Ghosts You Can Still Find in the Ghost-less Version:

*Dianna Murphy (Timothy Murphy’s Wife) *Dennis Kim (Alice Spencer-Kim’s Father) *Lydia Spencer (Alice Spencer-Kim’s Mother) *Skip Broke (Brandi Broke’s Husband) *Bianca Villareal (Jacques Villareal’s Wife) *Prisca Lobo (Diego Lobo’s Mother) *Darleen Dreamer (Darren Dreamer’s Wife) *Rosie Hecking (Brent & Brant Hecking’s Dog) *Ted Roswell (Meredith Roswell’s Husband) *Keala Hoapili (Lia Hauata’s Grandmother) *Minerva Charm (Darrel & Gemma Charm’s Mother) *Ekram Elderberry (Eleanor Elderberry’s Husband) *Francine Spencer (Cletus Harris’ Mother) *Blossom Greenburg (Mary Greenburg’s Wife) *Kristopher Volkov (Jacob Volkov & Rory Oaklow’s Adoptive Father) *Tai Lum (Mei Prescott’s Father) 

V1.1 Changes:

Party Makeup

Parties will always be made up of a tank, healer, melee (close range), and a long range. Everyone’s skill sets are simplified, however many classes have their utilities that they can use to further help their team. I do not know all classes, nor will I go through each class. The following information about each role is very general and doesn’t necessarily apply to all classes under the summarized role.

Tanks:  Do your best to use your skills to keep party members alive and bother the enemy healer. It also helps very greatly to help dps the target when you are free, and also to slow/stun/stop enemy party members if it seems like the damage being received by a party member is too high. Stuns, silences, ect are best done on the enemy healer when an enemy is getting hit hard to try and secure the kill.

Healers: You know your job, but healing can become difficult due to LoS (line of sighting) and having an enemy tank knocking you around. Try your best to keep up with the party to keep them within your healing range. Damage can be sudden and deadly, so keep on your toes. If you are getting focused, you can use LoS to your advantage to try and keep damage bearable. Run around objects or back and forth at the end of a wall. Be sure to put Slide Casting to good use. More on Slide Casting towards the end of this guide, under Tips. DPSers: The party cannot win without having decent kills, however you also won’t kill anyone if you don’t work with your co-dps. Focus on a single target together and, if you can, try to burst out the highest amount of damage you can muster in the smallest amount of time, preferably at the same time with your Co-DPS. You don’t want the damage to be slow, otherwise the healer can keep them up no problem. However you don’t want to risk dying either. Always make sure that you’re within healing range of your healer. You can easily get killed if you’re too far or behind a wall.

General Gameplay

Your goal is to have more medals than the enemy team by the end of the match. However, carrying medals also causes a burden of a defence debuff. The more medals you have, the lower your defence (Heavy Medal debuff), to a point where a healer couldn’t possibly keep you alive.

With this in mind, never go above 169 medals. Never go above a 1 stack debuff. 

Anything higher makes you an easy target and it won’t be your healer’s fault if you die. On the flip side, you can also use this to your advantage if an enemy is overstacking. They are easier to kill, especially if they have an awesome 10 stack debuff. If they die, half of their medals will be dropped, so be careful and double check how many medals you currently have before picking them up.

Do your best to bother the healer, dps together on a single target, shield each other, help each other, and halt the enemy when needed. As time progresses and kills aren’t made, culling times begin and will only end upon someone’s death. During culling, debuffs that are the equivalent of Heavy Medal stacks will slowly increase. These are the scary moments.

Boxes will also spawn during the match at set times. Adrenaline boxes spawn at 6m and 2m left on the timer, and increase your Adrenaline Gauge by 25%. Generally the melee has the better limit break, so give the adrenaline to them if they need it. Try not to let the enemy have it even if you don’t need it.

