GNB is TERRIBLE now!

[bic12]

The GNB changes are excellent. All this shows me is you don't understand either the job itself, balance, or both.

First, elephant in the room, yes, damage nerf. Yes, it needed it, or the other tanks needed buffs to bring them in line. They went with nerf, valid option, it's fine.

Now the main changes. Yeah, it's a 1 minute job now. That's not a bad change, GNB is far more forgiving now, you won't ever waste cartridges on bloodfest because of a bad situation or have to delay it because now it bumps you up to a max of 6 and gives you 3 to fill you up. Yes, Double down costs 2 now, but you have 6 so it's the same. Lionheart combo is done once per minute instead of once every 2 minutes and gets a potency nerf, brilliant! Less potency but more uses becomes more consistency, if you didn't crit and/or direct hit your lionheart it felt terrible because of the huge damage gain, that has been made smaller, so the inconsistencies in damage between equally performing players has decreased. In short, less RNG.

It also puts you in a pretty standard loop instead of having the boring 1 minute rotation and the better 2 minute rotation. Gnashing fang on charges is another great change because you have on to throw around wherever you like, so you can hold it if you need to reposition or have downtime coming up without drifting and still have it up for your burst. Sonic break is a shorter dot, so you lose less damage when a target dies shortly after being applied or goes invulnerable.

I feel people are complaining because that's just what people do when something they like changes, but not all change is bad. Embrace it, enjoy it. Put time in to it before judging it, it's literally day 1.

The whole reason GNB is fun was that it took much higher skill to play around the rigidity, and downtime made the rotation complex.

If you like it it just means your brain is operating at a lower speed.

[Luca_]

I really don't like these changes after giving them a chance in the normal raids last night, unfortunately. I don't really know how to properly describe why it feels off, but it's like they took a belt sander to the job for the sake of people who don't actually play it.

Pretty disappointed since I've been pretty much onetricking GNB since the beginning of Endwalker when I started raiding. I think I'm gonna end up swapping to DRK.

[Daralii]

I'm not sure about the changes of yet as I'm not much of a Gunbreaker player and I'm also not sure how strong or weak it is now.

But at the very least, this new "overcart" thing was very confusing to look at. Gold bullets are two bullets? We needed The Powder Gauge to extend and actually show 6 bullets.
Too much visual information going on, for a job they were attempting to simplify, it just felt overwhelming.

It's a very weird and stupid attempt to copy the Brotherhood "overchakra" from MNK, only they turn gold instead of red. The big difference is that the chakra gauge was already a full circle, while the powder gauge still only uses a third of the actual cylinder. Here's a remarkably shitty mockup I cobbled together in Paint:


For the simple gauge, the extra cartridges could just be below the normal ones. I wish they'd revert it, but they're very stubborn when it comes to their worst ideas.

[Ankhira]

If you like it it just means your brain is operating at a lower speed.

Ah yes, someone disagrees with how I feel = let's insult them.

Was that line needed? Literally could have left it out and I'd have considered your comment reasonable, my god I genuinely don't get why so many people here instantly start making jabs the second their viewpoint isn't agreed upon.

[Azurarok]

Would I perform much better with the job with these changes? Absolutely.

Did I need help reaching the skill ceiling for a tank job I don't even main? Absolutely Not.

[Immut]

8.0 patch.

Why stop there? Bring in Ys bump combat.

[Carstien]

It is a bad design to make another tank fall under 1 minute, PLD/WAR already fall under one minute, if you take a second to look GNB and PLD are even more similar now because of it which is a bad thing. Tanks should generally feel different enough.

Doesn't the Gnashing fang changes actually restrict gnb under level 100 to only use it twice during no mercy? I could be wrong. I'd be more in favour of it having two charges if they accounted for any content below 100 ever but they don't, it took them ages to give PLD a gap closer at 70 content instead of 80 content and to give dark missionary at 70 content.



Regular 1, 2, 3 shouldn't be filler.

Rotations like samurai's filler should be filler having different combos, Procs like dancers should be filler, a 1, 2, 3 is not a good example of filler, not on a tank, healer or a dps it's just bad and frankly boring.

I strongly disagree that making them run on a 1 min loop is a bad thing, there is no real reason that it would be. When it's a 2 min loop, because of tanks having less complicated rotations than a melee dps they begin to feel slow and stale. Look at DRK, the only one left on a 2 min loop, it's slow until you get there and then it's a frenzy. Evening it out is not a bad thing, in my opinion, and doesn't really change balance too much. I think the tanks feel different enough while also having the tools to compete. GNB has a faster paced 1 minute, WAR is slower but heavy hitting with the satisfying crunches and complete freedom of choice in the order you use the skills and PLD's is magical and can be done at ranged with a slight bit of flexibility. They maintain their identity without being polar opposites, imo.

Gnashing isn't restricted like that, no. You can only fit 8/9 GCD's under NM so that is one gnashing fang combo, lionheart combo, double down, sonic break. That's 8 total, add in a burst strike or if you really want to optimize time your gnashing fang so that the last GCD is under NM if you have a fast enough skp but it's a minor gain and otherwise you're free to just gnashing when you feel you have the time because of the charge system. I like to play on slower SKSP because I use PLD a lot and it needs 2.50 so I will never get more than one gnashing under NM, making the second completely free in my rotation.

The 123 combos are all filler, they just are. Yes, they are the backbone of the job but also filler, you use them when you don't have your stronger, better GCD's available. I don't see how this is even considered debatable for any of the tanks, or any job. When your burst and stronger gcd's are on cooldown, you resort to the filler. There may be exceptions, won't deny that but it's the general rule of thumb.

[Carstien]

Ah yes, someone disagrees with how I feel = let's insult them.

Was that line needed? Literally could have left it out and I'd have considered your comment reasonable, my god I genuinely don't get why so many people here instantly start making jabs the second their viewpoint isn't agreed upon.

Lol, thank you. I do appreciate the defence, but people are unfortunately just like that sometimes. Just trying to have a civilized conversation with multiple valid reasonings and opinions and oops, gotta throw out the insults.

For the record I don't disagree, new GNB is easier. That doesn't mean I can't enjoy how it feels and plays, it's easier but it's also more satisfying to me. The two things are not mutually exclusive. That's how I'd answer that comment if they weren't just being rude for the sake of it. I enjoyed RPR, the job I did the last tier on, more before they made it a little easier in the last patch, difficulty and enjoyment aren't always the same thing.

[TeresaFortell]

The whole reason GNB is fun was that it took much higher skill to play around the rigidity, and downtime made the rotation complex.

On the other hand, such a change to the job may just bring more people to play GNB, and the job would be more active during uptime.

[Servebotfrank]

I think people are confusing "rigid/strict and punishing" with difficulty when they don't have anything to do with each other. Gunbreaker has never been a difficult job, it was just a strict job. There wasn't any complex decision making to make with the rotation to account for downtime, you just had to eat the downtime (accepting the damage loss or drift) or greed to make sure you didn't drift. No one considers Reaper to be a difficult dps job, it has a very simple rotation, but it is an extremely punishing job to make mistakes on.

What's changed with Gunbreaker, you can burst more often now and you have more flexibility with gnashing fang. Wouldn't allowing players to adjust their rotation based on the fight be a better expression of skill other than "yeah my ping allowed me to greed this mechanic like a maniac to get gnashing fan off without eating a damage down because I lived on the West Coast."