How to NOT Fuck Your Party - A Rant on/Guide to Class Roles and Double Queuing
User: Bushwack
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So, how's everyone's evening? Everyone doing alright?
Me? I just wiped on Reaper.
First phase went fine. Fireballs went fine. DDR was a bit touch and go, but mostly fine. Then, we instantly wiped to Harvest Time because our fucking Sentinel didn't pull aggro off our Guardian. He was busy being murdered because he decided to be a complete fucking arsehole and double queue as Merc, so we had three DPS, a solo tank, and me trying to desperately purge Death Sentence from the whole party.
As I write this post, that is the fifth time it's happened tonight.
"Man, Bushwack, you just sound salty."
YEAH, YOU BETTER FUCKING BELIEVE I'M SALTY.
Ever since Aetherflux added multi-role queuing along with the new hybrid classes and had the fucking brilliant idea to make the MM's 'one of every role' balancing function count every role a player's selected, it's like every second queue involves a triple damage stack with a Merc solo-tank, or a Mech-ENG as our Sentinel, or a QD Gunslinger as our Breaker. To everyone bitching and moaning about queue times, I fucking blame you for this. Rather than trying to bash my head against this new shitty fucking matchmaking system, I'm gonna channel all my salt into this handy guide for anyone who doesn't want to go to hell for torturing four other people with an unwinnable party.
Who knows? Maybe someone will actually listen. At least, if Archon takes a nosedive, nobody can say I didn't do shit.
So, let's start with the first and biggest issue.
'We don't need a Senti-' YES YOU FUCKING DO
Everyone likes to shit on Sentinels, since they're the least sexy Role to play. Sometimes, it feels like every second Guardian treats the Sentinel like a fucking slave. Plenty of players think of them as a necessary evil, with how the matchmaking works. That's probably why so many think it's okay to double queue Sentinel and 'fuck it, it'll work out'. And yeah, if you're running a premade, you can build a party around not having a Sentinel. You can take a Rune Knight, an Inquisitor and three high DPS classes and just mash nearly any boss into the ground. Good luck with that in a MM party, though.
Let's go over what a Sentinel's jobs are, in order of most to least important.
- BOSS MECHANICS. Doesn't matter who you are, if you think there's something more important than getting to the Fort during W.Drac's Armageddon, you're a fucking idiot.
- Soak/negate direct-targeted tank busters.
- Allow 'Rage' debuffs to time out on the main tank by drawing or purging the effect.
- Handling adds with AOE or aggro tanking
- Boss Damage. People like to shit on Sentinels for not doing anything. Ignore them. Sentinels usually have the highest overall damage numbers of any role in higher levels of play. The 'weakness' of most Sentinels is that their DPS is gradual and reliant on having a high up-time. Good when everything's going smoothly and people are doing their jobs. Trash when you're still getting used to a boss AND you're having to keep track of your tank's cooldowns for them.You're gonna get hit hard by a bad team, especially a bad Guardian.
Other optional responsibilities include holding the boss's attention if the Guardian drops and calling tactics, since the Sentinel is usually the one with the widest vision of a fight.
There's nothing new on that list. Even peeps that hate on Sentinels know it more or less. They just think that, since most of it is situational, and everyone can do soak damage, that it doesn't matter. They think 'yeah, if our guardian does his thing, we'll be fine'.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Peeps like to think that, since Archon Online is a full on Action MMO and that any fight is possible if played well enough, that means they can do fucking stupid shit without repercussions. They play through the main story, probably solo, get to the end and think 'yeah, I'm basically a god'. And then they go to MM and think it's everyone else that's shit.
And yeah, Archon Online isn't a super team reliant MMO when you get down to it. There's certain classes that can, with a shit tonne of time put in, both in prep and during each actual fight, solo end game content. That goes out the window in Matchmaking, though. Getting good enough to solo in Archon means learning boss patterns, learning how to manipulate hitboxes and attack timings to line up with iframes and forced movement. It's about being patient and taking forty minutes to beat a boss fight that'd take a full party five. Good luck with that, when aggro is now something that needs to be worried about and you have four other idiots messing with the boss's AI. Good luck when your party starts raging in chat if you miss a quick phase, far less anything more time consuming.
If you think you're good enough to solo, solo. If you think you know a party combo that'll let you ignore a role entirely, take it to the Partyfinder. If you want to queue into matchmaking, play the fucking meta.
'Finishers and Breakers are both DPS so it doesn't mat-THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS'
Okay, lemme set this straight, for the record.
You all have a basic attack, right? All roles can do damage. It’s the sort of game Archon Online is. The best DPS in the game belongs to the Berserker, who's a pure Guardian. The fourth is the Magister, who’s a pure Steward. The lowest DPS in the game is the Sniper, though that’s probably not intentional. That ain't the point though. DPS ain't why you need a Finisher or a Breaker. You can get that from anyone.
