FFXIV Seal Rock PVP Insights

[Cursed]

Everyone wants to be the Field Commander and bard out orders on where to go, who to attack and when. It just so happens that idiots can type and listening to one can result in a pretty ass whooping.

Share your insights from experience - let this thread be a resource for those who are lacking in experience. As people contribute, I will add their insights to the OP.



Rule #1 (The Golden Rule)
Don't journey off on your own unless:
-You're on recon duty and understand that you are likely to die
-You're a PLD or an AST and want to distract the other team(s). Kite away from a node or kite into a trap where your buddies are waiting to come out of the shadows and gunk anyone following you.

Rule #2 (The Noob proof rule)
Defending is not the name of the game. Defending is important, but you will not win by defending alone unless the RNG on the node spawns is extremely in your favor.

You have to attack. This is PVP, its not Node hugging. How many times have you all seen idiots and morons shout in Alliance chat "DEFEND, BACK, RUN AWAY" when you're nation is trailing by a few hundred points?

Killing other nation's members grants you points and takes points away from them. If you're trailing in points and its past the 50% mark on time, you need to attack.

How you attack is another thing all together.

Rule#3 (Lucavi)

Rule #3 Be the shark, not the chum. Be the pincerer, not the pincered. A pincer is bad news for anyone caught in the middle. Even the most hardy teams with the most battle highs and fevers will eventually wither under a direct pincer from both rival factions, especially once LBs start coming out. A team wipe can devastate the momentum you have, as well as bleed a ton of points and high/fevers. Most devastating, however, is the effect on team morale a pincer has. Its all too common to claim the opening spawn nodes in your area, have both teams pincer you to get them since you have the most, then have your entire team wipe and begin the shouts of "X and Y always attacks us!" "Time to lose again!" or "Welp! GG scrubs!" This then leads to people spending more time angrily typing retorts and nonsense than actually attempting to recover from a very-easily recoverable situation.

Attempt to anticipate situations when both teams will attack you and actively work towards minimizing the damage that a 2v1 would entail, or outright evading a pincer. Its hard to effectively pincer what you can't reach. When in a pincered situation, do everything you can to peel into the most narrow or rear-directioned area or formation that you can (such as escaping to high ground, or a narrow section of land), in order to maximize the amount of contact that both rival factions will have with one another, instead of simply with you. Turn a pincer into a free-for-all between all 3 teams in the worst case scenario, and into a rout for both enemies in the best case scenario. This last one can be achieved by temporarily retreating from captured nodes, allowing both teams to engage one another on top of said node, then re-engaging, picking off stragglers from both teams, and then counter-pushing on the entire fractured mob.

When pincering, focus either on picking off stragglers from both teams or killing battle high/fevers (when both enemy teams are roughly similar in score) or entirely focus your attacks on a specific team, while actively avoiding the other pincering team (when in a situation when the pincered has a dramatic lead over both you and the other attacker). Its not unheard of to drain upwards of 150 points in a single pincer attack on a team, which can be absolutely debilitating in a fight. Most importantly in the second scenario is to not draw the attention of the fellow attacking faction to you, unless you are able to and plan on wiping them up after the successful pincer attack.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with forming a murder train, largely ignoring nodes, and proceeding to simply overpower one or both factions and win by virture of kills. Getting upwards of 650 points via killing the enemy all but ensures victory, if you have the team comp and the teamwork and trust to pull it off. Just make sure you don't make so many enemies or overstretch so far as to invite a pincer, or you may find that large lead evaporating quickly.

I think that's enough to start with. One thing I would like to add before I stop with the advise, RETREATING IS A SKILL. How to retreat is important. I'm tired of seeing idiots turn their back on the enemy and start running away, allowing the enemy to chase and pick them off one at a time.

What are everyone's preferences on kill orders and priorities?

[Dotsudoku]

I generally ignore PLD DRK WAR unless they're ~25% HP or less, AST and DRG unless they're ~50% or less, and go apeshit on everyone else regardless. SMN though, so YMMV. I can literally kill any non-tank with six button presses every minute

[Lucavi]

Rule #3 Be the shark, not the chum. Be the pincerer, not the pincered. A pincer is bad news for anyone caught in the middle. Even the most hardy teams with the most battle highs and fevers will eventually wither under a direct pincer from both rival factions, especially once LBs start coming out. A team wipe can devastate the momentum you have, as well as bleed a ton of points and high/fevers. Most devastating, however, is the effect on team morale a pincer has. Its all too common to claim the opening spawn nodes in your area, have both teams pincer you to get them since you have the most, then have your entire team wipe and begin the shouts of "X and Y always attacks us!" "Time to lose again!" or "Welp! GG scrubs!" This then leads to people spending more time angrily typing retorts and nonsense than actually attempting to recover from a very-easily recoverable situation.

