Personal feedback on new CC and a couple of jobs (MCH/DNC)

[Valence]

I decided to make my own thread because I do believe it would fit awkwardly as a simple reply to other threads. Sorry about that.

I have played a couple of Feast seasons before, one of which I ranked top 100, which is irrelevant. I have also played every CC season consistently since it has released in 6.1, and reached crystal every time with some top 100 sprinkled into the mix. I am by no means a top ranker or player, but I have played regularly with them all considering we meet the same people constantly once in crystal anyway. I do believe their opinion will be more informed than mine over some things, but I still wanted to tell my own history with pvp in XIV to explain where I'm coming from and say that I am no stranger to it and have played it over than gold/plat.



On Hit Detection and resolution delays

Having played with the new system more at length by now, my first initial reaction a couple of days ago was a bit like that kombucha girl, being at first intrigued by what it seemed to result into, but then, just no. It took me a bit of time to put words into it, but I do think I have started to nail some of the main grievances that really felt bad to me, and not just after the first games. It became even more annoying the more I played.

I have a lot of problems with this change, to put it bluntly. I do understand what was attempted and in fact, I do think that Guard feels outstanding to play right now after the changes, but it feels like a total overkill when you consider that it required to break everything else in its wake to address the common complaints from people unable to understand how snapshotting works in the game. That's fine, I understand it's not especially intuitive. But right now as a result, nothing else is, except Guard, and I do not think that's a net gain at all, quite the opposite.

- A lot of people have already pointed it out: everything being extremely delayed is problematic because it removes the overall snappiness of the game's response, and it feels excruciatingly bad to play as a result, and this alone should inform that the new system does not work. Any game that feels that awful to play, sucking the fun out of it, meaning that the prime component of any game, the "fun", is not a good game. Players have complained since forever that pvp in XIV lacks snappiness, lacks responsiveness, and feel disjointed especially on movement where a player can look to be somewhere on your screen when they're actually somewhere else entirely. Well now I do feel that we have the exact same disconnection with damage and effect resolution. I do not understand that when it was already a problem on positioning, this has been extended to the whole battle system as a whole. Instead of working on fixing the problems, we spread them to everything that was relatively untouched by them. The main mistake that the devs did is thinking that intuitive gameplay should be tied to the end of visual animations, when in reality it's tied to the buttons you press and the way they do resolve on your screen.

- Guard feels good now, definitely, but precisely because that is one of the only abilities that is more or less instant (even Recuperate takes ages to recup). If the whole idea was to make guard feels more intuitive, then it's a success, but at what cost? Wouldn't have it been better to work on making Guard behave like this in the old system first instead of breaking everything?

- I've seen the argument that it helps the defending parties and I partially agree with it. It does in a way that you can defend against something that you see being casted or happening to you, for instance being the target of a burst. It works precisely when Guard is up because Guard still works like the old model did. The problem becomes that once Guard is out, or when you're not using it because you're not actually being bursted down, everything is just delayed, and it makes defending actually harder because you think you're safe but suddenly see your health take crazy drops out of nowhere. It makes it a lot more confusing to actually follow up on when you're being attacked, and since it happens with a delay, sometimes you're already going further in when you shouldn't have like before. Before the change, as soon as you got hit, you'd react and back away. Right now, it feels like plunging your hand in a boiling pot except your nervous system has an awful delay so instead of instantly pulling it back, you keep in deep fried for seconds before realizing you're in actual pain.

- Keeping track of one's own attacks is absolutely awful now. You press keys and cross your fingers for things to go through essentially, and since some of them actually do resolve past one full second or two, you're already doing something else entirely. I stopped counting the amount of times I didn't even know what my actions did because I was either already busy on something else (I'm not gonna sit on my ass for seconds waiting to finally see the result of my actions), or because it was just too hard to track in the middle of everything else. It really feels like I'm playing from the moon, or that everything has suddenly been afflicted by the Spell in Waiting mechanics seen in the Eden raids in pve.

- Gambling. It's all about gambling now. You want to initiate something? You do, and you pray that the enemy will still be there when you actually land on them to AoE stun them, or start Contradance (oh boy I have a lot to say about this one). You just start something, at best get a feeling for it, then cross your fingers to land a good result because of everything that could happen in between. Why is it bad? Because this completely removes agency from players, since it becomes less about making a choice at a specific moment that will result in a good play, and more about throwing a dice. This as a result also removes a lot of skill expression in the mode, and I do hope that was not the disguised intent of the change..

