CC Ranked Feels Like An Unfun Joke

[Rayn_Vulpes]

I've climbed up to diamond 2 before yo-yoing back & fourth between 5 & 3. Yet I repeatedly am playing against the top ranked players, whom I've beaten in my countless hours of matches. What in the flying 7 circles of hell is supposed to be enjoyable about this game mode anymore?

Every match comprises of two teams using AST, WHM, & RDM. You spend what feels like 50%-60% of the match in a state of CC as you mash purify hoping it's up or or will even work this time to get you away from the mess of casters. Only to get deleted without knowing if you were the focus or just happened to be in the crossfire of several mages mashing high potency AoE CC that got you low enough for the "skilled" ninja to use LB.

Meanwhile it seems 50% of the time SAM lb doesn't even work properly as the target I go for with Kuzushi doesn't die. At first I thought myself insane but people watching me play have confirmed it just did not work.

Regardless of that however you're just playing a nightmarish game of roulette to see who gets the teammate that spends the game running it down. The one leaving you questioning how they ever got to plat, diamond or crystal. Because I've had people ranked in the top 1-20 on my teams do this. So clearly their skill & decision making alone didn't get them there. So I'm good enough to play against them, come out the best performing, but RNG has dictated I don't get to climb as my teams grow more insufferable. Ranked doesn't reward good players, it rewards lucky ones with the most time committed to running it back over and over.

The only thing keeping me going with this grind is the disappointing fact there are items locked behind this that aren't made available through other means. Except the more I play the less I care about getting anything out of this and just want to be done with it.

[ShinyChariot]

I mained AST from Plat to Crystal because I wasn't going to waste my time losing this mess of a season. You should do the same and get to Crystal so you can stop bothering.

[Phylecia]

I mained AST from Plat to Crystal because I wasn't going to waste my time losing this mess of a season. You should do the same and get to Crystal so you can stop bothering.

I think that this is what disappoints me the most with this games Jobs PvP design.

As you're pointing out, using AST to just to spike to Crystal and be done with it IS an option.

Like personally I hate that it's an option, if the Jobs were actually balanced and tested, it wouldn't ever be like that.

Why can't the jobs be balanced enough that they're all viable good picks and have just a few unique things that they are the best at--another words they have like trade-offs.

One might be more mobile, but not hit has hard, one might be more tanky, but at the cost of hit point total etc

Like if 2D fighters that have been around for years can make characters that play different enough they're unique but all are viable to play, it's a good game. Very few games with rank/tournaments need to ban a character, AND if a Job in this game was too strong to need a ban from ranked play, then that's what a patch is for... you can fix it.

I don't know why this is so hard for SE?

I was so excited to hear, we're putting in extra resource, money and time, into PvP so we can improve it, and not to sound like an ass, but yes it DID need improvement, but objectively speaking, on the whole, you've made it MUCH worse!

[Valence]

The delay on everything makes everything awful and unclear, a gigantic mess overall. Before 7.1 it was actually easier to know why we got oneshot, and how it happened. It was no less lethal at that level of play, especially with top rankers on both sides, but you still had a delay in damage resolution, except cc and calculations were done at snapshot, leaving a window of clarity in between.

I haven't had the time to try out Zantetsuken post change, but does it still snapshot the kuzushi calculation at activation, or does it wait for the skill animation to do it? A lot of LBs have been screwed over by the animation delay changes. Else... I don't know, perhaps you're hitting a target with shields without having noticed, although at this rank I'd assume you know about that already.

One thing I've also noticed at top crystal level is that they don't take games seriously at times. They just run around like monkeys in gold league, except they do play better but it still quickly turns into groups of people chasing one single target all around the map. It's nothing new though, was the same previously too. However, ranked still rewards skill with enough gap, else you wouldn't have all the usual top ranker culprits up there at all times and being the first ones to reach it as well.

[Rayn_Vulpes]

I'm glad to see there are others who feel the same way about the state of CC. If it was 40hrs of pvp or 200hrs of some other menial task for the same reward I'd be doing the other task at this point to save my sanity.

However, ranked still rewards skill with enough gap, else you wouldn't have all the usual top ranker culprits up there at all times and being the first ones to reach it as well.

By no means am I the best and I've had my share of mess-ups. There's definitely a gap between the top and bottom. I wont name drop but there's certainly some at the top who I'll recognize as talented players and others who after being paired with repeatedly has me questioning how TF they are ranked the way they are. More often than not my Diamond/Crystal matches are a back & forth tossup that I've won more often than lost. It's the Plat/Diamond mix games that repeatedly drag me back down since thats largely where the RNG teammate factor comes into play.

Perhaps its because there's not a large enough player pool to help stretch out that gap, but the problem players seem to repeatedly rise up to then drag others back down with them and this process repeats.

[Garuketo]

More often than not my Diamond/Crystal matches are a back & forth tossup that I've won more often than lost. It's the Plat/Diamond mix games that repeatedly drag me back down since thats largely where the RNG teammate factor comes into play.

If you are winning Diamond/Crystal matches, but generally dropping stars in Plat/Diamond and thats what preventing you from hitting Crystal, then you need to play better because it means you are not playing well enough to carry your plats when you get them. Like some people are not good, but the reason why you–and other people–get stuck in ranked is not because of matchmaking. Its generally a lack of fundamentals, consistent poor decision making, or a lack of knowledge of how to play their job.

