Gunbreaker gameplay hope and expectations

[Kalise]

-Snip-

I think you may have misconstrued my initial sentence into thinking that I was talking about Stances working. In their current form, they do not, as there is no incentive to go into Tank stance 99% of the time. As such, I can get where the "Just remove stances" idea comes from.

Meanwhile, I'm advocating that stances, offer a plethora of interesting and fun design space, wherein you can effectively DOUBLE the number of skills a Tank has at no extra button bloat. Simply by having IB/FC style button swapping between stances.

Of course, it would take more work to properly balance out stances. Both in how content is designed as well as stances themselves, including passive and active benefits.

Such as reducing/removing the damage penalty of Tank Stance (Since, you already tie DPS skills and effects to DPS Stance, it makes little sense to then slap on this penalty too) and putting in some interesting effects that a MT can take advantage of in Tank Stance (And OT when they're tanking something too)

Like, what if Shield Oath pushed out competitive damage to Sword Oath by having a passive retaliation upon blocking that can equate to SwO's AA damage proc?

What if, Shield Oath built gauge in a way that made sense by being upon receiving unblocked damage instead of upon Blocking (So you fail to block enough and you get yourself a Sheltron. Effectively creating a pseudo-random block chance).

What if FoF and Req shared a button and FoF was only available in SwO while Req was only available in ShO? What if doing something in ShO would then reduce the CD of FoF and doing something in SwO would reduce the CD of Req, so for optimal play you'd be constantly shifting between stances as your CD's came up.

What if Grit had Blood Price as a constant passive effect so you'd constantly be generating mana/blood as you get hit?

What if TBN did damage or reduced Delirium CD when the shield broke while in Grit?

What if spending Defiance let you generate Gauge when you were hit?

With Unchained being reworked to be usable in both stances and let you stack Gauge past the cap of 100 (But after it wears off you go back down to 100 gauge if you're over it)?

What if Defiance stopped having Parry as it's gauge bonus and had something else (Like maybe crit again)

What if more CD's had extra retaliation damage while under Defiance?

Just as examples.

[shao32]

In my opinion it will doesn't matter what they do with tank stances aa long they do something with it, the most easily approach will be or remove it and Idk put the effects on our agro combos like if you do power slash you get grit effect or butcher grant you defiance something like that to make agro combos being more useful in combat or just remove entirely the penalitations they currently have in order to don't piss off much the ppl that are more into dps with forcing us to stay in tank stances in the way they are right now.

And i feel we are gonna see a gap increase between tank dps and DD dps by how Yoshi respond about the concerns of our acc so I hope they don't go in to the lazy solution of forcing us to stay in tank stances for that, at least for DRK make the job more slow and less busy and ppl will not want to MT much.

[Phoenicia]

Snip.

Working around stances so they interact with how you play is what I was talking about. Like the many examples you provided. However, there is the issue of: If DPS gained by taking hits provided additional DPS, you will have the tank that gains more damage from that mechanic be the FoTM MT like how PLD/DRK were pushed to MT in HW (admittingly, they were terrible OTs in general). Which is something we don't want. This is the main reason SE gutted Blood Price and linked it to Grit (You can't tank in DPS stance and get even more DPS because you're tanking). Some of your examples feel like they are just complexity for the sake of complexity. I know they are just examples and they can definitely be tweaked in a lot of areas just like my 1 example. Let's leave this part as "we agree on the same thing".

I do get your idea after all.

But again, imo, not all tanks need a stance or stances. Stances can be just 1 or 2 jobs' flavor, where if played correctly, general performance is raised (DPS and mitigation).

Example: WAR and PLD have stances to dance between. DRK and GUN have limited resources to manage.

WAR jumps into Defiance to "Defy" heavy burst damage or long periods of high damage then slips back into Deliverance to dish out what it does. Fits its Berserker style. And in my example, it can use the change Unchained to access another stance's benefit without losing the one he's in. I can't think of much for PLD with its current move set though.

On the other hand, DRK can have more features that use MP in a similar fashion to TBN that converts into gauge. Because honestly, I think Grit should just go. DRK can have the current price (minus the blood gain) be passive along with Darkside. Playing your MP is all the "dancing" DRK needs. It should capitalize on it more. More MP -> Gauge and Gauge > MP interactions specifically. MP and/or gauge abilities can be adjusted to be DPS and Mitigation gains as long as they are done right (Ala TBN must break sort of deal). GUN can have similar functions with bullets maybe and its MP maybe?

This way you have 2 sets of tanks that feature different playstyles. Less "homogenization" (not that I consider that bad mind you), while keeping certain basic functions effective enough.

As for balancing 4 tanks, I think a good way to balance them would be to make a square of A, B, C and D and have one of the 2 following cases:

1- Adjacent letters have good synergy together, but bad with opposite corner; i.e. B is good with either A or C, but has no synergy with D. Or:
2- Adjacent letters don't have any synergy, so you want to always pair with the opposite corner; i.e. if you have tank A, you want tank C.

