Frontline General

[Jem]

My record this week is 0/8/7. At this point I'm pretty sure it's far better for me to never actually win than it is to win since I get 300 for 3rd and 450 for 2nd now.

[Lucavi]

Spoiler: show

Hah! Rio is in this screenshot. Serves the bastard right for rolling Adder. Fuck the wood nymph hippies.

[Rionel]

Whoa! I totally am in that screenshot haha.

I switched to Adder for the better PvP queues really. Maelstrom queues are just horrific and Immortals I heard weren't much better, if not worse. It basically went from 20-40mins+ average to insta queue/5-10 min as Adders.

As much as I'd vastly prefer to be Mael or Immortal, ultimately I want to play PVP a lot! With such long wait times if you're one of the two, it really drains the fun out of it for me.

My friend Mataeus very begrudgingly switched to Adders as well, for the same reason. He also calls them tree hugging hippies. But honestly the only thing that bothers me is the Adder's opening fanfare. It sounds like one of those fail-recorder flute songs, ugh!

Also as BLM, I've been experimenting with casting Thunder on a lot of people. Thundercloud frequently procing is pretty hilarious.

[Lucavi]

I thunder most pets I see, as well as fire III, so I'm primed to cast the big boys on live fleshbags.

[Pruviant]

I have always been Adders so I have nothing to compare too, but do the other 2 factions seem to have a shortage of healers a lot of the time?

Also, had a wtf moment the other day when I asked one of the 5 SMNs in my party if they could switch to SCH (on the off-chance they had gear for it and we had 7 dps and 1 tank). I was told I was "selfish" for asking if one of them could change for the betterment of the team. "Maybe you should level a healer if you want one so bad in here". I get not wanting to play heals, but calling me selfish? That makes no sense. We proceeded to funnel kills steadily to Flames for the entire match resulting in this:

Spoiler: show

At least 7 of them were Flames >.>

[Lucavi]

You can generally tell when people don't feel like playing healer because the faction gets rolled that game. I wouldn't say there's a healer SHORTAGE for Flames on my center, just that not everyone wants to play healer. I'm actually looking forward to it since its the easiest to actually contribute, since its quite easy to target your own teammates as opposed to specific enemies, and you don't need to be staring at a teammate to heal them, as opposed to casting the death spells.

[Taint]

Same I'm almost lvl60 WHM just for Frontlines. Its very good for lazy FL play, most parties in siege are so spread out I'll only have to focus a few players at a time.

[Raldo]

In 60-cap, do people still suggest wearing VIT accs for healers (and bonus attributes, if you don't use the job for anything else), or is the MND loss noticable this time around?

[kisada]

i think healers don't get targeted as hard as in other versions, so if you are really good at keepaway then you can run with normal mnd stuff. but if you find yourself getting caught out a lot then you should wear vit.

that said, coming from a smn's perspective, when i'm trying to kill someone it's really a binary thing. will my target get a heal? if not, i kill him. if yes, i don't. whatever that amount of heal is for doesn't really matter (unless it's like 100 hp). so throughput isn't the biggest thing to counter smn at least, as long as you keep them out of execution range.

[Kiarax]

I think a VIT piece or two is worth just to keep you from getting one shot from melee LBs. I use 2 accessories and cheap VIT+34 food now and it's prevented pretty much every melee LB kill that's hit me since. I actually think the stat loss is even less noticeable now than it was in 50 cap.

[Niiro]

Since healing generally outpaces damage so much the difference in healing potency is probably not that major in practice.

If someone is getting focused down super hard odds are it doesn't make much of a difference whether your heals are landing for 3k or 4k (or however much heals do now), nothing's gonna save them short of a bene and/or an assist.

[Spider-Dan]

I still run with full right side VIT and I frequently have more HP than tanks.

I actually expected to need some PIE, as I was always running out of MP in Slaughter and spells have a higher cost (relative to max MP) now, but I actually end up spending a lot less MP in Seize, even compared to Secure. Heals are much more burst-y now.

As to the job question: I don't think I've ever lost a Frontline match because of too many healers, but I've lost quite a few because of not enough. For a while, I was queueing Secure as a DPS and switching to healer when I got in (to avoid those situations of being the only healer in a party), but so far in 3.0, I've usually had another healer in my party, so I haven't resorted to that yet.

[Tobi]

I lost a game about an hourish ago where we had 11 healers, we never got more than 100 points.

[Lucavi]

You can absolutely lose a game that doesn't involve you having RNG god-luck with spawns by having too many healers. If you get to cap first, you can simply mix AOE damage and healing in to hold caps, but if you actually have to shove people off of nodes or wage open war on a team that isn't being pincered, it can be difficult to gain meaningful ground.

[kisada]

cs woulda helped!

[AoE]

I have always been Adders so I have nothing to compare too, but do the other 2 factions seem to have a shortage of healers a lot of the time?

Also, had a wtf moment the other day when I asked one of the 5 SMNs in my party if they could switch to SCH (on the off-chance they had gear for it and we had 7 dps and 1 tank). I was told I was "selfish" for asking if one of them could change for the betterment of the team. "Maybe you should level a healer if you want one so bad in here". I get not wanting to play heals, but calling me selfish? That makes no sense. We proceeded to funnel kills steadily to Flames for the entire match resulting in this:

I'm of the mindset that if people don't willingly come healer, chances are that they wouldn't be that great if they switched of they'd play less effectively than someone who wanted to. The exception being people who are regulars and queue on DPS so people don't get butt hurt if they queue healer and decide to change. I kinda cringe when people plead with others to switch healer and then someone switches and they have minimal HP because then it's usually safe to assume they have no PVP experience and/or lack of experience to be an actual good healer. IMO, if your healer isn't built to tank through people's bullshit, you're not being as effective as you can be. If you're doing it right, people will be reluctant to attack you.

I dunno which datacenter you're on but this is Aether Maelstrom's big problem in the majority of games I play. Some games we'll get two per party which I think is the minimum, then sometimes one party won't have a healer at all or in rare cases like which happened to me the other day, we had one healer alliance-wide.

I've won a 24-man game in Secure with no healer but it takes people either being experienced, or people who listen when you tell them to do something to be effective. Having 6 damage dealers focus down one person is very difficult if not impossible to heal through and as soon as you get down their healer, the rest of party drops unless they're just as, if not more experienced than you.

When the odds are in your favor, you gotta have fun with the situation. I've only seen it once but having an alliance-wide death ball of DPS/Tanks is fun as hell when everyone stops caring about dying when you know you won't win anyway. However, it's usually hard to convince people because people are so damn reluctant to adapt when it should be obvious that you should.

[Lucavi]

Since you're on my datacenter but aren't Flames, much like with Rio, I don't feel sorry for you.

[Moridam]

aether maelstrom is also just generally fucking retarded. stupid loud people giving stupid loud advice and people for some reason actually listen to it. "OK guys, we just had 2 A's spawn on top of us, now everyone stop fighting and run away and we'll somehow manage to win"

if you want a surefire way to beat aether maelstrom, just walk menacingly in our general direction and there's a very good chance you'll get free caps and kills.

[AoE]

Since you're on my datacenter but aren't Flames, much like with Rio, I don't feel sorry for you.

If I didn't have my own LS, I would've switched ages ago.

[JigglyJam]

Just switched to adders on aether for queue times too and going to echo maelstorm wtf. Either they pincer us with flames (flames way in the lead) or they just feed flames (like just standing there and taking it or something; flames also way in the lead).

I've adopted the strategy of "let's see what retarded shit mael does first" before making any moves.