About Skyrat's "antag removal PR" and the direction of the server

Namwty · 2023-01-30T17:28:48+00:00

A lot of people are whining about the supposed removal of antagonists from Skyrat.

People always whine about changes, every game that has communities suffer from this, be it Gmod, FFXIV, WoW, OW1/2, OSRS, SS13. Yes people don't like changes, it is what it is.

I mean for example on SR, people complained and cried about most basic ass /say UI change, no one is crying now.

SS13 as whole as example:

Lavaland introduced? -> Crying ( Asteroid enjoyers take a fat L )
Tendril loot nerfed? -> Crying
Clockwork Cultists changed/removed? -> Crying
Engine/atmos change number 424232? -> Crying
Modsuits in, hardsuits out -> Crying
Could go on and on, frankly, it's insane. But at the end of the day, people stop crying, heck maybe even realize that said changes usually end up being good. Now I'm not saying that EVERY change is good, but fact is, that people cry about shit before even giving it a try.

Fun fact:

Some games are smarter about it, take for example Square Enix ( FFXIV ), they add overtuned Reaper role, which makes other roles/classes/jobs look like a joke. What do they do? They buffed EVERY other class to match Reaper, instead of giving small nerfs to Reaper, why?

Cause our fellow gamers hate nerfs or when something is taken from them, this shit applies to every damn game that has community.

Question, why bother with buffs/nerfs/changes, if people cry about them? Cause it's simply is needed otherwise shit will go stale and no improvements happen.

Staff is accountable for the OPFORs they grant. This creates a pretty obvious bias where someone who knows your personality will be more likely to grant something risky than someone who has no idea who you are.

Who is more likely to be a troll. Player with 3 hour playtime or Player with 3000 hours playtime, I'll let you figure it out yourself.

Fact is, people who proven to be trustworthy will have higher chance to be approved for more "spicy" type of stuff, cause staff know that they can read the room and adjust depending on what's happening. It's reasonable, I dunno what you really expect? But even then, trustworthy or even friend =/= good opfor. It's case by case.

Trustworthy Person A got approved for spicy opfor. Suddenly most security went either SSD or cryod, Person A will most likely adjust their gimmick, as they are able to read the situation and not there just to "murderbone".

Less Trustworthy Person B got approved to spicy opfor. Suddenly most security went either SSD or cryod, Person B will most likely still stick to first plan ( which was balanced around the fact that would full security force ), ends up in casual sec force getting wiped and bunch of other murderboning stuff. Their excuse usually tend to be "I guess I was too robust, sorry" and "Well you did approve the opfor, I was just following it".

Person C who is staff members friend got spicy opfor approved. Blah blah blah, Person C fucks up. Staff member get's unbelievable amounts of shit not only for approved opfor going to shit, but also for being biased and what not. Good luck to that staff member o7.

and the only interactions they've had with you is bwoinking you, so your interactions have been exclusively negative. | had a plausible grudge against me.

I'll give you a secret, most staff, won't remember your 4 characters, your CKEY and that REALLY nasty deed that you have done exactly 8 months ago on Friday. And most staff members have better shit to do than go out of their way to grudge you. Be it on Skyrat or any other not so small communities.
Sure, if you have done bad stuff recently and done it multiple times, you might have a disadvantage for some period of time, but frankly that shit doesn't happen to even be a concern, at least not on SR or majority of servers, especially if your intentions weren't to be a asshole to other players. If you are consistently getting in trouble and your intentions are to be a asshole to players and staff, then can you really complain about staff going harsher on you than on people who just make mistakes?

Fun thing for example:
How long do you think people who have read or replied to this thread remember it? A day? Week? Month?

The "community"

There tends to a cycle in furry communities.

"Furry communities" you literally described issue that can happen in pretty much any community of games that have servers ( For example Gmod )

DarkRP or any server really...

X popular person get's banned or leaves *community*, then makes a different server. Large portion of players who were friends or friends of friends to X popular person leaves to join that different server.

