My frustration with PvP and what I feel may help to solve it

[GenericMagus]

Note: Will flesh out more later

I know I'm not much of an avid forum-writer, and may be unknown to people, but I have been a heavy PvP enthusiast from 2015, starting out in Secure and Slaughter. Over the years, I been heavy into PvP, loving it and enjoying having my time. However, I have had some rough times with PvP and some times where it frustrated me (Shatter being only Frontline mode for so long, long queue times and made the mode itself and others dead).

But now, I feel like it's time to give my opinion on PvP. I have played the Feast quite a bit but dropped out of it with chat restriction + didn't find time to actually do it, and thinking about getting back into it come Season 9, giving it another try at top 100, so I can't really speak much for Feast.

As much as I digress, I'm going to go straight into my problems with PvP:

*Healer stacking: This is much more prevalent on modes like Rival Wings, but it can be a huge problem as well in Seize. Basically, you stack healers and pretty much heal through any and all damage. What makes it most annoying is that they can stall out the opposite team, and it takes too huge of a disproportionate amount of effort to dislodge say healers from mid, or to actually kill them in Frontlines, as even if you manage to kill 1, they still have 2/3 healers left over to heal the on-coming damage, turning the fight more into a stall fest. This is even more dangerous in Rival Wings because a. Healers can heal mammets and stall out the match and B. Mechs are the defining thing of RW, being your win condition. Having a greater amount of healers means it's harder to contest against ceruleum pick ups, ability to hold mid indefinitely until you bring in a large force to dislodge them, allowing for greater map control and to still be able to hold off a mammet push.

Solution: Add a base healing penalty to team comps that exceed the number of healers. For example, on Frontlines, if 24, the healer limit is 2, 72, healer limit is 3 and for Rival Wings, the healer limit should be 1 per party. Going over the limit triggers a healing debuff that nerfs your outgoing heals by a certiain percentage i.e. Having 3 healers in 24 nerfs your healing output by 25%, thus weakening it a bit as with 3 healers already they already have too strong of a healing kit to keep everyone up, with the number increasing by 25% each healer you add above the limit, capping out at 75% reduced healing. For Rival Wings, going above 1 triggers it, much the same like Frontlines example and going up the same numerically.

*Melee are treated unfairly in Frontline and Rival Wing match-ups: Due to the greater amount of people in these modes, it can be far easier to cc lock melee, get them out of the way or threaten to burst them down thanks to the bias of ranged supremacy in all of the modes. All melee, tanks included, have too much of a difficult time fighting BRD/MCH, thanks to their burst still being high, ability to kite thanks to cc available and in MCH case just win the fight entirely thanks to its insane burst. With how bad the netcode is in PvP as well, melee can be very restrictive, and with having to get up close to a crowd of people to deal damage on can be too dangerous and unsafe, while other jobs have a far easier time dealing the same amount of damage but at a distance away from focus.

Solutions: Multiple
Give Fetter Ward back to Melee DPS, allowing them to be immune from cc entirely, however, I can see this upsetting balance in Feast as it makes cc'ing them far more harder to do, and allows them to have more uptime

Give Weapon Throw to DRG and SAM, and add a Weapon Throw effect to MNK Shoulder Tackle and a Bind to Riddle of Wind. This is my personal favourite way of handling it, it gives much needed soft cc to DRG and SAM, dispelling Bolt making it easier for them to secure and kill, and helps balance the match up between BRD and MCH, and gives MNK far more sticking power it needs, as in too large groups, you can effectively keep the MNK out, yet the MNK is given tools to actually stick to its opponent.

Fix the Netcode: The best solution

*Ranged Physical are way too overpowered: BRD and MCH are way too dominant in all modes, having Melee tier burst, the safety of being ranged, no cast times, having cc and escape tools and being able to zone any melee in the game, especially those who don't pack Bolt. This is why it's unfair to Melee, as the BRD and MCH have way too strong of dictating how a fight will go. It's a massive problem when you see all alliances stack BRD on top of BRD with maybe a MCH to stun healer that there is a massive problem, and it comes down to how safe they are at doing their damage and how there's no penalty to it, especially in BRDs case. Any melee comes close to try to DPS? Just pelt him with ranged attacks and deter him the other way. Gets too close? Stun and killed. It's way too unhealthy for any game mode outside of Feast due to how strong stacking them are. But to balance it out, we have to be creative. We can't nerf base DPS as SE tied it into Feast, so we'll have to have workarounds in order to balance it out.

