Gunbreaker gameplay hope and expectations

[Izsha]

I misunderstood. I thought you meant "remove damage types and replace it by giving everyone a cloned party buff" which would do anything for anybody except make drg not required....which was the same result as just deleting them.

But if your going to delete them and mete out new buffs vit deny them to certain classes, then it's just a new party buff.

What I dont get is if the aspect of the current system you dont like is the idea of drg getting special status because it helps ranged, then how does it make sense to give pld/drk a magic buff that competes with smn? Now you have just forced a different comp (pld/drk compete woth each other and smn). In that scenario, every group would take either pld ot drk since both wouldnt help. 2nd tank war. Magic dps wont be smn. By making them exclusive it devalues having more than one, the same way that 2 drgs arent better than 1 because you can only have 1 piercing debuff. A 2nd diesnt help and therefore makes the 2nd drg bring less than the 1st drg. In your example bringing a pld/drk/smn when you already had ANY of those already makes that job weaker and less desirable.

I thought the idea would be to make party comps more flexible, but mutually exclusive, identicle buffs will only do one thing. Reduce party flexibility because any duplication of the new skill is a detriment because it is a job function of 0 value for any additional jobs that have it. You are just replacing job specific buffs synergies that define comps (damage type buffs) with job specific dis-synergy that will also just define comps as each job only buffs other specific jobs and thus must be grouped. That's the same function I thought we were trying to avoid

[Izsha]

I'll just be more concise. Buffs that only help specific jobs force specific job comps. The classic examples the old setup. Drg buffs brd. Brd buffs caster=trifecta of every group requires brd, drg, and, whichever smn ot blm does more damage this patch.

My idea is to remove these job specific buffs all together. Then the comps are decided purely by job balance. How do you balance brd? Do you assume a drg and make them weak? Do you assume no drg and make them OP with drg? It's impossible to balance.

Dividing buffs into "caster or physical" is just a broader version of the same problem. You end up with either a caster comp or a melee comp. That is still limiting in comp instead of piercing it's just physical vs magic.

I would like to see these targeted buffs to disappear so you and your friends can play any set of 2 tanks, 2 heals, 2 melee, 2 ranged and not be punished for it.

[Lyth]

Why do tanks need raid damage buffs? Tanks shouldn't be setting up dps windows. If they are, then what on earth are the dps doing? I don't care if you're arguing over bringing a SAM or a NIN. I just don't want WAR to be mandatory, as it has been for the past five years.

Remove slashing resist down from WAR. Remove all of WAR's self-healing and lifesteal, and let that be the domain of PLD and DRK, respectively. Balance out WAR's absurdly high faceroll burst with absurdly low sustained dps, so that jobs that actually have to work for their dps actually provide some kind of benefit for doing so. Give all tanks parity on mitigation and stances, which in part means making Inner Beast into something that you actually want to use, but also means nerfing the everliving Thal out of Holmgang (i.e. turn invincibility moves into an actual once-per-fight thing, as opposed to Holmgang's once every other tankbuster). Let Gunbreaker provide a viable alternative to WAR's incredible snap enmity, mobility, and burst.

Then maybe, just maybe, you'll see people actually run some of the other tank jobs. And if Gunbreaker ends up being dominant - does it really matter? At least it's a Final Fantasy job with some actual series lore to it, as opposed to being a cheap Warcraft knockoff.

Besides, people playing WAR because it was flavour-of-the-past-five-years are just going to switch to whatever is most powerful anyways. They'll get over it.

[Phoenicia]

I would like to see these targeted buffs to disappear so you and your friends can play any set of 2 tanks, 2 heals, 2 melee, 2 ranged and not be punished for it.

Nothing is forcing you to "2 melee" as the game is trying to make comps into: 1 melee, 1 p.ranged, 1 m.ranged, 1 "other" where "other" is just any of the 3. People taking "2 melee" as a requirement is because of how busted NIN and DRG have been for the past 4 years (and MNKs in ARR). Mind you, currently some of the fastest kills have 2 casters 1 ranged 1 melee (Missing fastest kills by less than 10s. Probably can beat best but not enough groups trying it).

Here is the source from the game (O12S on DF, but you can see it in literally every 8-man savage raid in the current tier, every tier):


But yes, I agree, I want it to be as simple as: take the player, not the job. Any comp of 2 tanks, 2 healers and any 2:1:1 ratio of DPS and just go. SE can do it simply by taking a leaf from some of the other MMO books.