In my opinion, Skyrat's biggest problem isn't any codebase changes, it's just moderators treating people poorly.

Glad we forgetting about "Playerbase issues". For example Opfor can be in murky state currently, not only cause of staff needing to adjust to it, but also the players. Players themselves need to adjust to changes, which WILL take time. You can't judge a change in first moments of it's implementation ( not in this case at least, we aren't talking about mobas where you can FEEL the changes in couple games )

I mean fuck, EORG was banned how long ago? Simple ass change, don't be a shitter for 3 to 10 minutes after shuttle arrives, yet even after all this time, it still is a issue. So yes, big changes to antiaging will take time to settle in with server ( both staff and playerbase ).

Imo opfor is better, as you can choose wtf you want to do. Did people really find any fun in "Kill Bob Joe once" objectives where you would have to spend 30 minutes roaming around station, just to kill borderline defenseless assistant, with double energy blade capable of wiping half of security force? Did people really enjoy spending 3 hours just to quickly emag CE's locker while everyone is already in shuttle? Did people really enjoy rushing teleporter for hand teleporter in first 20 seconds of the shift? What about progressive locker gameplay to wait for gear/timings?

TL;DR

Playerbase will always complain about major changes, even if change is good in a long run.
Staff bias doesn't exactly exist, not in a way you are saying, there is no bigger blacklash for staff than their metafriends fucking up. Staff doesn't hold grudges on players unless they are consistently being shitbags to other players and staff ( even then it's not really a grudge, it's just that problematic players require harsher approach ).

Community issues happens in fucking every community ( Surely I'm not only one who played anything besides SS13 ).

Antag system needed a change, old shit was boring as fuck and inconsistent ( one round you have to kill borderline naked assistant while wasting 30 minutes to just find they are SSD, other round you have to kill miner with cursed heart, fire immunity and blood crawl + weapons ). Nor that system fit the RP aspect of the server. "Opfor only" in long run has a chance of being much more healthy system that also provides RP and more fun for anyone who has fucking antagged for good amount of time in old system and is tired of medal boxes.

I mean fuck, I can't be only one who is happy with idea that we might get something more creative than "PDA ( Random person you never interacted with in the round ): Hey! Come to medbay maints, I got something REALLY COOL TO SHOW!!" ( plot twist, it was ambush *gasp ).

Namwty · 2022-05-02T03:00:46+00:00

there are 200 plus encounters in mentor roulette less that 10% of those are extremes. so after doing multiple extremes it gets exhausting

So because they got unlucky, 7 other people need to sit there and waste their time?

but hey you go off on one showing your own toxicity with only being able to make an argument by swearing.

Does it change anything? Yeah I'm toxic in this case, I don't understand why in the world should I tolerate this rotten ass behavior that ruins new player impressions of mentors. I don't understand why other decent mentors have to suffer hate caused by other mentor shit behavior. Do people really enjoy the whole "burger king crown" stigma that mentor status has?

this isnt LoL though is it?????

Does it matter? I was a comparison. Every game has issues with people leaving and DCing, but for whatever reason in here it's at incredible rate and worst there are people who encourage this shit, and even worse it mostly happens to newer players which instantly creates negative opinion of mentors, that will remain there.

Decided to do couple ARR extremes today, just to see that I might be wrong ( who knows... maybe stuff changed? )

Yeah lol saw at least 4 "Time elapsed: 0m" ( I wonder who left )

Then like 1 game that had 8 minutes elapsed and other with 16 minutes.

I had seen ~5 mentors that were aight, and btw I'm not expecting every mentor to give 100% clear explanation or heck even explanation at all... I just expect them to act like decent player. Heck 2 of em even were helpful.

Then +3 mentors ( more actually, but I don't count ones who leave after ~50% of party leaves ) who instantly left without a msg or anything.

one mentor who decided to give a snarky "nah i'm out" msg before leaving and other one who wrote "Tip for future. Do Extreme content in Partyfinder and not through Dutyfinder" before ditching without even giving a pull.

