Frontline General

[kisada]

vit party boost is nice.

also lowering yourself in the enemy targeting order is pretty big if you're an impact player (or even a newer one). the less you die the more you can do

Besides that, war's really great for harassing and self-maintaining. Defiance/IB/path will let you run kind of rampant with some self heals, but the absolute most annoying thing you can do is run to where the enemy is hanging out and spam overpower on them. Seriously, people do this to me and i get interrupted non stop without equanmity, so i'm forced to change from my ideal position. HATE IT SO MUCH

And pld is awesome for lockdown. What i never see enough of are plds who lockdown a really nosy player who comes into our side of the map to harass us. So like a pld or war who thinks they can get away with pressuring my backline or a whm who thinks they can swift holy us pretty much can get away really easily. But if you're on pld, the moment they come in if you play it right it's 7s of stun while your alliance is beating on them.


If i weren't working on my kill title i'd probably play tank just to abuse and disrupt the enemy team.

[Moridam]

we've got a full 8-man running on aether maelstrom this afternoon. flames/adders are both pushing back hard but we're staying in pretty good shape for the most part, lol.

[Tobi]

I wish I never stopped the grind for the 5k kill title now ugh, shit feels like it'll be forever until I get it. I really wanna get back into healing FL too, and trying out BRD/NIN more.

[AoE]

we've got a full 8-man running on aether maelstrom this afternoon. flames/adders are both pushing back hard but we're staying in pretty good shape for the most part, lol.

Wish I knew I woulda grinded out with ya.

[kisada]

I wish I never stopped the grind for the 5k kill title now ugh, shit feels like it'll be forever until I get it. I really wanna get back into healing FL too, and trying out BRD/NIN more.

i thought you'd definitely get there before me with how close you were to slaughterhouse way back then, and how much that much FL made me wanna throw up lol

[Seravi Edalborez]

Sucks doing the most damage and having the most kills by a fair margin each, but your team still goes third (Immortal Lames). Felt pretty good on a personal note though, got 14 kills / 0 deaths earlier tonight. On BLM of course.

Really I don't understand why I don't get mobbed more. Feels like only 2-4 people ever try to hit me across an entire match; a BLM I'm hitting, a SMN who happens to Bane onto me, a BRD, or a random tank who shield bashes then fucks off. Then just hide behind a pillar and they're like "nope, I give up". I know slaughter isn't exactly a tactical affair, but feels like all I need to do to be personally successful is just hide in the middle of everyone so I'm more annoying to target.

[Tobi]

i thought you'd definitely get there before me with how close you were to slaughterhouse way back then, and how much that much FL made me wanna throw up lol

yeah, I was ahead by a huge margin, I felt like the only person who had slaughterhouse for awhile, but i'm sure both you and epe are probably ahead of me now since I did kinda not pvp much for a good 2 weeks.

Sucks doing the most damage and having the most kills by a fair margin each, but your team still goes third (Immortal Lames). Felt pretty good on a personal note though, got 14 kills / 0 deaths earlier tonight. On BLM of course.

Really I don't understand why I don't get mobbed more. Feels like only 2-4 people ever try to hit me across an entire match; a BLM I'm hitting, a SMN who happens to Bane onto me, a BRD, or a random tank who shield bashes then fucks off. Then just hide behind a pillar and they're like "nope, I give up". I know slaughter isn't exactly a tactical affair, but feels like all I need to do to be personally successful is just hide in the middle of everyone so I'm more annoying to target.

A fever person who is playing smart and know how to hide in the back or not make themselves easily noticeable will allow them to stay alive fairly easily. I mainly lose my high/fever to other teams coordinating well on us, and even then, once I see it happening, I usually retreat down our ramp hoping no one follows me, but even that comes with a risk sometimes 'cause their may be a sneaky hidden ninja with LB just waiting to fuck you at the right moment.

The majority of my matches, I either don't die, or sometimes die once or twice. I've actually started to run 2 vit accs on my blm now cause I prefer that extra surviability of being able to take melee LB and survive 2 cometeors.