Imo, Resist down buffs should go. NIN should lose exclusivity to Shadewalker and Trick Attack to some of the other jobs (similar effects don't stack). Battle Litany and Voice maybe should be changed to be both Crit and DH and not stack. Make it so "as long as we have 1 of each buff type available" is viable good set up. Heck, give some of those buffs to tanks/healers so "pure DPS" jobs like SAM and BLM can still "fit in".

Many ways for SE to actually balance these raid buffs so no job edges as "Most wanted". This game has no space for such classification when the raid size only allows for less than available classes (8 members vs 17 jobs).

[Colony]

It sounds like you really don't like warrior. Slashing debuff doesn't "set up" dps windows, trick attack does that..... yeah yeah yeah ninja! War ins't mandatory, with a nin drk pulls just as good as War. So what if its the best "pulling" tank? Simulated dps at the start of Alphascape put it last in terms of dps, and for awhile drk was ahead of it. Now of course its number one but considering the vast majority of the BEST raiders use its not surprising. "Balance War's absurdly high faceroll burst with absurdly low sustained dps" have you ever measured your damage on a target dummy without Inner Release? Spoiler.... its absurdly low..... "jobs that have to work for their dps" whats the metric here? Pld and Drk dont have to work any harder for their dps. You make it sound like drk/plds are unsung hero that work their hands to the bone for dps. Inner release makes it easy for inexperienced tanks to do "enough" damage but it doesnt mean the job doesnt work to get high numbers. Have you raided alphascape? have you experienced how tight the timing for IR can be for certain fights? Inner Beast is something we use when we have to just like when any of the tanks need extra mitigation for a questionable situation. In fact the "memeheaval" opener is the go to opener this tier. I agree that war shouldnt have a ride wide shield, "shake it off" should be called "raid wide shield" but that doesn't mean the class is leagues above the other tanks. I personally hate the current iteration of War, guaranteed/capped damage is just boring, many War mains agree.

[Colony]

I don't particularly care for how GUN turns out, I just want a tank that's challenging to do damage with, kind of like how war was before the 4.2 changes. And OP have you ever played drk? Its not exactly "slow af".

[Launched]

I just don't want WAR to be mandatory, as it has been for the past five years.

So what's your suggestions for nerfing/changing PLD horribly too? After all, it's been the most played tank in Savage/Ultimate for this entire expansion.

[Lyth]

I played WAR for nearly two years.

I suppose more specifically, I don't like what WAR and a few jobs like it have done to this game. We're on what, this game's third expansion (four if you count ARR's reboot). We should be celebrating the release of new jobs and the impact that they're going to have on our gameplay. But because several of the ARR jobs (WAR, SCH, NIN, DRG) have been unchecked for so long, they're pretty much a mandatory part of every group since ARR. I don't want to be raiding on and with the same ARR comp yet again for the sixth year running. And no, I don't want to be forced to bring a NIN just so that a non-WAR comp is capable of performing basic tank functions.

The discussion about dps windows was with relation to the conversation above. Even if you made slashing into a mini-trick window instead of a 100% uptime buff, it still shouldn't be on a tank. There are other reasons for slashing to not be in the game (not the least of which is the fact that several jobs, like PLD and DRK, use hybrid damage types, so it's unfair to have selective damage type buffs). If you're confident in your own skill as a player, you shouldn't need to bring a mandatory buff like Slashing in order for people to bring you along. Just get rid of Slashing and Piercing.

Burst is poorly balanced in this game. If two jobs do identical dps on a target dummy, then the job with the greater burst will invariably pull ahead in actual fights.

There are three reasons for this. The first is that if you're playing a burst heavy job, like WAR, in which most of your dps is concentrated in a 10 second window, having poor uptime for the remaining 90% of your rotation hurts you a lot less than it does jobs with limited burst.

Second, this game is built around burst windows from abilities like Trick. So if you perform your 10 second burst inside of this set of stacked raid buffs, a greater proportion of your total dps gets amplified compared to a job whose dps is spread out.

Lastly, most bosses have downtime, either when they jump or go untargetable. While this happens, nobody can dps, but the time to your next burst window keeps ticking down. So in fights with lower uptime, jobs like WAR pull significantly ahead, even if you execute everything flawlessly on PLD or DRK.

So unless jobs with high burst do significantly less damage on a target dummy, things aren't going to be anywhere near balanced in an actual fight.