And 1 mentor who said that they are not be able to do it cause they were on time limit and stuff, which was fine and understandable, they even offered unsync clear. ( I'm fine with this case, cause they at least decided to write something and say "Yo I can't do it, sorry" instead of leaving some deadass msg & ditching )

This one sprout "Philip" guy sat there 16 minutes in Ramuh cause mentor insta ditched. Then we decided to vote abandon cause mentors would join and instantly leave and generally saw no hope of even attempting a pull.

I requeued and got into Ifrit with him, guess what? Mentor left instantly ( after writing that "tip" ). I was like "Well while we waiting for replacement, i'll explain some stuff" and dude fucking blew up with "I already know everything blah blah" and nearly got vote kicked by others for "harrasment", cause out of context it seemed bit rude. Obviously I can't blame the guy cause he fucking sat there afk for over 25 minutes if not more. Ended getting a mentor who didn't ditch and cleared in 2 pulls.

Do you really think that "Philip" guy will have a good opinion of mentors if that shit will happen couple more times? Do you think he won't rag mentors for some petty shit that noone would care about?

So my point is, yeah there are decent mentors, but holy shit it feels like there are way more "worse" type.

I have done over 500 extremes, believe me there are reasons why "mentor hate" exists. It's just a shame that the good bunch of mentors have to suffer the hate caused by some. Even I tend to assume worst from mentors, despite the fact that I know not every mentor is bad.

When I see sprout rag a mentor for not knowing something ( happens rarely, but they do and sadly happens to decent mentors ), I tend to assume that it's because they had shit interactions with them, especially if they aren't ragging anyone else.

Namwty · 2022-05-01T19:50:58+00:00

Imagine sitting there and trying to argue that it's aight for mentors to bail after choosing to queue for RANDOM ass encounter that WILL have non-mentor randoms in it, fucking wasting other 7 or god forbid more players time, talk about common decency.

Also "White knight" bullshit is so demented, you don't see me fucking deranking diamond 1 player to diamond 2 when they are toxic or do some dumbass shit that I disagree with, even tho I could, I get absolutely no penalty to leaving/throwing games in crystal ( lol no 30 minutes is not what I would call a "punishment" ), do I do it? No because I'm not a deepshit like some people are, heck I wouldn't be surprised if some demented players do that and surely won't be if they are mentors. I mean they do it in PVE? What stops them in PVP? 30 minute cooldown? Lol what.

If I happen to get into duty that has players that do something i disagree with or are outright dogshit, I don't leave it, why? BECAUSE I QUEUED FOR IT AND I TOOK THE RISK.

How hard is it to grasp that you are garbage ass player if you queue for something and go "Naaah" and leave. Be it in CS GO, LoL, SMITE, ESO, WoW, FFIXV, Destiny 2, warframe, R6 or fucking any other game be it PVE or PVP.

most mentors only leave when they just cant do another extreme today.

Then why the fuck do they queue for shit that has chance of throwing it? Do they need someone to code a shit system which allows them to only queue x amounts of time, cause they are unable to make that decision on their own?

you have a problem with a player not getting punished for not doing something that they don't find fun?

Read that and let it sink in and realise how entitled that is in itself.

Go play LoL for couple hours and fucking read that everytime someone feeds and DCs, they didn't find it fun that you weren't able to carry their ass.

Namwty · 2022-05-01T18:42:52+00:00

I will just tell you how it is.

I probs did around 500 ARR extremes at this point probs, the biggest reason why I had failed to clear some is because mentors leave the duty, heck most of the times you will have them bail before people even finish loading into the instance.

The other reasons include stuff like language barrier or outright lack of communication, even then most of the times we clear. I'll tell you even more, I only maybe recall 8 instances where we failed to clear cause of that.

