Melee DPS need some work. (Suggestions)

[Krolja]

Most melee have no forms of CC, even the ones that could use it.

Healers can be very strong, DPS jobs have very little to optimize the way they play even at the highest level when it comes to playing their jobs. Instead you have to optimize your strategy, teamwork, and calls to your team, and hope they reply in kind. This is how you carry as a DPS right now, by getting the team to actually work together beyond just facerolling burst rotations into shielding on the same target.

The biggest mistake everyone seems to be making is forgetting that this mode is based on team play.

Yes Monks do still do a lot of damage, but have you noticed every melee has a DPS burst telegraph? If a Monk is stunned during riddle of fire, you get rid of a lot of that threat. Triple Mudra? Midare Setsu? Red BoTD(+Battle Lit)?

1) Melee need some form of slow/CC that helps them stick to a target. Lots of people are playing Samurai now because of their unparalleled mobility and the classes that do bring slows can't use them because they are too busy spam healing the crazy amount of damage the ranged class is doing to the melee. Melee need the tools to do their job, the only one that has ANY of those tools is Ninja and they have literally every single tool. Relying on someone helping the melee stick to a target with the limited communication we have is a joke. There's not a single other MMO on the market that has PvP that gives their DPS classes so little tools to help people perform their role.

2) "Hope they reply in kind". For a type of match setting that they want to be competitive, I just LOVE the aspect of relying on my hopes and prayers that they will burst the same time I do.

3) We don't forget that it's team play, it's just....SE doesn't give us any real options aside from spamming "Attacking melee!" 345 times hoping people help.

4) DPS wind-up doesn't really matter at the moment in high level play. Mainly because at any given time you're working through a TBN+Benision/TBN+Adlo shields, so you have a whole 2 seconds worth of actual damage on the person before shields go back up. Just another symptom of class imbalance. Feeling punished for not having certain roles on your team feels great. Ninja burst doesn't happen during Triple Mudra anyway, it's usually Bhava+Assassinate into Triple Mudra.

5) Healers can easily carry matches while the other roles kinda can't. I can't do my job if I'm dead, so playing a DPS class is reliant on the healers skill. Healers and takes are by far the strongest roles in the Feast at the moment. Can a DPS make a difference in a match? Yes. Carry? Potentially, if their teammates are good enough. Solo carry? Nah. Go play Whm/Sch/Drk for that.

[Cynric]

snip

There's much truth to this post.

Point 1: You are correct. We need a QoL style fix to allow us to do our jobs. Especially those melee stuck due to having slightly higher than need be latency.

Point 2: This is pretty much what I meant. We can only hope the team mates actually follow through with our strategies. In practice this does not happen as often as one would like. Though when it does the match can be sealed quite quickly. However this is honestly a balance disaster, against good players with a small amount of coordination when your team has none, it may seem that melee are very powerful. When all that really has happened is the Tank CC'd you /the target and the ranged secured either the first half of the burst or second half.

Either that or the healer was put behind.

Point 3: You are correct, yet the mode is balanced around a large amount of coordination from the team. For chat-less solo queue this is quite disastrous, and has led to a mix of inability to understand design/balance direction, and an inability for anyone to truly discern the exact full level of strength of any job. We're lucky if people try to coordinate as is. We can definitely say what seems powerful in the current environment, but it doesn't feel like the developers agree with us.

point 4: As a Samurai main, The DPS tells of my fellow melee make a big difference. It tells me when exactly to use Chiten to make them hurt themselves the most and mitigate the damage they do the most. That big red flower of Monks is a good time to attempt to shut them down before they even get started. I don't specifically speak of the wind up time, but of the animation before they attempt to do the most damage. (My experience with Nins were them readying triple mudra prior to using those skills)

point 5: You are correct.

[Kyani]

4) DPS wind-up doesn't really matter at the moment in high level play. Mainly because at any given time you're working through a TBN+Benision/TBN+Adlo shields, so you have a whole 2 seconds worth of actual damage on the person before shields go back up. Just another symptom of class imbalance. Feeling punished for not having certain roles on your team feels great. Ninja burst doesn't happen during Triple Mudra anyway, it's usually Bhava+Assassinate into Triple Mudra.

This actually matters a whole lot, though probably not for the reason you're thinking. Right now, you need TBN to survive coordinated burst, because the damage of GCD + OGCD is so spiky that very little else matters in terms of throughput.

Scholar seemed imbalanced (and Dark Knight is imbalanced) because they're the best solutions to over-tuned burst. Any fix to healer throughput is going to have to come packaged with nerfs to the percentage of health that burst represents. Even with a pre-adlo, it's possible for a ranged or melee to die outright in the duration of a stun if burst is properly coordinated. That's the real reason "Healer Carry" is a thing - burst damage is so strong right now that even "good" healers have a hard time with it.

[Cynric]

snip.

You definitely don't need TBN to survive coordinated burst. Yes it helps a ton, like a huge ton, (3k Potency is about half of general melee burst) But it's definitely not required.