Attempt to anticipate situations when both teams will attack you and actively work towards minimizing the damage that a 2v1 would entail, or outright evading a pincer. Its hard to effectively pincer what you can't reach. When in a pincered situation, do everything you can to peel into the most narrow or rear-directioned area or formation that you can (such as escaping to high ground, or a narrow section of land), in order to maximize the amount of contact that both rival factions will have with one another, instead of simply with you. Turn a pincer into a free-for-all between all 3 teams in the worst case scenario, and into a rout for both enemies in the best case scenario. This last one can be achieved by temporarily retreating from captured nodes, allowing both teams to engage one another on top of said node, then re-engaging, picking off stragglers from both teams, and then counter-pushing on the entire fractured mob.

When pincering, focus either on picking off stragglers from both teams or killing battle high/fevers (when both enemy teams are roughly similar in score) or entirely focus your attacks on a specific team, while actively avoiding the other pincering team (when in a situation when the pincered has a dramatic lead over both you and the other attacker). Its not unheard of to drain upwards of 150 points in a single pincer attack on a team, which can be absolutely debilitating in a fight. Most importantly in the second scenario is to not draw the attention of the fellow attacking faction to you, unless you are able to and plan on wiping them up after the successful pincer attack.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with forming a murder train, largely ignoring nodes, and proceeding to simply overpower one or both factions and win by virture of kills. Getting upwards of 650 points via killing the enemy all but ensures victory, if you have the team comp and the teamwork and trust to pull it off. Just make sure you don't make so many enemies or overstretch so far as to invite a pincer, or you may find that large lead evaporating quickly.

[Cursed]

Rule #3 Be the shark, not the chum. Be the pincerer, not the pincered. A pincer is bad news for anyone caught in the middle. Even the most hardy teams with the most battle highs and fevers will eventually wither under a direct pincer from both rival factions, especially once LBs start coming out. A team wipe can devastate the momentum you have, as well as bleed a ton of points and high/fevers. Most devastating, however, is the effect on team morale a pincer has. Its all too common to claim the opening spawn nodes in your area, have both teams pincer you to get them since you have the most, then have your entire team wipe and begin the shouts of "X and Y always attacks us!" "Time to lose again!" or "Welp! GG scrubs!" This then leads to people spending more time angrily typing retorts and nonsense than actually attempting to recover from a very-easily recoverable situation.

Attempt to anticipate situations when both teams will attack you and actively work towards minimizing the damage that a 2v1 would entail, or outright evading a pincer. Its hard to effectively pincer what you can't reach. When in a pincered situation, do everything you can to peel into the most narrow or rear-directioned area or formation that you can (such as escaping to high ground, or a narrow section of land), in order to maximize the amount of contact that both rival factions will have with one another, instead of simply with you. Turn a pincer into a free-for-all between all 3 teams in the worst case scenario, and into a rout for both enemies in the best case scenario. This last one can be achieved by temporarily retreating from captured nodes, allowing both teams to engage one another on top of said node, then re-engaging, picking off stragglers from both teams, and then counter-pushing on the entire fractured mob.

When pincering, focus either on picking off stragglers from both teams or killing battle high/fevers (when both enemy teams are roughly similar in score) or entirely focus your attacks on a specific team, while actively avoiding the other pincering team (when in a situation when the pincered has a dramatic lead over both you and the other attacker). Its not unheard of to drain upwards of 150 points in a single pincer attack on a team, which can be absolutely debilitating in a fight. Most importantly in the second scenario is to not draw the attention of the fellow attacking faction to you, unless you are able to and plan on wiping them up after the successful pincer attack.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with forming a murder train, largely ignoring nodes, and proceeding to simply overpower one or both factions and win by virture of kills. Getting upwards of 650 points via killing the enemy all but ensures victory, if you have the team comp and the teamwork and trust to pull it off. Just make sure you don't make so many enemies or overstretch so far as to invite a pincer, or you may find that large lead evaporating quickly.

1up.
Bringing two enemy companies together and letting them obliterate each other is a true sign of a veteran team. Some people refer to it as getting pincered or sandwiched - I've had the pleasure of being in some groups that will claim 3 nodes and direct in-coming enemy traffic into a tight narrow pathway between two hills, with their BLMs and SMNs placed on high ground sniping them off as they set to try and kill each other. Its a rare but EXTREMELY satisfying situation to be in as long as its not you getting fubared.

