes things worse for them is that their DPS is pretty much the same as a good Paladin's DPS. Sorry DRK's, but you got the short end of the stick in this mode.

~ Melee Classes ~

To be honest. I think every melee class is viable in The Feast. I could go into detail about it, but for the most part I believe each Melee class has their good strong suits in different times of the match. One thing I will say for melees is that damage is NOT everything for them in The Feast.


_______________________

Tl;dr for Cons section:

Classes are heavily imbalanced and strongly favor a specific class in almost all the categories (aka Tanks/Healers/DPS's).

[Cynric]

Machinist is actually extremely good and has high burst and decent singular CC. There's just a lot of bad mch.

Scholar is actually walled 100% by a monk. They can't barrier, they can't lustrate, and they can't keep up aetherflow, and they have very limited CC compared to AST/WHM. If they lose their fairy/it gets CC'd and they get a monk after them. You basically don't have a healer anymore.

Other than that everything looks fine. Each Melee brings something different. Monk brings dispell, decently high burst,decent CC. DRG brings incredibly high burst, ok CC, but lacks utility, and Ninja brings tons of CC and okayish burst, decent utility.

[Renault]

Sorry but your analysis on the current state of the three healing jobs is not quite correct. AST is the easiest to play, I'll give you that, but it simply falls shorts compared to the other two. SCH and especially WHM have much more healing output than the AST does. Just because people are bad at SCH and WHM does not mean AST is "OP". My opinion is that WHM is currently the most powerful healing job as they have massive, passive healing output in the form of regens. Tetragrammaton and Benediction are both extremely potent healing CD's and Sacred prism is probably the best healing ability in the game. They also have Repose, Fluid Aura, Blizzard 2, and Stone 1. Their CC is untouched by the other jobs.

[Pentt]

Sorry but your analysis on the current state of the three healing jobs is not quite correct. AST is the easiest to play, I'll give you that, but it simply falls shorts compared to the other two. SCH and especially WHM have much more healing output than the AST does. Just because people are bad at SCH and WHM does not mean AST is "OP". My opinion is that WHM is currently the most powerful healing job as they have massive, passive healing output in the form of regens. Tetragrammaton and Benediction are both extremely potent healing CD's and Sacred prism is probably the best healing ability in the game. They also have Repose, Fluid Aura, Blizzard 2, and Stone 1. Their CC is untouched by the other jobs.

I agree WHM is the best. Not sure if I'd put SCH above AST, they don't have any CC aside from Blizzard 2 and Aura blast and 0 instant casts outside of Lustrate. Even without a monk on the enemy team they seem too easy to shut down.

[Keramory]

Don't know why healers are the scapegoat for failing a match. It's like counter strikers blaming lag. As a healer and a monk I've seen several times the dps or even the tank make the overwhelming difference in feast, even without much help from the healer.

It's like dungeon farm. If the healer doesn't go out of his way he's bad, but dps can slack and no one calls them out on it.

Pffffffttttt

[Renault]

Don't know why healers are the scapegoat for failing a match. It's like counter strikers blaming lag. As a healer and a monk I've seen several times the dps or even the tank make the overwhelming difference in feast, even without much help from the healer.

It's like dungeon farm. If the healer doesn't go out of his way he's bad, but dps can slack and no one calls them out on it.

Pffffffttttt

Healers are kind of the only role that can carry a bad team. If you have shitty dps/tank, then the game mode has mechanics in place: ( Culling time, offensive buff, adrenaline) to help scrubs get kills. Nothing is there to help healers heal better, it's all up to the player.

[Renault]

I agree WHM is the best. Not sure if I'd put SCH above AST, they don't have any CC aside from Blizzard 2 and Aura blast and 0 instant casts outside of Lustrate. Even without a monk on the enemy team they seem too easy to shut down.

Sorry I was unclear. I think AST is more effective and better suited for the Feast, but SCH still does more actual healing than an AST. This is because most of their healing comes from lustrates, and not adlo. I'll disagree with your last point though. If they don't get their aetherflow removed and they use their fairy optimally, I think they'd be in line if not slightly better than AST. It's just that monks are SO common right now that they appear to be so weak.

[Iagainsti]

-Machinists...Yeah I don't need to say anything about them. They still bad.

It's Blanket Statements like this that kill me, I'm saving this post till I get home so I can post my screenshots from the PS4(kills me I can't go on XIVPVP for Feast stats yet) to show you how wrong you are.

As a MCH who easily cracks 120k while promoting for 30% of the match for healer MP, and multiple matches where I am 6/0-2/8-13 leaving the kits for my healers & melee, this makes me question your opinion on everything else, and makes me believe you're not qualified to write "summaries".

[Cynric]

Snip

You're half right. Scholar is better than Noct AST in some ways especially if there's no Monk to shut them down. However, Scholars also suffer from not being able to handle spread damage as well as lacking the CC options AST has. (Heavy,AoE stun, bind vs just bind) Ast also brings cards to the table, Bole,Arrow, and Balance are all extremely great cards and Scholar has nothing similar to this utility. Scholar shields are not instant cast and they only get a maximum of 6 lustrates before the fairy has to do most of the work, If the fairy is CC'd or killed, Scholar will have a struggle keeping themselves and their parties alive if the damage is split or they need to lustrate themselves to stay alive.

Scholar isn't bad by any means, but they have limitations on what they can do because of aetherflow and the fairy. The fairy is killable/CCable and aetherflow is a finite resource. Neither ast or whm suffer from this issue as badly.

As for the other half, AST does have the option of forgoing the survivability of shielding for the capability to heal their team mates better using Diurnal, and Diurnal may have a place when countering SMNs damage spread by using regens not possible inside Nocturnal. Nocturnal is just more widely used in the current meta as it works and has worked in the past. Diurnal stance may not be as good as Nocturnal right now but Scholars have no such option to choose from.

[RiceisNice]

The three healers have strengths and weaknesses catered to their playstyle. I feel that SCH is inherently the weakest unless you intentionally work your composition towards it. Noct AST lacks the group healing output of a WHM, and diurnal is essentially a poor man's WHM. WHM output relies mostly on cast times that can easily be interrupted.

As for ranged dps, I don't think there's room for debate that SMN is top amongst the four, but BRD and especially MCH are nowhere near as bad as you say (albeit they still have their own glaring weaknesses that put them below SMN). BLM requires both a coordinated team and composition (next to impossible to get both in solo queues) and an uncoordinated opposition to be able to shine.

Honestly, the balance of the mode is just as much as I'd expected considering their stances on frontlines and such. Just a little bit of tweak between the job differences, and well...the workings of seasonal rewards and it'd be something that can attract players for the long run.