Battle High

[Blueyes]

What are the community's thoughts on Battle High?

Are players satisfied with the mechanic as is? Would you describe it as a positive or negative aspect of PvP? If you think it should be adjusted, would you like to see it changed in a minor or major way? Do you think Battle High should stay or be removed entirely? Let's get a discussion going.

[Valence]

It's complicated.

- I like that it rewards good play.
- I don't like how it snowballs for the winning team.
- I like that it pushes competent teams to go for kills in order to build BH in order to secure victories.
- I don't like how it goes completely out of hand with the current kitchen sink / DRK meta.
- I don't like how it doesn't come with drawbacks, like decreased innate DR.
- I don't like how it relies on kills, the system is way too unstable and inaccurate to properly calculate when to land the killing blow, turning it into a gigantic lottery, and it also rewards kill stealing, or specific jobs that have blessed damage OGCDs to weave/spamm in order to leech kills.

[Aravell]

I do like the battle high system as a way to push players into engaging in PvP and rewarding those that do engage in PvP. But I think the system is outdated in the current format.

The battle high system was built for a time when jobs had little self-healing and often required dedicated healers to keeping them alive. But in the modern format, battle high is entirely too easy to get and maintain, so I do feel it should have drawbacks.

Since the biggest criticism of battle high is that it allows the team that's ahead to get even farther ahead, I'd say the damage up from it should come with negatives as well to balance it out.

My personal suggestion is to remove the healing received boost and add an 8% vuln up on every stack of battle high, so you'd have a whopping 40% damage taken increase at max battle high. Also, the healing received boost is overkill now that everyone can spam self-heals up to 4 times with no CD. These 2 things would make battle high a riskier thing to have, and it would also allow the teams that are behind to have a fighting chance since the team with stacked battle highs would do more damage but also die a lot faster.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

It should definitely see its adjustment. Easiest (albeit laziest) would be increasing damage taken the higher your BH gets. Alternatively, have BH affects differently depending on jobs played in FL since every PvP balance patch has always been to cater to CC situation. Since they won't make a frontline-exclusive kits, why wouldn't they use the outdated BH that purpose? That might be a balancing nightmare on their end though.

[Cidel]

I think they can afford to eliminate the healing perk. Everyone is sitting on several self-heals and a massive full HP/MP restore elixir by simply excusing themselves out of the fight. Before they tack-on vulnerability/defense-decreasing modifiers, I think a less scorched-earth drawback that's actually sorely needed would be to nerf the Limit Break gauge speed the higher your BH level is. Limit Breaks are where things in FL start to get ridiculous. Things like BH5 AoE LB nukes from DRGs, SMNs or WHMs become less of an issue when they can't happen as often and BH5 DRKs not having their Limit Break to fall-back on and God-mode out of an alliance focus-firing them at almost every engagement would keep them from being as oppressive as they are now.

0 BH players can keep their regular Limit Break gauge speed, with percentage modifiers slowing down the rate the higher you go. Quite frankly, at BH4-5 you shouldn't need (or get) constant Limit Breaks as a crutch, especially when your LB can floor entire alliances when you're at BH5 damage levels.

[Mawlzy]

In a mode where the winner is frequently determined by the team with a premade, BH gives solo players something to strive for. The heal boost seems too much though.

[Nubrication]

What are the community's thoughts on Battle High?

Are players satisfied with the mechanic as is? Would you describe it as a positive or negative aspect of PvP? If you think it should be adjusted, would you like to see it changed in a minor or major way? Do you think Battle High should stay or be removed entirely? Let's get a discussion going.

A 1.0 player eh? I think it's fine. If it gets removed, tanks and melee will be absolutely OP because of the innate dmg reduction. People tunnel vision already, imagine FL where the tunneling lasts even longer because nobody is dying.

Also, BH5 gives decent players something to work towards when their team is bad. There are times when an alliance just can't get anything done, so the least the individual player can do is get BH5 from kills. Imagine if your team is bad but you can't even secure kills because everybody seems tankier due to no BH. So you know you're going to lose because of subpar alliance, and you can't secure kills cause no BH - I think that's gonna get boring real fast.

[Eastwall]

I like the soaring High in rival wing better than this.

[Mistress_Irika]

It's been through at least one adjustment since I've been playing. I do miss when players were rewarded additional points for killing players that had a bounty (Battle Fever) on their heads. However, it's balanced for the most part. I would like to see one minor adjustment, and it's what everyone is saying thus far: remove the personal healing increase for battle high. The extra damage I'll leave that up for debate. The extra sustain from the heal increase is overkill and somewhat broken. BH5 melees and tanks with a 50% dmg reduction (preset), 50% dmg increase, and a 50% personal heal increase? Umm....

[Zeastria]

I'm more for remove [Battle High] in FL.
I pref more skill-rewarding PvP play;
that rewards skill/experience/teamwork over BH farming and job stacking (ability)abuse.