[Spider-Dan]

Stop chasing point standings if everyone is below 400 points (72-man) or all GCs are close in score. I'm tired of people screaming "WE NEED TO FOCUS ADDERS" because they are leading, only to watch Maelstrom end up winning because they sat back, held nodes, and let F/A wale on each other.

My general rules for push/defend are:

- if you have a 300+ point lead, defend
- if you have 3 or more nodes, defend
- if you have < 200 point lead but have equal or greater nodes than #2, defend
- if you are trailing the leader by less than what the leader needs to gain to win and you have node advantage, defend
- all other cases, push

[Seravi Edalborez]

Throwing in a cynical response: virtually everyone who reads these kind of tips is not the type of person who is costing you games (feeding kills, playing Rambo). That said there's a couple things I hadn't really considered (due to never being in games where our team is civil enough) like the pincer>retreat thing.

That said, my bone to throw in is: Don't go half-retard, only full-retard. If the majority of your team is being dumb, be dumb with them because you're not going to change their minds.

[Jem]

I generally ignore PLD DRK WAR unless they're ~25% HP or less, AST and DRG unless they're ~50% or less, and go apeshit on everyone else regardless. SMN though, so YMMV. I can literally kill any non-tank with six button presses every minute

Just to add to this, you can ignore kill orders if you see someone stray too far forward or too far off to the side in a large skirmish as even if they are hardier job, there's a decent chance they don't get healer attention. I pick up so many kills this way even if I'm the only one hitting them. Sometimes I'll do this on tanks if I notice them hassling our healers in the backline, won't always get the kill but it can force them to retreat giving the healing breathing room.

You can also abuse knockback moves to create that artificial spacing between them and their healer. Especially tanks/melee who make a beeline for healers right at the back.

Also, if you're a ranged job you can go largely ignored by positioning yourself correctly in packs since most people tab target.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Also, if you're a ranged job you can go largely ignored by positioning yourself correctly in packs since most people tab target.

Yeah this is huge. I could tell who did and didn't use focus target on me in Slaughter when I played BLM because they would be the only ones to turn their attention on me as opposed to the 6 other BLMs.

Which is another reason to stay in a group when fighting. Overextending even slightly can open you up for everyone to tab>murder.

[Lucavi]

That last bit is very, very true, Seravi. Its cute (no its not.) when you find yourself slightly at the front or left of the main pack and all of a sudden, you're getting hit by 50 people who's tab target focused you next.

I hate tabbing anyway; the shit likes to tab onto people ALL THE WAY in the back and out of range for me when I do it, so I just don't. I've tab targeted people behind me and above (on the high ground node in the caves) first when I wanted to target someone about 10 yards in front of me on the ground.

My personal kill order is:

Critically wounded targets >> Battle High melee >> battle high mages/ranged >> battle high healers >> healers >> ranged >> melee >> battle high tanks >> tanks.

The reason I place battle high melee so high is because they're either packing LB and need to die, or they're going to pack LB and will root themselves in place soon to try to kill someone. I get those fat points first, then go down the list. Its harder IMO to kill a battle high mage than melee because even if they're standing still, its at a farther range than a melee would be. I try to lock down those nins/mnks/drgs for the support to come in and destroy, then keep pushing in onto other priority targets.

[Spider-Dan]

As a healer, there is some value to jumping on the grenade during a retreat.

If I run back into the enemy lines and use Attunement, I'm guaranteed to draw at least 3 enemies (usually many more) that will stay on me waiting for it to wear off.

[kisada]

On a micro level:

You need to figure out real quick that PVE is not the same as PVP. Most everything you thought you knew about your job goes out the window. It's the key to playing your job well. Sometimes you need to chain OGCDs together. Sometimes weaving OGCDs in between GCDs is not the way to go. Many of your skills become completely irrelevant. You might catch me hard casting bio 2 and miasma once every 4 matches and that's generous.

Learn how to use your pvp skills effectively. Keep in mind some things that are great in old FL modes or WD aren't that great in SR. For example, equanimity was once considered mandatory, but I use it once in blue moon, if that, on smn.

Figure out your kill combo rotation and practice it. Again, it might not be GCD OGCD GCD and it might be something like OGCD OGCD OGCD GCD.

Buy potions. If i were rich I'd use xpots all the time but mega pots of int are like 150 each and still very good. Melees/tanks need to buy icarus wings and use them. They are seriously so freaking good. If you aren't using sprint to get kills, you're handicapping yourself.

