CC Ranked Feels Like An Unfun Joke

[Loggos]

I think what you're identifying is a central difference in philosophy across all PvP modes, and the dominant Discord ideology.

Complain about the 7.0 FL meta, we were told "get on voice with friends, play DRK, lead a meta stack."

Now in 7.1 we learn "ranked sucks, get on voice with friends, play custom matches."

And for those who do want to play ranked, "git gud" is rolled out rather than acknowledging matchmaking is far from perfect. Your job choice to carry? Yes, you get to pick from half a dozen tops.

When I retired from the 9/5 rat race, the first thing I did was throw my headset in the trash since I'd never have to sit on another Zoom call.

PvP Discord, partly because of its functionality, simply doesn't acknowledge that many of us do not want to engage in this way.

Yeah, I guess this really leads to a fundamental debate whether you as an individual should be "allowed" to play jobs you like or whether you should stick with meta picks "for the greater good" (provided you know how to play them).
(Edit: to clarify, I think players should play what they like/are good at and comfortable with.)
Of course you can say "it's your fault you don't rank up if you don't play a carry job". (For the record, Garuketo's posts I replied to did not say that. I'm just referring to the general sentiments Mawlzy described.)
But I'd rather hold the system accountable that puts out these unbalanced jobs in the first place. And if it can be acknowledged that there are systematic discrepancies between jobs atm, meaning it's not just the players' fault, then I think it's fair to look at other systems like the matchmaking and at least ask "ok, is this fair or are there some problems?".

A person reaching crystal on BLM doesn't disprove that in the grand scheme of things there is a problem with job balance, and top players having the skill to outplay the MM (I'll gladly acknowledge that they are that good) doesn't mean there's no problem with the MM at all.

There is a bit of truth in every reply I've seen here. Yes it is harder to carry lower rated players with a support job and it will take you more time, but also, yes you can still do it because your presence and the fundamentals of pvp as said above, are job agnostic and define a lot of the performance as well. Knowing how and when to push, when to go for point, when to defend, when to retreat, how to manage resources, how to position oneself... This is further informed by the job and role you play yes, but the basics remain. It is also by virtue of pvp that if you knew what you are doing wrong, you'd have improved over it already, and this goes for every player rank ever. You have to discover it for yourself and learn, and for example when I compare how I perform currently to how I performed when I started the season, adjusting to all the changes, shaking off the rust... well I can feel the difference.

I can definitely agree with this and I don't mean to say that skill isn't one very important factor. I don't deny that the long-standing top players who are all crystal aready this season rose above the matchmaking precisely because of their skill.
I'm also definitely on board with the point regarding general pvp knowledge that is transferable between jobs.
But personally I don't think this point and the point re: 1v5 carrying/sub-optimal luck with RNG are mutually exclusive. For example, when you know how to push the crystal but the rest of your team doesn't and leaves you alone (or they are all dead and respawn one after another so your team is always in the minority, while also not being coordinated enough for getting kills) then I guess it's hard to outplay this on your own when attacked by 5 people with tons of CC, esp. on a job that isn't able to take out players on their own and needs team-coordinated attacks for that. If in addition the enemy team is also smart enough to stay together, so you can't lure single players away to get them one by one then that's another limit I guess.

But I can see, and like gidsonBrand also pointed out, all this knowledge can significantly increase the odds for good outcomes and consistent win streaks.

However, I'll say that 95% of the jobs I've seen played in crystal so far are absolute monsters: AST the elephant in the room, but also GNB (that job is actually wild, see how it can top SMN damage even by being a crazy tough tank), NIN (LB timer is overtuned), and then the usual trusty jobs like WHM, PLD, or new SAM. It's almost always a variation of that comp.

This makes me curious. Do you know of any players who managed to climb from plat to crystal on a particularly "off-meta" job? (Vpr, Blm, Sge, Pct I guess?)

[Valence]

I've seen a DNC. I've also seen a CCRC ranker play lot of different jobs like BRD, MNK, etc but no clue if they climbed with those or not. Still, they remain up there with them. But those are far from the norm.

[Loggos]

Ok, that's very interesting to hear still!

[Eastwall]

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.

I had a post suggesting Se bring back how Ranked feast rewarded weapon skin. It reward you fraction of a weapon based on your rank at the end of the season. Idk If that will ever happen. If not, l am just going to take some risk and get cool weapon skin from ultimate