The absolute state of Frontlines

[Xylira]

After playing some frontlines today I think something is up with the damage change for some of the jobs. I noticed WHM was doing substantially less damage than recent changes imply they should. 10% is whatever, but it seems to be more around 50%.

Ex: Afflatus Misery used to hit for around 6k or so, and now it hits for 3k. Glare does so little damage it's not even worth the cast time anymore. Not that you should be using it often anyway, but moving is actually more valuable than the amount of damage it does now in all situations.

It's because of the innate damage reductions being buffed as well, so not only are WHM doing less base damage, but it's being ruduced even further.

Before the patch Afflatus Misery would do 10,000 reduced by 20% by magical/ranged DPS, or 40% by melee and tanks, so 8,000 or 6,000 respectively.

After the patch Afllatus Misery does 9,000 due to the 10% damage reduction, reduced again by 30% by magical/ranged DPS, and 60% by melee DPS and tanks, so only 6,300 and 3,600.

SE went more than a little overboard with these changes, IMO.

[Divinemights]

All Ranges had it too easy at 6.1, right now if you don't cooperate with other you wont be able to kill.
No longer easy spams as before.

[Arzalis]

It's because of the innate damage reductions being buffed as well, so not only are WHM doing less base damage, but it's being ruduced even further.

Before the patch Afflatus Misery would do 10,000 reduced by 20% by magical/ranged DPS, or 40% by melee and tanks, so 8,000 or 6,000 respectively.

After the patch Afllatus Misery does 9,000 due to the 10% damage reduction, reduced again by 30% by magical/ranged DPS, and 60% by melee DPS and tanks, so only 6,300 and 3,600.

SE went more than a little overboard with these changes, IMO.

That makes sense. I'd forgotten about the damage reduction changes too.

I'd say they went bit a overboard, yeah. Most likely if they just buff the potency of a few abilities it'll be fine. Overall the changes seem good, but specific skills are pretty under tuned.

All Ranges had it too easy at 6.1, right now if you don't cooperate with other you wont be able to kill.
No longer easy spams as before.

It's not a case of co-operation. That little damage when people have around 50k HP is really, really low.

[Niroken]

It takes a lot of people to kill the enemy now which honestly makes it super boring. The only issue that Frontlines had in my opinion was Limit Break spam. There's no point for a WHM to even attempt to try to kill a melee DPS and you can absolutely forget hitting the brick wall that is tank. Everything feels like massive HP sponges now.

[Gserpent]

It takes a lot of people to kill the enemy now which honestly makes it super boring. The only issue that Frontlines had in my opinion was Limit Break spam. There's no point for a WHM to even attempt to try to kill a melee DPS and you can absolutely forget hitting the brick wall that is tank. Everything feels like massive HP sponges now.

But on the flipside, garbage melee players can now happily unga bunga to their heart's content. Why learn how to play when you can just scream for nerfs until they happen?

[AnnRam]

Frontlines only needed two changes ;

Buff Tanks (Its good now at least they can dive and survive more than 5 seconds without their ults)
Rework Purify or add Fetter Wards to Melee jobs (except tanks) Melee jobs couldn't play because they get chain CC over and over and over specially when stacking SMN's exists ;

SMN1 Uses Mountain Buster
Melee Jobs in field = 3 seconds bind and slow.
Everyone uses Purify.
SMN2 Uses Mountain Buster
Melee jobs in field = 3 seconds bind and slow again, can't do nothing
SMN3 Uses Mountain Buster
Melee jobs in field = 3 seconds bind and slow again, can't do nothing purify still in on CD.
SMN4 Uses Mountain Buster
Melee jobs in field = at this point they get melted or they lost all theirs CD trying to do something.
Raise and repeat.

[Plastic_Fork]

SMN isn't really all that strong if you don't have several on a team. I usually play SMN for Frontline (been playing exclusively as SMN in pvp since probably SB), but with recent changes, both my normal dps and my LB are pretty useless outside occasional circumstances where I get to kill a few people. They buffed Fester this patch. Watching it deal maybe 5-10% of a players health in damage if they have no buffs or shields on them. Most of my spells can't kill anything anymore. Used to be able to LB and take out several players that were low on health. Now my LB might do 10% of everyone's health and they shrug it off and move on. I'll unload everything I have at my disposal on someone with no buffs or shields and I'm lucky to take them to 50% health now. The dps seems really low for SMN.

I'm also being one-shot through full health plus SMN shield by more than one class. If I'm not being killed by a MNK, NIN, MCH, or SAM in one hit, I'm being chain stunlocked into uselessness by everyone else. Stunlocks are still a huge problem in Frontline and CC. I don't particularly enjoy spending most of the match standing still and being unable to perform actions while the opposing team walks all over me. Purify works one time, but doesn't negate the 10 other stuns that immediately follow it. Guard keeps me alive for about 5 seconds before I'm immediately stunlocked and killed anyway. So both abilities aren't particularly useful.

Just stating what I'm seeing with the more recent changes to the class. I've noticed a decrease in dps and lower kill rate on SMN. Tanks, melee, and healers are hp sponges and it takes like 6-10 people to kill any of them, and my SMN is throwing pillows at people when I'm not busy being stunlocked into oblivion.

I hope they make some balance changes that help. Because stuns are out of control and the balance of classes still seems way out of whack to me based on my own play experience. The only skill needed is being able to press the most stun buttons before the other team can.

[Esmoire]

I think the damage reduction changes are a net negative, and I hope these are just a bandaid solution for the later FL changes. IMO melee should be no higher than 40%, and range get no DR at all. That said, I also think some limit breaks and the way CC works has to change. Fixing Miracle of Nature and the limit break scaling is a good start either way!

[Gserpent]

I think the damage reduction changes are a net negative, and I hope these are just a bandaid solution for the later FL changes. IMO melee should be no higher than 40%, and range get no DR at all. That said, I also think some limit breaks and the way CC works has to change. Fixing Miracle of Nature and the limit break scaling is a good start either way!

Agree.

For my money, I'd reduce melee to 20% DR, no DR for ranged or casters, and tanks retain 40% DR. Remove the global damage down for SMN etc. Reduce Guard and Purify cooldowns by half. All LB charge timers doubled (1.5x for 3rd place and 1.75x for 2nd place.) And all AOE effects have 33% damage fall-off (that is, it would be "12000 potency on the first target, and 33% less for all others," as you see on many BLU skills, Foul, Afflatus Misery, etc.) For ground targeted effects like Megaflare, "the first target" would simply be the target closest to the exact center of the circle (randomly chosen if two or more targets are equidistant.)

Resilience would have 1/3 uptime with a 15 sec timer on Purify, and 15 sec on Guard along with fewer LBs means it's a more reliable tool for protecting yourself from groups. Fall-off damage ensures people can't just spam AOE to win, and reducing global DR would prevent classes from being too strong.

Understand, I don't think melee should *ever* be able to just dive into an enemy team. Not even tanks should be able to do that, but tanks generally have less mobility than melee so they get more DR. If you dash into a group of 10 players, you should absolutely get obliterated as soon as your Guard and Purify run out... unless your team goes in with you and protects you.

FL changes should encourage and require teamwork and not reward lone wolfing. Lone wolves shouldn't be queuing for team-based games.

[Mistress_Irika]

FL changes should encourage and require teamwork and not reward lone wolfing. Lone wolves shouldn't be queuing for team-based games.

After charming an entire group just for the frontlines to back off because objectives were done I'm not too sure if I can personally agree with that statement.

Then again, it's normal solo q problems, and it's my fault for going in solo expecting change. Still, it's getting difficult to trust others over time.