Basic Guide and Tips to the Feast 4v4
Updating for 4.4, some info may be outdated.
There may be notes in red scattered through the document as I work to update it.
To start off, if you are new to the Feast, I highly recommend going to the official Feast page on the FFXIV website. This page includes all of the basics you should know about how the mode functions. I will be proceeding assuming you are familiar with the contents of the page.
Table of Contents
Disconnect Medals – Honor and You
Important Tips
- Sustained damage is less important in this mode. This mode is more about burst. You want to maintain decent sustained damage to keep pressure on the healer, but ultimately dealing lots of damage in a short time frame is what will get you kills.
- Besides just burst, you also need to try to coordinate damage with your teammates. Tanks should CC and help follow up damage. You can do this better with quick chat commands like “Attacking _role_” and “Hello” as well as countdown macros. These will be expanded on in the communication section.
- Check all your skills! A lot of abilities function differently in PvP compared to their PvE counterparts. You only have 9 unique class buttons, and knowing what each does and how to make full use of each is important.
- Did your teammate die? Retreat back to base to regroup. This is especially important if the teammate who died is your healer, but you may want to do so as well even if it was a DPS who died as you are still going 3v4 unless you’re sure you’re about to get a kill. The additional pressure of being one teammate down may stress your healer and tank’s resources.
- Knowledge is power. Try to read up or try different classes yourself in the wolves den pier to see what they do, and what you might want to look out for. This will give you an idea on what your enemy and your teammates can do and can help you to adjust accordingly. Also make good use of the enemy and party team frames so you can gather information like if a buff has been used, debuffs applied, the amount of TP or MP players have, and stuff like CC resistance.
- Don’t sit on the same enemy for too long. If you keep on hitting the same opponent, it becomes easy for the healer since they only need to worry about healing that one target- in addition, if that person retreats far back, you risk going in too deep and Line of Sighting your own team. Change targets depending on the situation, but don’t forget about point 2 with coordinating targets with your team.
- Kite. If you are being wailed on, don’t just sit there and take it. Pop your defensives, pop your Bolt (if you have taken it) and run. If you just sit there and take the full thrashing, your healer can’t keep up. However you must also be aware of your healer’s and tank’s positioning, taking care not to line of sight them or out range them!
- Individual players have different playstyles. You’ll tend to run into the same people in the mode and over time you will come to recognise players you often play with. Remembering their general playstyle, habits good or bad, and behaviour will help both with cooperating with them on your team and handling them on the enemy team.
- Don’t give up! Fight for the full 6 minutes! This mode is heavily built around comeback mechanics. Heavy medals and light medals, and the medal system in general, makes it possible to take back a game at the last minute even if it seems bleak. Don’t give up! Remember, this is a ranked game mode and everyone wants to win. Do your best!
- PvP has a steep learning curve and you will lose while you are learning. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t immediately get results. It is important to keep practicing, keep on analyzing yourself, and work to improve yourself each match. If possible, recording or streaming matches so that you may review it afterwards or ask others for help is extremely beneficial.
Medals
Summing it up, the goal of the mode is to have more medals than the enemy team by the end of the match. Getting 600 medals will give you the win immediately. Each time someone dies, they drop half of their medals.
The more medals you hold, the more damage you take. This is called Heavy Medal. The less medals you have, the less damage you take. This is Light Medals.
Additionally, each role has a maximum limit to how many medals you can hold.
Tanks can take up to 4 stacks, melee up to 3, ranged up to 2 and healer up to 1 stack.
When medals are dropped, you can see specifically how many have dropped in the chat box. It will show a message such as “Fname Lname of the Fangs dropped 50 medals.”
Distributing Medals
Since you take extra damage when holding medals, the distribution of these medals is an important factor in a match.
Typically, the tank should pick up the first stack of medals to get to 2 stacks, as they are the best at handling the damage.
After that you want to spread it around the DPS. Healers will want to avoid taking them if possible, because a single stack can be dangerous for them and if a healer goes down, its very likely the rest of the team will go down with them.
