Thread: 7.35 Highlights the Inadequacy of this Update Structure

I do think I mostly agree, although saying that older CCRCs in Endwalker were more comp free than today sounds misleading to me. They were all almost exactly the same at the meta level, with the occasional variant.

Meanwhile what I'm still waiting for them to actually address is the hard stuff, the stuff that you can't just balance by turning up or down some potency knobs. The stuff related to absurd delays, unresponsive abilities that just ping error sounds when you press them when they shouldn't (looking at you, purify and guard), and all the classes that have been left in an awkward spot after the hit registration changes that affected some of their specific mechanisms.

Still, +1 anyway

What was really painful to read was the reasonings on the changes. The patches so far to PVP have been a major disappointment, not just this patch but overall with the constant reverting of changes and just the overall approach to "balance"

VPR is not struggling because its damage window is short. It is struggling because it is less likely to live long enough to use it. Extending Noxious Gnash on World-swallower does not fix that. Give Viper a survivability lever during First Generation, restore some of the safety Backlash used to provide, or cut its exposure time to burst. Damage uptime without durability does not move it into viability.

If the goal is variety and playability, then a few places they can start: clean up Guard interactions, Guard breaks should not have damage amps associated with it, and reduce one-job kit overload.

If not gonna change that, then okay, give melees/tanks more options for survivability. Bring more classes up to par. Warrior absolutely suffers from their lack of self-mitigation and sustain if playing in organized pvp and it does not have support classes babysitting it. Yet you have Black Mage that has Mitigation, CC, Self-heals, Debuffs. Really?

I also agree that they really need to set a predictable cadence for PvP balance if they have any intention on making it a "competitive" experience in any form. There needs to be light numbers passes every few weeks. This is better than waiting for another major patch while everyone plays the same support-stack mirrors. And instead of looking at Solo Q win-rates they have plenty of data in their own tournaments and externally ran community tournaments. Instead of just throwing numbers, things need to be looked at in regards to synergy and more so approached with testing and observation, involve the community for feedback as well.

With how things are being done, it really gives the impression that whomever makes these changes are just looking at numbers and not actively testing their own changes or play the mode.

The game has big ass glaring issue where Ranked has randomized jobs, you often fighting 2 tank 1 healer or 2 healer 1 tank while you have to play with no stun, 1 melee 4 ranged
you got chugged 4 CC nonstop into your arse. There is no skill ceiling or even floor, you just hope you paired with proper team composition.
The netcode is awful, the job is oversimplified, the game feels fast but slow and clunky at the same time
Then the game be like "Please do your best!" "Sportmanship" "Have fun !" while the whole system freaking awful, it was never in your favor or anyone, it builds for you to play more.
Its all carrot on a stick, the more you grind the more you get but you dont get better, just luck.
Awful balance and balancing, why the hell the hero shooter game mode is in MMORPG Tab targetting pvp ? why the hell this game needs more accessibility?

I don't often engage in the forums but this patch had me thinking of writing something very similar to this just this morning; I'm glad Atreus beat me to the punch in much more eloquent terms than I could produce.

Some people here already know I produce patch note overview videos every single time PvP is updated. Last night, as I was digesting the notes and producing the overview (which you may watch here for some of my opinions) I thought this is the very first patch where I thought basically no change at all would have amounted to exactly the same. I ended my video with a hopeful remark that this is not a misfire but rather a breadcrumb for a shake-up in 7.4, as I'm the kind of person for whom hope dies last, but still, I'm very disappointed with the rationale for these changes.

I have friends and viewers that asked me for my expectations for this patch before the servers went down. It was painful to tell them that truthfully I expected nothing consequential to happen, but somehow it was even worse to see patch notes miss the mark THIS badly. If they want PvP to have any sense of longevity, the devs cannot keep relying on arbitrary winrate data to make all-encompassing adjustments that aren't often not only a bad fit for all modes, but sometimes also harmful to the health of the mode. They need to find a way to engage and communicate with your primary testers and users for this mode, meaning your players (and respectfully, I think a good majority of us don't feel heard even if we try to communicate our grievances through the official forums).

I dont get why the balancing based on winrates instead of how the job perform in capability.
It feels like "random bullshit changes go" whenever patch notes happens, its so weird that there is no thought or knowledge about the pvp given in this changes.
How the devs dont know about things they create and just go with the generalize data that doesn't reflects.. Atreus might be right, they might just put AI into this and call it "experiment"

Unfortunately for some time now, a lot of the patches have made no real sense, they provide an explanation on the class adjustments in the job guide, and I think every single time I have been left confused with the way they went about changes, or I didn't really see whatever they were seeing on adjustments or changes to things. There's an odd disconnect between what they adjust vs what is actually making a class strong and impacting the game.

A good example of this would be under patch 7.31 Adjustment Overview, "Scholar excels at managing resources such as MP, and therefore boasts high win rates. This time, we have reduced their maximum HP to temper their overall influence on matches." I would personally like to know how reducing their max HP by a small amount will impact the fact that all tools within its kit is extremely strong and none of that has even gotten touched yet. I feel the balancing team is starting to lose touch with the mode, and are forgetting the fact that you have to test and play the mode to get a grasp of what is going on and what is strong and why it is strong. Winrate does NOT tell the whole story of what is going on within the mode, so balancing around ONLY that is kind of insane to me.

Even in competitive meta of Light Party play has just devolved to GOATS slop meta where everywhere you look there is 4-5 supports and a choice of 1dps. NA/EU/JP/CN/OCE are all running relatively the same comps, the exception being some of the teams trying 3 support and getting not much value out of it and getting steamrolled due to the difference in comps.

This leads to another point of, why do Supports have so much utility and damage tied to them? It makes sense that they want to keep the game mode role-lock free so they can't absolutely remove all the damage from them, but I think we are starting to get into the point where the powercreep to keep no role-lock viable in Ranked/SoloQ/Casual is impacting the other jobs and roles.

Another big issue is Moderation within the game mode.
Moderation across the past few seasons have been completely awful. Players have taken to Twitter or Community figures to try and get something done about the rampant throwing and griefing within the mode, which leads to players not very inclined to post on the forums (where we are told the balancing team will look) because why would they? They see daily either through their ranked matches or twitch streams, that the problem players are still playing and doing the same things, and all their reports just get sent to the void leaving these problem players off the hook despite everyone's efforts to bring attention to the matter.

I sincerely hope that a balancing devs/community manager or anyone from SE see's these posts, even holding a poll or discussion just to show they care or are present gives the community more hope than anything that they are being heard or seen and that their efforts amount to something.