DRK - AST/AST/AST - The frontline meta

[Elfidan]

No, but I consider that someone who goes from " I have no stake in this" to " I don't like you, so I'll vote a certain way just to spite you" to have little worth.

Can't defend your position with words so yes, I can't agree with your vague opinions which don't seem to have any foundation.

I didn't care either way but thanks to your choice of words and general presentation yes now I don't like you.

You joined in 2020 so you're still fairly new. Hi, I'm Elfidan the incarnation of spite made flesh for the betterment of the world. I don't put much weight in the opinions of children who can't at least start out civil.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

That has to be one of the worst ideas of job design "compensation" I've seen in a while. This is more of the equivalent of chopping someone off at the knees and telling them to cheer up because they still have their arms.

That has to be one of the worst ideas of job design "compensation" I've seen in a while. This is more of the equivalent of chopping someone off at the knees and telling them to cheer up because they still have their arms.

Frankly, I'm not obliged to state why, (although I frequently do) stated that I think something is a poor idea isn't "disparaging a post". I'm not required to state why, if someone asks me why that's another matter.

Hi, I think you need to take a step back and actually check what you wrote because to me it looks like you think that the "one of the worst ideas of job design 'compensation'" was my personal idea let alone suggestion. It was not - it was what I expect the devs to do.

I would not mind AST losing 4000 damage on Macrocosmos, assuming it is accordingly compensated. Given the oGCD nature, it would still be part of its' burst at 8000 base damage following a Gravity II Dualcast.

To address the elephant in the room though - at 15y radius, 12000 damage alone would be insanely strong, but it also comes with Microcosmos' damage consolidation to heal. Given the heal part is part of being a Healer, it would make no sense to reduce the radius. Instead, a reduction in damage makes more sense.

Compensation besides the "I expect SE to do this" could be:
- Gravity II + Dualcast getting the 4000 damage (2000 each).
- Some dualcast adjustments like using Macro granting 66-100% of a charge of Dualcast
- Boosting the heal capacity of Macrocosmos
- Boosting the heal capacity of Aspected Benefic


...as you can see I got many ideas of what they could give AST to keep it strong without having to keep the 12000dmg 15y nuke that currently plagues FL. Maybe instead of just kneejerk reacting with "worst idea ever", refusing to elaborate unless "I" asked and generally acting with way too much aggression you could just ask for clarification or hell, discuss it with me.

[IDontPetLalas]

Hi, I think you need to take a step back and actually check what you wrote because to me it looks like you think that the "one of the worst ideas of job design 'compensation'" was my personal idea let alone suggestion. It was not - it was what I expect the devs to do.

I would not mind AST losing 4000 damage on Macrocosmos, assuming it is accordingly compensated. Given the oGCD nature, it would still be part of its' burst at 8000 base damage following a Gravity II Dualcast.

To address the elephant in the room though - at 15y radius, 12000 damage alone would be insanely strong, but it also comes with Microcosmos' damage consolidation to heal. Given the heal part is part of being a Healer, it would make no sense to reduce the radius. Instead, a reduction in damage makes more sense.

Compensation besides the "I expect SE to do this" could be:
- Gravity II + Dualcast getting the 4000 damage (2000 each).
- Some dualcast adjustments like using Macro granting 66-100% of a charge of Dualcast
- Boosting the heal capacity of Macrocosmos
- Boosting the heal capacity of Aspected Benefic


...as you can see I got many ideas of what they could give AST to keep it strong without having to keep the 12000dmg 15y nuke that currently plagues FL. Maybe instead of just kneejerk reacting with "worst idea ever", refusing to elaborate unless "I" asked and generally acting with way too much aggression you could just ask for clarification or hell, discuss it with me.

No, the origins of a bad idea doesn't really change whether it is good or not, now does it? and no, I don't view AST as a "plague", might want to take a look at some of the other jobs.

And no, the amount of detail that I want to add in a post is up to me, as is whether or not I want to continue in a thread. You're free to discount it if you feel that it's baseless, on the other hand I wouldn't be so fast to read aggression in my intent.

[maximesan514]

I don't even see alliances routinely wiping in 3 seconds, unless (and that's rare) it's a random one against a premade

You don't play enough, seems like you are unaware of what is happening. The game is broken.

[AnotherPerson]

Hi, I think you need to take a step back and actually check what you wrote because to me it looks like you think that the "one of the worst ideas of job design 'compensation'" was my personal idea let alone suggestion. It was not - it was what I expect the devs to do.

I would not mind AST losing 4000 damage on Macrocosmos, assuming it is accordingly compensated. Given the oGCD nature, it would still be part of its' burst at 8000 base damage following a Gravity II Dualcast.

To address the elephant in the room though - at 15y radius, 12000 damage alone would be insanely strong, but it also comes with Microcosmos' damage consolidation to heal. Given the heal part is part of being a Healer, it would make no sense to reduce the radius. Instead, a reduction in damage makes more sense.