[Epedemic_Optikz]

yeah, I was ahead by a huge margin, I felt like the only person who had slaughterhouse for awhile, but i'm sure both you and epe are probably ahead of me now since I did kinda not pvp much for a good 2 weeks.

i'm at 2900'ish kills atm. how about you (and kisada)? i've also been taking a break from pvp myself since i got my 100 flames wins and i don't have any desire to do frontlines anymore as flames unless the levi premade is going since constantly losing is not fun. i'll be transferring back to my hometown of maelstrom once my gc lets me, however, i'll be binging on gold saucer for a while and ignoring pvp so i'm sure i'll be the last to get the hand of mercy.

[Tobi]

I'm at 2925 kills atm. I might just go back to focusing purely on kills from now on at this point just because I want to go ahead and finish this title, usually once a node is up I mainly focus on that, and its become a lot harder lately to get aoe/flare kills on nodes now compared to before where you could easily easily get fever just off first node alone. as much as I feel close to the 5k, at the same time it just feels so far away, i'd really hate to leave it undone at this point but I'm just so tired of slaughter. also, since I play on controller, its a bit of a pain sometimes for me to get kills as well lol.

My progress will slow down a lot more now on title with 2.51 being tomorrow, i'll probably be going back to doing only like 30-50 matches a week again.

[kisada]

currently 3137 but i've been pretty good at making excuses not to play lol. depending on how competitive and fun triple triad is i might drop FL altogether, save for the poetics cap. in addition we've actually been doing den (a couple times this week i think) and there's literally 0 chance i'll play FL over den. once ultros guys come back from their aether trip we'll probably be doing den exclusively for a few nights a week. i'm having a harder and harder time seeing myself getting title lol.

also my avg kills per game has dropped quite a bit since i'm spending a lot more time and focus on calling things out in alliance. i don't get that nice 20 kill game too often anymore. ;( guess i can't complain about actually winning games though.

also yeah i thought it was just me but getting streak off that first node is pretty rare now.

[Tobi]

it'd be nice if I could somehow get like 1k kills a week then I could be done in 2 weeks but that shits not happening. it'll probably be another 3-4 weeks before I get that title, and thats assuming I do it regularly still which I'm fairly certain I won't after tomorrow but i'll try to get it done sometime in march hopefully

[kisada]

yeah honestly i'm kind of over it. i see the light at the end of the tunnel but, isn't it kind of funny? all three of us are super yukked out at this point. i thought for sure all 3 of us would have it by now and instead it's just gross to think about.

i'd much rather chase after the alpha wolf title but that's in a different dimension altogether.

[Taint]

Are you guys just AoE nuking on BLM for all those kills? My best is 14 but that was on BRD. I target anyone with low HP and just chase them down.

I was going on BLM but it just seems like people ran away from my kill spell more often then not.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Are you guys just AoE nuking on BLM for all those kills? My best is 14 but that was on BRD. I target anyone with low HP and just chase them down.

I was going on BLM but it just seems like people ran away from my kill spell more often then not.

tl;dr: I generally feel AoE is just number porn. Single target burst is where I feel powerful. Firestarter is like on-demand bigger Misery's End / etc BRD's killing burst.

My methodology

0) If we're sucking and I'm bored, I will aoe a group of 5+ just to be a dickbag. Otherwise I am almost exclusively single-targeting (or at least not intentionally AoEing, see below)
1) Priority order: Overextending idiots > Other BLMs > BRDs > SMNs > melee > healers > tanks. If someone is hitting you a lot, focus target them so you can keep an eye out.
2) Save Firestarter as a finishing blow or emergency while-moving hit; ~20-35% on most DPS depending on their toughness and your buffs.
3) If having trouble killing anyone, put Thunder up on like 4-6 people. I got lucky last night and did Fire > TC proc 3 times in a row on another BLM.

Do not be on the edge of your allied mosh pit (easiest to tab target by enemies), nor in dead center (easiest to get caught in Cometeor). Even if you must do this at the cost of not being able to hit much of anything. Only chase if you are fairly confident you will kill in 1 GCD (Scathe, FS/TC procs, optional Phantom Dart for the actual damage) otherwise you will probably die yourself from overextending.

