LIMIT BREAK: It Needs A Re-Work

[Atelier-Bagur]

I honestly would just want for them to personalize LB1 and LB2 for each job as I'm bored of the universal role limit breaks shared by every class.

There's no reason why a monk should use Cloud's Limit Breaks

[Atelier-Bagur]

My other solution would be to give each player their own LB bars to use and have each job do a unique effect like how it is in current pvp.

[Packetdancer]

It doesn't matter who uses it, except in certain raids or trials, because you can clear content without using it.

I will also note that the game will also often 'force feed' you a full LB3 meter shortly before any mechanic requiring tank LB to survive, even if you already spent your accumulated LB.

This already happens. It's called Active Help and has 4 pages. People probably don't read or remember Active Help, but it doesn't mean the game doesn't explain what a limit break is. They can read the tooltip as well.

While I am on record saying there's a lot of things this game could do better with regards to documentation -- explaining the white bar over debuffs you can cleanse with Esuna, making the tooltip on Arm's Length less opaque to people who don't realize the difference between Slow and Heavy, etc. -- I do concede that Limit Break is one covered in Active Help, and in generally sufficient detail (at least to my recollection).

However.

Something I realized when I made my raid-alt and started her out... the Active Help starts out throwing up constant notifications like how to walk. That an exclamation over an NPC means they have a quest. That you can select and interact with things, including those NPCs. Etc.

I think I had like 20 active help tips pop up in the first five minutes of play, and they were all -- without exception -- things that anyone who has played even a few videogames already knows. And while I grant there may be people for whom those tips are useful, I know that my immediate reaction was to disable Active Help as quickly as I could find the option.

In my case, this was an alt, so it wasn't like Active Help was going to tell me anything I didn't know. But I asked some others who were newer to the game, and they confirmed that, yep, they had turned off Active Help as quickly as possible because "it was all stuff I already knew". Which, in those first moments in your starting city, is almost certainly true...

...but it means that many players have disabled Active Help by the time it starts telling them things that are more specific to this game. (Like, say, how the Limit Break works.)

So I strongly believe they'd do better to get rid of all those initial tips, consolidating them into one single "If you're new to MMORPGs or video games in general, here are some basic tips to get started." pop-up that can be dismissed once. Because I feel like that would make it a lot less likely that people would turn off the Active Help system immediately... which would make it a lot more likely they still had the system enabled when it started actually saying something useful.

Have to admit, I rarely use it. Partly due to being told off for using it inappropriately in a Raid when I was newer and less experienced.

I mean, I'm a healer main who will fall back to tanking as her second choice; if I'm using the LB in most content, either it's a scripted tank LB3 or something has gone wildly off the rails.

As a result, I often forget that I do get to use the LB when I'm a DPS.

[Padudu]

Yeah I'm in the same boat of forgetting LB exists regularly lol. When I was starting to do healing classes I'd often forget to put it on my bar, as tank it hardly ever got used unless it was those tank LB requirement shtick. LBs honestly do not really matter if your party is good to begin with, it gives a little extra dps and that's it. I'd be down to see it reworked lol. LB as it is, is just there for the small push if your dps is low on savage fights (or revivals).

[Jojoya]

saying DPS LB3 in savage means your team is all bad while calling Healer LB3 good.
YOU ALL DIED SO YOU NEEDED THAT LB3! xD
a good run won't even touch healer LB

I think you missed his point.

You don't need everyone else dead for healer LB3 to be worth using compared to melee LB3. A DPS without the Weakness debuff is going to do about 33% more damage than the same DPS with the Weakness debuff (yes, I know the reduction is only 25%. Adding 25% to 75% is a 33% increase over 75%.) The weakness debuff lasts for 100 seconds.

How much damage is the melee LB3 going to deal compared to how much additional damage one or two or three DPS rezzed without the Weakness debuff will deal in 100 seconds? Don't forget that's it's going to allow healers to deal a bit more damage as well since it restores the entire party to 100% HP and they don't have to waste time casting the resurrections on the dead players if Swiftcast isn't available.

Sometimes it will absolutely make more sense to use it as a healer LB3 than to save it for melee.

My favourite thing about Limit Break and Sprouts is how they think it's a personal resource and spam that big orange button as available. Unironic.

That's because there's nothing in the game that does a good job of explaining how it works. The Active Help is something like "The Limit Break is a powerful ability available for use when you're part of a party" and usually gets ignored because it flashes on the screen right as players zone into Sastasha, with the sprouts needing to catch up to the other players that just disappeared from view the second the barrier dropped. Evidently, SE assumes that players already know what it is from playing previous FF games when FFXIV is the first FF game a lot of players have played.

I remember when I first played back at the start of HW, I had no idea the LB even existed until my first time in Aurum Vale and the group was yelling at me to LB on the adds for the last boss. I kept looking at my job abilities (was playing BRD) and couldn't find any that seems to relate to "LB". They did finally explain it to me. Since Hall of the Novice was added, I've suggested a few time that a LB tutorial needs to be included.

Edit: looked up the exact Active Help entry for Limit Break

"Limit breaks are powerful actions which are only available to parties of four or more members. The actions can be executed when the party's limit gauge is full. The gauge is located directly above the party list.

