DRK's make frontlines not fun.

[Sililos]

On OCE i noticed something recently, Most teams are now made up of tanks with a huge portion being Dark Knights.

Every time i see someone sitting on 1 HP, not dyeing, and ignoring stuns or other control ability's making a casual escape, maybe taking out an enemy or two while doing so is just annoying.

Getting caught by one and pulled into the enemy group, popping esuna and trying to run only to be pulled back in by 10 others at the same time leaving you feeling like a ping pong ball is just dumb.

They are oversaturating Frontlines, groups of them always seem to be able to focus a single person and curbstomp them effortlessly, a single DRK has no issue surviving an ENTIRE alliance of players taking out a number and escape like its nothing.

Hell as a DNC, their pull has longer range than my attacks, and im a freaking Range DPS! En Avant wont even help me 9 out of 10 times! A move that feels pointless to begin with since a single stun or slow means my job is a free kill.

Some jobs are just way to OP and need rebalancing, Not this FOTM crap where one job is set to OP while everyone else is free game.
Here SE, i will help you.
Tank: High Survival, Low DPS, Low Healing.
Healer: Low Survival, Low DPS, High Healing.
DPS: Low Survival, High DPS, Low healing.

See? That wasn't so difficult now was it? Stop giving single jobs all 3 while giving others None!!

[GordonGeeko]

Every adjustment is made for Crystalline Conflict and getting 50% overall win rates on all jobs. They have not shown any willingness to adjust abilities based on their performance in other modes. The only Frontlines-specific adjustment that was done to abilities is the PLD Cover and that took more than 6 months of constant complaining and that was a very cheap exploit.

The best you can probably hope for is some Frontlines number changes like a dmg down on DRK, similar to what they did to SCH, WHM and SMN.

Every AOE abilities that works in Crystalline Conflict is amplified in Frontlines because you just have... way more players. Your SCH biolysis can spread to 5 enemy targets ? Now you can spread it to potentially up to 48 people. You can pull 5 people on DRK ? Now you can pull up to 48.

Unless they start limiting the amount of players that can be affected by abilities, you're gonna see a lot of DRK/DRG combos because pulling more than a dozen people in a single spot is perfect for LBs like dragoon. DRK is extremely broken in Rival Wings as well. The middle train is pretty much decided by how many DRKs you have on your team.

I feel your pain for DNC, it has nothing going for it in Frontlines. The range of its attacks is way too small. Good luck getting in range to cast your LB and using Honing Dance without melting.

Frontlines is just heavily imbalanced and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

You are asking for CC resistance and Fetter Ward

CC resistance and Fetter Ward worked on the following:
- Stun
- Silence
- Sleep
- Bind
- Heavy
- Knockback/Draw-In (same CC type)

prior to patch 6.1. While for Crystalline Conflict it may not be a good choice to bring back CC resistance, Frontlines and Rival Wings are a whole different beast given player count. Either or both need to return, with priority on large-scale-PvP CC resist after having suffered the effect previously.

[BubblyBoar]

DRK pull has counterplay. But the easiest thing to do is to guard immediately if you are pulled by a DRK. run away after the onslaught of AoE skills get thrown at you. You usually only have to worry about a RPR/DNC/WAR breaking your guard with LB, but most times it WILL save you.



On the note of counter play, there are quite a few jobs that can counter DRK pull setups. For a sacrificial play, but RPR and DNC can dash passed a DRK to his allies and LB them. It will slow down the follow up and give your alliance time to react and escape. SGE can protect your party of you set down your LB when you see a DRK jumping in. WHM, like DNC and RPR, can LB the group behind the DRK to slow them down, even if you a moment. That moment is enough to save a whole lot of people. This is not even every option and these are all option you can do solo. Meaning you don't need to rely on more than one person to counter that pull. Obviously you arent going to catch every single one, but you can prevent massacres and deny BH a couple of times a match, which is very valuable.


I ended a group of BH and multiple DRK pull setups with my DNC. Not only were we able to come back because of it (the score was like 200/600/1300 with us in last) but we even won that match. The point is that you need to work your strategies and tell people to watch out for it. As much as people like to meme up FL, you do have to use your brain and you can have major impacts on games.


I disagree with adding Fetter Ward to FL. While it seems it would help people from getting caught, it would also make setting up those kills even easier and harder to counter since the DRK and their allies also have access to it. 30 seconds in not a lot of time in FL. Use guard more often even just for its anti-CC effects. Guard is preemptive, Purify is reactive.

[IDontPetLalas]

On OCE i noticed something recently, Most teams are now made up of tanks with a huge portion being Dark Knights.

Every time i see someone sitting on 1 HP, not dyeing, and ignoring stuns or other control ability's making a casual escape, maybe taking out an enemy or two while doing so is just annoying.

Getting caught by one and pulled into the enemy group, popping esuna and trying to run only to be pulled back in by 10 others at the same time leaving you feeling like a ping pong ball is just dumb.

They are oversaturating Frontlines, groups of them always seem to be able to focus a single person and curbstomp them effortlessly, a single DRK has no issue surviving an ENTIRE alliance of players taking out a number and escape like its nothing.

