A detailed feedback of an high-ranked Crystalline Conflict player on 7.1 PvP changes.

[Lybal]

Hi ! with the new PVP changes from Dawntrail, I feel like now is an important time to give feedback to the dev team, and so I post here in hope to improve this gamemode for the better.
My focus will be on Crystalline Conflict, while I do play a bit of Frontline and Rival Wings I am not nearly as invested and knowledgeable about them, I also did not play them this patch yet.
I will also avoid talking about balance and more about job design and game design
And last, I will only talk in detail about jobs I played and used to play regularly.

But before that, let me introduce myself and my background :

- I play Crystalline Conflict since season 1 on Chaos
- In season 1, I reached a peak of 7k points, higher than the #1 player at the end of the season
- I went on to get top 10 in every season I played (season 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11)
- I ended up rank #1 in season 8, holding #2 as well that same season on Light
- I play a variety of jobs, melee jobs for most of them : RPR, SAM, MNK, DRK, GNB, RDM, DNC
- I got to play on stage in the tournament organized during fanfest 2023 as a finalist with my friends !
(This is purely informative, I do not mean to brag about my results)


My feedback on the hit detection :

The hit detection change seems to be received either badly or with mixed feelings by the community from what I read in the EU community so far.

As for me, I believe it to be a necessary evil of sorts, damage calculations being frontloaded led to extremely unfair situations for the person on the receiving end, dying multiple seconds after guard is up was one of the most common complaint people had when trying out PvP, as for other who kept up with PvP, they had to work their way around the jankiness of that system.

Now however, roles seems to be reversed, you can more reliably guard and mitigate damage before you receive it, but the frustration instead comes when you're the attacker, and your damage comes up 1 or more second after you pressed your GCD

The main problem of the new hit detection is that it is extremely reliant on how long animations are, and FFXIV animations being very flashy, they tend to be very long, while it pose no issues at all in PVE, in PVP it is extremely relevant.

Unfortunately, I can't think of a way around that problem that doesn't involve remaking a lot of animations and taking away from the aesthetic FFXIV is going for, it is also a solution that requires a lot of work from developers.

[Lybal]

So, if we are to work with our current options and choose between frontloaded calculations as it was before and backloaded calculations as it is now, I definitely want the new system.

My reasoning is that it is always better to favor the defender rather than the attacker, as it is a lot more frustrating to die when you felt like you reacted as fast as you could given the information you had, than it is to miss an opportunity to kill due to your damage being delayed.
As the attacker, you also still have options to work around the delay and kill your enemies, you can use an attack with a long animation into one with a short animation to line up burst, and you have ways to kill your opponent like stuns where the delay won't matter as much.

However, while Guard, Purify and Recuperate are relatively fast and thus reliable with this new system (ignoring Purify bug), some defensive skills inherent to jobs did not benefit from the change such as Riddle of Earth that is now even more delayed than it was before, and if animation changes were to be made, those skills should be the first candidates.

In the end, I think that even if the hit detection change is received with mixed feelings by the community, it should stay as I believe it to be a net positive in the long term as players adjust to these changes.


A detailed feedback on my favorite jobs :


Reaper :

I am very dissapointed of the changes made to RPR :

- Harvest Moon deals more damage the lower the health of the opponent, however Reaper doesn't have enough good GCD to lower the target's health before you can get good value out of Harvest Moon
- Reaper doesn't have any good damaging oGCD anymore, this is a problem because now your damage is too spread out to get enough value out of Death Warrant.
- Death Warrant having no oGCD attached to it feels very bad, if the target dies before it hits it is completely wasted, a scenario quite common, it puts Reaper players in a constant dilemma : "Should I activate Death Warrant early to make sure I get a bit of damage or activate it later and risk to waste it completely ?"

The design of Reaper has a lot of anti-synergy, the different skills do not work together, if feels like they exist on their own.
Note that I do not have any problem with RPR Limit Break, it is mostly unchanged and still feels very nice !

One of my main fear is that these issues are not due to numbers, but a lot more to the design of the job as a whole, and changing skills is more time consuming and and a more heavy decision for a developer to make than just changing numbers, thus I am afraid that Reaper will stay in this state for a while.