Full burst (usually about every minute depending on job, sometimes a bit longer ) can be strong, but it's not so strong you can't heal through it(ignoring damage stacks/culling stacks). Especially if the target uses safeguard, or kites a bit, or LoS's the opponent a bit. I guess if you were standing beside your healer, and the tank stunned you both before protect/divine/etc. goes off, yes you are probably going to die.

The only healer I could really see having trouble is Ast, because of the nature of ED mixed with their other issues.

The tank/Melee/Ranged have to coordinate the burst /CC for what you're talking about. And if you die there that's honestly well deserved. If healers could heal through even that, what would be the point?

[Kyani]

You definitely don't need TBN to survive coordinated burst. Yes it helps a ton, like a huge ton, (3k Potency is about half of general melee burst) But it's definitely not required.

1) TBN isn't required to survive burst, but as you hinted, it significantly raises the skill floor for your team's healer when used well. DRK is strong right now in large part because it can win carry "weaker" healers by smoothing out burst damage.

2) Full burst damage is fine, IMO. For some classes, however (DRG and MNK come to mind), the damage is heavily frontloaded rather than over 3 or 4 GCDs. Great healers can handle it, while even above average healers will often struggle. This brings us back to 1), where DRK runs circles around the other two tanks defensively while offering solid damage.

In general, I think class balance among dps is quite good, with the exception of RDM (still too weak) - they just uniformly overpower weak healers while struggling to secure kills against good ones. Healer changes will need to come, but the ratio of burst vs sustain needs to change alongside them. Regen is OP as hell right now, and i'm surprised it didn't eat a nerf at the same time Broil did - Regen's combination of efficiency and throughput is completely off the charts compared to any other heal.

Healers shouldn't be able to heal through everything, but even around the middle of the pack, healers struggle to heal through anything, and the strength of 1 GCD+1 OGCD bust has a lot to do with it.

[Krolja]

I've never seen or thought of using Triple Mudra before prepping Bhava, and now I feel dumb. Good insight, thanks!

[Holy_Miasma]

Im nore sure if it makes sense for nin's bhavackara to have more potency than tornado kick and Forbiden Chakra and still be able to shoot off a raiton evey 3 - 4 seconds.
Melee dps aren't even balanced among themselves atm.

[Cynric]

Im nore sure if it makes sense for nin's bhavackara to have more potency than tornado kick and Forbiden Chakra and still be able to shoot off a raiton evey 3 - 4 seconds.
Melee dps aren't even balanced among themselves atm.

You're forgetting the fact that Monk still has GL3 in PvP, +15% Damage , then there's Demolish +10%, Then there's Riddle of Fire /Earth(Each +10% and 60s CD) then +3%(trait)

and neither T-Kick nor F-Chakra have a CD particularly(only 10s, and it takes less time than that to rebuild GL3 meanwhile Fchakra is likely to be up after its 10s CD has expired, or around the same time.), While not recommended you could probably fire off T-kicks almost as rapidly as Raitons, maybe more often TP depending. Form shift can give you GL3 quite easily, and it only takes a a few combos + somersaults to actually have F-chakra back.

Yeah Bhava is stronger by 500 potency, but the 40s CD hinders it in comparison to either FChakra or Tkick. The Ninki resource is also used for both Mudra(CC or burst) and Bhava. so you're making more decisions than a Monk ever has to with it's split resource.

Ninja has +10%(SF), +10%(locked behind hide usage) and +3% DMG up trait.

Monk has quite a bit more damage than you might think it has. It still has honestly the strongest instant burst out of the melee even after the nerf. Prior to the nerf If you used Boot (RoF/+RoE)> True (FChakra+Tkick) > Snap(somersault) With Demo up on target + offense buff, It was pretty much a guaranteed or almost guaranteed kill on most targets, even with defense buff. 100-0 solo Whilst rebuilding a single stack of chakra/GL to prep for next burst shot.

The nerf weakened monk but its still really strong burst wise. It's just not gonna solo someone out the gate like before.

[snipski]

Im nore sure if it makes sense for nin's bhavackara to have more potency than tornado kick and Forbiden Chakra and still be able to shoot off a raiton evey 3 - 4 seconds.
Melee dps aren't even balanced among themselves atm.

Go play Ninja in Feast and make it into the top 100 if it's so op then the potency nerfs to Raiton and Bhava was a bigger nerf then gaining a stun.
And Monk is fine it has the best burst of the melees still.

[Holy_Miasma]

Go play Ninja in Feast and make it into the top 100 if it's so op then the potency nerfs to Raiton and Bhava was a bigger nerf then gaining a stun.
And Monk is fine it has the best burst of the melees still.

I got to platnum and then got tf out. This season is horrible in my opnion, not worth the stress. (btw, i was in the top 100 untill i reached plat, my goal)
Any stun is deveststing if used correctly. Though good dps is defintely very important, what is more important is secured kills. Who cares if you're output a lot of dps if it isnt killing anything. However i don't like this general idea that when i talk about PvP i'm only talking about the feast. I take frontlines just as serious, hell i even take duels seriosuly.
(In duels ninja definitely has the edge) I still feel melee need a bit of love. As a counter argument, get some good people together and play a feast custom match with 2 ranged on on the opostion a few rounds. (Note i said good)