The absolute state of Frontlines

[gioroggia]

That's the thing though - it's not unbalanced. It's fine. The proper change here is *no change at all.* The issue is a player skill and knowledge issue, *not a balance issue.*

You do not ever, *ever* design or balance a competitive game around the majority of (typically very, very bad) players. You balance it around the very best, and the impacts of those changes trickle down to the lower tiers of player. FL isn't some kind of sweaty hardcore esports game and isn't intended to be, but it's still a competitive game and should still be tuned like one.

SMN does not need any changes whatsoever, beyond the likely *systemic* changes we can expect - higher DR on melee and tanks, longer LB charge times, and so on. You said yourself that you don't die to SMN/Megaflare spamming, so that *very obviously* means that it's something that doesn't need adjustment - it needs players to stop playing like complete garbage.

Hey, buddy, not a single FL match is played solely by the "very best". Note that you are referring to a hypothetical, nonexistent state of the game where people are much better than they actually are, and founding your argument upon what you THINK would happen if the game were that way. Not only are you relying on a state of the world that does not exist, but you are also making weak, unverifiable claims about it. That makes for a very flimsy argument.

On the other hand, you can join any FL game and most of the time summoners will occupy most if not all of the top-damage spots and will be the first to reach Battle High V. That is actual, solid evidence of the imbalance exists in the state of the game as it is, regardless of how you believe it would be in your hypothetical, nonexistent world.

The image is of course just anedoctal evidence, but it is a pattern we are all too familiar with.

[Gserpent]

Hey, buddy, not a single FL match is played solely by the "very best". Note that you are referring to a hypothetical, nonexistent state of the game where people are much better than they actually are, and founding your argument upon what you THINK would happen if the game were that way. Not only are you relying on a state of the world that does not exist, but you are also making weak, unverifiable claims about it. That makes for a very flimsy argument.

On the other hand, you can join any FL game and most of the time summoners will occupy most if not all of the top-damage spots and will be the first to reach Battle High V. That is actual, solid evidence of the imbalance exists in the state of the game as it is, regardless of how you believe it would be in your hypothetical, nonexistent world.

The image is of course just anedoctal evidence, but it is a pattern we are all too familiar with.

I agree, but you design competitive games around the best players - you assume that everyone is playing as they're supposed to be playing. Balancing around the lower end of players is a stupid design choice, because the lower end of players are just going to scream that you should nerf/remove anything that they can't handle (which would be literally everything, if we're talking about viewing them as a large group) and that's an impossible task if you want to have a game that's still actually fun to play. Fuck's sake, dude, there's probably people trying to get things nerfed or changed in Fall Guys or something.

And, no, competitive doesn't mean sweaty esports. A game where you put two teams of players (or two individual players or whatever) in direct competition with each other is, by definition, a competitive game. If you don't build the game by assuming people will be playing the way they're *supposed* to be playing, you're going to have a rotten mess of a game. Imagine if Starcraft was balanced around low skill players that can't handle a 12pool or proxy rax reaper opening. It'd be terrible.

If the issue is a PEBKAC error, it's not something you need to make balance or design changes for. SE could certainly do a hell of a lot better at teaching people how to play their game, though. Maybe that's a good starting place. Most people in FL have absolutely no fucking clue what they're doing because there's no "safe" place to practice (thumping target dummies doesn't really count and duels are meaningless in a game not designed to have meaningful 1v1 combat), much less any kind of effective way of talking things over during or between games.

Like, imagine if DF was the only way you could do savage raids; no pre-formed parties, no way of determining who gets into your party or if you'll see them again next lockout, etc. Can you imagine how much of a fucking dumpster fire that would be? Except that's what PvP is right now. So is it any wonder there's such a pervasive "why should I care?" attitude?

[Sigma860]

Hey, buddy, not a single FL match is played solely by the "very best". Note that you are referring to a hypothetical, nonexistent state of the game where people are much better than they actually are, and founding your argument upon what you THINK would happen if the game were that way. Not only are you relying on a state of the world that does not exist, but you are also making weak, unverifiable claims about it. That makes for a very flimsy argument.

On the other hand, you can join any FL game and most of the time summoners will occupy most if not all of the top-damage spots and will be the first to reach Battle High V. That is actual, solid evidence of the imbalance exists in the state of the game as it is, regardless of how you believe it would be in your hypothetical, nonexistent world.

The image is of course just anedoctal evidence, but it is a pattern we are all too familiar with.

That picture is so true. Then you click the HP Restored tab and it's all White Mages in the top 10 spots.

[Naphtha]

That picture is so true. Then you click the HP Restored tab and it's all White Mages in the top 10 spots.

Speaking of WHM, I tried to double-beam people to see if there's any potential for a one-shot, but unfortunately, the math just doesn't add up, you need 3x WHMs beaming the same target to 100-0 them. I would really like to see it, honestly.

[gioroggia]

That picture is so true. Then you click the HP Restored tab and it's all White Mages in the top 10 spots.

Yeah. You get high heal numbers with WHM without even trying. It just happens.

And Summoner... Well, it's not that other jobs can never match Summoner's damage in Frontlines. Dragoon and Black Mage, for instance, can do just as well. But with them it takes good judgment, skills, and precision to pull that off. Summoners can do it with very, very low effort. If a job makes mediocre or even bad players perform just as well or better than very good players on other jobs, there is a balance issue there. And that works not only at the individual level (ie bumping the performance of an individual player) but also affects the entire match more systematically if the number of summoners is very different across the three teams or one team has summoner pre-mades.