[Lybal]

To me, Reaper needs 3 main changes to make it flow better with his current kit :

- A damaging oGCD to fit in Death Warrant (Harvest Moon felt very satisfying as an oGCD)
- Your main damaging GCD should not scale on missing health (Gibbet and Gallow could be reintroduced in some form instead of Harvest Moon)
- Give some buff or oGCD attached to Death Warrant as to give it some value even if the compiled damage doesn't take effect (Death Warrant could give a buff that would make your main damaging gcd available for exemple)


Samourai :

On the opposite end, I am very pleased with changes made to Samourai :

- Having 4 strong GCD and a lower cooldowns on Ogi Namikiri means that now you have a much better uptime, SAM used to feel quite weak when his cooldowns were down but now you always have something available when you need it if you manage well your GCD.
- Zanshin is a very very good addition, it can be used to combo for damage or a sustaining tool depending on the situation, and it being linked to Chiten feels like you always get value out of Chiten even if the enemy doesn't attack you

My pain points are very small in comparison but still notable :

- Tendo Setsugekka and his follow-up should be 6 yalms, the current range is not consistent with his PVE counterpart and feels very small for PvP, it gets cancelled very often and is very frustrating for the Samourai player.
With 6 yalms, enemies could still reliably outrun it with mobility tools, but as a Samourai player, it would get canceled much less often while spacing, and it would allow for reliable setup like Dash => Tendo Setsugekka on a target running away without sprint, right now SAM has no way to ensure Tendo can land
- Much less important, I wish Oka had something to differentiate it from Mangetsu, this is a minor detail to me but I liked having my 3 gcd all doing something different to make for more options

Overall, Samourai changes manages to fit in really well with all the tools the job kept, while keeping the same satisfying flow, for me it is a great success.

[Lybal]

Dark Knight :

Dark Knight overall didn't change much, and for one I am very happy for it.
I know players who play largescale PvP dislike Dark Knight a lot for Salted Earth, but I think for Crystalline Conflict, it is an excellent design.

Dark Knight is a job which requires you to take a lot of risks to get the most value out of it's kit by lowering his health, making for a very tense gameplay as you walk a fine line between life and death, and I like that Impalement follows that design logic.

The damage nerf on Eventide is well deserved as the job already has a lot of tools to deal Aoe damage along with Salted Earth, and Disesteem spread out that Aoe damage over an additional GCD that gives you an additional option in case you need a ranged attack.

To me, the changes reinforces the existing design of Dark Knight in an healthy way, and it's nice to not change too much what isn't broken and instead build up on it !


Monk :

I did not get to play it much yet but I do already have some strong issues with MNK :

- Flint Strike feels useless and out of place, the damage on it is low, it is lower than the average damage of the base combo and everytime you use it you do not build up Phantom Strike which is a much better gcd to have burst damage leading to a kill.
The only upside is it's range, yet MNK always felt like that one melee job that do not play range at all, even in PVE it works around downtime differently with very little ranged GCD, having a short cooldown ranged GCD in PVP feels out of place and it does not synergize with the rest of the kit.
I think if MNK should have a ranged GCD, it should be on a long cooldown, and before Enlightnement already fulfilled that role.

- The knockback on Wind's Reply is now very unreliable due to the lack of stun
In other job kits, knockback is seen on BRD and MCH as a way to push melee out of range, but in MNK case, Enlightnement was also a way to bring enemies back to your team.
However, knockback have always been unreliable due to other player's position being slightly off on your perspective, and the stun often served as a reliable way to knockback players where you wanted it to, now however it doesn't exist and it is very difficult to judge where you're going to push the enemy.

I feel like while Monk is still good, it isn't as satisfying to play as the changes really disrupted the flow of the job.

[Lybal]

Overall impact on changes on Crystalline Conflict games :

Small disclaimer : The patch still being very new, this part is more of a first impression than a solid opinion

Maximum health being higher, hit detection changes, as well as job design and additional skills led to people dying less from burst damage.

A lot of new skills came in the form of powerful GCD, while potency of old and new skills seems higher overall, they are more spread out over more GCDs, at the same time healing is mostly unchanged.
This leads to a shift where players die less from unavoidable and frustrating death and attackers require a bit more coordination to achieve the same burst as before.

However, mana also depletes more quickly and players need to back off more often to replenish ressources.