- We already had a lot of delays in damage resolution in the old system actually. What was instant at snapshot was the ability calculations and the crowd control and other non damage/healing effects. Damage and healing could actually take time to resolve, much like in pve. Now everything is not only delayed, but it is also delayed up to the very tail end of the visual animations of every ability, so even damage and healing are even more delayed than they were already. Damage and healing being delayed is fine and actually good for the system because it helps counter plays and defense which leaves time for the players to react, but this is a bit much. It becomes a real problem when everything is backloaded at the end of animation, which means that not only the damage and healing happen there, but all the crowd control and effects also happen there at the same time, which is extremely bad for defense and counter play because the moment the player notices they get attacked, the damage already resolves as well and you're being presented with a done deal. The only thing that the player can notice, is a visual animation starting in their general direction and react preemptively...

I do think when you make such a sweeping change, you should either test it, or you should go by smaller increments to prevent a complete disaster, especially when your previous system actually works and proves popular. You could have just worked on Guard for starters. The rest worked very well. I do not understand why we had to tear it down (honestly, it's pve jobs that need to be teared down, not pvp...).

Please, please revert it because it's obviously dysfunctional, and if you really have to, work on it some more, test it, and make us try it out at a latter point?


Small preface on the job changes

Despite some obvious balance issues here and there and some jobs being left in the dust, which I do believe is the least of our worries because fixing balance is the easiest thing when it comes to adjusting numbers anyway, I do think that the new pvp jobs for 7.1, at least most of them, are very interesting and I like what I've seen so far. I want to thank the dev team for striving to keep them flavoured with their own unique identities and gameplays.


On Machinist

MCH has been my main job since Season 1 of Crystalline Conflict. I have mainly used it to climb through all seasons but the last couple that I did on DNC. I do play other roles here and there, but not that much in Ranked. I play almost everything in Casual though, because it's good to know what you're up against by playing it and understanding how it's played.

I do feel that the MCH job has it rough right now. What has been expanded upon is what should have been addressed or changed in my opinion:

- The Heat stacks and the whole mechanic of building up to overheat is neat in concept, but it doesn't work well in pvp at all. In the previous version for Endwalker, it was jut a gimmick that the player had on top of the actual kit. I'll explain why: you want to have control and agency over when to overheat or not and the problem is that it is tied to your filler attack, which is cumbersome and not really tied to choice. You also want to specifically have full control over its activation if you're after the 25% speed bonus that comes with it, else it's useless. So in reality and use, when you could benefit from the heat blast spamm and the speed increase happened when it happened and you lived to live with it. The heat blast spamm could be handy to trigger a WF from afar, else you generally relied on scattergun to do it, so it still had some value, but you had little control over it by the nature of pvp: when a burst happens, it happens, and you don't exactly have time to build up heat or start with a CASTED filler shot to get the last heat stack before finally being able to burst. In the new version for 7.1, we get an even more cumbersome Wildfire that requires not 3 but 5 shots to land for barely more potency. This takes literally ages to do and the only benefit I can maybe see is that it's longer than Guard even though a skilled player will just wait for the end to Guard like they did before anyway. WF is already a gigantic red flag and the actual use it has most of the time is to trigger Guard. Now we also have Full Metal Field that does initiate overheat, so you'll tell me that it's good right? Now we have control over when to use it? Well, yes and no because it's still incredibly cumbersome, is a giant tell from afar, and takes a full GCD of time anyway, so the only benefit is to force a 5 heat stack when you need one. In reality though, I do feel that considering the nature of pvp, you'll just use it for its AoE damage and pressure on the enemy. All in all, I think heat needs changing, you can keep the build up, but you need an actual button, oGCD if possible, to spend them whenever you like and that, I could go for.

- No more Heavy on Analyzed Bioblaster: it was already barely a reason to use it before, now you certainly made it easier to decide which tool to analyze, because I certainly ain't using Analyze on Bioblaster anymore now. Actually a huge nerf to the job in Frontline, ironically, where it was actually very good.