Scholar, on the other hand, can sometimes deal even more damage than summoners. But since 95% of it comes from a slow-damaging AOE dot, it just gets healed off and is not nearly as impactful as summoner. It would be a different matter entirely if the every job didn't have infinite instant heal capacity (recuperate + potion). But as it is, the AOE dot doesn't really "wear out" the enemy team as it's supposed to. People heal off and when MP gets slow they just pot it back.

[Naphtha]

Yeah. You get high heal numbers with WHM without even trying. It just happens.

And Summoner... Well, it's not that other jobs can never match Summoner's damage in Frontlines. Dragoon and Black Mage, for instance, can do just as well. But with them it takes good judgment, skills, and precision to pull that off. Summoners can do it with very, very low effort. If a job makes mediocre or even bad players perform just as well or better than very good players on other jobs, there is a balance issue there. And that works not only at the individual level (ie bumping the performance of an individual player) but also affects the entire match more systematically if the number of summoners is very different across the three teams or one team has summoner pre-mades.

Scholar, on the other hand, can sometimes deal even more damage than summoners. But since 95% of it comes from a slow-damaging AOE dot, it just gets healed off and is not nearly as impactful as summoner. It would be a different matter entirely if the every job didn't have infinite instant heal capacity (recuperate + potion). But as it is, the AOE dot doesn't really "wear out" the enemy team as it's supposed to. People heal off and when MP gets slow they just pot it back.

I wouldn't underestimate SCH's dmg, they can easily score a BH5 without really trying, and if you have a few SCHs with BH5 stacking DoTs you can easily do over 10k per tick of dmg, it's not something that is easily ignored. I've been the victim of ~14k dmg per tick from SCH dots, if you're unable to pot (Ongoing fight), it's a death sentence.

[gioroggia]

I wouldn't underestimate SCH's dmg, they can easily score a BH5 without really trying, and if you have a few SCHs with BH5 stacking DoTs you can easily do over 10k per tick of dmg, it's not something that is easily ignored. I've been the victim of ~14k dmg per tick from SCH dots, if you're unable to pot (Ongoing fight), it's a death sentence.

Yeah stacking dot changes things a little since it makes each tick actually somewhat threatening and help take down players who are not very attentive, or at least force them to retreat which in turn gives your team numerical advantage. But 4 scholars stacking coordinated dots is still not nearly as impactful as 4 summoners stacking their LBs. Not to mention other matters that make that type of coordination harder with scholar - it's more difficult to coordinate the dot cast than bahamuts, and it's quicker and easier to reach bh5 with summoner since scholars get few kills and rely mostly on assists. Point being, it's not like scholars are useless, just that the damage numbers we see at the table at the end of the match do not reflect their actual impact on the game. If we go solely bu that, we end up vastly overestimating them. On a side note, I just wish using deployment tactics on buffed party members (or yourself when buffed) would extend the buff to alliance members as well. Because party members don't really tend to stock together, that decreases the utility of adloquium + deployment compared to CC.

[Naphtha]

Yeah stacking dot changes things a little since it makes each tick actually somewhat threatening and help take down players who are not very attentive, or at least force them to retreat which in turn gives your team numerical advantage. But 4 scholars stacking coordinated dots is still not nearly as impactful as 4 summoners stacking their LBs. Not to mention other matters that make that type of coordination harder with scholar - it's more difficult to coordinate the dot cast than bahamuts, and it's quicker and easier to reach bh5 with summoner since scholars get few kills and rely mostly on assists. Point being, it's not like scholars are useless, just that the damage numbers we see at the table at the end of the match do not reflect their actual impact on the game. If we go solely bu that, we end up vastly overestimating them. On a side note, I just wish using deployment tactics on buffed party members (or yourself when buffed) would extend the buff to alliance members as well. Because party members don't really tend to stock together, that decreases the utility of adloquium + deployment compared to CC.

Yeah, I mean there's a reason why I made SMNs the target of my video, no stack even comes close to the raw potential of a SMN stack, which could easily wipe a big chunk of an alliance in an instant with only 4 or even just 3 SMNs working in tandem, which is nothing when each alliance has 24 people.

I wasn't trying to fluff up SCH too hard, it's just being slept on IMO considering how funny it can be to watch someone's HP bar slowly melt away while they struggle to pot it back up (Assuming they ran out of MP to recoup).

[gioroggia]

Yeah, I mean there's a reason why I made SMNs the target of my video, no stack even comes close to the raw potential of a SMN stack, which could easily wipe a big chunk of an alliance in an instant with only 4 or even just 3 SMNs working in tandem, which is nothing when each alliance has 24 people.

I wasn't trying to fluff up SCH too hard, it's just being slept on IMO considering how funny it can be to watch someone's HP bar slowly melt away while they struggle to pot it back up (Assuming they ran out of MP to recoup).

Lol and I love when I get an unexpected kill from someone who escaped my team only to die to my dot

[Sigma860]

Scholar, on the other hand, can sometimes deal even more damage than summoners. But since 95% of it comes from a slow-damaging AOE dot, it just gets healed off and is not nearly as impactful as summoner. It would be a different matter entirely if the every job didn't have infinite instant heal capacity (recuperate + potion). But as it is, the AOE dot doesn't really "wear out" the enemy team as it's supposed to. People heal off and when MP gets slow they just pot it back.

Not to mention Scholars have to put themselves at risk to get a good spread with their DOT a lot of times. Summoners can just sit back and cast and save their rush-down combo for enemies that dive in or stragglers that get left behind when the enemy team breaks.