Tank LB and fight design

[Cabalabob]

So lately we’ve been seeing a trend of the game forcing us to tank LB in raids to survive the enemy’s ultimate attack. T13, A12/s, O11s.

The tank LB has been widely regarded as useless, as when things are going well you dps LB, when things are going badly you healer LB, leaving little circumstances where you ever really want to use the tank LB, which is why they started adding these mechanics that require it to survive.

But this isn’t good design, forcing the tank to LB doesn’t make the tank LB useful it just makes it necessary.

Rather than forcing the tank to LB like a scripted segment I’d rather see more mechanics that the tank LB allows us to avoid.

We’ve seen this in fights like ultima’s ballad where you could tank LB to eat the orbs, byakko ex where you can use it to ignore the tiger add and o11s where you can use it to soak the red fists. This is good design that makes the tank LB useful, you don’t have to use it, you can do these mechanics another way, but the LB makes it easier and in some cases is even a dps gain over the dps LB.

I’ve pretty much resigned myself to accept that the tank LB will never be reworked to be something that’s just useful in its own right, that it will forever be a niche ability. But I’d at least like to see that niche explored properly with more of these hard hitting mechanics that we can have the OPTION of using it on and less of these forced segments that are only there to justify the tank LB’s existence.

Note: I’m not saying that the scripted LB segments can’t be used. From a mechanical standpoint it can be effective, like in o11s it means you can’t dps LB to beat the level checker as you need it to survive the ultimate, meaning you can’t cheese the dps check. I just don’t want this to become a common trend in every fight (like the boss leaving the arena to charge an ultimate attack has become).

[Bright-Flower]

It's kind of a neat moment for tanks, but honestly I think things like tanking Susano's sword are more interesting than just 'okay I have to hit the lb button now or we die.' It's kind of neat here and there but I agree it's not well designed. Tank lbs are either virtually useless or they're 100% required with any middle ground being really rare if it exists at all. Really, healer LB 1 and 2 suffer the same fate, who ever hits healer lb 1 or 2? 3 only gets used because of the aoe raise.

[ReiMakoto]

In the current raid there's 3 tank LB uses, if you're doing safety strats, meaning there's almost as many tank LBs as melee.

[Derio]

The Byakko tank lb3 strat is one of my favorites and I wish there were more like it. You rarely get to use a tank lb3 and its very sad, which is mostly why I wish they would ephasis more on the job gagues especially for tanks.

[Bright-Flower]

The Byakko tank lb3 strat is one of my favorites and I wish there were more like it. You rarely get to use a tank lb3 and its very sad, which is mostly why I wish they would ephasis more on the job gagues especially for tanks.

Yeah, outside of something where it's flat out mandatory the only time I end up using it is at the end of a dungeon where it's clear the dps aren't using them anyway.

[Nedkel]

LB should never be a team team shared, they could reduce its dmg for dps balance even. That would fix so many issues.

[Bright-Flower]

LB should never be a team team shared, they could reduce its dmg for dps balance even. That would fix so many issues.

It's a shame because I like team limit breaks in concept, but they're so heavily skewed in terms of which ones are useful or not, it kind of kills it. Tanks mostly only using them when required to survive a boss move, healers mostly only using them when **** hits the fan and you need a full party res. Even with dps melee limit breaks are mostly preferred for bosses with not that many cases for aoe ones to be as good except for aoing down dungeon pulls.

[HyperiusUltima]

It's a shame because I like team limit breaks in concept, but they're so heavily skewed in terms of which ones are useful or not, it kind of kills it. Tanks mostly only using them when required to survive a boss move, healers mostly only using them when **** hits the fan and you need a full party res. Even with dps melee limit breaks are mostly preferred for bosses with not that many cases for aoe ones to be as good except for aoing down dungeon pulls.

BRD/MCH fall short in that respect, but with Tanks it’s either you need it or you don’t. Also for the Ult from Omega, there has been SCHs with WAR/PLD That has cheesed around the Ult by stacking healing increases from all sources for a giant Critlo, Fairy Magic Defense Buff(Ult is Magical), then adding in AST CU, PLD Veil+Passage, and WAR Superbuffed Shake It Off.

It gave them a free LB3 to use on the boss because Shields are so OP along with mass mitigation. I think they’re going to fix this come Shadowbringers when they bring the new healer given that SCH/AST has taken over ever since they kept AST being OP.

[HyperiusUltima]

That part aside, I wanted to point out why Limit Breaks being separated would cause issues and more problems for the Balance Team: Potencies for every Job would have to be evaluated, and even though this would raise Skill Level, how you generate that LB also had to be considered and at what rate so it’s not OP.

Doing that much on top of an expansion would be very difficult to balance; not like they already have major issues since Stormblood released with MNK skill ceiling(akin to Bow Mage in Heavensward) going up, WAR getting their broken fix mid-expansion as a first time thing and then having neutered DRK’s kit heavy-handedly.

There’s also WHM Lilies still running about.

So, taking all that into consideration on top of Gunbreaker and a new healer, I wonder how much in terms of resources they’re pouring into the Balance Team.

[Kalise]

Yeah, LB's in general just are in a particularly rough spot.

It's basically a binary option of either it's 100% useless or 100% useful (In the case of Tank/Healer LB's)

Then outside of that it's basically mDPS LB's > rDPS LB's because most of the time you're wanting to LB a boss, in which case the higher damage ST ones from mDPS are better.

Making LB's individual, while not only causing a huge balance issue (Since, either every class would be designed with completely unique L1/2/3 LB's and balanced around how quickly they generated LB's) or it would change very little as Tank/Healer LB's would still be binary useless/useful. The major thing would be pushing more mDPS to be in parties for multiple ST burst LB's.

Honestly, if they want to make all LB's useful, without just slapping in mechanics that force specific ones to be used or its a wipe, would be to enhance the less desired LB's in some way.

An example could be directly buffing some LB effects. Such as making damage mitigated/healed by Tank/Healer LB's give a proportionate damage boost. Or making rDPS LB's debuff the enemy increasing damage taken.

Or an alternative could be something like being able to Combo LB's. Taking inspiration from Ungarmax (The Squadron LB where all 4 members channel together for DD and a damage boost). What if instead of LB's being a one shot of a single person gets to use a LB and that's it, what if classes from other roles could, after that one person has started their LB, could ALSO LB to create new effects?

Such that you could end up comboing in different ways for different effects. Such as DPS > Healer > Tank would produce a different outcome to Tank > DPS > Healer.

Which, yes, would require a lot of balancing to incorporate, but once done would mean that all roles would have viability to use LB's without situations like currently where they are either pointless or absolutely needed, if of course the effects ended up balancing out each of the 3 DPS types (mDPS/rDPS/magDPS) so that mDPS wasn't always the superior one for bosses.