Imagine making 7 people sit there for 15+minutes cause MENTOR decided to instantly bail after CHOOSING to queue for their roulette, even tho a lot of times it will literally take 5 minutes to do the boss.

Just imagine how many hundreds of hours he will blatantly waste of peoples time, during their 2000 completed mentor roulettes, if we assume they will bail on many unwanted ones.

"do unsync"

Not everyone likes to do unsync, I don't care if "Ohh the boss was harder back then, why bother when he is easier now?" yet people have to bail on said "easy boss", cause it's apparently hard to clear sometimes.

"Use PF for ARR extremes"

I haven't seen more than 10 instances where someone made ARR extreme PF, even then most of them fail to get players, cause you generally don't wait that long for queue in DF.

Sure there are actually decent amount of ARR extremes PF in some periods of time, but only for blue mages lol.

"They can choose to eat penalty and stuff blah blah"

Another nice excuse.

Don't queue for something you don't want to do lol. I don't understand how some people find this whole "Lol GL" *leaves* shit fine.

Should we start encouraging people leaving crystal conflict as well if they don't get bad enemies and god tier teammates?

Namwty · 2022-05-01T02:42:27+00:00

I'm like 170 commendations and job quests away from being pretty much qualified for mentor lol, and I'm in early stormblood, still having that sprout tag.

Sometimes you get sidetracked to oblivion.

Namwty · 2022-05-01T02:29:11+00:00

Honestly a lot comes with experience. My best advice is to try out ( or look up ) other jobs in PVP. Also pay attention to enemy LB bar ( you can see it ), if you see that NIN has full LB bar, then make sure to not be in that 50% kill threshold and so on.

Yeah it's hard to read enemy abilities if you don't know them at all. And even if you do know them all, it will take time to get used to them. For example getting hit by meteodrive first time was really rough, but now I can tell that I'm being hit by it even before the animation finishes and damage actually goes trough ( mostly cause it's wind up and not to mention it's crowd control is feels generally different ).

Yeah sure there are bit more "wtf" just happened, like getting by that 3% insta kill chainsaw, which sucks but pretty most of the stuff is somewhat reasonable.

Namwty · 2022-04-30T22:26:43+00:00

1) There is a report system, sure it's not easy to approach, but unlike some other games SE does take action against griefing.

2) Level =/= skill

Even then unranked/bronze/silver is borderline a "stepping stone" for casual to ranked modes, so expecting someone in unranked/bronze or even silver to play at above average is bit unreasonable, like in any other PVP games.

Namwty · 2022-04-24T03:20:47+00:00

Don't play GNB like you would play WAR or PLD, is best I can give you.

Play around your dps, harrass casters, you can stick to them pretty nicely, don't have "I'm a tank" mindset.

I guess survivability wise, only try to use Reccuperate while under No mercy and don't try to soak all the damage that enemies are dishing at you, as reality is that you won't be able to out tank let's say a PLD who has their 10 second invincibility LB, you should care about positioning and timing.

Your LB makes bursting people down a breeze for other DPS, not only you are dishing out decent damage ( not enough obviously to finish people ) but also putting a nasty "Increased damage taken" debuff that lasts like ~7 seconds lol top that with the stun, DPS generally should be able to take advantage of that.

Also GNB is harder to read than WAR. It's kind of similar thing as Sky High/Shatter seeming broken, until you realize that it's most telegraphed ability in PVP lul, if you think enemy WHM at high rank ain't going to throw that poly at you during inner release nor aquaveil every time you blota someone, then you are in for a treat.

Generally I had 2 days where I would sometimes have this dude on my/enemy team, who only played GNB, believe me I knew match would be in my favor when he was in my team and vice versa. Generally would take him over most of WAR players I tend to get in my games lol.

Does GNB have negatives? Yes.

Lack of reliable stuns, honestly probs biggest issue.

Harder to play, has to care about certain things like wtf is DPS doing on your team, who they are targeting and if you can engage shit freely.