If the goal of the design team was to reduce burst damage in favor of sustained damage to change the way games plays out, I think they nailed it pretty well !

Most importantly, there's a difficult balance to maintain between keeping burst damage low enough so that players need to coordinate to kill someone on the same skill level, and sustained damage high enough so that players can be punished for their mistakes.

And so far, I think this balance is pretty good.

However, as players get used to changes and bugs get fixed, I believe players will die less and less, but to me it isn't too big of an issue as it can be fixed just by adjusting numbers with nerfs and buffs.

Overall, I'm happy with the changes, but I do feel like some jobs got the short end of the stick, I complained about Monk and Reaper in this post, but I do not doubt that some people attached to other jobs I do not play also have complaints, and I hope for them as well as for me that the team working on PvP can take their input in account.



Thank you for reading !


I took a lot of time writing this post to give feedback as constructive as possible, I'd have taken the time to write more if possible but I think that is already enough and most importantly I did not play enough to feel like my opinion on other jobs would be relevant.

[ThaCa]

Very good points all around!

If only they managed to fix Purify, then the new system should allow for more counter play and less getting globaled. Sometimes server ticks still mess people up, for example I managed to Mircale of Nature a person whose shield already appaeared on my screen.

With addition of more crowd control to more Jobs it allows more different team compositions at least some form of control, which I consider good (IF only purify would work properly).

One of the things I would really like though is addition of allowing people to place follow-up skills on the hotbar, it's a minor gripe since most Jobs don't feel like they need it but on WHM having Glare IV tied to Seraph Strike feels bit clunky as I use the same button for dash on pretty much every Job and having it suddenly turn into an attack makes it feel bit awkward.

[Mikey_R]

Just a quick one on the hit detection. I agree that it needed to change for some, Primal Rend for example, however, for others, it seems to go overboard. Using Monk as an example, the damage goes out at the end of the animation, for Phantom Rush, you are pressing the next GCD as the damage applies, which is a full 1.80 seconds after the button press. I mentioned this in the monk thread, but you can press Phantom Rush, press Rising Phoenix and, because of the PR delay, PR gets buffed. Whilst it is a nice bit of trivia, it is also very counterintuitive (it also behaves the same with Demolish).

Now, whilst that damage going out is based on the end of the animation, going to Reaper, their base combo and Executioner's Guillotine apply the damage on the first hit of the animation. With Executioner's Guillotine and Infernal Slice having long animations, it would make a massive difference in when the damage goes out.

I can point to other cases where there are differences, PLD seems to be at the end, DRK is at the start, SAM is at the start, except Tendo, first hit is quite late, second hit is relatively quick, so it is a big burst of 20,000 damage, which seems to be intended. This isn't an exhaustive list, but even with basic attacks, the rules for the delay aren't consistent and needs to be addressed.

[Lybal]

Just a quick one on the hit detection. I agree that it needed to change for some, Primal Rend for example, however, for others, it seems to go overboard. Using Monk as an example, the damage goes out at the end of the animation, for Phantom Rush, you are pressing the next GCD as the damage applies, which is a full 1.80 seconds after the button press. I mentioned this in the monk thread, but you can press Phantom Rush, press Rising Phoenix and, because of the PR delay, PR gets buffed. Whilst it is a nice bit of trivia, it is also very counterintuitive (it also behaves the same with Demolish).

Now, whilst that damage going out is based on the end of the animation, going to Reaper, their base combo and Executioner's Guillotine apply the damage on the first hit of the animation. With Executioner's Guillotine and Infernal Slice having long animations, it would make a massive difference in when the damage goes out.

I can point to other cases where there are differences, PLD seems to be at the end, DRK is at the start, SAM is at the start, except Tendo, first hit is quite late, second hit is relatively quick, so it is a big burst of 20,000 damage, which seems to be intended. This isn't an exhaustive list, but even with basic attacks, the rules for the delay aren't consistent and needs to be addressed.

Yeah, some attacks have animations that shows your character use multiple hits and for those cases it doesn't seem to be consistant, you could make a case that the damage could apply at the beginning or the end there's no clear answer, tbh I wonder how the game even decides when to apply damage for these, did they code the timing themself or does the game apply some arbitrary code to decide and it just so happens to give different results, but having a consistent rule for these would be nice.

[Themarvin]

if am competetative then you will have to adapt...