GNB Defensive Changes

While I honestly find the DPS aspect of GNB's toolkit to be pretty awesome, I have some reservations about GNB's defensive utility, especially when compared to the other three tanks. While GNB is privy to the most defensive mitigation CDs with Camouflage and Heart of Stone, I often feel like I'm dead in the water when any of my defensive CDs are not up. I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of this being GNB's unique defensive playstyle, but I believe there should be a few tweaks to some of these tooltips to make it so I feel like less of a burden on my healers.

Camouflage
I'm not sure if an increased parry rate would help much here; I know many would just do away with the parry rate entirely for something more generally useful. However the 10% mitigation for twenty seconds every 90 seconds isn't terrible. As of right now I find myself using after my first use of HoS as I can ride that twenty second buff until my second HoS is up. I feel like maybe just a reduced CD would make the ability somewhat more attractive. At the least I don't think it should share the same CD as Rampart, as it definitely feels inferior to rampart.

Heart of Stone/Brutal Shell
Simply put I feel as though Heart of Stone should be increased from a 7 second buff to a 10 second buff. Its 25 second CD is 10 seconds longer than The Blackest Night and definitely less useful, especially with regard to tank busters on boss encounters. Paladin's sheltron is also better in that it's more readily available and by level 80 is a six second block buff -- and is a part of a defensive toolkit vastly superior to Gunbreaker's. The 15% buff is still welcome all the same, and also promises good OT utility in that it can be applied to anyone in the party.
However I find the added effect of applying brutal shell onto a secondary target to be one of the least exciting aspects to any tooltip in this game. Brutal shell itself is not exciting. I understand its parity with Souleater or Riot Blade or Storm's Path, but it simply does not make a meaningful difference in combat. Certainly I could never see myself going out of my way to apply HoS onto a party member in order for them to get a shield that's worth approximately 3% of my total health.
That being said I'm not sure what to do with brutal shell. My only idea is that the effect could be applied through some other skill/skills so that shielding as a GNB is an active party of your defensive rotation.

Aurora:
Considering that from max MP a Paladin can cast 5 successive Clemencies with no cooldown to speak of (not that they ever would or would want to), I find GNB's Aurora -- which is equivalent to roughly one clemency and sits on a 60 second cooldown -- to be pretty lackluster. However I don't recommend changing the cooldown for Aurora to compensate; I would recommend changing Aurora to consume a cartridge and maintain a cooldown equal to the effect of Aurora's regen (18 seconds) so that ability can't be stacked by one GNB. As it stands abilities such Bloodfest act as basically just a DPS dump and would have zero utility in a defensively hectic situation. Furthermore GNB's cartridge system has already been criticized for being too simple and bare-bones. Integrating at least one defensive ability into GNB's cartridge system would make the decision making of spending cartridges much more meaningful -- because as of right now it's not at all.
Lastly, I would also advise that any over-healing done by Aurora be stored in a shield. Heals right now can feel pretty bursty, and if I've recently popped Aurora and am healed to full, then that's a waste of 60 second cooldown. Allow this shield effect to be transferable to party member for an appropriate period of time with HoS.

I wouldn't recommend any of these changes. Made it to 80 and honestly can wall to wall pull with a TRUST and be absolutely fine despite the ridiculousness of them single targeting everything. You just got to manage the CDs better and work the class to its fullest to be able to pull it off.

You can't just compare the recast times of HoS and TBN as TBNs use is also gated by a MP cost.

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Originally Posted by Rhais

You can't just compare the recast times of HoS and TBN as TBNs use is also gated by a MP cost.

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Unless you're overusing Flood/Edge of Shadow, MP shouldn't be problem. Furthermore, it's easy to anticipate the flow of tank busters in a fight so that even if you are trigger happy, you can manage CDs to have enough MP for an upcoming tank buster.

My biggest gripe is parry is still physical attacks only. If it did magical as well, I wouldn’t mind the 50% parry rate.

Aurora is off GCD and costs 0 resources, it's perfectly fine.

The only thing that needs to be changed is the parry on camouflage. Everything is is FINE! If you can manage your cooldowns properly you will be FINE!

