Tank LB and fight design

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).

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.

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Kalise

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I feel that while making LB more like adrenaline will result in some problems, i feel it also frees up more options for everyone that isn't a melee dps. caster and ranged LB can be used for extra burst damage on adds without sacrificing potential damage to the boss. tank LB can be used to by the tanks as additional mitigation for raidwides or to block a tank buster, reducing the strain on healers who have trouble with CD planning. Healer LB could even potentially keep multi rez, at the cost of reduced range and imposing weakness onto all revived. Honestly i feel it would be better for the game in the long run.

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Originally Posted by saber_alter

I feel that while making LB more like adrenaline will result in some problems, i feel it also frees up more options for everyone that isn't a melee dps. caster and ranged LB can be used for extra burst damage on adds without sacrificing potential damage to the boss. tank LB can be used to by the tanks as additional mitigation for raidwides or to block a tank buster, reducing the strain on healers who have trouble with CD planning. Healer LB could even potentially keep multi rez, at the cost of reduced range and imposing weakness onto all revived. Honestly i feel it would be better for the game in the long run.

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I’m one to agree to disagree. Until they come up with a way to fix the current LB problems we have(Shields) there can’t really be a lot of thought put into this without it sounding really unbalanced like Ungarmax was.

Once that’s resolved around Tokyo Fanfest hopefully, we’ll be able to see what can be done.

I think tank LB got to a decent spot now. Yes it still can be better, but defensive tools are, by nature, meant to be for preemptive use.

Aren't we using LB so we don't do fist mechanics in O11S? It is not a requirement where we wipe if we don't use it as that mechanic is definitely doable by staggering the firsts and lots of healing. Tank LB saves us the effort of handling the mechanic and the healing attached it to for a total net gain.

On Male and Female in O12S, we willfully ignore handing the same mechanic twice by "cheesing" them with tank LB. Again, not a requirement, just saves us the effort of doing the mechanic and the healing requirements attached to it.

I don't think LB is as binary as people make it sound here (where it is either required to survive 1 mechanic or wipe) because the only time this happens in this tier is O11S transition.

Can it still use improvement? Definitely, but is it as bad as we make it sound? I don't agree.

Allowing for Tank LB cheese strats I think is fine. O11/12S are good to me. I don't even mind the mandatory LB3 in O11S either. What we don't want is something like Healer LB3 in A4S. Where it's clearly not intended, yet makes the fight easier by a mile by completely circumventing several mechanics throughout the entire fight instead of an isolated moment that's more of a tradeoff. I am keeping in mind that had more to do with the fact that Gordias was overtuned and Pentacle lacked a proper fallback strat. While the overtuning made it 'mandatory', the latter is what allowed it to exist.

The part that's annoying is many of those same tank LB3 strats can also be beaten by dedicating resources to a SCH/WAR Critlo Deploy combo instead. Which just screams "Remove Critlo" to me more than "Wah Tank LB3 is bad".

Really though, isn't the problem that LB3 is usually the 'only' thing that we shoot for? Why not improve LB1/2's relative value instead? The way to do that I think would be to increase LB Generation based on how many times you LB (regardless of the level used) in a fight, then tune up the value of LB1/2 slightly on tanks/healers a bit so that they're more worthwhile compared to the current DPS LB1/2s in certain situations.

Job gauges are already like individual limit break....something you build up with different method...

I mean there is a tank strategy in omega 12 s f/m. Were you stack with meteor and arrows and tank lb. and it’s more or less the common one. But yeah the possibility to use lb on non forced mechanics to get more dmg or make them more easy is a neat idea.

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Originally Posted by Kalise

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.

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This. To be fair, if each job had a couple LB options or were more flexibly based, we could probably manage individual LBs and have a more interesting game for it, but the easiest way is definitely just to make the lesser used LBs more useful, including rank 1 and rank 2 LBs in general.

Right now the best mitigating factor of the tank LB's usage is how much can LB gauge can be recovered over the mitigated strike, as defensive percentile absorption (or eHP of absorption) will supply gauge. A more nearly linear growth of its % mitigation would probably help as well. At present it scales 20-40-80. It should probably be nearer to 25-50-80, or even 30-55-80, so that the first LB can actually meet significant breakpoints, even if that means reducing its gauge pay-off to compensate as to be a viable option without being an obligatory gimmick.

Healer LB needs something more as well. Greater immediacy would be an obvious start, or even HP-splitting, healing from a minimum to maximum % on each target, with the total healing (based on party HP) distributed to most wounded members. Perhaps we could include partial mana restoration or debuff cleansing as well. And, of course, the healing itself should supply proportionate gauge. (To be honest, healer LBs in particular give me strong hopes for the prospects in individual LBs, or effects which could replace them entirely.)

I think the job gauge will expand to where individual limit breaks will be pointless

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Originally Posted by 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.

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I actually believe that this is the best way to make the tank LB work if they tweak it a little more, make it a choice between safety but risking enrage or less safe but higher chance of beating the enrage. I love when fights have multiple solutions and ways of dealing with mechanics. That's one of the things I like most about a lot of the savage mode fights this expansion, that you can do some of the mechanics in a variety of ways.