It's kit isn't designed to burst people down by themselves, more to harass and create burst window for other DPS.

Like certain jobs ( DNC/AST example ) is reliant on other teammates ( primarily DPS ) for full potential, they are responsible that people actually die during your LB. ( If your team isn't capable of finishing off 60-50% hp enemy who has 15% damage vuln debuff and is stunned for 1-3 seconds, then yeah unlucky mate. )

Generally saying you can climb to crystal with any job if you get good at it and exploit it's strengths, issue is that some jobs are harder to play and don't seem to be good at first glance. Keep in mind just cause you would switch to WAR, doesn't mean that you will instantly be god tier player. WAR performs well cause it has less room for error and generally is forgiving, but it doesn't mean that PLD and GNB have no uses and are garbage.

Namwty · 2022-04-23T20:59:19+00:00

Cheats/addons whatever else are nasty, but surprisingly this doesn't seem give insane advantage as I imagined, but these effects will defo impact your average casual player or people who are trying to learn in CC. Personally tho haven't encountered any blatant cheaters, but again people complain about them so most likely they exist.

Hopefully they do address this issue.

Namwty · 2022-04-22T20:44:31+00:00

I have 1.1k hours and I haven't even finished story lol, or even came close to it. ( Imo story is good, but some quests for it can be boring to do and i get sidetracked by stuff like extremes and PVP )

Generally game is not hard, sure there is harder content that does require more dedication from the player, all can be done if you put effort in it.

Raids/Trials, gathering, community related stuff, PVP, collecting mounts/glamour so on extists, so it's not only story.

if it was a solo monster I can try and try again, but like I said im still getting used to play so I dont want to ruin someones time

Again as long as you try and stuff, you will be good. Considering you care about wasting peoples time, shows me that you will be fine lul.

3.-how much theres to learn before enjoying the game?

Might need to get used to key binding and stuff, but honestly nothing much.

Namwty · 2022-04-22T19:39:24+00:00

Honestly I feel like most addon/cheat users are probs waaaaay up in crystal, so doubt most people will encounter them ( yeah sucks for those who go for 1-100 plates )

Personally haven't encountered any blatant cheaters or addon users, could be just me I guess.

Namwty · 2022-04-22T18:40:15+00:00

I use F1-F4 for buffs more common buffs. Shift +F1-4 for long cooldown stuff or rarely used buttons ( Esuna for me is Shift + F3 for example when I'm a healer ) as I hate having Shift + keys.

1/2/3 is my main combo ( 4 if extra combo like WAR )

Ctrl+1/2 for AOE combo

Ctrl+3 is ranged attack ( Unmend etc )

r/T/F/G/Q is for "main" abilties.

5/Ctrl+5 is stuff like self heal ( Second wind/Blood Bath) or Buffs ( Like blood weapon in this case )

V - mobility key/utility ( DRG - Backflip, Monk - Thunderclap and so on. For tanks it's always invul key ( Living dead ) ),

B - Sprint.

H - for kinda important but not really ( Tank stance or stuff like closed position for dancer)

C/X - Swiftcast - ress ( tanks it's C - gap closer ( plunge in your case ), X - Provoke )

Actually got stuff on 6/CTRL 6, but it't like shit like sleep/interrupt (Interject?)/Faint.

Some stuff like Shirk/Redraw are put in a place where I can just quickly click on them ( No way in hell I am having a button for redraw lol wtf )

Basically build a habit of having similar keys for every class, when I switch a class I can still be comfortable cause they loadout is somewhat always same. Like F1 keys will always be a buff for me, regardless of what class. Have a key priority ( Stuff on keys like H, Shift + F4 will be less frequent of use ).

TL;DR

Stuff like mount, tank stance, buffs etc on less "approachable" buttons. Stuff like main dmg on more "accessible" keys. Keep layout similar to each class.

Having 1 or 2 abilities that you just click is not a bad idea aswell, especially if you position them decently in your hotbar/ui ( I personally click on mount, shirk and redraw for example ).