There's no such thing as kill stealing. Well, maybe there is, but if you have a conscience about this stuff you better stow it away cause it will hurt the team. KS = Kill secured. You know what's worse than feeling bad about a dude who you sniped at 5% HP? A dude who got bene'd at 5% HP and ran away cause you thought someone else would finish him off. Kills belong to no one except to the person who secures it.

CC is pretty much the best thing ever in these modes, so use it if you have it. What sets players apart from each other are the ones who use CC effectively. Stuns, binds, sleeps, whatever you got, use it.

If you are a ranged/healer class, positioning is your most important tool by far. Dead players don't do shit on the battlefield. And you get dead real quick if you're in the wrong spot.

Be map aware and minimize your tunnel vision. Everyone does it but you can minimize it. I'd like to think I play at a pretty high level but I tunnel some even in my best games. However, I've managed myself to the point where I only tunnel if I'm in the zone since at least I can justify hanging around a bad spot if I'm killing anyone around me. So make sure you keep track of yourself and always work on maintaining your map awareness. At the end of the day objectives are still important.




Macro stuff:

Defense only is shit. People who think this kind of stuff are propagating a faulty strategy. If I start a match and someone says this I let them know pretty quickly they are shit, their strategy is shit, and that anyone who thinks the same is shit. Somehow it works and they usually pipe down. (btw I don't do it to be mean I just want other people to spread the word cause the last thing I want is to queue into another match and have more and more people parroting "defense only." ).

[Spider-Dan]

You might catch me hard casting bio 2 and miasma once every 4 matches and that's generous.

This must be a SMN thing, because I hardcast the hell out of Miasma on SCH (solely for the Malady effect).

In fact, I make it a point to get Malady on every marked target.

[Sho]

I generally ignore PLD DRK WAR unless they're ~25% HP or less, AST and DRG unless they're ~50% or less, and go apeshit on everyone else regardless. SMN though, so YMMV. I can literally kill any non-tank with six button presses every minute

Hate this shit because it's true, lol.

Fucking SMNs.

As Ninja, I straight up save my melee LBs for all SMNs and Battle High/Fever opponents. Let loose on them under Hide.

[kisada]

i generally ignore pld, drk, and ast. pld literally only cause they probably don't know they shouldn't be on pld, which means they probably are using shield oath. and of course most plds will panic HG if they take big burst damage. drk drives me nuts because i can't differentiate between living dead animation and shadowskin/shadow wall. but biggest thing is they'll snap use LD anyway so if one's running off at low hp i have no idea if i'm wasting deathflare on them or not, since i'm not good enough to check their status bar.

ast i will only consider going after if i have every single cd available and/or it's 8v1.

that said if anybody is at less than full health i'd consider them a viable target, regardless of job.

[Cursed]

Please, let SMNs get nerfed.

[Tobi]

Seal Rock is shit. I'd rather have lv60 secure over this shit mode. Each new mode just keeps getting shittier over the original. Secure was good, even though it still had its flaws, it was much better than both secure and slaughter. Slaughter released, and was instantly worse than secure, seal rock released, which is now worse than what slaughter was.

My reasoning behind seal rock being worse than slaughter is due to the fact you that you actually pvp and kill people in slaughter, whereas seal rock is just pve warriors dick humping rocks all day and never wanting to actually play the mode correctly. When your alliance(s) is shit and retarded, you have no choice but to join them in being retarded too since you can't really do anything when no one is listening.

Flames Standing: 686
Maelstrom Standing: 652
Adder Standing: 152

Adders gets one B rank node, while others have a A rank, what does adder do? <pos> DEFEND, OMFG YOU GUYS STOP CHASING AND DEFENDDNENENDNEND OUR NODE, THERE'S NO NEED TO CHASE.

Seal Rock in a nutshell right there. What's this pincer and attacking you guys speak of? There's only one thing in seal rock, and that's dick humping rocks all match.

[kisada]

i like sr better than old fl lol. feels like a really good mix of secure and slaughter. i can understand the frustration though, as i keep hearing about how our GC is just wretched these days.


btw it's not smns that need nerfs. healers just need to be better. a good healer disrupts my gameplan more than anything else in sr.

[Deathbringer]

Every time I see a AST, I stop whoever I'm killing and go for them- fuck AST

[Fiye]

Every time I see a AST, I stop whoever I'm killing and go for them- fuck AST

Aspected Benefic under Nocturnal is the real MVP.

[Elcura]

Every time I see a AST, I stop whoever I'm killing and go for them- fuck AST

And unless these people bring backup, it doesn't go well lol.

I enjoy pulling people to my camp like I'm fishing for mobs in XI again. Nostalgic.