There is also the blessed Wolf’s Heart. This spawns at 4min left in the match and always at the center of the arena. This baby gives 2% max MP and 5% max TP per second and 10% increased movement speed. This is a high priority item so get it asap. Sometimes the ranged DPS will even LB it and others will bind/stun enemy dps to halt them from breaking it open. Whichever side gets the Wolf’s Heart will have a very big advantage and can easily change the tide of the game. Generally it’s best to give it to the healer for the best outcome. However, if you feel your party’s healer won’t survive at all, even after obtaining the Wolf’s Heart, it might be in your better interest to give it to whoever seems most competent in your party.

Strategy

So how in Halone are we supposed to have our party work together and sync properly? Especially with the lack of party chat? If you look in your PvP profile, there is a section for chat commands. Such as hitting the skill Charge will cause you to yell [Everyone Attack!] in the party chat, joined with a sound effect. You can also still use way marks and party signs to help you, as well as macros. Macros will be listed later. It can also help to put someone (friend or foe) on focus so you can watch what they’er targeting as well as their buffs and debuffs.

Generally it’s best to mark a target as 1 so that everyone can focus their damage on this target. However, you still want to time your bursts and any stuns/silences that may end up on the enemy healer to pan out at the same time. Use the count down macro I have included. It’ll mark the target to 5, then count down to 1. It’s also good to use a call out to get everyone’s attention before using the countdown macro. A favourite is using the pvp chat Charge.

As 2 changes to 1, this is when you want everything to happen. The combined and condensed damage both dps are doing, as well as any silence/stuns on the enemy healer, may secure a kill for you. If not, it should pressure the enemy healer into popping their defence buffs and maybe even their emergency heals. It’s okay if a kill doesn’t happen, because now the enemy healer has (hopefully) depleted their defences. Keep this up and keep it rappid. If your team works together well, you’ll get your kills. If your class has specific skills that could help, such as debuffs to put on the target, go for it and use them.

Sometimes, especially if your target gets deleted, it might be in your interest to switch targets to the healer after you see them deplete their skills. They’ll be mostly defenceless. If you get the healer down, the rest of the party can easily be killed. Be careful though. Healers may run and try to run around walls and objects to LoS you. If you follow them without watching where you are relative to your party’s healer, you could accidently LoS your own healer and leave yourself as a sitting duck.

Be mindful of your surroundings no matter who you are. If you feel yourself getting heavily damaged, it may be in your best interest to retreat and seek cover around objects. Again, just be careful not to LoS or get out of the range of your own healer. If you recognize a burst (such as when a Dragoon turns red and especially if they’er tethered), counter it however you can. If you’re getting targeted, put distance between you two. If you have shields, use them on whoever is getting bursted. If you have sleep/stuns/ect use it on whoever is bursting to halt it.

In higher tier matches, it becomes obvious that everyone is really good at what they do and it almost feels impossible to otherwise secure a kill. This is also when you may notice whoever is doing call outs are rapidly switching targets everywhere before finally settling on one to count down and burst on. This is Swapping. At this point you’re trying to be more stealthy about who your target is. After all, if you just mark a target and stay on it even when not count down bursting, it’s pretty obvious to the enemy team who they need to protect. Swapping around together like this can help make it harder to predict who is going to get harm.

Lastly, if you have skills that can be interrupted then it might be in your best interest to try and communicate with your party when you do use this skill. Such as sleep. If someone is slept, the moment they are attacked they will be awoken. Sleep is nice as it can help extend the time the enemy healer is unable to heal, as well as halt the enemy when they’er bursting or when your party is forced to retreat due to your healer getting killed. Try and hit [Stopping X!] and even mark that target as target to ignore before using your skill.

Macros

Macros can help you greatly. Anything from instant targeting, to marking, to using skills on party members without having to select them. Keep in mind that you can target anyone by a name also but you cannot use skills on an enemy target who is targeted by name.

/micon “skill” pvpaction (micon for pvp skills specifically. Good to see their cool downs since they are separate from pve skills.)

/target <attack1> (targets whoever is marked 1) /target <f> (targets whoever you have focused) /target “name” (targets whoever you name, be it friend or foe) /target <1>, <2>, <3>, <4> (targets your party members from first to fourth. Pick one.) /as “name”, <1>, ect (targets whoever the subject is targeting. IE /as “enemyname” will let you target whoever they’er currently attacking.)

