List of 7.1 PvP Change Grievances

[ThaCa]

SMN here… loaded into FL last night and even though not much has really changed on my bar, for some reason I could not get Mountain Buster to work! I would press it and nothing would happen. I tried it on the Wolves Den striking dummies after and it worked fine, so I’m not sure why it wasn’t working. Also, Slipstream tool tip seems about the same, but I no longer see the ring on the ground after I cast it. Is there some sort of setting that got changed, or is it really invisible now?

Ended up switching to PCT after I couldn’t get Mountain Buster to work. At least not much changed there, although I was hoping they’d find a way to add Hammer Stamp. lol

Mountain Buster is now close range frontal cone attack towards your target.

[Teno]

Not sure why, but it feels like the people that designed 6.1 PVP actions were replaced by the main job designers. A lot of flavor was removed from jobs such as RDM's light/dark, or MCH's wildfire now needing 5 hits so you really need to pair it with the double hit that grats overheat to get all shots in, and suddenly several jobs gets basic buff abilities. It almost feels like every single job is becoming more burst focused, kinda like in PVE.

This was my thought exactly. Some of these changes have a bad smell similar to their pve dumbing down.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Mountain Buster is now close range frontal cone attack towards your target.

Ah I see… maybe I wasn’t close enough. I’ll test it out again tonight.

[Scintilla]

The class changes I suppose I can live with, even if I may not like all of them. However, one thing that I cannot stand is the ridiculously slow response rate. Any skill takes forever for it to cast, having to spam the skill repeatedly for an age before it finally decides to work. To attack feels slow and a chore. To defend what would've been a perfectly survivable onslaught before can feel almost impossible now, with any attempt to defend or heal requiring a full week to take effect.

PvP feels slower, less reactive. I very much hope that they've had the same feedback across all of the communities and that they listen to it, because it'll be yet another nail in the coffin of FFXIV PvP if it stays like this

[Volfe]

I kinda enjoy having to plan my moves and predict more, but they should've balanced some classes better around the delayed attacks.

So far I've mostly tested my mains.

Monk's phantom rush makes no sense, your targets somehow notice you just beat the shit out of them at the last second. Also, why is throwing rocks at people for 6k even a skill? I'd take the old stun without the additional damage instead of that.

Reaper just felt better to play with the way its skills were arranged before, it seems harder to hit a big juicy death warrant now. Though I'm fine with the separation of extra damage from your shield, and LB stills works fine.

Black mage... Not sure if it's worse or better, maybe just got to get used to it. Seems way easier to bully and you just gotta retreat into ice mode.

[JeJenkoJenko]

Harmonic Arrow's wind up animation is insane compared to Empyrean Arrow. It feels so awful to play with.

[Post]

I'm going to try and keep Reinhardt_Azureheim's post in mind as I reply as I quite literally only played for about 90 minutes and I'm fairly sure that a lot of my immediate reaction to the new style of closer-to-animation effects of actions and "Hit detection of PvP actions" as they refer to it in the patch notes is just that it's so vastly different that I'm going to have to relearn everything.

So I'll lead with tangible points that are more or less limited to a couple jobs, starting with GNB:
The fact that Nebula is now tied to Fated Circle means that you cannot preemptively apply the shield before leading a push unless you're willing to give up at least 8000 AoE damage. I dislike this for the brief amount that I played, but maybe it's not as big a deal with the slower, "more sustained damage" pace of the game.

WAR:
The stun on Primal Rend is now tied to when I land on the target instead of when I execute the action (aligning with the damage). This has had me both miss stuns on players because they purified while I was already airborne, land stuns on players because my target regrouped while I was airborne, and stun players that I began the action on while they were still guarding because guard ended before I landed on them. It's very different and maybe I'll grow to appreciate it, but...

DNC:
Similarly, you can just walk out of Contradance before it 'applies', or walk in long after the DNC began and get hit. I guess this is more reactive for the defending side and more 'fuck it!' for the DNC themselves; can't cover yourself to try and extend Contradance with Purify anymore either cuz it's only lasts 3 seconds.

