Guide:The Feast for Dummies

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Intdoduction

This page is intended to give you a basic rundown of strategy, do's, dont's, and more for The Feast (4 on 4). If you've tried The Feast and find yourself eating dirt more often than not, you're in the right place to tilt things back in your favor!

Core Points

PvP Collecting Medals icon.pngCollecting Medals!

The goal of The Feast is to reach a total of 800 Medals, or have more than your opponent when time runs out. Each player starts with 100, and in order to pick your targets correctly to come out on top, you are going to need to pay attention to the medal counts for each player.
When you K.O. an opponent, they will drop medals on the ground signified by an icon with either a coin (<=25 medals), a bag (26~74 medals, or a chest (>=75 medals). However, when people get KO'd and then pick up a different number of medals, these icons may not accurately reflect who you need to kill to win. A good thing to do here is to lock the scoreboard on the screen (scale down the window if needed) so you always know exactly how many medals players have. This way you can target the players that will give you the medals you need to win.
Remember, you have to pick up the medals for them to count! If you K.O. someone near the end of a match, if you don't pick up the medals in time, they won't be counted in either team's total.
Medals will disappear and go back to their original owner after 10 seconds. Make sure to pick them up promptly, or instruct someone else to! If a member of your team has dropped medals, you can exploit this by using crowd control abiltiies on opponents to keep them from picking them up until they get returned.
If you think you should be collecting the next medals that drop, communicate this to your team with the PvP Collecting Medals icon.png Collecting Medals! chat command. Conversely, if you already have a lot of medals and your team scores a KO, signal someone else to get them with the PvP Get The Medals icon.png Get the Medals! chat command.
As a match nears its end, when a team is behind, one of the most common behaviors is to simply target the person who has the most medals (typically the tank)- however, if they are the tank and haven't taken on too many medals (e.g. less than 5 vulnerability stacks), this might neither be necessary or the best option. If you only need 25 medals to win, any player with that many medals or more will do! Go after whoever you think you can take down that will win the game!

PvP Get The Medals icon.pngGet the Medals!

Picking up 150 medals or more will give you Heavy Medal stacks. Each stack increases damage taken by 12%, up to a maximum of +120% damage taken at 10 stacks. As you need more medals than your opponent to win, your team will inevitably accrue stacks, making keeping a lead more difficult. To maximize your chances of survival it is a good general rule to try to keep to the following, after which another person should be directed to Get The Medals!:
Role Max Heavy Medal Stacks Max Medals
Tankroleicon.png 4 209
Healerroleicon.png 0 149
DPSroleicon.png 1 169
K.O.ing a player for the first time will always drop 50 medals. A second time (with no pickups in between), 25 medals.
As a healer, avoid picking up more than a 25 medal pack unless you've already been KO'd and dropped medals. That is, don't take medals from the first kills unless your Tank is unable to or does not pick them up. Getting any stacks will make you a much more attractive target than you already are, so be very careful about this.
As a tank, the ideal situation is to pick up the medals from the first two KOs of unique players- This will take you up to 200 medals / 4 stacks. To avoid too many vulnerability stacks, have other members of your team pick up the smaller medal packs if your team KOs the same player more than once. Signal someone else to "Get The Medals!" when you are "full" (4+ stacks)
As a DPS, it is best to pick up <=25 medal packs, but it is okay to gain 1 vulnerability stack if necessary. Go ahead and take medals from the first kill(s) if the Tank isn't able to get to them in time.
Defeating the same player repeatedly will drop fewer and fewer medals (unless they pick more up). While sometimes this can be a necessary tactic, it can make tracking the medal totals more difficult.
While it may be hard to resist, if you can't handle more vulnerability stacks, Dont Get The Medals. If none of your team mates pick them up and they go back to their owner, as long as you have the lead it is not a big deal. Defeating them still gave you a combat advantage.

Match Flow / Timing

Being aware of the time of the match is very important. Certain things will happen at certain times, and being prepared for these events is critical to your success. This section covers key events during a match. As a general rule, you may wish to be cautious when these time milestones are approaching, because dying close to these times will likely mean giving these objectives up to the enemy team.

PvP Hello icon.png Hello! (Before the Start)

There is a 60 second waiting period before the match begins. Don't just stand there! Get buffed up and communicate your intentions for the start of the match.
Don't forget to ready your PvP gear set (More on that later) and your PvP Ability preset before queuing up, lest you leave yourself at a disadvantage when the match starts.
While you can change gear at any time that you are not in combat (including after returning from a KO), PvP ability enhancements must be set before you enter the instance, unlike Frontline and 8 vs 8 Feast.