- The elephant in the room: with the new hit detection system, the Marksman's Spite LB has been turned into a joke. Anybody with Guard can just counter it and it takes ages to unload. You'll tell me that it just ensures that people keep track of Guard use and use the LB to punish people without Guard. Sure, yes, but it was also possible before. Fact is, that LB already had a lot of requirements for it to work: not enough damage, and the target went away and it was wasted, enough damage either in a coordinated burst or solo, and then it was a good LB, but also too much damage and overkill when the LB wasn't needed in the first place, and it was also a wasted LB. This alone added a lot of depth and decision making on the fly when the MCH had to consider a LOT of parameters before taking the shot, especially at high level, and especially when deciding to combine it with Wildfire (a big red flag) or not. No, it's just a fancy execute, and it really, really nerfed the job, and when I mean nerfed, I do mean nerfed; whether you agree with the change or not.

- Bishop Autoturret is pretty crazy now. 6k potency pulses is a damn lot. I don't mind it though, it gives a lot of utility to the job, but perhaps I wouldn't have taken this in exchange for all the nerfs above..


On Dancer

I need to preface it by saying that I absolute love the DNC additions.

- Special mention to Dance of the Dawn, which rewards the player and their partner incredibly well for getting kills and results, and the snowballing effect is absolutely delicious. I just want to emphasis how good, engaging and fun this is, and that it also rewards a savvy DNC player to swap partner around to someone else that would benefit from the LB generation or if just not to waste it on someone that already is capped.

- The change on mobility speed increase tied to Starfall is absolutely great as well, much, much better than the recast reduction of before.

- Honing Dance is absolutely wild with the buffs and I love it. I really makes it rewarding to use considering how dangerous the skill has always been, and it really feeds into the support role of the job.

- Fan Dance: while the 20% defense is pretty high now, I do feel that this skill suffers a little from that it really conflicts with itself. Generally you'll use it for the AoE damage pressure and for the burst, even with the reduced potency it now has. Perhaps I'm wrong though and you need to actually sit on it either for LB or partners being in trouble, which I'm sure was the aim of the change. Definitely adds more skill expression considering how short the new duration is (5s), but I can't help but feel that the skill is a little schyzophrenic in what it wants to be.

- The elephant in the room: the LB Contradance has been direly affected by the hit detection changes. Now everybody has the time to just get out of its range but the most unlucky or unaware targets, and it really, really hurts the usability of the LB. I do feel this was one of the most complex and skill demanding LBs to pull off properly, requiring to track the LB status of everyone else, track every potential enemy counter, find a good window to start it while not being blasted to oblivion, and get a good feel and coordination with your team to actually follow on it. Now you also have to add that crazy delay that just makes the enemy shrug it off because they can just walk out or jump out anyway. The only benefit from it is that Fan Dance now protects the player a little better for it. Even the charming refresh window, that was already incredibly tight, remains the same because of the damage and effect delays on every skill you can cast to refresh it. It's actually super bad with crazy long skills like Dance of the Dawn, which is probably a serious contended to Phantom Rush on the ludicrous amount of delay it has. Not only that but Purify only lasts 3s now, which cannot protect you properly from any crowd control during it, and being stunned or silenced during a Contradance means that it will be instantly wasted since once out of the animation lock, you don't even have a full second to refresh charmed. You NEED Purify to cast it, without a pocket PLD's cover or a BRD's warden. This is not negotiable for the skill not to fall flat on its ass at higher levels of play.

Overall though, I do love new DNC, but that last glaring issue NEEDS to be fixed.

[Loggos]

Thank you very much for your post. You explained many things with a level of detail that gave me a much better understanding how the changes affect the gameplay and addressed points I hadn't read about before.

- Gambling. It's all about gambling now. You want to initiate something? You do, and you pray that the enemy will still be there when you actually land on them to AoE stun them, or start Contradance (oh boy I have a lot to say about this one). You just start something, at best get a feeling for it, then cross your fingers to land a good result because of everything that could happen in between. Why is it bad? Because this completely removes agency from players, since it becomes less about making a choice at a specific moment that will result in a good play, and more about throwing a dice. This as a result also removes a lot of skill expression in the mode, and I do hope that was not the disguised intent of the change..

Honestly, before reading about everybody's grievances I thought I was going insane because I felt like my whole game awareness, muscle memory and intuition were completely gone on patch day but logically I couldn't have regressed that much overnight, right? The system changes couldn’t have that much of an impact, right? Having it laid out for me how far the system changes actually go and how deeply they affect the gameplay gave me back my sanity at least. Now I'm just disappointed that I don't get to play the old mode anymore. I really wanted to know how I would have ranked.