Compensation besides the "I expect SE to do this" could be:
- Gravity II + Dualcast getting the 4000 damage (2000 each).
- Some dualcast adjustments like using Macro granting 66-100% of a charge of Dualcast
- Boosting the heal capacity of Macrocosmos
- Boosting the heal capacity of Aspected Benefic


...as you can see I got many ideas of what they could give AST to keep it strong without having to keep the 12000dmg 15y nuke that currently plagues FL. Maybe instead of just kneejerk reacting with "worst idea ever", refusing to elaborate unless "I" asked and generally acting with way too much aggression you could just ask for clarification or hell, discuss it with me.

I can't speak for others, but IMO those are really REALLY bad compensations that will kill AST's job design. The reason Macrocosmos and Aspected Benefic works in the toolkit is because AST has a lot of decision-making to how they want to spend their healing and leverage the full power of Aspected Benefic's regen and Macrocosmos' compiled healing effect in a chaotic and frequently spiky damage in PvP. The key to decision-making on AST is how Dualcast interacts with the rest of the toolkit, including the RNG of card buffs. Buffing Gravity II + Dualcast to increase damage just forces AST into a state where "you're now forced to use Gravity II + Dualcast on cd or you lose egagarious amounts of damage since the biggest portion of the damage is locked here". That is even worse for gameplay since Dualcast and Gravity II are both 15s cooldown. There's no more gameplay decision to be had anymore in how you spend your remaining Dualcast charge. In other words, AST currently feels good because it managed to balance the entire toolkit and offers meaningful gameplay decisions - and all the while keeping it fairly straightforward and simple.

With the current setup, you at least have choices because a portion of your damage is locked behind Dualcast Gravity II, but there are more situations where it can be beneficial to forgo Dualcast Gravity II for healing as aspected benefic alone isn't strong enough, but doubling it up with dualcast gives it a unique advantage to other healers. Forcing Macro to lower dualcast recast speed results in being unable to leverage Macro's healing compiling fully since you would want to use it on cd to access Dualcast Malefic more. The changes would contest too heavily on Dualcast Aspected Benefic to gain usage out of it. Not to mention, I'll just be ignoring leveraging the card effects fully and stick with the same strategy if healing & Gravity II gets buffed on AST. If I'm playing AST in Frontlines, I don't want to be locked into a more static gameplay rotation. Static gameplay rotations runs completely counter to how AST was designed to be played.

As per the original idea - In PvP, AST's Draw is currently already a 20s CD. The duration of a card's buff is 15s. The most you can buff Draw by reducing its cd is 5s. The difference between Draw at 20s and 15s gives you leeway to hold the card for a slightly more favorable situation and time to realign your dualcast proc. Reducing the cooldown of Draw does nothing for AST in that regard. Not to mention, the complaint was that 3 AST stacking Macrocosmos is strong to people who don't have any clue how to play around it, but buffing cards literally does nothing for that composition other than nerfing that composition without giving anything in return. Only 1 card buff can be active at a time in a party, so any additional ASTs just straight up loses damage and card flexibility further. That's incredibly huge difference in power gap. If you were to tell me this is compensation, I'd take that as a thinly veiled provocation to nerf AST.

If you were thinking about buffing Malefic so AST can recoup damage through their ST nuke, that's a new can of worms that the healer forums will probably chew you out for. Everyone's so sick of that in PvE. Forcing an increase in ST nuke means you want to heal as little as possible to keep up sustained dps, but due to the spiky nature of damage in PvP it's better to err on the side of caution than on the side of DPS so that also especially runs counter to how AST wants to play when leveraging limited dualcast charges.

If you were thinking about buffing Balance, you have to remember that is completely RNG so that's actually pretty bad in terms of card balance and opens up more issues. If you were to guarantee all cards will give a DPS increase in addition to whatever additional effect the other cards will provide, then you start stepping on BRD's toes.

[eeto]

It's a joke

Oh man... that's rough. Might as well just skip FL for the night cause they definitely aren't just queuing for one game.

I know it isn't their fault that FL design is flawed, but these players have a choice, and they've decided to actively partake in destroying and suck the fun out of FL.

I spoke with few of them when they were in my party. They acknowledged the fact that they are exploiting it, while it lasts.

[Cidel]

The "Frontline meta" is basically "farm kills for Battle High off of the ignorant masses who don't know how or when to a) Guard, b) Identify oncoming threats, c) Focus targets 1st that don't have their finger over a 10-second invulnerability skill, d) stay with their team, and sometimes e) utilize Recuperate (sad, but I see it regularly)."

