Tank IDENTITY

[Shurrikhan]

Gnb is a generic tank. Going off the few job quests and artefact armour I think bodyguard might have been the theme they were going for or maybe squall roleplay if that counts, but I don’t think it’s come across clearly. Maybe this is a product of being added in shadowbringers. Heart of corundum and aurora can be put on a friend, but paladin feels more like one with wings and cover and clemency and veil. I don’t think it particularly works as the described anti-gun troop from bozja either, but they haven’t really done anything to make garlean guns seem all that dangerous in game compared with literally everything else.

I guess I have to wonder what "anti-gun" is supposed to look like. To me, I'd imagine you'd have the ability to quickly close the distance (full-blitzing in), mitigate that distance through dense cover (guerilla warfare), and/or to disrupt them (either disproportionately affecting ranged attacks or just amping up disruption in general, which rifleman and casters would be especially susceptible to). None of that really comes across on GNB outside of tiny bits of flavor text (Camouflage, etc.).

Speaking of flavor text, though, GNB's naming scheme --Aurora, Camouflage, Gnashing Fang, Heart of Stone-- does at least come off as fairly... primal. It feels Hrothgari. It just needs to actually bring that over to the mechanics.

If anyone's played Mists/WoD Feral Druid, for instance, you might have already run into the idea of a hypermobile harasser/bleeder spec (though more a predator than a disruptor) with a side of offensively-fed deliberate support tools.

I'd have expected GNB to play out a bit more like that, bouncing between enemies as sort of a shock-and-awe or hit-and-run evasion tank (not simply in terms of being dependent on RNG mitigation -- *gag* -- but in terms of wanting to use enemies or their attacks as pseudo-cover for a far more integral sense of movement).

[fulminating]

I guess I have to wonder what "anti-gun" is supposed to look like. To me, I'd imagine you'd have the ability to quickly close the distance (full-blitzing in), mitigate that distance through dense cover (guerilla warfare), and/or to disrupt them (either disproportionately affecting ranged attacks or just amping up disruption in general, which rifleman and casters would be especially susceptible to). None of that really comes across on GNB outside of tiny bits of flavor text (Camouflage, etc.).

I think the way I would approach articulating it through gameplay would be a burst composed entirely of primal rend-style attacks that splash stun > vuln* > bleed. I think I'd probably have the gunbreakal rend be a relatively wimpy hit, but allow a harder hitting continuation combo to be performed. Having to double weave on a gap closer is asking for trouble, but I'll sweep that under the rug for now. I can't say I understand how superbolide ties into the job identity, it certainly feels more out of place than the other three - probably at least in part due to the Quintus jokes that surround it, and the job quests not hyping gunbreakers up as much as the other tanks.

GNB's naming scheme coming across as primal doesn't really help its case much I feel, what with that being half of warrior's theming. They could lean more heavily into the hrothgari end of things, but I feel that would be alienating to people playing the other races. With how many the WoL's fought they could lean into the garlean identity, but that's just a gunblade user rather than gunbreaker (and how would you really turn the delayed fuel slashes and ceruleum tigers into player-usable skills?). I guess it could be a way to convey the WoL uniting everyone theme, but at the same time it wouldn't really make much sense. If they wanted to lean into the bodyguard theme more, they could have some kind of retaliatory move for when they or a designated party member takes damage, but that's just tbn or vengeance depending on which way you want to implement it.

It's probably mostly an issue of several bad things all happening at once - highly abbreviated job quest lines, shadowbringer tank lobotimisation and the chosen theme being both generic and already covered. Then again holy knight queensguard, vigilante hippy and stormy berserker covers a lot of bases. It is nice to have a non-emotion-fueled counterpart to paladin though.

*not a party wide vuln