As long as all 4 tanks can fully do all aspects of their job regardless of being MT or OT. "Synergy" can be anything from doing same type of damage (i.e. PLD and maybe GUN do a lot of magic damage, so they both benefit from Contagion). Or Beneficial raid buffs that can't stack vs ones that can (i.e. Shake it Off and Veil can't stack, but Passage and SiO do. bad example since PLD has both Veil and PoA, but you get the idea I hope).

In the end, however, all we can do is wait and see what SE has in mind. All we are doing here is wishing for some things and letting our imaginations go wild.

[Kalise]

-Snip-

Well, a lot of the concern would really just come down to balancing.

Especially if there a "MT that gets more DPS from reactionary boosts" they can just fiddle with the numbers until it's more even across the board (And/or if it's an issue with DPS potential between MT and OT role they could also add in new DPS stance only skills. Like a Sheltron alternative that deals direct damage to use Gauge on)

At the end of the day, I really hope that they do make Stances work. Especially given how often I personally don't "Feel" like I'm tanking, when irregardless of being MT or OT I simply play exactly the same way outside of, popping CD's for Tankbusters.

I kind of want Tank Stance to feel like I'm preparing to Tank. With more focus on well, being the focus of attention. More active mitigation and reprisal mechanics to basically make the unique fact of being MT, thus meaning taking the hits from the boss, means something. With more interesting ways to push DPS than "Just press your DPS rotation more gooder"

With then the DPS Stance being the more independent stance where the output is more focused on what I'm personally doing rather than reacting to damage and putting up mitigation.

Resulting in a shift between playstyles to mix things up as fights change and positions change (I.e. Tank swaps). Rather than being essentially a DPS where the only concern is "Push your DPS combo optimally. Pop CD's at appropriate times" no matter what.

Sure, you can argue that such things are possible without stances, but I feel that leads to an issue where either the raw DPS combos outperform the mitigation related reactions, or you get a scenario where certain tanks become "The MT's" because their mitigation related actions outperform their DPS combos. All the while, dealing with the issue of button bloat to incorporate these actions (In addition to also still requiring Enmity combo skills to exist as separate skills)

But I guess we'll see what SE has planned.

Perhaps this thread will find its way back to Gunbreaker gameplay now that the detour of "WAR is OP" and "General Tank Discussion" has come to, somewhat of a close...

So we can fantasize about things such as "What's Gunbreaker's Job Gauge going to be?", "How will the FFVIII 'Trigger' system be implemented", "What kind of cool moves will be the focus of the job (Like Bloodspiller, Fell Cleave and Requiescat/Holy Spirit)"

... As an unrelated side note and another detour from the thread... I was wondering about what if Dark Arts for DRK was changed into a toggle that didn't deactivate on every skill use and merely added the MP cost onto relevant skills while active. Functionally the same, just less "Spam it before every skill use" and more "Toggle it on, do a few hits, toggle it off to regain MP"

[aqskerorokero]

Easiest thing to do to balance stances is to put - 25% HP and - 25% defences a's a side effect to dps stance for Pld and War, then lock Drk's cd behind Grit. Ppl will start think when to use what.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Buddy, that's not easiest, that's just plain terrible and you'll see a lot of the tank community revolt if they tried to implement that.

[Kalise]

Easiest thing to do to balance stances is to put - 25% HP and - 25% defences a's a side effect to dps stance for Pld and War, then lock Drk's cd behind Grit. Ppl will start think when to use what.

There are plenty of easy ways to force people into Tank stances.

The issue is forcing Tank stances is, in of itself, not good design as many Tanks would like to push the limits of what they can handle and be able to use DPS stances when possible to deal more damage.

To say nothing about gimping the OT's defences making them more vulnerable to raid AoE's is pretty horrible design.

[ReiMakoto]

Buddy, that's not easiest, that's just plain terrible and you'll see a lot of the tank community revolt if they tried to implement that.

Strong agree (Hi aod). At the higher level tanks want to deal damage, not to mention it would make older content way harder to do sync'd. Slapping Debuffs like that for trying to optimise damage will just discourage people from tanking more.

[LegolasT]

DRK is the fast tank so don't see GUN being a fast tank that identity is already taken. DPS wise we have WAR so that's already used up. It would make more sense for GUN to be a energy tank that works to compliment the other three tanks or benefits for the DPS or healers. So far the tanks with the best synergy has been WAR and PLD which has left DRK out but with GUN it can be more creative

[Leidiriv]

I'm pretty sure, based on the description of the class, that it'll be the "charge-based abilities" tank, kinda like SCH using Aetherflow. You get your charges every so often and can spend them on a regular attack like Energy Drain or some utilities like a damage down debuff on the boss. After spending a stack, you get a bonus based on your stance (mitigation or a damage buff for a short duration) and then you've got Renzokuken which gives you unlimited stacks for a decent duration, and maybe there's another skill that gives you both ammo benefits for a bit. That's the best I could come up with, anyway.