Why do you save your LB?

[Bluevann]

Dungeon wise. It is unwise to push bosses in and out of certain phases too fast. That's a "derp" moment when you push a phase without preparing for it, due to bursting issues.

I am talking more about taking out adds (like in the Haukke manor case) or finishing the boss quickly when the "final nasty stage" comes out, such as in Dzmael. I'm a BLM main, and I was always told to do that in both cases.

[Anienai]

When do you guys LB?

I don't always use LB, but when I do, I use healing / tank LB 3 to piss people off.

[NyneAlexander]

I don't always BLM LB.. but when I do, I kill the spiney and wipe the party

[kukurumei]

I don't always BLM LB.. but when I do, I kill the spiney and wipe the party

Please do ifrit as well. Nothing like meteor-ing the nail and pushing iffy to enrage and wipe everyone at the finish line!

[Galliano]

Either towards the end of a fight to bring the fight to and end quicker, to push through a certain phase or for a sticky situation such as half the pt being dead and a healer popping LB.

[JayCommon]

I love the responses to this thread....very hopeful...

As BRD, I have used the healer LB maybe 20-25 times to resurrect a wipe. Want to know what happens? People just wipe again. In theory, saving the LB3 for a healer LB is the right thing to do, however it doesn't work so well in practice. If you are with a group of people who don't know mechanics to a specific fight, chances are that Healer LB is not going to save your run. Out of all those times, only one time my healer LB actually saved the fight and we got a win. Ifrit HM. And only because we could down it with 1 tank, 1 heal and me as DPS, because everyone else wiped again. Anything scaled harder than Ifrit HM, your healer LB3 is not going to help save much.

On the other end of the spectrum, I have seen healers use the LB3 to resurrect the fallen DPS, and they just fall again. Kind of like PArcher said, Are you seeing a trend? Don't get me wrong. That ONE time I saved a wipe and we beat the trial because of my LB3, I felt like God. It was awesome. Noobs praising my existence and such. But honestly, no. Healer LB3 is not something worth 'saving'. Not in my experience, anyway.

The other points are valid, about saving a DPS LB until specific phases. All HM primals can easily be done without an LB, but it helps I guess. But otherwise I stick to OP's sentiments. There is no point to hold an LB, unless for certain phases of trials.

Tank LB3 for Ultima HM is the only support LB I've seen work with any type of repeated success. If you are relying on a healer LB to save your run, you probably should find a new group to run with.

[Mister-Wonderful]

I love the responses to this thread....very hopeful...As BRD, I have used the healer LB maybe 20-25 times to resurrect a wipe. Want to know what happens? People just wipe again. In theory, saving the LB3 for a healer LB is the right thing to do, however it doesn't work so well in practice. If you are with a group of people who don't know mechanics to a specific fight, chances are that Healer LB is not going to save your run. Out of all those times, only one time my healer LB actually saved the fight and we got a win. Ifrit HM. And only because we could down it with 1 tank, 1 heal and me as DPS, because everyone else wiped again. Anything scaled harder than Ifrit HM, your healer LB3 is not going to help save much.

On the other end of the spectrum, I have seen healers use the LB3 to resurrect the fallen DPS, and they just fall again. Kind of like PArcher said, Are you seeing a trend? Don't get me wrong. That ONE time I saved a wipe and we beat the trial because of my LB3, I felt like God. It was awesome. Noobs praising my existence and such. But honestly, no. Healer LB3 is not something worth 'saving'. Not in my experience, anyway.

The other points are valid, about saving a DPS LB until specific phases. All HM primals can easily be done without an LB, but it helps I guess. But otherwise I stick to OP's sentiments. There is no point to hold an LB, unless for certain phases of trials.

Tank LB3 for Ultima HM is the only support LB I've seen work with any type of repeated success. If you are relying on a healer LB to save your run, you probably should find a new group to run with.

Healer LB wasn't put in the game for a guaranteed success. If you time it right, it can easily save runs, as you said you have done once. There isn't much more to ask for. No one is relying on it. You have to time it better to save runs, doing healer lb3 right before a big hit is obviously going to kill everyone, doing it between hits is going to save lives...

I can't stand it when the melee dps try to wait for a 2 or 3 bar LB, when it's pretty obvious that by the time it's filled it will be overkill on the boss. I'll steal it from them if I'm on BLM or SMN so it's not wasted. There is ZERO need for 10k+ damage on a boss with only 3k left. Just because you like seeing the bigger number is only hurting the group. I agree with the OP. If the LB is full at the start of a fight, use it ASAP!

