GNB QoL and Balance Suggestions:

Well, I did find out something last night that makes me feel a little better. I was not away that regardless of any CC other than death, your LB will continue to go on including the final hit. Which is odd when you are LBing, get turned into an imp, then while in imp for continue swinging into the AoE stun. So that helps. The only issue is that while you are LBing you cannot do anything until it's done unless you cancel it early. With this in mind, I think I still like the idea of shortening it's cast so you don't have to be out of the battle of sorts until it finishes. If they could also add in a simple anti-knockback/anti-draw-in or increase your movement speed to that of sprint, that would be perfect. Because right now, if you are mid LB and knockbacked or pulled in any way, you are stuck in that new location at walking speed not doing a thing.

GNB feels extremely weak right now.
I was hard stuck in Gold 4 playing GNB. I swapped to SAM and immediately soared to Plat 3. Keep in mind, this was including my first few games as SAM where I was still learning to figure the class out.
Either we're all collectively playing GNB wrong, or GNB is just too weak compared to WAR.

For the record, my SAM feels tankier than my GNB.

My suggestions:

1. Draw and Junction needs to GO! Give us something where we don't feel like we're fighting against the game's targeting system. Stop punishing us for the enemy team having no tank/healer.
2. Give us good, reliable sustain!
3. Give us good, reliable CC!
4. Make our ult not so easily counterable!

Ever since I found out your LB cannot be interrupted except by death, I am more ok with it than I was before. One of the saving graces is that the vuln up stacks apply even on Guarded enemies. So when there is that one pesky WAR on point that is standing there with Guard up, I can start my LB, start applying the vuln up stacks, call them out to my teammates, and when there Guard drops I finish my LB so they are left with a 3sec stun and a 15% vuln up to capitalize on.

The other thing is it is ALMOST, in a very vague sense, a way to counter CC. By this I mean that when you get hard CC'd, Stunned, Silenced, Polymorphed, etc, you CANNOT attack. However, if you get CC'd 5 times over while in the middle of your LB, you are still attacking. Yes you are still taking in damage and cannot heal, but if you weave it between Guard and the Purify buff, it's a way to continue DPS uptime through the hundred CC's that exist in the game. My go-to combo is to Rough Divide(for the 10% damage buff) > Nebula(for the mitigation, retaliation damage) > LB for full duration > Rough Divide(to reapply the damage buff) > Double Down whoever is on point. A lot of things can mess this up, and I need a Tank to be on the other team for Nebula, but it's a good way to do high AoE damage on enemies grouped up on the point.

Has anyone here gotten above Plat 4 as GNB?

I've just started doing a bit of PvP with GNB today and having a rough time. Having no CC at all except on your LB is really hard to deal with as a melee job. If the enemy decides to run away, there's not a lot you can do to stop them. You are very reliant on your team for setups. I feel like they should at least have Heavy on Rough Divide, and maybe something on Double Down as well. The other tanks just straight up murder GNB in CC and GNB doesn't do anywhere near enough damage to justify having as little as they do.

The junction system is cool thematically but it is pretty lame having to choose between damage, healing and defense when most other jobs get all 3 simultaneously. And like others have said, it puts you at the mercy of the enemy team's comp. It'd be nice if you could at least target yourself but honestly I'd rather just have something that lets you switch mode entirely at will. Like instead of needing a target just have Junction cycle through Tank/Healer/DPS mode on a 10-20s cooldown. Or have it so you start battle in one mode and get two buttons to switch to either of the other two modes with a shared cooldown.

I don't mind the LB being as long as it is since you can end it early, but since you are slowed down and can't do anything else while using it, it's fairly easy for enemies to just run out of the AoE (letting them avoid the final hit and stun) and also interfere with you at range while you're unable to do anything. Right now it kinda feels like it's better to just pop the big hit right away for the stun before the enemies can run out of it. So I think the channeled portion should be more powerful to encourage you to try and get the full thing off. Either more damage, making it apply Heavy, or making the Relentless Shrapnel debuff more severe and long lasting.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rael_Norende

GNB feels extremely weak right now.
I was hard stuck in Gold 4 playing GNB. I swapped to SAM and immediately soared to Plat 3. Keep in mind, this was including my first few games as SAM where I was still learning to figure the class out.
Either we're all collectively playing GNB wrong, or GNB is just too weak compared to WAR.