Hell as a DNC, their pull has longer range than my attacks, and im a freaking Range DPS! En Avant wont even help me 9 out of 10 times! A move that feels pointless to begin with since a single stun or slow means my job is a free kill.

Some jobs are just way to OP and need rebalancing, Not this FOTM crap where one job is set to OP while everyone else is free game.
Here SE, i will help you.
Tank: High Survival, Low DPS, Low Healing.
Healer: Low Survival, Low DPS, High Healing.
DPS: Low Survival, High DPS, Low healing.

See? That wasn't so difficult now was it? Stop giving single jobs all 3 while giving others None!!

Yes, that would really work, wouldn't it. can you imagine how much fun playing a healer would be based on your model? Neither can I.

[IDontPetLalas]

You are asking for CC resistance and Fetter Ward

CC resistance and Fetter Ward worked on the following:
- Stun
- Silence
- Sleep
- Bind
- Heavy
- Knockback/Draw-In (same CC type)

prior to patch 6.1. While for Crystalline Conflict it may not be a good choice to bring back CC resistance, Frontlines and Rival Wings are a whole different beast given player count. Either or both need to return, with priority on large-scale-PvP CC resist after having suffered the effect previously.

adding what you are asking for would make sense, but not without also bring in changes to DR as well. In the current state I don't see that adding in resist to heavy/bind , for example, while still allowing melee to keep their current DR against healers/casters would be reasonable.

[Niroken]

Damage Reduction made Frontlines not fun.
Now it's just melee damage and tanks running around having fun while everyone else deals with hitting a brick wall (with some of those having ranged attacks and escapes as well).

They haven't done much to Frontlines since so I doubt they are going to touch it.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

adding what you are asking for would make sense, but not without also bring in changes to DR as well. In the current state I don't see that adding in resist to heavy/bind , for example, while still allowing melee to keep their current DR against healers/casters would be reasonable.

Absolutely correct. The damage reduction in the current state is implemented to deal with the onslaught of crowd control to give people a chance at surviving.

IF the switch flips to introduce CC resists again, the DR would need to be reduced a fair bit, however I'd be careful by how much I'd reduce it. but certainly not keeping the -60% the melees and tanks have right now.

[Sililos]

The easiest thing to do is to guard immediately if you are pulled by a DRK. run away after the onslaught of AoE skills get thrown at you.

While i appreciate the advice and can see how it would work in the right circumstances, The issue on OCE is, we get 2 hours a day where frontlines are active, in that time there are 2-3 'guides' providing macro info and assigning targets, DNC seems to be a primary as i will always have an entire team of sometimes 30+ players target me all at once and flatten me after using every CC in the book at the same time with some staggered for Esuna use, using Guard? seems worthless, i still take damage when its up as some ability's ignore it, and those ability's get used a lot.

Its impossible to use a DNC LB, people dont run from it, they dont panic, they simply target and kill you before the cast finishes, and as i learned in CC, it only takes 1-2 people to kill a DNC if they are stunned, our defense's just dont provide enough to survive the cast time of our LB, nor to get in and do any meaningful damage and get out unscathed, Sure it works well if the enemy team eat glue and have no clue how to use a keyboard, but lets be real, 9 out of 10 times with the matchmaking system? You are on the glue eating team with the enemies being highly skilled masters of every job and perfect execution lol. (Or lets be real here, likely bots with how little they slip up and how fast they counter.)

I cant really do much when the opponent's somehow know every jobs skills by memory and have elaborate plans on how to counter every other job they are ready execute flawlessly every time before you even step out of respawn.

I wish i could say i was a skilled player, but i really cant, and in this games PvP environment? Especially with the 2 hours a day active time on OCE? Im not going to get to learn. All that getting targeted by an entire team and flattened like they are a hive mind is, dont go near the enemy team, and everyone's melee range is more than DNC range attacks.

[Jettinson]

The average DRK can be countered but once you actually get a team that can cover it like... a Paladin which is also one of the roughest class to deal with then good luck. This is not even complaning since it's not common to find and it is much harder to pull if you do not have premades but there you go, a Dancer can be easily shutdown since the Charmed effect isn't instant like Reaper's Hysteria so you need a tank\healer to make sure it doesn't get nuked.
Regardless all 4 tanks are deadly in FL, you have 2 who have 10 sec invulnerability (Paladin and Dark Knight), 1 that removes guard, can't be CC under LB aside Imp and lower your damage with Orogeny and 1 that has a fast LB regeneration and can wipe full groups if not focused (Gunbreaker) with a buffed LB and a buffed Nebula.

Straight up it's Frontline, there should be a proper balance and not just stat wise like the horrendous damage reduction, there has to be a check on how some abilities behave etc.

I mostly post this because i still enjoy Frontline and there is plenty of times i had a blast but sometimes i wonder how the game would look if the mode was properly mantained. It took so long to finally get rid of the interaction Guardian Cover but still Paladin is a monster in stalling\defending and makes other classes' play much easier and harder to counter as an example. Ninja remains king in tanky ranged harassment and can just sit back and not worry on over committing and just be ready to LB from afar and even if it is on melee range, it can easily tank and escape. I thought before 6.1 dragoon would be annoying to fight, i was not ready for this lol