Speculation: Sudden Death is going to be a bad idea.

[KusoWat]

As the title says, I believe that the Sudden Death 'feature' coming in patch 3.55 is going to be a poor one for a variety of reasons, which I will now explain.

We got very little information on this change, however, I think it is safe to speculate that "Sudden Death" will simply be a quickly stacking Culling Time which happens at the 8 minute mark if both teams are tied. Based off this hypothesis, my following points are made.

1) This system benefits specific jobs:

Simply put, some jobs benefit more from this change than others. Jobs like Paladin, White Mage, and Summoner have huge cooldowns to take advantage of a Sudden Death mechanic at this point in the match. Abilities like Sacred Prism and Hallowed Ground, for example, will now become more valued than ever. I have no suggestion here, only that there will be a further imbalance of jobs in the event of Sudden Death.


2) Melee Limit Break is now even more broken:

As if losing in the last 30 seconds due to a melee limit break wasn't cheesy enough, it will now be even harder to deal with, bordering on 'impossible' depending on the damage amplification of Sudden Death. At 2 stacks of culling, melee LB can one shot anything but a tank outright, without any need of assistance from teammates. There are very very few counters to melee LB in this condition, and even those counters are hyper-conditional as well, such as a healer having both purify and attunement ready (and have it register in time), having tank LB, etc. Even the typical counters like Testudo, Thrill, and a well timed benediction will not save you here.

3) Strategies become more 'cheap':

Now, instead of trying to close out a draw and turn it into a win in the last minute of the match, teams are more likely to "wait it out" until Sudden Death. What will happen is one team being hit by literally unhealable damage due to Sudden Death's damage amplification and losing in a total cheese. It's fair to argue that this is legitimate, but my opinion is that it takes away from the defensive options available, making the game far less about skill and more about which job has large cool downs come up at this time.

My hopes are that SE actually considers player feedback on this change during preseason (unlike several other changes which were correctly predicted to be detrimental to the nature of The Feast), and takes action accordingly.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

At this point, I truly struggle to understand just what they intend to turn the Feast into? No communication, forced scoring through stacking debuffs, and now Sudden Death? I mean, if both teams play to their utmost ability, what's wrong with a draw? You make good points Kuso, and I feel like SD will just become healer/ranged zerg mode.

I'm happy to be sitting out Season 4 now. The more they make these poor changes, the less I'm interested in the Feast.

[Khalithar]

It will be fine as long it decreases healing done, which is something culling time should have had from day 1. I mean the intention of the debuff is make the match end right? If it's dragged on for that long then something should be done to just make it end. Decreasing the time limit would be an acceptable solution also.

[Dimitrii]

What's the big deal? It's not as if draws are all that common to begin with I think I have all of 2 draws this season. A draw serves no purpose other than to lower your winrate so I have no problem with them adding the sudden death feature so that the match doesn't end up becoming the 8 minute waste of time that draws currently are.

[KusoWat]

It will be fine as long it decreases healing done, which is something culling time should have had from day 1. I mean the intention of the debuff is make the match end right? If it's dragged on for that long then something should be done to just make it end. Decreasing the time limit would be an acceptable solution also.

Decrease healing done? Please. At match end, the result should reflect the difference in skill and execution between the two teams. If the two teams are evenly matched, it should end in a draw, not prolonged so that you can get cheesed by unhealable damage a la melee LB.

What's the big deal?.

Read the 3 points of my post for the answers to that question.

[Magic-Mal]

Maybe it won't bring Culling Stacks and it just be no respawns.. Thats what I thought initially.

[Llus]

Sudden death in other team based games refers to an over-time situation in which the next team to score points wins. This is what I believe sudden death will be. If you're tied throughout the game, making the next kill end the game (even early) certainly sounds like a sudden death situation. This will likely bring about another problem: saving limit break for sudden death. Instead of securing kills with LB early in the match; this will likely push DPS to hold on to their LB even longer hoping to get a sudden death kill to win the game (much like in the late stages of the game some players hold on to LB to try to take out the tank at the end).

[Enlial]

Wouldn't "waiting it out" result in culling time, anyways?

It seems like allowing the possibility of players basically voiding a match would be open to abuse and this fixes more problems than it creates, if it actually does create any. Hard to say when we dont know any details

[KusoWat]

Wouldn't "waiting it out" result in culling time, anyways?

It seems like allowing the possibility of players basically voiding a match would be open to abuse and this fixes more problems than it creates, if it actually does create any. Hard to say when we dont know any details

What? You're not understanding. You cannot "wait for culling" in the final moments of the match because it doesn't happen. The match ends. As for "abuse." What abuse? This has been the system which has been in place since pre season 1, and it has not been abused.

[Enlial]

What? You're not understanding. You cannot "wait for culling" in the final moments of the match because it doesn't happen. The match ends. As for "abuse." What abuse? This has been the system which has been in place since pre season 1, and it has not been abused.

Huh? At some point you're going to have to make a decision to stop using cooldowns and lb, presumably while the score is tied, and it'd have to remain tied until the timer ran out, meaning nobody dying for an extended period of time. Its also possible that LB bars get reset upon sudden death commencing.

Maybe I am misunderstanding but I mean, even if sudden death turns out to be a totally chaotic 50/50 coin toss, stalemates are pretty rare in the first place and I guess its an incentive not to let them happen