Solution:
Bring back Range penalty. We had this before back in ARR/HW, where if you don't sweet spot as a BRD/MCH, your damage gets affected, and can get to really pitiful amounts if far away from sweet spot. To put it simply, there should be a range at which you deal max damage at (say 8-10 yalms), while going outside of that range (11+) will cause your DPS to drop, with going to max range effectively dropping your damage to 50% of its total damage. This is to counter not only BRD stacking from max distance, but to allow an easier time for melee to get in to deal damage, as they can survive the onslaught of ranged attacks to actually reach their targets, and it would force BRD/MCH to play riskier as they have to get closer to deal damage. This is the best way to balance it out without affecting it too hard in Feast, as they are unchanged damage wise but given another condition to have to do their damage.

*We need a mode of just straight up fighting, no gimmicks, no items, no anything, just 2 teams just butchering each other with an objective they have to win with or against, nothing else. There shouldn't be too many RNG modes and gimmicks that can ultimately ruin the mode

*Why is there still Magic resist on Ice in Shatter? Why hasn't it been removed? It makes it far too unfair to Magic DPS

*Why isn't Bolt available to all jobs at once, instead of needing to be an Additional action that makes or break fights because ranged popped Bolt and you don't have it?

*Rival Wings is dead and Square Enix doesn't care: Just a reminder SE is happy to let this mode die, and thanks to the efforts of a Chaos server PvP Discord dedicated it, is still allowing it to run on certain days, but the mode is effectively dead otherwise, SE doesn't care about balancing it and is neglecting it. To have a dead mode in this game should be seen as a shame to SE, Diadem is dead as well (unless you're a crafter/gatherer with a FC airship), and should be used far more often against the company for failing to make meaningful, entertaining content. Hell, I believe Eureka will die as well, with it only sustaining on relics, but that's a point for another time. The point is, SE failed to listen to feedback with Rival Wings on how to make it better, and the community is paying the price for being unable to run the mode now (the Discord is almost 300 people in total who wants to play the mode. 300 people who SE let down, and many more as well.)

Solution: This is gonna be far harder to suggest, but I have ideas
Make a 12 v 12 mode version of Rival Wings, halving the number of players needed. This will also disable mid, lower CE tank spawns, only having 3 groups instead of 6 and instead shift focus more into lane control/presence, able to rotate the map and push down towers instead and with a heavier focus on how skilled the people are with managing to gather CE, mechs and to push objectives. To balance the mode, all mechs will need a reduced amount of health alongside with objectives like towers having a reduced amount of health. However, mammets will now spawn 3 at a time instead of 2 ( 1 Viking and 2 Mages) and the game will have a heavier deal of more lane fighting and being able to show up where needed. Both teams will have the passive CE spawn of mid.

For 48, it's much the same as the current mode however, both teams will have passive CE gain. This helps ease the stress that mid causes due to the fact that even now there can still be too much of a stress on the inexperienced and those who are unable to get the CE to stop the enemy team from snowballing. Instead, for the first 2 mins of the game, mid is locked off, opening at the 18 minute mark. Mid increase the CE obtained from 1 in 5 seconds to 1 in 3 seconds, much like it pre-nerf but even if one team doesn't have it they still have the passive CE to fall back on, and to stay in the game for far longer. These suggestions should help bring back life into the mode, help solve a lot of problems the mode has, and be able to be a more fun experience.

This is all my current thoughts, frustration and how I hope to fix them, thank you for reading.

