Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

[Mistress_Irika]

You're not going to be able to fix player behavior. You can nuke premades from frontlines entirely, and you'll still have those same people that will avoid fighting. You'll have the same people that'll ping objectives and tell other to let them fight. There's no getting rid of them.

Having battle high is fair. As someone mentioned before, take away the healing advantages that battle high gives. Taking away battle high entirely is just going to reinforce doing objectives only.

[Aravell]

TLDR: Game mode has changed -> survival is more self-reliant -> recuperate bonus is needed.

It's actually because survival is more on the individual that I think the healing boost from BH is unbalanced. You had to rely on others to survive fights back then, so the healing boost was justified to make that easier. But now you rely only on yourself to survive, the healing boost is unnecessary because you don't have to work with a healer anymore, it all depends on your own play.

Also, if you remember Battle Fever, then you must also remember how hard it was to get (only kills counted, no assists) and how easy it was to lose it (you lost all of it on death, doesn't just halve it like now). You could very easily just lose it all if you got caught by a Cometeor and 2 Bravers back then, unless you had a pocket SCH.

The game mode has changed and so a rebalancing does seem in order. What I think is fair is that if BH remains this easy to stack, they need to nerf the benefits of it, or they could revert to only being able to stack it on kills and losing it all on death to justify the strength of BH in the current FL.

[Mawlzy]

It's actually because survival is more on the individual that I think the healing boost from BH is unbalanced. You had to rely on others to survive fights back then, so the healing boost was justified to make that easier. But now you rely only on yourself to survive, the healing boost is unnecessary because you don't have to work with a healer anymore, it all depends on your own play.

Also, if you remember Battle Fever, then you must also remember how hard it was to get (only kills counted, no assists) and how easy it was to lose it (you lost all of it on death, doesn't just halve it like now). You could very easily just lose it all if you got caught by a Cometeor and 2 Bravers back then, unless you had a pocket SCH.

The game mode has changed and so a rebalancing does seem in order. What I think is fair is that if BH remains this easy to stack, they need to nerf the benefits of it, or they could revert to only being able to stack it on kills and losing it all on death to justify the strength of BH in the current FL.

I imagine jobs that splatter the field with low-damage AoEs and DOTs would have an issue with that.

[Nubrication]

It's actually because survival is more on the individual that I think the healing boost from BH is unbalanced. You had to rely on others to survive fights back then, so the healing boost was justified to make that easier. But now you rely only on yourself to survive, the healing boost is unnecessary because you don't have to work with a healer anymore, it all depends on your own play.

4x15000 heals = 60000 HP. That's literally nothing when 7+ people are trying to bash your brains in. I'm not even counting the BH that they (the 7+ players) might have or their crowd control. You seem to be overestimating the power of recuperate. The real reason why it seems OP is because players don't crowd control correctly. Stun your BH5 target who is at full HP? Chances are he's going to get away, unless you got a whole alliance on him.

I think it IS balanced simply because you can't rely on your healers anymore, so the only way to heal yourself really, is to rely on yourself. A melee in a really good premade back then was impossible to kill. Like literally. I'm talking about 20+ kills and 0 deaths, which was insane back then. The only way to stop a good premade was to make a counter full party premade of PvP players. Now, even premade melees can easily die. BH5 players are easier to kill then BF players BECAUSE anyone can get BH now. So ANYONE can do more dmg, more heals. So that's why I think recuperate should heal more per BH. Also, because of all the AOEs now, it's definitely needed. You remember the fiasco early on of Onsal/New Pvp Mode? Where everyone was WHM/SMN and alliances got wiped before they could even get into melee/mid range. Then they swapped to all SCH (simply imagine 8 buffed SCH debuffs and you have an unbuffed recuperate at BH5, how exactly do you think that's gonna work out?). Then the PLD HG cheese. And now finally we have the DRK/DRG/(AST) meta. Shoot, when Secure first came out, everybody was WHM holy spamming lmao.

Also, if you remember Battle Fever, then you must also remember how hard it was to get (only kills counted, no assists) and how easy it was to lose it (you lost all of it on death, doesn't just halve it like now). You could very easily just lose it all if you got caught by a Cometeor and 2 Bravers back then, unless you had a pocket SCH.

Can't relate, I got BF like 95% of my games, with or without the premades I used to run with.

[Aravell]

I think it IS balanced

I guess agree to disagree then. It seems like we've both had vastly different experiences with FL. I'm not overestimating the power of Recuperate because I've seen people barely get out with no MP, all defensives down and less than 5000 HP. If Recuperate wasn't buffed by their BH, they'd be dead. I think those people who overstay do deserve to be a kill, FL should be about ebb and flow, 22500 heal from Recuperate does allow you to stay out that little bit longer, which could net you a kill that you otherwise would have backed off from and couldn't get. 4x7500 is 30000, that's quite a hefty amount of extra HP if you use Recuperate well and get as much effect out of it as possible.

Can't relate, I got BF like 95% of my games, with or without the premades I used to run with.

I also could get BF in most games where I played a DPS, but I mostly played healers back then, which means very little chance to stack BH.

What is an undeniable fact though, is that it was harder than it is now. The patch they changed BH stacking to include assists, WHMs were getting BH5 by spamming Medica II. I think I'd rather see it reverted to kills only, honestly.

[Niroken]

I also could get BF in most games where I played a DPS, but I mostly played healers back then, which means very little chance to stack BH.

What is an undeniable fact though, is that it was harder than it is now. The patch they changed BH stacking to include assists, WHMs were getting BH5 by spamming Medica II. I think I'd rather see it reverted to kills only, honestly.

I'm confused. Are you saying that healers should have a lower chance to stack BH?

[Neoyoshi]

I havn't flung myself belly-first into Frontline since the most recent update that altered data points; i wonder how that affected frontline(?)

[Colt47]

I havn't flung myself belly-first into Frontline since the most recent update that altered data points; i wonder how that affected frontline(?)

Not a whole lot. It's still basically like schools of fish flocking around one another to make it hard for the predator to pick one of the guppies out and eat them. And in general while the PvP changes going into endwalker are good, what they need is literal NPCs and a gambit system to get this thing working. PvP is basically going to die out anyway since it either grows stale too quickly (Crystaline Conflict) or is an RNG mini-game with Frontlines that most people forget to do anyway. I went all the way to rank 25 twice to get the special armor coffers from the last two that had them and I am barely rank 7 on this one from sheer burnout.

[IDontPetLalas]

I havn't flung myself belly-first into Frontline since the most recent update that altered data points; i wonder how that affected frontline(?)

If your question pertains to popularity- I have yet to see a FL queue exceed 5 minutes, frequently less. So some people may explicitly not queue for Shatter, however I haven't really seen a difference.

[Mawlzy]

If your question pertains to popularity- I have yet to see a FL queue exceed 5 minutes, frequently less. So some people may explicitly not queue for Shatter, however I haven't really seen a difference.

We might not get a clearer picture until after the Mogtome event. But agree, given the complaints about FL (including from me), the queue times suggest it's popular. Whether that popularity is driven mostly by XP and rewards is harder to determine.