Battle High needs to go.

[HyperiusUltima]

As much as I understand Battle High is a means for overcoming the opposition, the problem stems from Battle High granting benefits as long as you don't die. I think this should change, only to reflect who has been giving huge contributions and not some end-all be-all buff that can steamroll games. The moment a group has 5 Battle High Vs on DPS, everyone else is toast. Sure, you can burn them down, but they're difficult to kill not only because of the DPS they can do, but also the healing that's given by healers since they're going to get a lot of Assists.

The problem presented however by removing Battle High is that games will go longer. Is it worth removing the buff to only be an indicator of team contribution for games to run the clock down?

[Ixon]

Just get your own battle highs and kill their battle high's.

[Esmoire]

Just with killstreak benefits in games in general, I can see why they might seem bad to have someone who is ahead get more ahead, though the reality of not-dying being the mathematically correct way to win is not enough to condition self-preservation and to dissuade reckless action. Some kind of benefit that encourages you to not only stay alive but get a lot of kills while doing so is a nice way of supercharging psychological reward systems to get people to play better. It is no foolproof and a BH is not always indicative of good play, though good players will have them often.

There is also having to weigh the opposite outcry, of when people moan about there not being enough ways for an individual to make a big difference in 72-player PvP... which is entirely false. A player who plays well will of course make a sweeping impact with or without BH, though I think some kind of visual indicator for allies and enemies alike of who is performing well creates a lot of fun and interesting dynamics. The system that is having the same few melee DPS pulverize one team, is also the system that might, say, allow a veterans to leverage the load of someone new to PvP a little better and feel like you have a little more agency in your victory if you know how to play.

There are some general momentum problems where a winning team has a host of BHs which can lead to a more oppressive lead, though I don't think that is symptomatic with the BH system itself. Stuff like the impending changes to force freelance to break player distribution apart is a nice start, and they can look at more comeback systems if they feel they are necessary, though I regularly see teams in a dumpster at the start come around to something near the end of things so for the most part I think it's fine. I think melee are scaling too well with BH, though I think there are some lethality issues largely a result of the +15% damage on melee being unnecessary.

[Miminming]

Dont remove it, but maybe you can give ot to people who snatch the ground too... killing give to much reward in the new pvp, and ninja too op

[Rilasha]

This rendition of Battle High is what I think really is the problem (disregarding the change of premades to 4 and the GC sync stuff). The old Battle High required you to get four kills (then eight for Fever) without dying to receive a buff to damage done. You lost it all if you died once and had to start again. People easily got around it by killing the person, making them lose their damage boost. This also was a deterrent for having someone extend too far and getting too greedy for kills.

The new Battle High system allows you to stack it without killing anyone, with 2 points for an assist, while killing gives 10. I could assist 50 kills without a kill myself and get Battle High V and only cast Fire once on them each time. It is also coupled with the fact that if you die, you only lose half the damage boost that you had pre-death. So High V lowers to High II on death, which still gives a boost. The assist system allows for more Battle Highs across a team that is destroying others, which then leads into destroying the other players even more than before. There's no serious repercussion for dying if you only lose a portion of the boost compared to the whole boost.

With the old system, you could have one person with Fever and some pocket healers do outstanding damage and carry, but now that everyone on their team ALSO has access to the buff, it just leads to more snowball, even if you kill the person who is contributing the most.

Though there are some strength problems with some melee DPS that need to really be addressed (hello, ninja), this is what some of the general problems with new Battle High are.

[Ixon]

Dont remove it, but maybe you can give ot to people who snatch the ground too... killing give to much reward in the new pvp, and ninja too op

But.. it's PVP. Player VS Player. The main goal is to fight each other, everything else is a side objective. Sitting on nodes for 10+min is boring as hell.

[Nalien]

The tank/melee innate damage/defense buff needs to go. It was needed in 4.5 when they added it, but the recent changes to PvP and Battle High make it ridiculously overkill.

Only change I'd like to see to Battle High, given Yoshida has said they're planning to change the value of points earned from kills, is for points earned from kills to be based on peoples Battle High Meter. A basic example, but the amount one loses from dying on that meter, should be the value earned in objective points. That makes killing people with Battle High V very lucrative, while farming the same <10 Battle High points players over and over is practically worthless.

[BloodRubyXII]

As a Caster, stacking up battle high is a really good motivation to play safe, especially as RDM. I can snowball in the late game with it. The problem here is that some jobs (lol ninja) doesn't have a lot of risk involved to play like Ninja and get it way too easy and do stupid damage.

[Baxcel]

How about modifying the Battle High so that the team in first can't have the buff.. use it as a catchup mechanic for the teams in 2nd an 3rd place?

1st no buff allowed unless dropping to 2nd or 3rd
2nd only gets BH from actual kills no assist bonus.
3rd Kills an Assist add to BH.

Appon reaching 1st place your team loses all BH buffs and team that went to 2nd or 3rd can start building their?

Maybe give a full Adrenaline bar to those that lose BH by reaching 1st place?

[OskarXCI]

The tank/melee innate damage/defense buff needs to go. It was needed in 4.5 when they added it, but the recent changes to PvP and Battle High make it ridiculously overkill

Maybe remove the damage buff but don't remove the defense buff.

If you remove the defense buff, people will go back to only playing as casters/ranged, like how it was before 4.5.

Consider playing as melee/tank yourself to make it harder for your opponents to kill you.