"The limit gauge will slowly fill as battle progresses, while certain acts of heroism─such as curing an ally while they are on the brink of death, or preventing an enemy from using its special attack─will cause the gauge to rise quicker.

"The Limit Break trigger is located in the Actions & Traits menu under General. It can be set to your hotbar for easy access.
There are five different types of limit breaks: single-target attack (melee), attack to all targets in a straight line (ranged), area of effect attack (caster), increase party defense (tank), and HP restoration (healer). Which type is used depends on the class/job of the person who initiates the action.

"Limit gauge length varies depending on party size and battle type. The more party members you have, and the more difficult the foe you face, the more options you will have."

It's not especially helpful to someone with no previous knowledge of Limit Break in FF games. While it says it's not available until the gauge is full, it doesn't state that one player using it depletes the gauge so it will no longer be available to others in the party until it refills, and doesn't go into detail (understandably) about which is best to use in what situations.

[Renalt]

This brings me to the actual meat of the matter: It shouldn't matter who uses the limit break, but it DOES. Melee does vastly more damage by using the LB than ranged or magical DPS do.

Ranged use LB on trash pulls. That FAR exceeds total damage a DPS can single target LB a boss. Ranged should LB the trash mobs (especially during a W2W pull). That saves way more time than shaving 5% off a boss. The melee should however LB the boss when available.

So no. Only having Melee with 2 different LBs is dumb.

[Angellos]

Uh. 1) just sitting on LB3 is wasting it, 2) caster and ranged LB are far more effective on trash packs than sitting on a full limit for half the instance's run so a melee can feel like a hero wasting a ton of damage on the last 5% of the last boss.

The bard was correct.

The bard was NOT correct: because 3 seconds later, most of the party wiped and the healers had no LB3 during Paradigm's Breach. So no, the bard was absolutely wrong. 5400 damage (WOO.... awesome) meant a near wipe. The bard should never LB3 a single target boss.) THIS Is why it needs to be re-worked.

[AmiableApkallu]

The bard was NOT correct: because 3 seconds later, most of the party wiped and the healers had no LB3 during Paradigm's Breach. So no, the bard was absolutely wrong.

No one is clairvoyant. Using the LB is a judgement call:

• If the party was generally doing fine up until that point, then a DPS is justified in using the LB.
• If the party was constantly eating mechanics and dying left and right, then the DPS should let the Healers have the LB.

[hagare]

I think you missed his point.

You don't need everyone else dead for healer LB3 to be worth using compared to melee LB3. A DPS without the Weakness debuff is going to do about 33% more damage than the same DPS with the Weakness debuff (yes, I know the reduction is only 25%. Adding 25% to 75% is a 33% increase over 75%.) The weakness debuff lasts for 100 seconds.

How much damage is the melee LB3 going to deal compared to how much additional damage one or two or three DPS rezzed without the Weakness debuff will deal in 100 seconds? Don't forget that's it's going to allow healers to deal a bit more damage as well since it restores the entire party to 100% HP and they don't have to waste time casting the resurrections on the dead players if Swiftcast isn't available.

Sometimes it will absolutely make more sense to use it as a healer LB3 than to save it for melee.

again, that would mean his team suck if weakness is everywhere.
The very thing he called out people using melee LB3 for in the first place.
I'm not debating the impact of healer LB3. But that he had the gall to say that if people use Melee LB3, it means they suck.
When people would only need healer LB3 because they either die often, or they fail a mechanics and it becomes almost a wipe. Aka failing.
Healer LB3 is impactful yes, but the only team you use it is when you're failing, badly.

Using DPS LB3 usually means the run is going smoothly and you can get it done a bit faster.
Tank LB3 is usually a mechanic necessity.
Using healer LB3 usually means you guys are dying a lot or about to wipe because you didn't do the fight right.

[Gemina]

A tutorial for beginners wouldn't be very effective at coaching up new players on how and when to use LB. Due to its design and sporadic use, learning when and how to use LB is entirely hands-on. What I absolutely LOVE about LB is that it is a party resource, and when used selfishly, it tends to bite players right in the arse.

As a DPS, you learn to hold onto it after you use it and realize you really screwed up because everyone is dying, and the boss still has plenty of HP. Or the tank needed it to block an ultimate and you just doomed everyone. Melee vs ranged LB is a bit meh. What I will say is I frown much less when ranged is used on single target opposed to a melee using theirs when there are several targets on the battle field. Either way though it usually isn't anything to raise a stink over so long as the healer or tank don't need it.

Healers tend to learn to use it when the entire party is saying, "Healer LB3!" in chat. Tough to miss.

Tank? I love getting A12N in roulette just for the 50/50 chance that both tanks have no idea LB3 is required to survive.

I have no issues with LB really. Even healers and tanks getting limited use is an objective viewpoint because playing a DPS job doesn't necessarily make it mandatory for you to use it, or even guarantee you'll get a chance to. Healer might actually be the one role where if you play it enough, your chance to save an entire party with LB3 somewhere along the line is nearly 100%.