Should the ability to change your job at the starting point of Frontlines be removed?

[NekoMataMata]

You can change your job at the starting point of FL for those who don't know. You can do this at any time during the fight, as long as you're at your base camp.

The reasons you might want to do this is for the experience of course. Whether you're just doing your FL daily or whether you're actively camping FL for fun, this allows you to queue as a job that you want to gain experience in and then switch to a job that you enjoy or are more capable with.

Sounds absolutely amazing right? I mean it's a great way to motivate people to actually make an attempt at playing pvp by letting them do their daily as a job they enjoy. One small problem though.

Due to poor balance in pvp, most people who know about this will instantly swap to Summoner. It's not uncommon for me to get into frontlines and see over half of my 8-person team's icons swap to summoner within the first 30 seconds.

I probably don't need to explain the whole balance issue of Summoners being able to drop their enormous Bahamut LB AoE on entire objectives in FLs to easily wipe out other groups clean off the map or simply dissuade them from going near the objective while their team claims it. And I don't really need to explain that Square isn't going to balance pvp for FL.

We can curb this a little bit by jus removing the ability for people to swap jobs in FL though. Summoner isn't really the entire issue anyways, since this just proves that if you give people the ability to gain experience on whatever job they want while playing anything else, they're likely to pick whatever is at the top anyways.

Soooooooo would anyone have any issues with removing the ability to change your job during FL?

[RobynDaBank]

Lol. Hell nah.

[Kemiko]

What you're suggesting wouldn't fix the issue. Most likely what would happen is the first week this goes live you see what you want. A lot of diverse jobs in the roster accompanied by a lot of complaints by those that don't read patch notes or read them close enough to scrutinize the PvP section. After that, those only do their daily Frontline roulette for XP will find the experience worse than they already do (as the PvE and PvP game design is only more different than ever before) and likely just stop queueing for it altogether - while those that enjoy PvP or are grinding the GARO achievements will merely queue up as the meta jobs anyway.

tl;dr
It'd only change things for about a week and for the worse.

[LaylaTsarra]

No thank you it's fine the way it is right now.

I probably don't need to explain the whole balance issue of Summoners being able to drop their enormous Bahamut LB AoE on entire objectives in FLs to easily wipe out other groups

Summoner needs a nerf and bet one is coming.

[NekoMataMata]

No thank you it's fine the way it is right now.



Summoner needs a nerf and bet one is coming.

But if you nerf summoner people will just switch into something like WHM since the potency on their LB is actually the same, the aoe is just a bit differently shaped. Do you simply just go through every job nerfing all the aoes at that point?

I don't really think balance is SEs strong point here.

[NekoMataMata]

What you're suggesting wouldn't fix the issue. Most likely what would happen is the first week this goes live you see what you want. A lot of diverse jobs in the roster accompanied by a lot of complaints by those that don't read patch notes or read them close enough to scrutinize the PvP section. After that, those only do their daily Frontline roulette for XP will find the experience worse than they already do (as the PvE and PvP game design is only more different than ever before) and likely just stop queueing for it altogether - while those that enjoy PvP or are grinding the GARO achievements will merely queue up as the meta jobs anyway.

tl;dr
It'd only change things for about a week and for the worse.

This is sadly more accurate. I didn't think about that :/ Anyone that does FL casually or just for the daily would just stop. Competitive players would be more numerous and they'd have no issues with slaving to the meta constantly.

[Deveryn]

The only part I like about this is it might force the less committed people out of FL, if they can't be there to level their least favorite job.

[IckeDerTyp]

Back when I actually did pvp. I usually was the sole person going healer. Like 50% of the time.

So uh, no! Don't remove that option ^^

[gotaname1]

I like qing in as a job that needs leveling and switching to a job that i know how to play. I also like being able to switch jobs after death to adjust to the situation in frontlines. So this idea gets a hard pass from me.

[LaylaTsarra]

But if you nerf summoner people will just switch into something like WHM since the potency on their LB is actually the same, the aoe is just a bit differently shaped. Do you simply just go through every job nerfing all the aoes at that point?

I don't really think balance is SEs strong point here.

I don't see whm as that powerful in frontline. Summoner takes out entire parties and the number of them is a bit too much. It's clearly overpowered in my view and I run frontline quite a bit on my main and many of my alts. Should see the circus in Japan with parties full of summoners.

Edit: 13 Summoners in the 3 alliances for Adder as I just queued into it in Japan. Yeah it's not broken.