[GenericMagus]

At the very least SE should addreas healer stacking in all modes and putting on a ranged penalty for BRD/MCH, just for Frontlines and Rival Wings at the very least

[Cidel]

Those are some valid concerns (especially healer stacking), but I get the feeling that unless the devs are willing to make role adjustments to "balance" Frontlines or Feast that's independent of the other mode, they're forever going to be extremely choosy about what adjustments they make for fear of "breaking" something in the other mode. You seem to be aware of this at least, as referenced in one of your posts:

At the very least SE should addreas healer stacking in all modes and putting on a ranged penalty for BRD/MCH, just for Frontlines and Rival Wings at the very least

I agree with your idea to impose a healing debuff that stacks when a party goes over a threshold for healers (I said as much all the way back when Secure was the only Frontlines mode, and Medica II+ Regen stacking on 3-4+ healers standing on flags was a problem- of course they "fixed it" by never allowing more than one HoT per type to be active). I'd argue though that the "cap" before the debuff takes effect is 2 healers per party in any Frontlines size.

The ranged penalty is a little bit more tricky. Most Frontlines "meta" revolves around ranged DPS since the sheer amount of people participating in a 72 makes running a melee job the equivalent of taking a knife to a gunfight; either have a healer or two baby-sitting you or watch as you get singled-out and melted for running in range of 5+ casters and BRD/MCHs on either opposing team (sometimes both) desperately waiting for something to run into range. Frontlines "balance" benefits from something like that, but I absolutely do not think it should be a thing in Feast again. But it certainly is a problem in a mode that can have multiple people sitting safely out of tank/melee engagement range waiting to focus a melee who has to get well into their range of attack just to function.

[GenericMagus]

Oh and removing the magic damage penalty from ice as well, that needs to go. On phone so having to message like this

[Hegeteus]

Maybe the solution to healer stacking could be more flexible rather than having to scan for a certain amount of players over a specific threshold. What I'd suggest is a debuff that comes along with healing spells to make consequent healing less powerful on the target so that healer stacking problem is neatly taken care of without having to delve into specific battle platforms. This debuff would vanish after X time has passed since it's last application(or when combat ends) and you'd only get it if you actually received health(similar check as white mage's lily stacks). Potency of the debuff could be spell specific based on their healing power and it would naturally have a limit to it. Additionally, this would make healers defeatable in duels.

[Hegeteus]

Another thing I'd do is increase the melee range and add subtle movement speed slowing effects to existing skills used by melee classes(like a weak version of heavy). While this isn't as good as a better netcode would be, these ideas together would combat some of the issues caused by it and allow melee players to keep striking with increased reliability. Ideal places for this slowing effect would probably be skills with cooldowns and non-damage combos. This could also have it's own brand to increase simplicity, and then be a relevant part of melee class identity. Maybe this could make the whole PVP a bit less of a running circus or a ranged zerg fest.

[Rufalus]

I would address the balance in the simplest of ways.

Melee: increase damage potency, increase max HP
Healers: lower max HP, lower max MP, replace one of their heal abilities with a support or dps ability
Range physical: replace one of their dps abilities with a debuff ability on enemy target

[Crit]

I would address the balance in the simplest of ways.

Melee: increase damage potency, increase max HP
Healers: lower max HP, lower max MP, replace one of their heal abilities with a support or dps ability
Range physical: replace one of their dps abilities with a debuff ability on enemy target

:thinking:

[OskarXCI]

Rival Wings is dead and Square Enix doesn't care. SE doesn't care about balancing it and is neglecting it

Last I heard, RW is acitve on japanese data centers and a second map is being developed. Have you checked the 4.2 patch notes? They did balancing.

Bring back Range penalty

Yes! There is a caster and ranged penalty on mammets in RW but they need to bring it to Frontline as well. Leave it out of the Feast though.

Make a 12 v 12 mode version of Rival Wings, halving the number of players needed.

Yoshi-P has said that they won't do a version of RW with less people. I, myself, think that they should reduce the amount of people you need to get a match going. If there is a lack of players, let the match start with 32 people and have the remaining 16 join in progress.

[GenericMagus]

Snip.

Yes I saw the patch notes, but it's obviously not enough to make it playable again. Sure, it's playable for the Japanese. Great! If only the West playerbase can enjoy it too. If it wasn't dead in the West, then it wouldn't be a point to make, but then again this is SE with the Japanese playerbase.

Yeah, it's sorta my thoughts as well, to not have to balance it in Feast, to have no range penalty in Feast, just in PvP outside of it.

I can see your point and there should be a way to do it like that, but this is DF queues after all, considering so few if any content allows it in the first place.