Otherwise all I really do is spam Fire and use FS procs. If someone is really low (10% or under) I will try to scumbag with Scathe for a killshot** unless they are getting healbombed. I do not always focus down whoever "everyone else" is, I will often just pick off some random guy outside my/our priority order just to see if healers are awake. You would be surprised how often I will just be allowed to take some random MNK or NIN from full to dead.

I will sometimes at the end of my AF3 MP, if I have a FS/TC proc, do a hardcast Flare, use FS proc, optionally Convert or Mana Draw and gauge if I can do another hardcast Fire or if Scathe spam will suffice. I don't know if this is really optimal, but it looks cool and is pretty bursty which is all I feel matters.

If getting hounded, Phantom Dart'd Raging Scathe spam is not awful. Though in Laughter you're basically already dead if more than 2 people are gunning for you.

I will readily admit I don't use Sleep much and only really SwiftFreeze for Cometeor. Only really sleeping healers to "stun" them.

**Despite doing this, it's not like I'm not also getting a lot of damage out for my kills. A couple random screens from matches I liked.

Spoiler: show

[Tobi]

in terms of AoE, it depends. if there's a bunch of melee hugging the node, you can sometimes easily rack up kills from it due to flare. usually there's melee hugging node at start, in which case I do the quad raging strikes flares then back to single target rotation or trying to pick off lower hp people, which is a bit harder for me to do unfortunately due to controller.

[Seravi Edalborez]

in terms of AoE, it depends. if there's a bunch of melee hugging the node, you can sometimes easily rack up kills from it due to flare. usually there's melee hugging node at start, in which case I do the quad raging strikes flares then back to single target rotation or trying to pick off lower hp people, which is a bit harder for me to do unfortunately due to controller.

I do this too on node but I don't often get kills from it. Just racking up a lot of damage. Feels like a summoner's curse, all the damage in the world but can't kill nobody with it.

[Tobi]

With others most likely doing the same, yea, kinda have to get a bit lucky unless you try to time the flares more precisely. It'll keep melee from the other teams off the node, thus lowering their overall damage on the node and helping your team deal more percentage damage to it. You're still dealing some damage and keeping others from it. But yea, for me to AoE, it depends how many melee are just around it.

[kisada]

Are you guys just AoE nuking on BLM for all those kills? My best is 14 but that was on BRD. I target anyone with low HP and just chase them down.

I was going on BLM but it just seems like people ran away from my kill spell more often then not.

hmm, i only ever aoe on first node. with a good flare rotation (4-5 flares depending on potions and brd) you can get a really easy kill streak right away. i actually got 6 as my high with the node halfway up. after that it's just a matter of being opportune with kills, properly animation canceling as you cast (my friends and i call it orb-walking, a term from dota), and just really have a good feel for whom you can kill.

i.e. if i see a guy being peppered with heals after he takes dmg i'm prob switch targets. or if he's at 50% and halfway to home base i'll switch cause i assume he'll get a heal. but someone who's right next to me who has a long way to travel to get to his healers i'll hammer and pray for some firestarter procs. also, phantom dart plays a huge role in if i think i can kill someone, and i'll either open with it (if i have RS) or i'll use it to bridge the gap in case my firestarter proc doesn't go off and i need one last bit to kill.

[kisada]

With others most likely doing the same, yea, kinda have to get a bit lucky unless you try to time the flares more precisely. It'll keep melee from the other teams off the node, thus lowering their overall damage on the node and helping your team deal more percentage damage to it. You're still dealing some damage and keeping others from it. But yea, for me to AoE, it depends how many melee are just around it.

in response to seravi, it's pretty much this^

i think 3-4 blms in your own alliance is a really nice number for you to actually get kills. anything more than that is really hit or miss. but even if you don't get kills you can force people off node which is overall dmg boost for your alliance. i think lately melees have been playing the node somewhat smarter making it more difficult to get kills, but it's been picking up for me a bit.

[Seravi Edalborez]

I should say I mean I don't see many kills, not that I don't personally get them. But I didn't consider the peeling melee off th node factor.