The thing is, DRK's pull-in+salted earth (and LB) is an extremely effective way to take advantage of all of those traits. The reason its so effective is because most people queuing Frontlines:

1) Don't know how to identify a DRK initiating a pull-in (or CC them) and their 1st instict is to run away- not Guard (which causes them to die to any and all follow-ups),
2) Do not understand the concept of tanks and melee having larger defense modifiers than ranged dps and healers, and tend to fixate on whatever happens to be closest/easier to Tab target even if it's literally the hardest target they could pick to kill.
3) Do not bother changing targets and will often continue to stubbornly spam their keys on even DRKs and PLDs; who usually (and in the case of DRKs, almost certainly) are prepared to burn their LB- effectively making them unkillable for 10 seconds, causing them to waste precious burst phases and LBs. And some people still refuse to stop beating on invincible targets.

In addition to those, DRK happens to be the only job in most Frontlines scenarios that literally shapes the flow of any given engagement. The pull-in is deceptively large and can grab an unnaturally large group of people into a concentrated spot; which in turn makes it easy for their entire team to use their AoE toolkit and be guaranteed a large number of kills and assists, and having their LB as a follow-up not only makes them essentially immune to repercussions, but in itself does respectable AoE damage which is only compounded if the DRK has high levels of Battle High.

Even though there exists specific counterplays to DRK shenanigans, they're often temporary and requires individuals saving their entire CC kits specifically to delay one DRK for a couple seconds. Indeed, the best way to deal with them is reacting with Guard and crawling away, but WAR and DNC/RPR wingmen are uncommon, but not unheard of. Of course, this is asking too much of most casual Frontline participants; after all, these are some of the same people who routinely accumulate Vuln stacks or even repeatedly die to old, routine PvE content- so expecting them to react accordingly to dynamic PvP situations is a stretch. That's not to say Frontlines should continuously be dumbed down for them, but the fact that one job can impose entire teams to basically expend their limited Guard resource or die... That's almost about as unhealthy as PLDs basically making captures uninterruptable with Guardian.

As for ASTs; I mean, yeah, coordinated Macrocosmos can be lethal. The stacking of many AoEs are lethal; even SCHs. The thing about ASTs is they are squishy; you have a few attentive players with ranged options and you can heavily dissuade or even kill an AST running up to try and use it. The problem is your average Frontliner won't. They'll see the DRK running in (or not, maybe they suck), maybe with a WAR or two, and decide that's what they'll blow their 0 Battle High burst on, and keep going even after the DRK pops Eventide... Your average person queuing Frontline is just not very savvy to these things, hence all the "lolPvP" sentiments and Twitch "I sleep" spam whenever there's a live letter addressing it, but when they actually set foot in PvP they make an absolute clown of themselves like someone joining an EX farm group without a clear or even looking at a guide 1st.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

No, the origins of a bad idea doesn't really change whether it is good or not, now does it? and no, I don't view AST as a "plague", might want to take a look at some of the other jobs.

And no, the amount of detail that I want to add in a post is up to me, as is whether or not I want to continue in a thread. You're free to discount it if you feel that it's baseless, on the other hand I wouldn't be so fast to read aggression in my intent.

Never claimed the idea to be good, only wanted to clarify that the idea is not what I want or think is good but rather what I expect them to do.

Fair enough on the latter part.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

[...]

Sorry, would moving 4000 damage from Macrocosmos elsewhere really "kill the job design of AST"? A 12000 dmg Macro with 8000 dmg Gravity II vs a 8000 dmg Macro with 12000 dmg Gravity II would not kill the job design, only move where the damage is placed.

You bring forth a good point regarding the Dualcast feedback, so the idea is what I now mentioned, moving the damage portion to the normal Gravity II cast. It would not force more usage of Dualcast onto Gravity II yet would keep the AOE burst strong within a 5y radius (Gravity II) while reducing Macro's output for AST nuke squadding. The extra compensation from this would be Gravity II simply coming with a 15s recast so you get +4000*n dmg every 30s total. Not too crazy.

Good point with the Draw btw, I don't know why but I thought Draw's recast was currently 30s so that's off the table. 15s recast Draw would mean you could chain card after card.

That said, I would not disregard potential changes such as changing the spam button (Malefic) just because PVE does PVE things. What happens there stays there. But at this point I don't think it would be beneficial to buff it.

[brancinaed]

I have some ideas how to have a larger impact in games where there are lots of DRK/DRG/AST. Play Samurai or Reaper to counter this meta. Both these jobs absolutely crush it, but I see fewer of them recently.

Dark Knight and Dragoon both have so much AOE damage they have a hard time avoiding Hissatsu: Chiten. Samurai can shut down their battle highs so easily with smart use of Zantetsuken.

Reapers should aggressively Hell's Ingress into the back line and force healers back, to panic, or sometimes kill them while having the safety of Regress. Tenebrae Lemurum is such a good ultimate for causing disruption to forced engages. If aware enough to identify the engaging players Reaper can disrupt half of them with uncleansable CC which ruins engages.