Good necessary changes with a couple setbacks for Crystalline Conflict ranked.

[Edelgarde]

It's very clear what the changes are intended for. The pacing and flow of Crystalline Conflict matches are a lot more slower, despite jobs being just a tad bit more busy. Yoshi P must of watched way too much CC Tournaments, watched the same teams steamroll the other team with ease which leads to lots of 2 minute wins, and said "Yeah, this isn't interesting to watch. Let's give people a better chance to put up a fight."

It's a lot more harder to KO people unless people have the common sense to have some awareness of what is going on all around them, and combo someone who is completely vulnerable and crowd controlled to help their teammates secure a KO. Because it is much harder to KO people unless your team has the proper synergy to do so.

If people are familiar with LP (scrims), the pvp changes are indeed beneficial. However, in solo queue high ranked, matches drag out insanely long because it is incredibly difficult to get a full team wipe.

Now what I'm about to explain is the experience what high ranked matches are like.

Game flow in high ranked matches where everyone is at a similar level is really just about just efficiently using your resources to force the enemy team off the crystal so you can push it forward bit by bit at a snails pace. Sometimes you don't even need the 50%, you just need to progress it a bit further than them, and then win the overtime. That overtime can drag for so long due to being unable to wipe the enemy team if they find a way to rotate their teammates on point.

Healers just have the ability to outheal all the cooldowns that we are throwing on one person. Especially AST. The game mode has been so reliant on healers if you want a good steady and slow push of the crystal, because if everyone is on the same level, but the other team doesn't have a healer, you can expect that team to be easily pushed back, because they are forced to retreat and pot more often.

tl;dr: It's harder to KO people without proper synergy with voice communication, everyone is too tanky, too easy to drag overtime for much longer than it should, other team can secure 0 KOs and still potentially drag overtime to 15 minutes, healers and PLD has too much power to sustain the team to make it harder to push the point, high ranked matches are an absolute slog and killing my motivation to climb with how long they go for.

Fixes that need to be done ASAP would be:
- Buffing a LOT of DPS jobs damage potency so they have an actual purpose and can actually get past enemy healer's heal potency. Let DPS jobs be actual DPS jobs. Let them be the ones to apply more pressure.
- Nerf AST, for the love of god.
- Make some awkward timing of hit detections a lot more responsive.

I know they wanted to make the match flow and pacing in between Old Feast and Old Crystalline Conflict. But right now it's leaning into being a slog like Old Feast PvP. We're not in that perfect middle ground yet.

[StriKE_SC2]

I don’t understand why the damage output of healers and tanks is so close to DPS roles.

Tanks can take a lot of damage, and healers can restore a lot of health, but DPS don’t have any of those capabilities. Their role is purely damage-focused, so their damage output should really stand out more.

[ThaCa]

If they want longer conflicts that don't drag out, they should consider giving some DPS Jobs abilities that have stacking debuff that increasingly weaken the enemy's defenses over time. Even though it might be bit too much having base combo slowly generate blunt resistance down etc. might help on very long fights and force the targets to further disengage to drop them. This also opens up option to give some Healer like SCH that lags behind AST and WHM Esuna like ability with decent cooldown to occasionally reset one of them.

As for healing output, it's ridiculously unbalanced at the moment. AST is insane, WHM is still pumping good, SCH is lagging behind though the shields don't seem to count for the score and SGE is in absolutely horrible state where both his damage and healing got butchered aside from the Kardia gain that just can't keep up with any other healer.

[Valence]

No idea if this was the intent they had, but past crystal people still drop in one shot anyway, delay or no delay since everything happens at once. HP went up, but so did damage, and doing a competent synced burst will result in the same end that it used to before, whether the drop happens right now or 1s later due to animation delays. All the damage and associated effects come at once anyway one way or the other. It is only harder to KO people at lower ranks, because people don't know how to focus targets down.

I do feel however that one of the biggest offenders of matches dragging for ages is AST, because it can top someone from low HP back to full instantly. So if your team is unable to burst down a target at once, then the AST will just top them off and we're gone on the same dance until the next burst in 20s, where the AST will also be able to do that again if burst fails. Special mention to Guard that now works admirably (one of the only true benefits of this change), then the AST will also heal that person back up back to square one. Even a WHM can somewhat do it too, it's just less overpowered.

But perhaps that's also the conundrum of the mode, either you get the experience of base random games and nobody can kill each other unless someone fucks up and overcommits, but on the other hand at top ranks (or especially scrims/LP I'd assume? havent seen/tried those with the new changes) people just insta die because people know how to CC and burst a focus target. Generally you get CCed, you barely have time to press purify before dying there at times. I just feel that the changes exacerbated this a great deal because it didn't feel as terrible before to me.

[Stormfur]

people just insta die because people know how to CC and burst a focus target. Generally you get CCed, you barely have time to press purify before dying there at times. I just feel that the changes exacerbated this a great deal because it didn't feel as terrible before to me.

I've mashed guard while having plenty of HP and the system seems to alternate between "nope, doesn't register" and "yes it does register but now you turned it off, good job".

Meanwhile, purify, like you said, goes by in a blink. Stun, stun, scattergun and you're ragdolled all over the place. I don't know what they changed but it really does feel worse.

[Valence]

The problem defensively is that they made guard better, but purify + recup is terrifying delayed and you just die.

[Loggos]

I've mashed guard while having plenty of HP and the system seems to alternate between "nope, doesn't register" and "yes it does register but now you turned it off, good job".

Meanwhile, purify, like you said, goes by in a blink. Stun, stun, scattergun and you're ragdolled all over the place. I don't know what they changed but it really does feel worse.

Yeah I have the same problem. Even though guard is supposed to be better now and should be more responsive I don't personally notice that improvement. For me it's as laggy and janky as purify and recuperate.

[Valence]

Well Guard isn't technically "better" as it works like it has always had, it's just the delayed computation at skill registration that prevents most things to go through, unlike before where a skill used before guard would compute damage before, and when the damage actually resolved later (after guard is up) it went through unimpeded due to snapshot. It just prevents this to happen now.

[Ixon]

I don’t understand why the damage output of healers and tanks is so close to DPS roles.

Tanks can take a lot of damage, and healers can restore a lot of health, but DPS don’t have any of those capabilities. Their role is purely damage-focused, so their damage output should really stand out more.

I assume they don't want a team of mostly tanks and healers to not be able to kill anything, but it's not implemented well. Wouldn't be an issue if there was role queue or if you could swap jobs mid match to compensate for what your team needs, but right now they've pigeon holed themselves into this position.

[Loggos]

Well Guard isn't technically "better" as it works like it has always had, it's just the delayed computation at skill registration that prevents most things to go through, unlike before where a skill used before guard would compute damage before, and when the damage actually resolved later (after guard is up) it went through unimpeded due to snapshot. It just prevents this to happen now.

Ah that makes sense! I guess for some people this positive effect is canceled out by the general delay in activating actions so it's like one step forward, one step backward.