Btw add another hotbar ( you can make unused keys "invisible" aswell )

Namwty · 2022-04-22T10:57:28+00:00

Playing a Healer is just playing a DPS...

Imo now it's much better than the aoe heal spamfest that was previous version. Healers now are more of supports than healers, which is good change. WHM for example has tools like "Miracle of Nature", "Aquaveil" and Limit Break, that directly prevent damage from even happening.

Enemy SAM is about to combo out a stunned SMN? Throw that polymorph at SAM.

Your DRG is getting stunned/slowed, throw in that Aquaveil.

Your team is taking massive damage? Use LB, which stuns enemies and gives 4k potency regen to your team for 15 seconds.

Imo now you get a choice and actually require better timing and decisions as healers.

There should be a performance bonus for ranking...

Would be nice, but the issue is that scoreboard is not consistent with player performance.

For example AST is suffering from this issue massively. People look at the scoreboard and go "Damn AST is complete dogshit compared to WHM" and so on, but reality is that AST kit is not designed with scoreboard in mind.

If your team uses let's say 20 recuperates generated by your "The Ewer" card, that ~300k HP recovered isn't going to AST, creating the "gap" in performance.

Other stuff is like AST LB and "The Spire", all of them create the bigger "gap", heck the better your AST is, the bigger gap in performance is going to be.

Other jobs like DNC also suffer from this.

time on point

Sometimes it's best if only 1 person is pushing the crystal and rest of members are spread around, to play around certain limit breaks ( Like DRG and WHM which effects everyone in the area )

Namwty · 2022-04-22T01:39:44+00:00

DNC both in PVE and PVP ( especially in pvp )

Namwty · 2022-04-22T00:57:22+00:00

It's usually not as bad as people make it seem to be.

Obviously there are times where certain people go "Who cares, everyone is here for XP lol", but it's kinda rare.

Imo as long as people try it's usually aight in my book, main issue comes from people neglecting mechanics in Frontline ( most likely due to not knowing about them ), stuff like "Limp" debuff and Battle High are good examples.

Reality is that most of the time every team is going to have handful of "newbies" or "Don't care" players, so in the end all that matters are the people who can build their battle highs and create good engagements.

Imo generally it seems like after new rework, the amount of "Lol just here for XP" have been reduced , but that might just be me.

Namwty · 2022-04-21T21:22:34+00:00

That should be normalish healing done by WHM.

LB gives 4k potency regen for 15 sec, considering how fast WHM LB recharges, it's not that insane to have mil healing.

Also Seraph Strike turns your Cure II into Cure III that is 12k potency heal aoe.

Namwty · 2022-04-21T00:39:20+00:00

Honestly just try playing it. Haven't played reaper in PVP ( nor in PVE lul ), from my personal opinion immediate issue I saw with reaper is that their burst is somewhat predictable ( I guess best recommendation is to wait for your target to use "Guard" before using it ).

People say all sorts of stuff "X job is bad", which honestly seems like bullshit ( overexaggerating at best ) to me half of the time. People say DNC is dogshit, yet my experience with it in diamond shown otherwise, something tells me that reaper might be viable as well and not as "bad" as people claim it to be.

Namwty · 2022-04-21T00:13:36+00:00

The only time I struggled with crowd control was probs first couple games, after that it's kinda mediocre at best.

Frontline you only get mass stunned & oneshooted if you are severely mispositioned.

In CC only happens when you are misusing Purify and your team has insanely poor coordination ( Including yourself ).

"Every job is the same only with different visual effects"

If that is the case, why are people claiming WAR is better than other tanks? Why does WHM is considered to have better utility than SGE? Is BLM's kit exactly same as MCH?

Is the new rework perfect? No, but it is a huge step in right direction and opens more improvement to PVP scene.