As far as Inner Beast goes, that was more of a concession than anything else. People come up with all sorts of excuses for WAR's privileged position in this game. 'Oh, WAR needs a ton of defensive cooldowns because we can't use Inner Beast without losing dps'. Okay. Turn Inner Beast into a Sheltron/TBN analogue. Just get rid of Raw Intuition, Thrill of Battle, and give all three tanks proper parity on the 30% DR and Invuln moves.

'Oh, WAR needs oGCD stances that have no costs attached because there's a HP penalty for switching into Deliverance'. Fine. Just turn it into a flat %DR and make WAR stances on the GCD, costing 20% of your primary damage gauge like everyone else. We need to get rid of WAR's special treatment. Or better yet, get rid of stances across the board.

I know it's a scary thought, but maybe if all these tanks were on an equal playing field, people would value the player and not the job.

I kind of like Shadowbringers' motif of "out with the old, and in with the new" as the WoL and Scions shed their old jobs to try out new ones. It's high time for a change. The present course isn't working. Let's breathe some fresh air into this game.

As far as PLD is concerned: I'm glad that they actually found something resembling a niche this expansion, such that they are no longer forced to eat scraps off of WAR's table. And no, I don't think WAR should have a piece of that, which is why Shake it Off was a very poor decision. I hope the next expansion builds on PLD's identity, and I'd like to be able to raid with PLD on DRK without feeling like I have to bring along specific jobs to compensate for the lack of a WAR. I hope the same is true for DRK and Gunbreaker.

[Kalise]

Let's breathe some fresh air into this game.

By homogenizing tanks?

By removing a lot of what makes WAR unique?

Instead of you know... Changing PLD/DRK into something unique that can compete with the functions that WAR uses?

That way, people can actually pick a class rather than all 3(Soon 4) Tanks just being copy/paste versions of the same damn job (Which for a large portion of their existing design is already the case, given the complete lack of diversity in their combos making them all largely the exact same 123 spamming braindead rotations...)

Like, if burst is a problem, why not enhance Requisicat for PLD so it can be more burst orientated? Why not enhance Blood Weapon so it has more burst impact? Rather than just gutting WAR to be equally as bad as both of those classes?

If Raw Intuition/ToB are an issue... Why not give PLD/DRK additional CD's that compete with them such as buffing Bulwark? 30% DR and Invuln moves? Buff Shadow Wall so damage taken generates MP + Blood so it has a damage boost associated with it like Vengeance. Buff Sentinel so it has a lower CD and generates MP or Oath? Fix Living Dead being trash and let PLD lower the GCD of Hallowed Ground in some way?

Make all stances not use GCD so it's less ass to dance as PLD?

I know it's a scary thought, but maybe the issue with WAR's dominance isn't that WAR is too OP but that PLD's and DRK's are having too much focus on trying to get WAR nerfed, rather than get their own stuff buffed to a competitive state?

[Colony]

Inner Release being on a 90 second cooldown means it doesn't line up with every burst window. In short fights, basically every savage fight excluding ultimate, that doesn't let War pull ahead significantly over the other tanks. The numbers prove this. Drk can pool mana and blood and take advantage of every TA window with C/s, plunge, bloodspiller. This is why, in my opinion, its more fun than either of the other tanks. Yes war can do this with upheaval and fell cleaves but its not as impactful as a fantastic drk optimizing their dps. I already addressed that its easier for inexperienced wars to do "enough" damage because of how IR works. That doesn't mean the other tanks cant put up statistically similar damage, i mean very close. Again, tank damage is basically a non issue at this point, its disgustingly balanced. Maybe in some fights the other tanks have to plan more to do similar damage, although they dont at the highest level, why is that a bad thing? Why am i punished so hard when I miss a fell cleave durring IR when a drk barely loses anything for over capping mana or only getting 7 gcds during blood weapon? Because the classes are different and achieve dps differently. War is slight, and I mean slightly, ahead of the other two but why does every job have to be equal in terms of performance and excecution? How about making it so turning off grit is a full gcd? How about not making the already near irrelevant tank stances even more bland and similar? "Equal playing field" they basically are, all the things you are complaining about don't even really come into play unless you're dealing with the top <1% of speed runners, which by the way several drk players have managed to find a place in. You're upset with the communities perception of War being far superior to drk, pld is its own thing as the dedicated patsy and that should be addressed, but in actuality in all scenarios there is very little difference.