If someone had died and thus has less medals, having them pick up medals would be best rather than someone else taking additional damage.
The medals stay on the floor for about 10-15 seconds so don’t panic if they aren’t immediately picked up.
Taking more than 2 stacks is a death sentence. Unless you are a tank. But let other members pick up medals before going for a 3 stack.
This HUD allows you to see in game the team’s medal totals, how much each member has, and the time remaining in the game (or the beginning preparation). The information on medals is especially important since you want to be able to keep track of who has what and how much which will allow you to make informed decisions on targets and tactics and who on your team should pick up the next medals from a kill.
Note that the star ★ denotes which team you are on/which player is you on the list. So in the above screenshot, you can see that I am on Team Fangs and am the Scholar.
Disconnect Medals – Honor and You
When someone disconnects, or leaves the match, all of the medals they held will drop to the ground. You can quickly tell if the medals on the floor are from a disconnection if you see someone on the scoreboard has 0 medals.
There are a lot of different views on how to handle medals from disconnections, or even if you see someone standing still assuming a disconnection or the disconnecting icon.
Most members of the community will halt the match out of respect for the person disconnected to wait until they come back. But may resume and end the match if the person does not return in a minute or so. Sometimes, if it’s clear the person isn’t coming back, players will try to coordinate outside of the game in order to organise medals to force a draw.
There is nothing strictly against the rules from collecting medals from disconnections, but it is typically frowned upon. If you wouldn’t want to lose because someone picked up your own DC medals, it’s probably a good idea not to pick up other people’s DC medals.
Boxes
An often overlooked part of the Feast are the adrenaline kits and the Wolf’s Heart. You should learn when these boxes spawn and try to make it a habit of winning them for your team! .
The team that does more damage to the boxes will claim the contents of it, not the one that gets the final hit. Overkill damage does count though, so don’t think that once you have the box down to 45% that it’s yours for sure.
A common mistake is using melee limit break on the boxes. Don’t.
Adrenaline Kit
The adrenaline potion gives you 25% of your adrenaline gauge. This is usually given to the melee as their limit break is very powerful. At the last stretch of the match, a tank might take it if you are in the lead and want to gain a limit break to play defensive. Bear in mind that since it only provides 25% of your adrenaline gauge, if you are at very low gauge at the end of the match you should call it out to let your teammates know so they may pick it up and make use of an LB instead.
Two adrenaline boxes spawn twice in each match near the center of the arena.
The first set of boxes spawns at 4:30 remaining in the match.
The second set of boxes spawned at 1:30 left in the match.
Wolf’s Heart
The Wolf’s Heart gives you a buff that gives you increased MP and TP regen as well as increased movement speed. This is practically always given to the healer as the MP regen gives them a lot more leeway with their healing and lets them throw out more powerful heals more often and, if they are sore on mana, not run out and kill the team. The increased movement speed is also beneficial to help them get enemies off their backs.
One wolf’s heart box spawns in a match in the center of the arena.
It spawns at exactly 3:00 remaining in the match.
Communication
Important Quick Chat commands
| “Get the medals!”Alert your teammates to collect medals. | |
| “Collecting medals!”Inform your teammates that you want to collect the medals. | |
| “Attacking tank/healer/melee/ranged DPS!”Use this to inform your team who you want to attack so that you can coordinate your damage on the same target. Use this prior to using your countdown and burst so that your team can get ready to attack with you. | |
| “Stopping tank/healer/melee/ranged DPS!”If you are a class with CC, use this to let your team know that you are shutting someone down for a moment. This is especially important as a BLM, as any attacks done on the person you use sleep on will cancel the sleep effect, so let your team know so they won’t immediately wake them up. | |
| “Everyone attack!”A way to inform burst. You can use this after calling out your target to let your team know you are going to burst now. | |
| “Hello.”Useful for DPS. Lets your co-DPS know that your burst is ready.Why “hello”? There’s nothing better to use. | |
| “Adrenaline Rush ready!/Adrenaline Rush not ready!”The main use of this chat is for Melee to inform their team that they are going to use their limit break so the team can ready themselves accordingly.You can also use this to tell the team your bar is full/empty so someone else should take the adrenaline supplies, if that situation arises. | |
| “Collecting adrenaline supplies/wolf’s heart!”Use this when you see the boxes are about to spawn/just spawned to remind your teammates to get ready to fight for it. | |
| “Fall back!”This is usually used to tell someone to back off and play more defensively or if they are line of sighting their team. |
Countdown Macro
New “Focus Attack” quick chat added which serves the same function as a countdown. But macros that relied on using skills on countdown targets (5-1 markers) won’t work with it.
