Thread: Frontlines 7.1

You need people to be playing melee to actually encourage in the first place for that to work. 90% of teams these days are ranged players. They're not going to be backing you up or following your lead. The 3s Purify may as well not exist at all for all the good it does, and that assumes you live long enough to press it as you are lobbed with every single form of CC in the game and then finished off by a NIN LB or MCH LB before you can hit recuperate once. Even if you were to get in effective combat range of the enemies melee abilities are so pathetic and weak that you may as well be swatting the enemy team over the head with a pool noodle.

Originally Posted by Archeron

If all the commanders and experienced players are in a similar boat to me, it isn't worth the investment into Frontlines anymore. It's not fun, there are other games out there that do PvP better, so nobody is doing Frontlines who either isn't a masochist, or still has FoMo/Achievement grinds to do.

I think a lot of "Bad Commanding" is coming from DRK no longer being the juggernaut it was, and premades no longer being capable of carrying the team as much as they did in the past. Now it is a team wide effort, and with melee being instantly destroyed in every engagement it's hard to convince people to push.

I think you're right on both points. I'm actually finding it interesting from an abstract point of view. Playing WAR just stopped being fun for me, so I've been experimenting with some ranged jobs. Funny thing is, as the number of tank/melee continues to fall, it's becoming (for me) more difficult to play ranged effectively. I think this is because: 1. in many engagements, you no longer have a front line to work behind; 2. with fewer enemies playing the role of cannon fodder, it's harder to drop AoEs on a large group.

Added to a general drop in skill level on the field and it's not enjoyable, other than watching the meta drift. I'll be done leveling all my jobs in a few days and will likely just pack it in.

Originally Posted by Archeron

You need people to be playing melee to actually encourage in the first place for that to work. 90% of teams these days are ranged players. They're not going to be backing you up or following your lead. The 3s Purify may as well not exist at all for all the good it does, and that assumes you live long enough to press it as you are lobbed with every single form of CC in the game and then finished off by a NIN LB or MCH LB before you can hit recuperate once. Even if you were to get in effective combat range of the enemies melee abilities are so pathetic and weak that you may as well be swatting the enemy team over the head with a pool noodle.

I guess we just don't have the problem so bad on Light

I'm not going to argue that anyone should be enjoying frontline, since that is ultimately subjective.

I do think that melees are not far from being in a good place in general. The purify change was probably the biggest nerf and should be adjusted in my opinion. Even with that, I think the majority of melee jobs are currently very playable in casual games and can perform well. DRG, DRK, and PLD are the only 3 that I think had their damage overly nerfed, though they can still provide utility for their team. The other jobs feel reasonably impactful, doubly so if you duo queue with a good healer.

Originally Posted by PGuin

I'm not going to argue that anyone should be enjoying frontline, since that is ultimately subjective.

I do think that melees are not far from being in a good place in general. The purify change was probably the biggest nerf and should be adjusted in my opinion. Even with that, I think the majority of melee jobs are currently very playable in casual games and can perform well. DRG, DRK, and PLD are the only 3 that I think had their damage overly nerfed, though they can still provide utility for their team. The other jobs feel reasonably impactful, doubly so if you duo queue with a good healer.

I suspect how you queue has a pretty major impact. That said, even if I wasn't playing purely solo, the change to hit detection has produced an experience I simply don't like.

I only started getting into PvP properly in 7.0, Frontlines (and Rival Wings) making up the bulk of it. Despite the usual jank I was having a ton of fun learning different classes, modes, and improving my game. For a newb solo queuer it was high highs and low lows, I was excited about the future of PvP

7.1 took the wind out of my sails though. I'm not an exhaustive patch-reader and don't know enough about the game to be able to articulate exactly why; there's other people who have done a good job of that anyways. My favorite class was Sage but now I feel like a hindrance to my team. Why not play Astro? It does everything better. Some of these PvP changes are baffling and feel terrible, and I have no idea what the devs are aiming for.

I haven't bothered playing on EU or JP since 7.1 so I can't speak for how the FL ecosystem is over there. Frontlines on NA is 90% ranged jobs with a PLD/WAR/RPR/DRG here and there. If you need to duo queue with a healer to make a job fun to play, than you can 100% say that the balancing of the game has missed the mark. They need to either remove some CC, add diminished returns after being CC'd, lengthen purify/add CC immunity to melee abilities so we can actually function.

As far as the "Utility Jobs" They should feel rewarding to play. But the "Utility Jobs" haven't been given fair treatment. Healers are free to dish out as much damage as they like without consequences while Tanks are handed the wet pool noodle. It's completely unneccesary, and no wonder nobody is playing Melee when you can just roll up with AST/WHM and do double the damage, and get twice as many kills, with minimal deaths. The meta shift to ranged domination wouldn't have been enough to kill it off for me, but thankfully the hit registrations are so bad that I can't even be bothered to do Frontlines as a daily anymore.

Well second melee acoplyse, can expect they buff melee dr and lower range dr in nect few patch

I would hope they don't up melee DR again, it was horrible at 60%. It's pretty bad as is with melee 1v1 being futile on frontlines.
Sometimes I'll just dance-off in these situations. Yol Dance is my go to.

Real trouble is ranged have twice as much crowd control now, as to what they can do about it, I don't see that fix being in for a while but it would involve lowering ranged cc, or giving melees more cc immunity.

Originally Posted by SalamanderIX

I would hope they don't up melee DR again, it was horrible at 60%. It's pretty bad as is with melee 1v1 being futile on frontlines.
Sometimes I'll just dance-off in these situations. Yol Dance is my go to.

Real trouble is ranged have twice as much crowd control now, as to what they can do about it, I don't see that fix being in for a while but it would involve lowering ranged cc, or giving melees more cc immunity.

Whatever the solution is, I suspect it includes decoupling CC and FL. Which will probably never happen.