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So, why do you need 'em? Well...
Breakers do damage to vulnerable targets.
Finishers do damage to non-vulnerable targets.
Easy, right?
Breakers exist for burst damage. You line up your cooldowns, prep your buffs, wait for the boss to stand perfectly still, then punt 'em right where it hurts. A Breaker's trying to condense five minutes of DPS from most other classes into like thirty seconds. It's about having your shit ready to go when the boss starts charging up his spirit bomb so that you can take his head off and stop him pushing your shit in. Breakers bring the sort of damage that beats an 'offensive' boss phase.
Finisher are the other way. Finishers are more about accuracy, pinpoint amounts of reasonable damage and the kinds of crowd control that actually work on bosses. S'why the Trapper is a Finisher. Finishers are meant to open up a boss, one way or another, so that your team can make use of their strengths. Finishers bring the sort of accuracy and protection negation that beats a 'defensive' boss phase.
This is why dropping either of 'em is trash. Snek without a Finish ends with you wiping to Burrow as he destroys the whole arena without you ever touching him. Ariel without a Breaker ends with you wiping to Tsunami 'cus good luck doing 50 mil in 20 seconds without one.
Plenty of people have spent years and pages, bitching about how stupid Archon's Role system is and how slow its matchmaking system is because of it. Don't look at me, I didn't make this fucking system, I just play here
'Man, queue times are pretty long tonight. I guess I'll just tick this box to help-'STOP
Let's go over the all the usual suspects responsible for this plague, with a short summary of why you shouldn't double queue for each of them.
- G/S Mercenary (All Builds): The biggest offender by far, probably because everyone watched that one time a certain streamer solo tank Bart in a MM Party. 'If it worked on Bart, the hardest boss in the game, it'll work on-'WRONG. Not only was that a fully kitted Merc, which you probably aren't, but Bart's tank busters are super forgiving compared with Reaper, W.Drac, Snek or Ariel. Merc has no way to drop aggro, his iframes are trash and, as a result, if you try to face tank any of those with JUST Earn My Keep, you will rapidly find yourself tanking the floor. Merc can theoretically solo tank with the right comp (much like General). Hell, Merc can just solo if you have the gear and knowledge. If you had to read this guide though, you ain't good enough to even think about it.
- S/B Mechanic (Turret/Pilot Build): 'Oh shit! Here comes the Tank Buster!' 'Don't worry, guys, I'll just sac 90% of my damage to absorb it!'. If you're queuing for Sentinel as a Mechanic, have a Legion build on the backburner or you're setting yourself up to wipe to Rage mechanics.
- G/S Hell Knight (All Builds): Choose either, but not both. A Hell Knight taking aggro is mincemeat if Invoke Contract drops and, believe me, without someone that can take the heat off you on occasion, you're going to drop contract. Hell Knight can't tank without a Sentinel.
- S/B Ninja (Weapon Builds): This is actually fine, if you remember that Smoke Bomb exists and you don't queue into Reaper. If you queue into Reaper as Sentinel Ninja, you deserve everything you're about to get.
- B/F Gunslinger (Quick Draw): Don't MM with QDG. Just don't. QDG is a cheese build that exists to skip phase 2 for W.Drac and Burrow for Snek. It does no damage. Not only does that mean it's trash everywhere else, but it's also trash for MMs of those. QDG is meta when paired with Inquisitor, Rune Knight and usually Archmage. You don't have that guarantee of damage for MM. Oh, and if you're the sort of person that queues as Breaker with QDG, go fuck yourself.
- B/F Vigilante (All Builds): Just like the HK, pick one, but even moreso. Dagger Vigilante is passable as a melee Finisher. Crossbow Vigilante is a worse Inquisitor (which isn't even that bad; 'oh, you're slightly worse than the most broken class in the game, what a fucking tragedy'). You can't do both.
'Come on, Bushwack, it's not that big a d-IT. FUCKING. IS'
I don't go into matchmaking expecting perfect play. I don't even expect particularly 'good' play. I don't expect optimised rotations. I don't expect phase skips. Hell, I don't even expect knowledge of the mechanics. Plenty of people go into matchmaking having never tried a fight before, hoping to learn it.
Think about what happens when that newbie runs into someone
Double queuing is super fucking disrespectful to the time and commitment of everyone you're queuing into. People go into matchmaking for a bunch of reasons. Usually, because partyfinder is slow, or because it's elitist. Most people who go into partyfinder want to clear, and by fucking up the party dynamics, you're taking a dump all over them.
When I go into matchmaking, I expect people to be trying to clear the content. When you double queue into a role you have no intention to fill, you're putting your desire to get into a game over everything else.
Don't fucking do it.
EDIT: For everyone asking my opinion on double queuing as Steward, how the fuck would I know? I'm a Bishop main. How many idiots do you think are going to try to legitimately try to take the main healer role from a Bishop as a Heretic or Antiquarian?