[Rayn_Vulpes]

If you are winning Diamond/Crystal matches, but generally dropping stars in Plat/Diamond and thats what preventing you from hitting Crystal, then you need to play better because it means you are not playing well enough to carry your plats when you get them. Like some people are not good, but the reason why you–and other people–get stuck in ranked is not because of matchmaking. Its generally a lack of fundamentals, consistent poor decision making, or a lack of knowledge of how to play their job.

If this were a game like league where you as an individual can make an impact through your own lane skill, splitting, or understanding how to apply pressure & focus objectives I'd be inclined to agree. The game provides ways to make & open opportunities that don't have to involve direct engagement with the enemy.

However CC is designed around a single point objective that it seems all too often players at a lower level ignore. Sure I can spend a game harassing the enemy backline and essentially be a 2v1 distraction to make controlling the crystal less oppressive but if they wont stand on it wtf am I to do? I can stand on it as SAM but that's just a good way to get bullied by enemy casters as my team stands around slack jawed ignoring the current roster of back line menaces. Solo kills aside from SAM & NIN LBs don't really happen all too frequently unless someone is truly incompetent. Even unskilled players realize they can mash purify, elixir & run in circles near indefinitely if not grouped on. There's zero wonder ninja is oppressive when it's the only job that can actually secure kills at a higher level of play. This especially nonsensical with the state of AST & WHM being full hp without needing to touch mana when attacked, so coordinated focus is mandatory to remove enemies. Even further amplified by the fact that PLD allows characters to stand in the direct middle of a fight and fully recover dragging out painful overtimes.

CC is far too often a boring numbers game where if you have the weak link or wrong jobs you dont have the numbers to make anything happen.

Sure there are a few jobs that can have high impact moments through their LBs but they still require a level of coordination from a team that all too often I fail to see outside of crystal.

[Garuketo]

If this were a game like league where you as an individual can make an impact through your own lane skill, splitting, or understanding how to apply pressure & focus objectives I'd be inclined to agree. However CC is designed around a single point objective that it seems all too often players at a lower level ignore & killing an enemy requires more than 2 of your teammates to be narrowed in with you. There's zero wonder ninja is oppressive when it's the only job that can actually secure kills after a certain level of play. Sure there are a few jobs that can have high impact moments through their LBs but welcome to CC ranked where it's a mirror reflection on both teams of the meta & the team that has the weakest link loses because crystal control is often a numbers game.

I mean CC is kinda a Mario Party mode, but at the end of the day, the very good players climb each season pretty fast, and the not very good players get stuck. Until you are at the top spots of the leaderboard and you're losing games because you have a few thousand Crystal credits and matchmaking is giving you Diamond 5s on your team vs multiple other people in the current t30, matchmaking is not playing against you and is actively trying to push you up to Crystal. Just keep practicing and learning from your mistakes each game and you'll improve over time.

Like there are exceptions to this where you truly just lose to team rng, but if you get stuck in a tier lower than Crystal for probably around 15+ games, its not the game's fault you are there. I don't know how else to say this lol.

[Loggos]

I don't play Sam myself but an ingame friend told me if kuzushi has just 1 second left when you start the LB it doesn't work because the debuff expires before the animation. We also tried it out in the Wolf's Den duelling area and it did indeed miss as described.

[Commander_Justitia]

I don't play Sam myself but an ingame friend told me if kuzushi has just 1 second left when you start the LB it doesn't work because the debuff expires before the animation. We also tried it out in the Wolf's Den duelling area and it did indeed miss as described.

I did wonder sometimes why I survived a ninja or samurai LB, despise being sub 50% health and having samurai debuff, but it just not doing any damage. I made a mental note, but didn't bother checking it out.

Regarding the delay, it is the same with fitting skills in wildfire or a vulnerability buff, it takes now the animation time into account, so you will miss the time window. Also means you can stun people at 1s of guard kinda, it will land when it falls off.
Also noticed more gapcloser fun: e.g. if a target dashes or gets knockbacked away, while you gapclose to it, the cooldown will not be used up, and you can gapclose again, or, you will gapclose the bigger distance all at once, that is usually outside of your max range, making the target wonder what kinda magic teleportation spell you just used.
Another thing is that when you die, you can usually still see the actions like a recuperate or a heal from your healer on you(but it won't register because you died), that is still sometimes the case, just other times, it will show "dodged" now. I wonder why there are two different categories now for it.
Also see a lot of animations of my skills, just them not going through, giving me wrong feedback of what I actually used. Also dying 2-3s after using hallowed ground, because of delayed damage effects landing on you, feels bad.
If I am not wrong also saw a player getting bounded the moment he used purify, so he was cc resist while bound. It was like that years ago, seems like it is coming back. Just years ago purify was 10s buff, now with 3s you wouldn't get any value from it, if it happens.

Also think they force GCD's to take more time before you can use offglobals, like, you usually could skip animations by using offglobals, it was a legit technique in the past to output more damage in a specific 1s timewindow. And I think the devs are aware of that, so they tried to mitigate that skillful play, so newbies aren't at a disadvantage to that. So now everyone has to play slow. Meaning over half of the GCD cooldown will pass, before you are able to even press purify or recuperate. This was faster before. You are getting robbed of the opportunity to be able to play good, you just have to take the damage now.