The one, the only, that elusive “countdown” you all hear about.
Since coordination and burst is so important, it only makes sense that you want your team to all throw out the damage and CC at the same time to make it impossible to heal through.
This is done through this countdown macro. It countdowns with “5, 4, 3, 2, 1” markers on top of your targets head. Try not to make your target obvious to the enemy team. After starting the countdown try to switch to a different target while it counts down before swapping back at the end to catch the enemy off guard. This is called “hard swapping”.
There is no audio cue with it though. You must inform your teammates beforehand using quick chat communications like “Attacking role” a few GCDs prior and “Everyone attack!” once you start the countdown. Try to coordinate with your co-DPS when they callout “Hello” if they do as that is a sign that they are ready. Try to use it often to keep pressure up.
/mk attack1
/mk attack5 <t> <wait.1>
/mk attack4 <attack5> <wait.1>
/mk attack3 <attack4> <wait.1>
/mk attack2 <attack3> <wait.1>
/mk attack1 <attack2> <wait.1>
In the holy words of Suhr Zarek:
👏 do 👏 a 👏 countdown 👏 each 👏 time 👏 you 👏 blink 👏 lets 👏 go 👏
Are you a Tank?
As a tank, you have two main goals:
Protect your team, and help secure kills.
Is the enemy DPS going to burst? Are they harassing one of your teammates too much?
Try to CC them to stagger burst or to peel them off of your party enough to give them enough time to recover and attack them to tempt them to retreat to safety.
Is your own team going to burst? CC the enemy healer (and maybe the tank if they have good support) and help follow up the burst.
If your team is using countdowns, don’t CC the enemy healer too early or else it will be useless. After you are done CCing, help attack your team’s target to try to finish them off if they haven’t yet.
Make use of Tank stance.
Tanks have higher HP but besides that they still take just as much damage as other members of the party. You are just as vulnerable as your teammates if you don’t make use of your tank stance. You can be ripe for the picking especially if you have heavy medal stacks, and end up getting stunned and bursted down before you can put the stance on. I highly encourage tanks with heavy medal stacks to stay in tank stance until they want to burst. The risk of dying and giving the enemy a bunch of medals is a lot worse imo than missing some tank sustain. Removing tank stance does not put you on the GCD as well so you can immediately join in on the damage. Especially as a PLD, as you can get quick, clutch, mitigated covers.
Are you a Healer?
Keep an eye out for signs of enemy burst.
A lot of healing PvP is about watching and proactively getting ready for burst; reacting after the burst happens may be impossible to heal through against a good team. Telltale signs like a glowing red dragoon and buffs like monk’s Riddle of Fire or a BLM/SMN casting Fire IV/Ruin IV means it may be coming so start applying buffs and/or precasting your heals. The enemy tank rushing towards you can also be a sign that they are going to CC you for a burst so watch out for that too.
Make use of Focus Target
Having a focus target is an often overlooked and immensely helpful tool for a healer. Keep a dangerous enemy DPS as your focus target and you can more easily spot signs of their burst such as buffs or dangerous casts. Additionally, it also puts a nice arrow over their heads so you can more easily spot them in the battle to see who they may be on or to more easily line of sight them if ranged.
Positioning is Key
As a healer especially. You want to position yourself somewhere where you are in easy access of your teammates, but far enough away that you can easily see when enemies are switching to you and to try to make yourself as annoying to get to as possible. This is usually done by sitting around the corner of the wall or a pillar so you can quickly LoS them, but if your team is pushed in too deep you may have to risk being in the open. Be wary.