This is not a good idea, you are taking a weaker lb and using it, when you could have probably done nearly as much damage from just casting, and you never know when someone is going to take big hits or some deaths will occur, and you will get lb2/3 due to big chunks of lb filling or even need that healer lb (I know its rare, but it happens) burning it as soon as you want to as caster is about as careless as you can be, it does almost no benefit. This applies less to SMN as your dots are doing a bunch of damage while you are casting, but it still applies, and as blm you are only slowing yourself/the group down.

[JayCommon]

Healer LB wasn't put in the game for a guaranteed success. If you time it right, it can easily save runs, as you said you have done once. There isn't much more to ask for. No one is relying on it. You have to time it better to save runs, doing healer lb3 right before a big hit is obviously going to kill everyone, doing it between hits is going to save lives...

I appreciate you putting words in my mouth. Thanks for that.

I never once stated/implied that I timed my LBs wrong. If you are under the impression that I am Pulse of Lifing a group of players into Titan's p5 plumes or tumults, then you are sorely mistaken. A Healer LB is not needed for any fight at all....ever. You said "No one is relying on it", but apparently you didn't read any of the responses in this thread. Almost the entire first 2 pages is people advising to wait on using an LB in case a healer needs it. That is....quite a bit of people relying on it.

My real point is that if you need to use the Healer LB at all, then you are only temporarily saving lives, because more likely than not those people died because they aren't running the mechanics correctly. Do you think that after they have been resurrected they all automatically remember/learned how to dodge? Sure, occasionally someone dies because of lag, or things outside of their control (dog unplugs controller etc.) The majority of deaths happen because people refuse to learn, or are just terrible at the game. My timing for LB3 doesn't make one bit of difference if the players I resurrect willingly walk right back into plumes, or don't get the hell out of eruptions, or whatever mechanic they are failing at during the fight. And now, you are basically invincible after resurrection for 5-10 seconds or until you fire off an attack, so your statement is highly irrelevant to begin with.



Or maybe you just never PUG......

[Sunarie]

Almost the entire first 2 pages is people advising to wait on using an LB in case a healer needs it. That is....quite a bit of people relying on it.

Or maybe you just never PUG......

Snipped the response and all.. but.. I would disagree that saving it just in case (which is what the majority of people in the thread are saying) is the same as relying on it. Relying on it would mean you are counting on having to use it (and it actually working) every fight in order to clear the fight at all. That's a big difference from saving it on the off chance that something goes tits up and needs to be saved (say some person got distracted and ran the wrong direction for eruptions, or started running early and managed to kill everyone else). Then again, that last sentence is true when I'm doing end game primals, or raids. I don't PUG, so my experience is probably going to be different than yours. We've had a lot of success using a healer LB to recover when we've actually had to do it. Then again, we don't exactly use it often (I can't remember the last time), and when we have a lot of people die it's not because they don't know mechanics.

Our FC actually takes the approach that we don't want to rely on a LB period. Way back when we first started running Titan HM, we refused to use a DPS LB to help with the heart. We didn't want to have to rely on that to get past that phase, we wanted people to improve instead, so that there wasn't a bunch of auto-attacking prior to the heart phase, or that if we pushed him too early we weren't screwed. So I'd say that relying on a LB, whichever kind, we actually try and avoid. LBs for us are just helpful things that can happen in battle for the most part, not something we actually need (the exception probably being Ultima HM).

I also haven't done Ifrit EX. My group isn't focusing on the Primals right now, and as a tank, I really have no need to pug them.

[JayCommon]

snip

I guess it really just depends on your viewpoint. I totally agree with most of what you said. Every once in a while things can get crazy, with a static. I can count on one hand the amount of times I have ever needed to LB3 my static, and we have been playing together since launch. And it is truly rare for me, because I usually leave that up to the actual healers. I will ONLY LB3 if both healers are down. And my FC kind of unofficially takes the same stand as yours in regards to using it at all. The only thing we have ever designated a LB for, is in phase 6 of Turn 4. Any other time, it's like you said: It's nice to have, but not really needed.

Then we get into the PUG discussion which is entirely different. My FC has about 2-3 days a week where we all get to play together, due to work/life/family etc. I can play every day if I choose to, so I end up pugging content when my FC isn't on. I help people with trials with my LS, and try to teach mechanics to people who don't know them. But my experience in Trials with full PUG groups has never been good. In all my groups save for one, my LB3 has been used to resurrect a wiped group, that just wiped again.

Technically you're right about the difference between relying and saving 'just in case', but I would argue that if you go in with that mentality then it's already a fail. IMO, you should go into a new fight knowing that you will wipe, but trying to progressively get better at the mechanics. To me, it's like keeping a pair of crutches in your car's trunk when both of your legs work just fine. But, that's just my opinion.