/pvpac “skillname” <1>, <f>, “name”, ect (use a skill on this subject. "name” will NOT work for enemy targets. Sorry, no /pvpac “Fluid Aura” “EnemyTank”. A nice example for party use is for Dark Knights /pvpac “The Blackest Night” <2> or maybe White Mage /pvpac “Fluid Aura” <f>)

The following lines are the countdown macro. It will only work if someone is already targeted as 1. Keep in mind that if you use any other macro while the count down is in process, the timer will halt. This includes targeting macros.

/mk attack5 <attack1> <wait.1> /mk attack4 <attack5> <wait.1> /mk attack3 <attack4> <wait.1> /mk attack2 <attack3> <wait.1> /mk attack1 <attack2> <wait.1>

Just About Ready? A Few More Tips.

Before you hop in, try to know and understand your class to the best of your ability. Build macros that you think will help you. Practice on the dummies in the Wolves Den to make sure you have everything down. Use the macros, including the count down macro, so you can get the muscle memory in, especially if you’re a dps trying to weave this into learning your bursts and how to ready your next burst asap. Hell, practice swapping, too. If you need to, make macros to mimic the Feast chat call outs so you can practice with those too.

This is also a good time to see if you like where all your keys are. Feast is pretty fast paced and constantly moving, so you want to be able to use your skills while on the move. When you practice, keep moving around the dummy and move things to better positions if need be.

For casters, it’ll be very important for you to learn how to Slide Cast, especially if you’re a healer. This will help you greatly so that you can heal yourself and use objects to run around and LoS enemies with. Normally when you cast a spell and move, the spell gets interrupted. However, you will still cast your spell anyway if you move late enough into the cast. I don’t know about other spells, but having tried out healer, moving when there’s .5 seconds or less left in the cast.

You should also adjust your HUD. Make everything easy to see at a glance, but not covering your screen too much. You’ll want to see all the rapid movement going on, especially to watch for openings and if someone is bursting. You’ll also want to keep the score board up so you can keep track of how many medals everyone has.

If you get the map that’s covered in grass, be careful about your defence/offence boxes at the start. Due to the map’s set up, one party’s long range can very easily sprint to the other side of the map and destroy the other party’s boxes. If this happens, that party will lose the contents of that box and will go to the other party instead. Be sure to break the further box first. If you’re a tank or healer, it might be in your better interest to go straight to center to try and intercept anyone attempting this.

As for boxes, try to let someone beat up the boxes that would benefit from it, especially the left side/defence box. A lot of close range, including tanks, need to beat things up to increase their meter, ect. Melee typically takes the right/offence box, so if you’re ranged, let someone else beat up the left/defence box. If no one comes to beat it up, then go for it yourself. Dark Knights, for example, gain blood for their blood meter through their combos. If you let them break the box, they can use bloodspiller sooner, which gives you an earlier opportunity to silence the healer.

Don’t forget about using focus. This can help you greatly by letting you see someone’s current buffs, used buffs, current resistances, ect in real time. For instance, you can use it on the enemy healer to watch when their stun/silence resistance wears off.

Since there is no party chat in Feast, you can try your best to communicate to those who don’t know what to do. For instance, if your party destroys the Wolf’s Heart, but it doesn’t look like your healer is picking it up, try this: Mark the healer as 1 and spam [collecting wolfs heart]. You can even spam mark 1 on the healer to make it blink above their head. It’s better than nothing.

So that your chat is clean, make a new tab and only have Party under the Chat tab enabled, as well as System Messages, Own Battle System Messages, Loot Notices, and Sign Messages for PC Targets under the Announcements tab. This is especially nice to see exactly how many medals an enemy target drops. You can do some quick math to make sure you don’t go over 169 total medals yourself.

Remember, there is very little information out there. Not a lot of people will understand at first, but try not to get angry at them. They may be just as new as you are. Try to teach before you resort to becoming a rude brute. Because, quite frankly, it doesn’t give you a gold star to look like a total ass. I don’t care how good you are. You’re still an ass if you resort to rude behavior, especially if it’s very clear that they just need a bit of coaching.