For the record, my SAM feels tankier than my GNB.

My suggestions:

1. Draw and Junction needs to GO! Give us something where we don't feel like we're fighting against the game's targeting system. Stop punishing us for the enemy team having no tank/healer.
2. Give us good, reliable sustain!
3. Give us good, reliable CC!
4. Make our ult not so easily counterable!

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Same, was stuck on silver 1, changed to SAM and went from silver to plat in a couple or hours. I agree that SAM feels a lot tankier with a bind to escape, a clutch aoe lifesteal if timed right, a stun if u need to escape too, and a better 50% shield and just massive damage to counter with. Not to mention ppl are not gonna target you as much with your lb ready unlike GNB which just get pummeled. Something needs to change.

I feel that small changes they can do to make the class better is as follows

Make Junction a shorter cooldown. Theres too much commitment tagged to this ability alone, making it around 10 to 15 sec to align it with the other tanks AOE abilities (Confiteor, Chaotic Cyclone and Quietus).

Give Double down Junction effects, Tanks = CC (Bind preferred), Healers = A straight heal + Regen Zone, DPS = More Damage.

So I was able to recently hit Diamond rank as GNB ONLY. Took 190 wins, so approx 400 games total if we give room for games I lost while in Gold/Plat 4. The biggest issue with GNB while you are trying to climb is the lack of solo impact GNB has at the moment. When you look at jobs like WAR or WHM, they are able to single-handily carry games by themselves(especially WHM). The ONLY potential GNB has at carrying games is a well landed LB(which is already hard to do), while jobs like WAR and WHM can carry through Primal Rend and Miracle of Nature only. Most of my opinions on changes I would like to see on GNB has not changed much, but I will reiterate the top key points:

1. At minimum, you should be able to Draw and Junction(DnJ) yourself, and at most be able to DnJ your allies, when deciding what "stance" to be in. The flexibility of choice is gone when the enemy is all DPS and you cannot go Tank or Healer stance.

2. DPS stance needs a buff the most. Tank stance is decent with the mitigation and stackable shielding on self(though nowhere near WAR sustain), and Healer stance AoE healing is nice in situations or maps that have your team grouped up(though I would like to see the healing AoE range increased to 15yalms). However, DPS stance only offers a few extra potency on your oGCDs with a Blasting Zone burst, while having zero defensive sustain outside the Recoups and Guard. You are just a squishy, worse DPS, and to be forced into it against a full DPS team feels terrible.

3. Double Down needs an extra affect. Compare Double Down to Confiteor, Salted Earth, or Primal Rend and Double Down falls flat. Whether it's an AoE knockback, or a life steal, or maybe even affects that change based off DnJ stance. It just needs something.

4.GNB LB needs either a shorter duration with the same total affect, or a movement speed buff, or increase the range to 10yalm. The fact that so many jobs have escape moves, or can literally sprint out of it, or knock you back and you are left spinning in a corner feels awful(there also seems to be an activation issue where the LB simply will not go off for a while even while spamming the button, but I am unsure exactly what that issue is).

5. The "Powder Barrel" affect from wither finishing your main combo or from using DnJ should be 15-20sec duration, not 10sec.

There are some other things that I personally would mention, like putting the Brutal Shell shield back on our 2(I don't know why they took that out), or moving the DnJ effects from the oGCD's to the GCD's because having to GCD first to get to a small shield or heal you desperately need is clunky and a pain, or putting DnJ on a 20sec timer so it aligns with the Junctioned Cast, or buffing No Mercy to 20% or more because 10% is so hardly noticeable it's barely a buff, but these are my top suggestions for making GNB more viable.