MCH:
Even though we all have more HP and MCH's limit break stayed at 36,000, you can just Guard when you see the crosshairs on you. I'm pretty sure this means MCH's garbage now. It lost its AoE heavy and the vuln on its bishop autoturret (though it gets it on its weaker Chainsaw). Its knockback is less unique with additions like Blast Arrow knockback (which also has 25yalms of range, double Scattergun's 12) as well as Drill being weaker and less uniquely able to pierce Guard (compare NIN's 12k+ for free without MCH's Analysis opportunity cost).

My feeling just from this brief foray is that they changed a lot of stuff for the sake of changing (which isn't necessarily bad in competitive games from time to time for freshness?), but they didn't really do much of a pass on it for creativity or balance, seeing as a lot of the changes are "make x weaker so we can fit PvE action y in as a combo from x."

They're also letting us playtest it, which maybe this isn't too different with how it was in 6.1, which I wasn't around for, but it seemed cleaner from afar. That said they had already changed a bunch including nerfing/buffing the now wholly different old versions of SCH and BLM, which also felt more interesting? by the time I returned in 6.2.

[Mawlzy]

WAR:
The stun on Primal Rend is now tied to when I land on the target instead of when I execute the action (aligning with the damage). This has had me both miss stuns on players because they purified while I was already airborne, land stuns on players because my target regrouped while I was airborne, and stun players that I began the action on while they were still guarding because guard ended before I landed on them. It's very different and maybe I'll grow to appreciate it, but...

It feels like WAR was tested on striking dummies and they shrugged and said "yeah, that'll do."

Maybe it has potential. Like there are probably some configurations of enemies where the apparent randomness can be quite destructive. Something that's very disconcerting though is while you're standing in the beginning of the Primal Rend animation lock, the skill quite frequently indicates the target has gone out of range with the "x" appearing, but eventually you fly through the air and blap it.

[Akimitsu]

BLM: Used to be a well rounded job that could deal very high AOE damage and pressure, a high risk high reward job. Now a clunky mess, who's often better off spamming instant ice spells after using wreath of fire because of the difficulty of just sitting there and casting fire spells. A lot of effort for unrewarding damage in general. Burst often just fails to hit anyone after Aetherial Manipulation because of the new hit detection. The limit break doesn't feel good to use anymore.

SGE: Phlegma into Psyche: While this could have been a very good alternative to the absurd double Phlegma we previously had (that forced one of the squishiest classes to go in melee range and stay there for 2 attacks), because of the new hit detection and the 3y halved potency this just doesn't feel impactful. The reduction of shields on Panhaima is also a very weird choice. The LB in FL was and still is terrible outside of its defensive utility.

SCH: The new SCH is just an awful mess, with nonexistent pressure, left to spam broil until their LB is up for some more underwhelming damage.
(This next art is mostly about FL) My main issue with the job in its previous iteration was that to have the best amount of presssure on enemy teams, you'd have to adlo yourself to buff your damage, and thus possibly being short on a heal to help allies. This is now fixed but at what cost...

SMN: Crimson Strike's input is too fast after Crimson Cyclone, unlike Mountain buster which is the ideal immediate follow up to Cyclone.

WHM: Glare IV's input is too fast after Seraph Strike.

RPR: The changes on this job are baffling, it used to have an actual flow and some logic behind it, but like someone commenting on another thread said, it's now a job that revolves around pressuring a target below 50% with a toolkit that barely feels adapted for that task.

AST: Turned into a no risk high reward class, and if I'm not mistaken, the radius of gravity has been increased by 3 yalms too...? The loss of the previous cards is also sad.

NIN: I'm not sure Shukuchi + Doton was ever bug or not but it was fun... The delay on Hyosho is horrible.

MCH: The LB suffers from the new hit detection more than any other LB. 5 hits to get the maximum amount of damage out of wildfire is too much. Turret has its (limited) uses but it's been nerfed now and frankly it's a weird skill.

[Elissar]

damn i used to love junction mechanism of GNB exactly because of job identity....and that was an interesting skill test vs DPS and tanks..