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Originally Posted by Sonosan

Aurora:
Considering that from max MP a Paladin can cast 5 successive Clemencies with no cooldown to speak of (not that they ever would or would want to), I find GNB's Aurora -- which is equivalent to roughly one clemency and sits on a 60 second cooldown -- to be pretty lackluster. However I don't recommend changing the cooldown for Aurora to compensate; I would recommend changing Aurora to consume a cartridge and maintain a cooldown equal to the effect of Aurora's regen (18 seconds) so that ability can't be stacked by one GNB. As it stands abilities such Bloodfest act as basically just a DPS dump and would have zero utility in a defensively hectic situation. Furthermore GNB's cartridge system has already been criticized for being too simple and bare-bones. Integrating at least one defensive ability into GNB's cartridge system would make the decision making of spending cartridges much more meaningful -- because as of right now it's not at all.
Lastly, I would also advise that any over-healing done by Aurora be stored in a shield. Heals right now can feel pretty bursty, and if I've recently popped Aurora and am healed to full, then that's a waste of 60 second cooldown. Allow this shield effect to be transferable to party member for an appropriate period of time with HoS.

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Paladin spending MP and GCD time on Clemency is hurting his own DPS by a really really big number, both abilities are not even comparable.
Aurora is a much better ability than clemency, because it is free of cost oGCD that does not hurt to use.
Aurora is only comparable with War Equilibrium.

change the name of the thread from "changes" to "mega buffs"

Camouflage is meant to be paired with another cooldown so you you usually will pair it with heart of stone meaning you got a 20% mitigation with a 50% chance of an additional 15% reduction. Now look, I would rather it be a flat 100% chance to parry to remove the RNG aspect of it, but if you are complaining about not having the cooldowns for tankbusters that means one of two things.

1) You are waisting CDs and using too many.

2) Your OT isn't helping with your tankbusters, which is unexcusable now that every tank has a skill to help thier partner tank.

When will people realize that camouflage is a free defensive cooldown? It's meant to be used as filler for auto attacks and should be paired up with a heart of stone. Heart of Light can also be used to mitigate busters or magical aoe. They aren't even the worst defensive tank, that would probably be paladin due to them having the least amount of mitigation and they have absolutely no self healing via weaponskills or oGCD, clemency shouldn't even be mentioned here, it is a big dps loss.

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Originally Posted by Stormbrand

When will people realize that camouflage is a free defensive cooldown? It's meant to be used as filler for auto attacks and should be paired up with a heart of stone. Heart of Light can also be used to mitigate busters or magical aoe. They aren't even the worst defensive tank, that would probably be paladin due to them having the least amount of mitigation and they have absolutely no self healing via weaponskills or oGCD, clemency shouldn't even be mentioned here, it is a big dps loss.

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Thank you someone understands! Auto attacks deal the most damage to the tank over the course of a fight. Aurora, brutal shell, and camo are all crazy good when it comes to that. It would still be nice for a buff to camo to either 100% parry atleast.

I think there's an issue with GNB's kit being clearly weaker than others in regards to taking on tank busters, without a short cd invuln to make up for it and that together with 2 of it's unique cooldowns being shareable, makes it rather unwanted in the MT position. Right now you need to rely more on Nebula and Rampart for TBs while WAR and DRK can spend theirs more on autos and while PLD technically suffers from the same issue, they already have passive block providing constant fluff mitigation.

I think most importantly, Heart of Stone should get bumped up to 20% while used on yourself.

Camouflage is a decent cd for autos, but I'd like the parry chance changed to 100%. This would make it reliable for physical tank busters, making it a counterpart to Dark Mind, while still giving a little bit of fluff mitigation in fights with zero physical damage, unlike old Raw Intuition which became pure Shake it Off fodder in o5s or while tanking Omega F.

Aurora honestly is fantastic the way it is and having it be a regen rather than straight up mitigation feels refreshing. It also synergizes well with Superbolide due to it's true invulnerability effect.

Superbolide is perfectly fine and I've used it to great effect on trash packs, you simply need to warn your healer that you want to use it so they don't heal you until you're at that 1HP. Then they can calmly get your health up with sustained heals thanks to the 8 second invulnerability. Using any of the invulns unplanned and at high HP is already wasteful(yes, even Hallowed), so I don't see any issue with it.

Brutal Shell's shield is really just extra healing potency disguised as something else. The actual effect is literally equivalent to Soul Eater(150+150=300). It's not bad, it's just not anything special - it's on par with the other self sustain combos and that's perfectly fine, just don't think the shield is something it's not.