- Keeping track of one's own attacks is absolutely awful now. You press keys and cross your fingers for things to go through essentially, and since some of them actually do resolve past one full second or two, you're already doing something else entirely. I stopped counting the amount of times I didn't even know what my actions did because I was either already busy on something else (I'm not gonna sit on my ass for seconds waiting to finally see the result of my actions), or because it was just too hard to track in the middle of everything else. It really feels like I'm playing from the moon, or that everything has suddenly been afflicted by the Spell in Waiting mechanics seen in the Eden raids in pve.

I relate to this strongly. Even worse, some skills will just flat out not activate. So all the muscle memory based on quickly weaving in skills (while not having to worry too much about them getting lost in the queue of actions) is more or less redundant. I have to spend much more time tracking whether skill A actually went off only to frantically press it again three times. That of course takes my attention away from all the other things happening around me, a problem I didn’t have before to that extend.
I tested the reliability of skills going through on a dummy and it was very inconsistent. Sometimes it did work like before the update but more often it did not. But the fact that it sometimes works implies that it’s technically still supposed like that but was unintentionally broken? (Please correct me if I’m wrong though.)
I also feel like this problem is exacerbated in matches and happens even more frequently there (I suppose because so much data is processed at the same time?) while it happens less outside of matches. But I’m not sure if this is true or my perception just playing tricks on me.

[Mawlzy]

Honestly, before reading about everybody's grievances I thought I was going insane because I felt like my whole game awareness, muscle memory and intuition were completely gone on patch day but logically I couldn't have regressed that much overnight, right? The system changes couldn’t have that much of an impact, right? Having it laid out for me how far the system changes actually go and how deeply they affect the gameplay gave me back my sanity at least. Now I'm just disappointed that I don't get to play the old mode anymore. I really wanted to know how I would have ranked.

I was so confused I logged out, updated all my drivers, and did a malware scan.

[Silaryn]

- Special mention to Dance of the Dawn, which rewards the player and their partner incredibly well for getting kills and results, and the snowballing effect is absolutely delicious. I just want to emphasis how good, engaging and fun this is, and that it also rewards a savvy DNC player to swap partner around to someone else that would benefit from the LB generation or if just not to waste it on someone that already is capped.

I haven't played a lot of CC so this is coming from a Frontlines perspective. I'm going to respectfully disagree with you here. I'm not disagreeing with how effective Dance of the Dawn is. I just think it feels absolutely awful that I have to rely on my teammates to proc it. I have no agency over the move; if my teammates aren't killing, I'm not using it and that feels bad to play. Did my teammates decide that the ice is the true enemy? I can forget DotD exists. I don't feel like I get rewarded at all for any kind of play. IMO if they're going to keep Solo Step they should also make it proc when I get a kill as well. That way at least I get rewarded for my gameplay and I have some agency over using my kit. DotD is a great skill (damage delay aside) I just don't think how they implemented proc-ing it is fun; I think it feels horrible.

This was a good post, especially the part on hit detection. You did a better job explaining it than I can.

[DolphinsFan]

I decided to make my own thread because I do believe it would fit awkwardly as a simple reply to other threads. Sorry about that.

I have played a couple of Feast seasons before, one of which I ranked top 100, which is irrelevant. I have also played every CC season consistently since it has released in 6.1, and reached crystal every time with some top 100 sprinkled into the mix. I am by no means a top ranker or player, but I have played regularly with them all considering we meet the same people constantly once in crystal anyway. I do believe their opinion will be more informed than mine over some things, but I still wanted to tell my own history with pvp in XIV to explain where I'm coming from and say that I am no stranger to it and have played it over than gold/plat.



...

I agree with a lot of what you've said. I'm not really feeling the new defensive advantages when I get shredded in the time takes to cast a purify. Regarding the loss of snappiness, I feel this is in large part not because of the hit detection, but instead animation lock. To get an idea of what I mean, try using any skills on pld after casting its new Imperator. What you'll find is that something that's supposed to be an ogcd now has you unable to act for the whole duration of a gcd cooldown while you wait for the animation to play out. To make matters worse, some if not all skills don't get put on queue, meaning even the button presses have to be done after the animation has played out. I believe this is the main issue with purify atm. Not only is the action delayed, but you have to keep spamming purify the whole time of each cast if you want multiple to go out. Buttons feel unresponsive, because they are. They simply do not activate when you press them if you're stuck in an animation, and the button mashing you need to engage in to counter it is not fun.