Are you a DPS?
Burst > Sustain
This was mentioned in the important tips section but I am going to reiterate it because of how important it is. Healers have powerful spells because of the fact that DPS can do massive damage in a short span of time. Your goal is to push out as much damage as you can in as short a timeframe as possible to give the healer no time to recover, especially if they are getting CC’d. The better the opposing healer/tank, the more narrow the window to land kills in becomes, so be sure to practice on a dummy to see which combinations of skills can get you the most damage out in a small window- don’t be afraid to ask others for advice if you are unsure!
But don’t ignore your sustain game too much.
Burst is what ultimately gets the kills, but you want to make sure you can push out some consistent enough damage in between burst windows to keep the enemy team on the defensive. Pressure could mean baiting out a defensive cooldown and put higher strain on the enemy healer’s MP, and this is potentially one less thing you have to worry about when it’s time to burst again! This includes hitting Light Medal targets, just because they have light medals doesn’t mean they are no longer a potential target.
Cooperate!
You typically can’t get a kill by yourself unless the enemy team is especially negligent. Cooperating with your team is very important.
Make use of the aforementioned countdown macros and the quick chat options to coordinate with your team. Use “Hello” to inform your co-dps that you are ready to burst. If you see your teammate called “Hello”, or when you want to apply some pressure, call out the target and then start the countdown shortly afterwards.
Melee are usually the countdown user, but some ranged may take up the reins. The more confident or experienced person will usually do it. If you have contact with the person on something like Discord you can discuss who will do the calls at the start of the match. Using the macro on someone at the start of the match while waiting for it to begin will also let your team know that you have it available and can be a way of telling the team that you will do the countdowns.
Extra Useful Info
Defensive Icons
It is a good idea to keep a lookout for these icons when deciding targets as they will affect how much damage you will do.
Macros
There are a lot of useful macros you can use in general and for each role and class but listing out all the useful ones would take too much space!
At the very least, make sure you have a countdown macro set up. As well as targeting macros to easily target each member of the enemy party. This is done using the <e1> – <e4> notation.
/target <e1> targets enemy tank
/target <e2> targets enemy healer
/target <e3> targets enemy melee
/target <e4> targets enemy ranged
I recommend checking out this macro document to see what you could use.
Common Abbreviations
LoS – Line of Sight. Whether or not your target is obstructed by an obstacle. For example, if you run around a wall from your healer, they cannot heal you as you are out of their LoS.
OOR – Out of Range. If you are too far from someone to be able to cast spells on them or vice versa.
CC – Crowd Control. Status effects which restrict your character is known as crowd control. These are stuns, silences, sleeps, slows and binds.
DR – Diminishing returns, the resistance you have on CC after being afflicted
WH – Wolves Heart. The Wolves Heart buff that gives MP/TP and movement speed.
CD – Countdown or Cooldown.
OOM – Out of Mana.
TBN – The Blackest Night. DRK shield skill
ED – Essential Dignity, AST instant heal skill. Or Energy Drain, SMN damaging skill.
RoF – Riddle of Fire. MNK damage skill.
RoE – Riddle of Earth. MNK damage and defensive cooldown.
BTE – Between the Eyes. MCH damage skill.
DS – Dragon Sight. DRG tether buff skill.
Additional useful links
Kisada’s guide on self-improvement and mentality.
A long but excellent write up on keeping your cool and not too stressed while you climb.
Discord community aimed towards helping each other improve in PvP.
Website dedicated around PvP news and info.
Discord community for general PvP banter. More aimed for veteran players.
A document with some macros you may find useful.
AST PvP guide by Korihu and Melo
Tips and tricks and the basics of how to heal in the Feast as AST.
Good luck in your climb!
Thank you to the members of Wolf Pups Den and Team Tryhard.
If you have any questions feel free to contact me on:
Reddit – 13ulbasaur
Discord – 13ulbasaur#7770
FFXIV – Korihu Yanhu, Gilgamesh server
