Thread: Melee ineffective in 7.1 Frontlines

Originally Posted by Archeron

Before 7.1, on my melee jobs I wouldn't think twice about running towards the enemy team, blasting off my kit before quickly withdrawing. Now I get halfway to the enemy team, I'm hit with every single form of CC in the game and bounced around like a ping pong ball, and killed in seconds.

Without an entourage of healers, or an invuln spell, it seems pointless to even try charging enemy lines anymore, and the majority of NA seems to agree with this as most of my teams seem to consist of 80-90% ranged jobs (Ninja may as well be lobbed in with ranged at this point...) People who I play alongside frequently now exclusively play ranged jobs.

It seems to me class balancing has taken several, massive leaps backwards compared to the system we had prior. Unless I'm missing something, that makes melee somewhat more playable, I don't think I will continue to play Frontlines beyond my FoMo season rewards.

I disagree with the thesis that it only happened after 7.1

The vast majority of players in any role in FL play extremely carelessly and put minimal effort into winning. Most have always preferred ranged combat because they are safer, and melee classes like Samurai or Monk have always suffered in such meaningless wall-to-wall firefights.

The Dragoon rotation has not changed at all and even became slightly better. If we consider tank roles, Gunbreaker and Paladin have always been underdogs in FL due to the obvious advantages of Warrior and Dark Knight.

Also nothing changing with mindless DRKs who jumped into the crowd alone and died without any effect and without the support of allies (which, in principle, is true for almost any melee job).

The meta in FL is built around a burst of large control and AoE damage in a short time. If that not happend then...

... No matter what class you play, it's not fun and just boils down to boring throwing range AoE an each other if one or more sides don't have players willing to shape the game strategy and lead the others.

The FL maps needs to be changed completely. Make players move in smaller groups (preferably 8 people). More points of interest. In such conditions, the jobs like monk and pal will feel much better than 24/24/24.