DRK and DRG in Frontlines

[Waffles298]

am i the only one who feels that both DRG and DRK are way too busted in Frontlines? it feels like if you get a match against a party that has them you’ll just get curb stomped by them (the DRK’s chaining their salted earths, while the DRG’s kill you).

if your on the team with them you just breeze through a match, farming points and BH off the teams that don’t have them.

there really doesn’t feel like there’s a hard counter for this situation, as some matches (the one i just had in particular) the team with the most DRK’s and DRG’s will have BH5 within a couple minutes of the match starting.

i really feel this is pretty unbalanced, ngl.

[Xylira]

You're definitely not the only one, there's other threads that discuss this exact same issue. There's a number of other broken combinations as well, particular when you start stacking things together in premade groups that can coordinate better. But DRK+DRG is by far the most braindead easy one to pull off at the moment, which is why it gets abused so much. SE seems to not care much at all about Front Lines balance since they added CC to the game.

If they'd just removed the pull effect from salted earth it would solve most of the issues.

[Connor]

The worst thing is when you know it’s coming, try putting up Guard once pulled…but it doesn’t go off in time lol. You can preemptively guard, sure, but then if you don’t get pulled you’re wasting a valuable cool-down

I’d also note I’ve seen a lot of the DRK/DRG combos supported by an AST. DRK/DRG do pull/lb then the Astrologian finishes the rest off with Macrocosmos to farm battle high / kills.

Although, to me Macrocosmos still isnt as silly as Scholars topping the damage charts with literally no effort whatsoever (*laughs in Biolysis*). Even a DRK/DRG combo can end up with less overall damage than a Scholar spamming Expedient / Biolysis / Deployment lol, depending on how lucky you get with enemy stacks

[Waffles298]

not to mention DNC’s joining the mix to pull people out of guard with their LB’s so the DRG’s/AST’s can do their work.

[TheGrimace]

Pretty funny they didn't do anything about this before the event began. Be ready to see a lot of this cheese happening. Have your finger near Guard at all times and hope you get it off in time.

[NekoMataMata]

Pretty funny they didn't do anything about this before the event began. Be ready to see a lot of this cheese happening. Have your finger near Guard at all times and hope you get it off in time.

Easier to entice people to play the broken game mode than to fix it, meanwhile not giving any tome rewards to CC at all.

[Oizen]

The issue has been and will always will be the horrendous servers making shit like purify and guard borderline nonfunctional

[Valence]

Yes there is broken combos. Imo stacking 8 SMNs together and all pulling LB at the same time (200k wide AoE potency) is even easier, but I guess it cannot be done with a light party premade alone. Still, why aren't people doing it? I suspect that most people just want to play their jobs and have fun or do their daily and not bother doing something they don't want to do. But yeah, people could retaliate with a lot of nasty stuff.

My only advice is to just turn off all effects to limited only and you'll see all the DRG LBs pretty effectively from miles away, especially in FLs where everything is so open. Perhaps sometimes you'll insta Guard by reacting to a DRG LB that's actually yours, but better safe than sorry. Also, wasting cooldowns in FLs is nothing on the scale of things. It's back under 30s, this is not Crystalline Conflict where it lasts for an eternity. There is a crapload of downtime in FLs.

My new thing in FLs is to just go for the anti BH5 jobs like WAR, MNK, etc. You literally have all the tools you need to stun the DRG just after their LB, and punt them right in the middle of your team so they get insta deleted. Works against most jobs, and if it doesn't, it spooks them enough that they become less of a problem when trying to pull off their crap.

[Mayhemmer]

Yes there is broken combos. Imo stacking 8 SMNs together and all pulling LB at the same time (200k wide AoE potency) is even easier, but I guess it cannot be done with a light party premade alone. Still, why aren't people doing it? I suspect that most people just want to play their jobs and have fun or do their daily and not bother doing something they don't want to do. But yeah, people could retaliate with a lot of nasty stuff.

My new thing in FLs is to just go for the anti BH5 jobs like WAR, MNK, etc. You literally have all the tools you need to stun the DRG just after their LB, and punt them right in the middle of your team so they get insta deleted. Works against most jobs, and if it doesn't, it spooks them enough that they become less of a problem when trying to pull off their crap.

I used to see more SMN pre-mades on Crystal, they were a real problem for a long while. Don't see them often anymore, not sure why.

Playing 'anti-' jobs is honestly just how I play FL nowadays. I mark enemies I know will be problematic near the start of the match, and just adjust to counter and hard-focus them the entire match. It doesn't always work, but it is very satisfying backhanding a cocky NIN or DRG and plucking their BH away from them. Believe it or not, BRD can make a decent counter to DRG, at least in making sure they can't run away. Frontlines is truly a mode where the enjoyment is derived from making sure other players can't have fun =/

If the devs truly make job adjustments based on how often individual jobs are played, like they claim they do, then I expect at least some changes to one or both of DRG and DRK in the (distant) future...

-is what I would say if I trusted them. But then you remember that DRG getting a needless buff to it's LB damage is arguably the reason why this new method has gained so much traction. Things never just get "better" in Frontlines. You just get a different flavor of cheese on the menu every 6 months.

[Valence]

If the devs truly make job adjustments based on how often individual jobs are played, like they claim they do, then I expect at least some changes to one or both of DRG and DRK in the (distant) future...

-is what I would say if I trusted them. But then you remember that DRG getting a needless buff to it's LB damage is arguably the reason why this new method has gained so much traction. Things never just get "better" in Frontlines. You just get a different flavor of cheese on the menu every 6 months.

Devs don't balanced or design pvp jobs in accordance with Frontlines, which is enough to explain 99% of its state to me as far as I'm concerned.

While I don't get caught that often at all myself, you can't say things like this neither when infinite sprint + plunge exists, and crap servers that make you get pulled in from 30y away.

It's really not hard to pull a large amount of people as a DRK at all, you can even literally sprint in from behind and pull aswell.

Just use Guard when you see a DRG LB coming. They're not exactly hard to miss with effects turned down (which is unfortunate considering you kinda need them on in CC, but in FLs, you'll just burn your eyes faster than in alliance raids with them anyway).

And if your job has teleports, then zoom away.