PvP Offensive Supplies icon.png PvP Defensive Supplies icon.pngCollecting Offfensive/Defensive Supplies! (0:00 Match Time)

At the start of the match, one Offense and one Defense supply box will appear on each team's side of the map. These boxes dictate the early match strategy, including which players typically get targeted. While new players or players used to other PvP mdoes may expect the healer to always be the first target, in 4v4 Feast, this is not as often the case!
The current meta for collecting the supplies:
Most Common: Ranged DPS collects both offense and defense, or Ranged DPS collects Defense and melee collects offense. The Ranged DPS tends to be the biggest threat to the enemy, so picking up the defense is a deterrent to being initially targeted. For the same reason, sometimes the ranged will take the offense buff as well. That being said, if they DO get KO'd, you've just lost both buffs, so there is a certain risk.
The other option is letting the melee DPS pick up the offense. A skilled melee has very strong early burst damage potential, so doing this further deters targeting the ranged DPS and basically sets up a "Kill their melee before they kill yours" situation. Historically, this setup is most common with a Monk.
Less Common: Healer takes defense, melee takes offense -or- melee takes both. This tends to happen more with newer players and generally isn't reccomended, although if you are a novice healer and the other team knows it, they will target you, so picking up the defense may produce a better outcome in this situation.
Melee taking both buffs isn't as common, but can be a okay play if you predict that your opponents will initially target you before realizing you have the buffs. This is a gamble, but it can work in the right hands. Some people really don't pay attention to these things- don't be one of them yourself!
Rare: Tank takes the defense or the offense. New tanks who are used to PvE combat may think "I'm a tank, I need more defense, right?" and take the defense buff. Do NOT do this. At the beginning of a match, the likelihood of the tank being targeted first is slim to none, so you're just denying protection from someone who is actually going to be taking hits.
Warriors can have powerful burst damage early in a match, so sometimes they may pick up the offense buff to try to take down the person they are trying to control. This can be effective, but if you are Paladin or Dark Knight, do not try this.
Teams with Monks or Warriors should allow those players to break the boxes even if they are not collecting the buffs- This allows them to gain Greased Lightning or Abandon stacks before the fighting starts.

PvP Adrenaline Supplies icon.png Collecting Adrenaline Supplies! (2:00 Match Time)

At 6:00 on the game clock (2 minutes in), two adrenaline supply boxes will appear in the center of the arena.

Whichever team does the greater amount of damage to the boxes will have the buff drop on the ground under their control. Act fast to claim them before the enemy!
Each Adrenaline buff increases the adrenaline gauge of the player who picks it up by 25%.
If you obtain both, it is usually best to let the melee pick up one and the ranged pick up the other. While one person picking up both will fill the gauge sooner, some of the adrenaline will be wasted, so keep that in mind.
Try to signal to your team when you plan to use the Adrenaline so your team mates can coordinate their actions with you. A well timed attack (or defense!) will help ensure the move is a success.
If no player has been K.O.'d yet, this is also when the first Culling Time will occur. Be careful! The adrenaline boxes are important, but you won't be breaking them faster, so if the enemy decides to jump on you right away, the distraction could be dangerous.

PvP Wolf Heart Supplies icon.png Collecting Wolf's Heart! (4:00 Match Time)

After four minutes, the Wolf's Heart Supplies will appear in the center of the arena.

The team that does the most damage to the box will claim the buff for their team. This box has much more HP than the others and will take a bit of time to destroy. Act fast to claim it, or try to defeat an opponent before it appears to make sure your team gets it!
The Wolf's Heart buff grants HP regeneration, MP Refresh, and Haste for the player that picks it up.
This buff is almost always given to the healer as it ensures they do not run out of MP at a crucial moment and also makes them cast faster, which makes it easier to get heals off before allies go down.
Because the box is very sturdy and the overall power of the buff is high, it is not unusual to see a DPS use their Adrenaline Rush on the box to deny it from the enemy team. This may seem extreme, but this buff will prevent deaths from late heals and lack of MP, which gives your team a substantial edge.
More so than any other point in the match, do your best not to get KO'd near the spawning of the Wolf's Heart box. Dying will likely give up the buff to the enemy team. That being said, if you don't expect that you will be able to obtain the buff, don't help the enemy destroy it- Take the opportunity to attack the enemy without being attacked back!
Additionally, try to make sure any diminishing returns from crowd control abilities are gone at this point. Suppressing the enemy with crowd control is especially powerful during this time.

PvP Adrenaline Supplies icon.png Collecting Adrenaline Supplies (Again)! (6:00 Match Time)

Two more adrenaline boxes appear at 2:00 on the game timer (six minutes in). All the same info from before applies here.

==PvP Good Match Icon.png Good Match! (8:00 Match Time) A Feast match lasts 8 minutes from when the battle starts. At this point, the victor will be determined based on the medal count. However, if the score is tied, Sudden Death will occur.

If a match ends in Sudden Death, Culling Time will automatically kick in regardless of the timer and the match will continue, with Culling Time damage vulnerability increasing over time as normal.
The match will continue until the first time that any medals are picked up. Even if people die at the same time, whoever picks up the medals first will win, so pay attention and grab them fast!

After the match, players ratings will be adjusted based on the outcome and the average rating of each team, you are updated on your promotion series progress if you are up for tier promotion, and it's back to the open world where you will probably queue up another match!