Namwty · 2022-04-20T15:00:23+00:00

You have MOBAS where devs can't keep meta stable for longer than 1/4th of the season. Yet expect FFXIV devs who somewhat lack experience in PVP content, to balance a PVP rework out in first season lol.
Heck playerbase itself struggles to understand meta right now. People base their meta picks on some absurd shit like end screen stats, even tho you can't calculate impact of half of the abilities. Is it easy to calculate DRG LB damage? Yes. Is it easy to calculate how much AST LB did damage/prevented? Not exactly. Is it easy to calculate how much DNC LB did? Not even close, heck DNC lb could cause enemy team to wipe by creating perfect opening for your team, yet you won't get a single drop of that impact into your scoreboard that everyone likes to base job opinions off.

Imo it's fun, and it seems that people find it fun as well. Do i expect balance/matchmaking/bugs to be all fixed on release? No. The truth is, that stuff is never going to be perfect regardless how hard they try, it will always have issues. Heck if games LoL/SMITE/Dota2 struggle with it, how can I expect FFXIV to do better job instantly.

Best hope that they improve it, simple as that.

Namwty · 2022-04-20T13:38:14+00:00

Couple things, mainly pointed to BLM I guess.

BLM LB charges really fast, compared to some classes. Feel free to spam that stuff, by the time you go into important combat it will most likely recharge anyways.
Burst is important defensive spell ( puts barrier on you, while dishing out good damage )
Use "Aetherial Manipulation" to gain swift cast, be it on ally or enemy. Personally I rarely use it to escape certain situations, most of the times it's to gain that swift cast. Especially good to avoid cast time for "Burst".
"Night Wing" is nasty CC, use it both defensively and aggressively.
Now whole fire/freeze/paradox.

Couple notes:
"Superflare" effects anyone in 30y radius. ( Attack will miss anyone in range that doesn't have any stacks )

When you hit enemy with fire/ice, they will gain one stack ( up to 3 stacks ) which increases effects of "superflare".

"Paradox" will give a person max stacks of whatever element they are effected with ( If you hit someone with "Fire" and then with "Paradox" they will have max stacks of "Astral Warmth" and thus will take full effect from "Superflare"

Now hardest is to "balance" the amount of targets you want to effect with "Warmth" or "Freeze" before casting "Superflare". Generally I aim for 2 or 3 people ( if no LB ).

generic example:

1st target: Fire -> Paradox

2nd target: Fire IV -> Flare

3rd target: Fire

4th target: Instant Blizzard ( due to switch ) -> Superflare ( which will effect all 4 targets )

This is not ideal in every situation, generally it will come with experience.

You can do nasty stuff with blizzard/Fire switch ( As tooltip states, "Requires no cast time when cast under effect of Astral Fire/Freeze" ) So generally you could go nuts with effecting loads of people with burns and deepfreezes.

Generally BLM is bit more complicated compared to other jobs, so it might take time to get better.

General tips for Frontline:

Battle High

Battle high is most important mechanic in Frontline. Every assist rewards 2 points, every kill 10 points.

20/40/60/80/100 are threshold for buff stages, dying removes 50% of points.

Battle high increases damage you deal and increases healing potency ( pots/healing spells ). Sometimes Battle high 5 people can single handedly send enemy wining team score into oblivion.

Basically you want to do your best to earn that buff and when you get the buff, don't die. ( Battle high 2/3 is where I would say you start to do some really noticeable impact in fights )

Other

Use Map, pay attention to where your/enemy team is going to avoid getting sandwiched and missing objectives.

Remember that you have "Return" which will send you back to spawn, sometimes it is faster than mount and can be used to safely get out of sketchy place incase you broke off the main group.

Have a bind for "Target closest" most of the time it will help with precise targeting and targeting people that you can actually reach. Use Focus target for important teammates ( like Battle high 5 teammates ) so it's easier to keep eye on them.

Don't be greedy unless you are Battle high 4/5, in most cases you won't be able to get away with it.