GNB being the "Base protector" would be cool in concept but the execution is really garbage. In a game mode where CC is king, GNB has nothing. In a role where tanking requires even more mitigation and sustain than ever, you have next to nothing. In a game where DPS needs to be high to kill anything, it has nothing. I do more damage as SGE than I do as GNB and that's without running in to get roflstomped.

1. Draw and Junction - Just a hot garbage skill. Not only does it bafflingly refresh separately from the skill that it triggers to come on, but it takes way too long meaning you can't really adapt to anything. Just like others are saying this needs a rework. In my opinion the use of Draw and Junction should grant a buff ON CAST depending on target, -OR- either take away the massive CD of the skill it procs or take away the CD of the Draw skill so you can use it more.

2. Limit Break - I don't understand why we have to manually press The trigger at the end unless I'm mistaken and it just does that little damage. It looks flashy but due to speed and everything else feels like I don't do anything with it. Meanwhile a WAR can literally stop people from guarding, PLD can defend all their allies, and DRK can grief a point for a long period of time. It never feels like the LB does anything of note unless it's like 1v1 which is not what the majority of encounters are.

3. Damage vs Mitigation - They're supposed to be the "DPS" tank but we just had this song and dance with ShB > EW where they realized it and gave them heart of corundum. For how much damage you do if you can be destroyed by basic DPS with no sustain or mit it means nothing. Why do different junctions that you have to deal with cooldown on GNB if you can just do both mitigation and sustain and CC with WAR?

Having a heart of corundum that triggered based on the junction you have for example could add some cool big brain plays of how to mitigate your health and how to trigger specific effects given that you're always going to be taking damage as a tank.

If HP hits 50% then a base (balanced) heal and X happens:
1. Tank - a shield or extra mitigation.
2. Healer - an AOE heal for the party/buff the base heal
3. DPS - DoT/Explosion

Then it becomes balancing the risk reward of encounters with your terrible sustain and defense with heals/damage/etc and ACTUALLY allows you to adjust to different scenarios instead of just theoretically doing so.

4. Double Down - In a mode where ranged aoe stuns are the mvp, Doubledown feels useless unless a whole group are stupid enough to walk into it. Sure LB > Vulns > No mercy/Doubledown CAN do big damage, but how often are you going to be free enough to not only get all stacks but pull off lb and THEN be able to do damage without getting major punishment?

Sorry to double post but couldn't fit it all.

Essentially Draw and Junction either needs to ACTUALLY feel like it's doing something by adding effects to Doubledown or putting Corundum-like ability in the game or something else needs to be changed about it, because I've tried aoe healing, it feels pointless. I've tried Nebula, I die anyways. I've tried blasting zone, if I am bursting a SINGLE guy down I can take him out. But combine that with the fact that you have to be ON TOP of someone to use Double Down and the class just feels like a really crappy version of the pve GNB.

Maybe even making Draw Junction be a single button that transforms on cast, like DnJ use on target > swaps to new button > 15s cooldown or something. At least then I could rapidly adjust strategy on the fly and feel like I'm doing more than a really lame version of my normal rotation. PVP versions of most classes get these really interesting mechanics whereas GNB was like "Hey remember your pve kit? Well this is the same thing except we cut in three pieces bound to a 15s cooldown skill that's then bound by a 30s cooldown skill to change! Please look forward to it!"

I know I sound overly salty it just sucks to have a tank that literally spends more time getting bodied than helping its teammates and is almost an active detriment to its team. If nothing else at least give me lightning shot or something back so I can pressure from a distance. It's gimmicky sure but if it like gives a single vuln debuff or something leading to a LS > RD > Burst at least then I can kill the WHM that can not only tank me but kill me. :/

WAR can literally control the map while most other tanks are just beefy dps and I think without CC or better sustain or something to punish you really don't have anything, and GNB just doesn't put out enough damage to warrant the current kit, especially when it WILL be the target of a lot of damage because of how commonly known its bad kit is, and it being usually the only tank in the group.