[Valence]

I haven't played a lot of CC so this is coming from a Frontlines perspective. I'm going to respectfully disagree with you here. I'm not disagreeing with how effective Dance of the Dawn is. I just think it feels absolutely awful that I have to rely on my teammates to proc it. I have no agency over the move; if my teammates aren't killing, I'm not using it and that feels bad to play. Did my teammates decide that the ice is the true enemy? I can forget DotD exists. I don't feel like I get rewarded at all for any kind of play. IMO if they're going to keep Solo Step they should also make it proc when I get a kill as well. That way at least I get rewarded for my gameplay and I have some agency over using my kit. DotD is a great skill (damage delay aside) I just don't think how they implemented proc-ing it is fun; I think it feels horrible.

This was a good post, especially the part on hit detection. You did a better job explaining it than I can.

DNC is inherently a support class, so as such relies heavily on team mates. This is the same thing for your LB as well, if nobody follows or exploits it, then it's a wasted LB, and this isn't a new addition from 7.1. I'm maybe going to sound a little crass, but perhaps more selfish jobs are more to your taste? They don't rely on team mates to take advantage of what you do as much. Melees especially.
I do feel that not using it is of course less satisfying than using it since you don't get the dopamine from the satisfaction it brings, but in terms of potency, it's very similar, and Sabre Dance overall is a lot snappier on resolution where Dawn just takes a millennium to resolve.
Also, if your team mate sucks or doesn't score kills, you can still do it yourself. Sure you'll lose your team mate's kills to proc it, but yours still work and are, for one here, tied to your own skill and not dependent on whatever your partner is doing. Picking up the right partner has always been part of DNC, and being able to adjust is part of the skill required to play the job, and I do feel it has some decently high ceiling there. Still, DNC has enough power on its own to also secure kills, so make sure you burst well, your partner isn't the only player of the duo.

That's how I feel about it either way.

[Mikey_R]

The main mistake that the devs did is thinking that intuitive gameplay should be tied to the end of visual animations, ...

Not even that is consistent. Monk is at the end, but some jobs like Reaper, Dark knight and Samurai do it at the start, so they haven't even made that consistent.

[Silaryn]

DNC is inherently a support class, so as such relies heavily on team mates. This is the same thing for your LB as well, if nobody follows or exploits it, then it's a wasted LB, and this isn't a new addition from 7.1. I'm maybe going to sound a little crass, but perhaps more selfish jobs are more to your taste? They don't rely on team mates to take advantage of what you do as much. Melees especially.
I do feel that not using it is of course less satisfying than using it since you don't get the dopamine from the satisfaction it brings, but in terms of potency, it's very similar, and Sabre Dance overall is a lot snappier on resolution where Dawn just takes a millennium to resolve.
Also, if your team mate sucks or doesn't score kills, you can still do it yourself. Sure you'll lose your team mate's kills to proc it, but yours still work and are, for one here, tied to your own skill and not dependent on whatever your partner is doing. Picking up the right partner has always been part of DNC, and being able to adjust is part of the skill required to play the job, and I do feel it has some decently high ceiling there. Still, DNC has enough power on its own to also secure kills, so make sure you burst well, your partner isn't the only player of the duo.

That's how I feel about it either way.

I don't think Contradance is a good comparison. I still have agency. If I perform better I'm going to get my LB faster. Yes, it is team dependent... but not completely. In Frontline if a dark knight dives in and pulls, I can LB the team behind them to prevent the follow up burst. So I can get independent value out of it. Dance of the Dawn requires my dance partner to get a kill; there is nothing I can do myself to proc it. Contradance and Solo Step just feel completely different. I don't see them as comparable.

Thanks for your, uhhh... concern over my job of choice. I'm going to ignore the condescension. I like dancer, I mostly play dancer, and I plan to continue to play dancer. Dancer is my favorite job; if I think they made a change that isn't fun I should say something. I'm going to be specific, I'm only talking about how we proc DotD. I'm not talking about dancer's kit as a whole nor dancer's overall power or usefulness.

[Kisshu]

On MCH, the changes to the LB has made it almost useless except for fringe cases.

It now takes so long to deal damage, that the target has ages to heal or use guard to cancel out a kill.

Especially in frontline where your target can simply heal up and run to the back before getting hit, and you've wasted the LB.

You pretty much have to find a target that doesn't have protect or MP for heals in order to get any real use out of it.

[CidHeiral]

The delay on everything feels pretty bad to play. Occasionally not guarding something fast enough was never as annoying as feeling like you're constantly playing in extreme lag. I understand why they did it and I applaud the effort but in practice I'm really not a fan.