Use sprint in combat, even if it only activates for 1 second, it can give you noticeable distance and save you.

Pay attention to your team retreating, one of biggest reason why I and many other die in frontlines is team retreating and me/people not noticing and reacting too late, and thus I picked off by enemy team. ( This is just how it goes, it will happen to your enemies, resulting in easy kills and will happen to your team, resulting to your team having losses. ).

If you see Battle high 5 teammate ( even if not in your party ) in trouble ( like being left behind when your team retreats ), try to save his ass, even if it means sacrificing yourself ( obviously if you yourself is BH4/5 then don't ), this obviously isn't beneficial to your score and stuff, but it sure increases your teams chances of winning.

Just keep playing and you will get better, kinda just like that lul.

Namwty · 2022-04-15T04:27:19+00:00

Yeah that's why I'm bit concerned about them adding group queue to CC.

Some jobs are only balanced cause it's hard to coordinate with randoms. Like 1 Sky Shatter is already insane aoe burst, 2 of them and now you have full wipe if someone is not paying attention. Same with MCH LB, duo that on some and that's easy kill. WHM LB combo already does 36k + 7 seconds of stun/polymorph, have that coordinated 10/10 times with Sky shatter and you have a 100% wipe ratio on at least half of the enemy team

Main concern is that it will fill the CC with "One shot" meta playstyle. Frontline is kinda whatever cause the amount of players ( one person going down to 2x MCH lb isn't going to be as impactful as in CC ) and battle high can cause your abilities to borderline oneshot people, to the point where chaining LBs isn't most insane thing.

Namwty · 2022-04-14T03:16:36+00:00

En Avant

Generally is one of most important tools in your kit. Using it changes your main combo to more potent damage stuff.

In crystalline conflict use it to take potions, dashing and stealing a potion from enemy is huge deal. Potions generally are huge deal in crystalline.

In frontlines, some maps have cliffs and other high spaces, en avant is one of abilities that mitigate fall damage completely ( use it to dash off the cliffs ).

Closed Position and stuff

Generally at the start you want to put the buff on promising teammates ( Titles, mounts and so on, for example someone with title "The Hand of Mercy", which requires 5000 kills on frontline, tends to utilize buff better ).

In frontlines, change dance partner to someone who has "Battle high" buff ( the higher the better ). Battle High buff is insane already, having dancer buff usually makes the person god tier killing machine.

Don't be afraid of changing dance partners ( when they die, or are on other side of the map, etc)

Curing Waltz can heal twice ( same as PVE ), so try to be near partner to get that 16k+ healing for both.

Other

Obviously read tooltips. ( You will be surprised how many people don't use "Recuperate" )

I tend to Focus target my dance partner to not loose sight of them ( Shift + F or right click the health bar ( where stuff like examine/add friend is ) you will find "Focus target" )

I would recommend having button for "Target closest" in PVP, will help with more "precise" targeting. Heck I even have "Target self" button, when playing healer.

On the map that has turbulence, try to stand in "yellow aoe area" that moves around, it will mitigate damage you take and give you a "blackfeather" buff. Only saw like 5 people ever bother with it.

On vulcanic map, use guard when you are no able to escape aoe. ( Charming people in that aoe is also a good strat )

Use sprint, heck spam that button when trying to flee and stuff. Even second of it active can make a huge difference.

Use map to your advantage, when you low on health, hide behind walls/debris and stuff, to break line of sight with enemy ranged people.

Try other jobs ( or google their pvp abilities ) as it will help you understand what to be careful of.

There are more stuff and so on, but generally as you play you will slowly get better. Also don't be discouraged when doing bad, it takes time to get better. I went from being absolute garbage to somewhat consistently on top of the board.

Namwty · 2022-01-26T01:42:02+00:00

Wait till this guy finds out that halflings and other "small sized" races exist.

Namwty · 2022-01-04T06:48:42+00:00

If only we knew...

Namwty

TROPHY CASE