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Color me confused but why if you have no melee would you hold the lb for a boss fight when you can hit packs of trash 6+ with it multiplying the damage out?
Pretty sure it was tested even and shown that blm lb is stronger then that of mach/Bard. I know as i used to argue the opposite until some i guess... proved me wrong, lol
On the flipside if a melee is not using lb i sure as heck will
Disregarding that caster LB is stronger than MCH/BRD, there is no magic quick-kill margin on the last boss of Fractal. Nothing about the boss is HP-based. It's time-based on a rotation. He doesn't take more damage when under a certain percentage of health, so he won't die any faster by holding the LB.
DPSing for 30 seconds, LBing, then DPSing for another 30 seconds is the same amount of time as DPSing for 45 seconds, LBing, then DPSing for 15 seconds.
You will never have to kill an extra wave of adds because someone LBed earlier.
The only argument for holding LB would be if you're not sure if you can kill the boss before adds even with LB, so you'd use the AOE of the LB to kill the adds at the same time as hitting the boss, which the caster one is arguably better suited for as they position the LB separate from themselves, while a BRD/MCH would need to stand on a platform that's already lighting up and carefully line themselves up to hit a maximum number of targets.
However, since you're a MCH, you actually would want the person to use the LB sooner than 20% HP if it's up to LB2 by then because the sooner it hits 20% HP, the sooner you can use Heartbreak, which would be a DPS increase for you, especially if it doesn't die within 30 seconds of hitting 20%.
Ranged LB does less than caster LB as other people have said; It's still 10% across the board from what I see, but that only means that the numerical difference becomes more significant as it increases.
And you're typically better off killing the clocks linearly with a ranged LB anyway. If you're still struggling to kill the boss before the extra wave of clockworks with a caster LB, you're sure as hell not gonna kill it before the spawn with a ranged lb.
The BRD/MCH would need to skill shot it without being able to see their telegraph. This already causes some downtime in trying to position for it, which may not be made up with overall dps if you factor in the lower damage (especially on the scale of LB3, where it's roughly a loss of 600 potency on each target if the value is 10%). Not to mention the width is incredibly small even for LB3 (if you even get that far anymore), you'd still need to do careful positioning to hit all the mobs in A2S. Not to mention a BLM shouldn't be using it when their enochian is active anyway (and considering that the fights are really scripted, it's something you can plan for, but it also means you can pre-aim the LB for things like landing phase or liquid gaol spawn)
This mentality really annoys me. So many casters I run with just assume I'm not going to LB because I refuse to break a combo to do so. People shout LB as I hit Heavy Thrust - you can be damned sure I'm gonna do another 5 GCDs before that LB drops - but it *WILL* drop. So so so many casters get antsy and prematurely shoot the load when you could have waited 10 seconds and I'd have dropped a Bladedance or Dragonsong Dive to do way more than yours did. I was in A3 today - LB3 was ~75% full, so I was waiting on that when one of the SMNs decided to just drop their LB at around 40% on the boss.
Casters need to stop doing things like this. Trust that your melee will use it. And if they don't, blame them if you wipe.
Its not something you can just "plan for" as sometimes it will screw with your rotation. For example, in the case of A3S, I start a new Enochian refresh after sluice/digi because there are no movement required that can potentially interrupt you during that part so it's perfect to pop all your buffs(RS+Pot+BV foes) at that point which also lets you get a boosted flare + convert on the limb + boss.
Not to mention, the animation lock for BRD/MCH LB3 is faster than a BLM.
Its all situational on the fight and your CDs timing.
I thought ranged was about 2-3% less than caster. Not that it matters much in anything but raid/ex trials content. Also, Limit Break.