Individual "Limit Breaks"

[Jacost]

In FFXI, each class had one ability that had a two hour cooldown (later reduced to 1 hour) and had a very powerful effect. I'm hardly asking for FFXI-2 here, but this is one aspect of it that appealed to me. Of course, considering the fast pace of this game they can probably work with a 20 minute cooldown, enough to ensure that it's only seeing use once, maybe twice per dungeon. Maybe something like this as level 60 skills:

Paladin: Shining Sword - Provoke all enemies in a player-centered AoE, generate additional enmity equal to Rage of Halone, and reduce their accuracy by 90% for 10 seconds.

Warrior: Primordial Fury - Instantly grants maximum Wrath and Infuriated. You remain Infuriated for the next 10 seconds no matter what you do.

Monk: Thousand Fists - Instantly grants maximum Greased Lightning. For the next 5 seconds your auto-attacks will have their rate tripled, and the GCD will be halved.

Dragoon: Rising Dragon - Dragoon jumps, losing any heavy or bind effects, and remains in the air for 3 seconds. During that time he can still move but cannot be targeted or damaged by anything. Upon landing, all nearby enemies take a 500 potency hit.

Ninja: Kage Bunshin - Ninja summons a clone that will mimic every move the Ninja makes. Clone's actions have half the potency of the original. Clone loses 10% of it's HP every tick (dies in 30 secs if it receives no additional damage) and cannot be healed.

Bard: Encore - Bard uses every song at once at double effectiveness (doesn't stack with Battle Voice) without losing DPS. This includes Swiftsong if out of battle, but it's effectiveness is unaffected.

Black Mage: Manafont - For 10 seconds, the BLM can cast spells even if they do not have the required amount of MP; in such a case, the spell will instead consume all their MP, or none if their MP is alreday 0. Casting Flare will end the effect immediately.

Summoner: Grand Summon - For 20 seconds, all Summon abilities have 0 cast time. You may have up to 3 Egi out at once, however they can't be controlled. Rouse, Spur and Enkindle apply to every Egi, but Sustain only applies to the most recently summoned one. When the time runs out, all but the most recently summoned Egi will vanish.

White Mage: Arise - Raise a target with full HP, MP and TP, and without weakness.

Scholar: Fae Blessing - 100% chance to crit for 10 seconds.

I'm no theorycrafter, so I don't know how balanced any of these would be. I'd also like to know if the general idea behind it is sound.

Just to address some of the comments: No, these are not true LBs, and have no bar. They'd be regular skills in terms of mechanics, but they evoke the feel of a limit break as we know them from previous FFs. I gave a 20 minute cooldown to ensure that they'd probably only see use once a run, but 5-10 minutes probably would work better.

The numbers could definitely use some adjustment by someone who knows this stuff inside and out. I just designed them thematically, the idea being that this is what happens when a hero of this class really pulls out all the stops and shows that they have, in fact, been getting stronger over the last year. The only one I think doesn't really work is the WHM one, but I had some issues there. The only other thing I could think of at the time was a full-party Benediction, which sounded unimpressive (although perhaps if it also healed all status effects on the party...). Another idea I had later was allowing infinite Freecure and Overcure for a brief period.

As to balance... Like I said, these would be learned at level 60. I think it's likely that SE will have all current content level-synched to 50 in future to preserve it's current balance, allowing them to shake things up for Heavensward. Since these wouldn't be usable outside of expansion stuff anyway, it could be designed around at SE's leisure.

[Brightshadow]

20 minute cooldowns won't work in a modern MMO like this, and these are too weak to be limit breaks perhaps on 5 minute recast timer.

[Akiza]

For a limit break 3 a 5 minute recast timer would be ideal because this game is fast paced. Raid bosses take 11 minutes to kill at most. A 20 minute recast timer on limit break 3 won't work unless SE made raid bosses take 40-45 minutes to kill.

[Velox]

as far as balance goes, MNK, WAR, WHM seem extremely underwhelming compared to the abilities you gave the other jobs.

If said LBs were to have their own bar separate from the party gauge than a good balance for time would be to make them so they can only be used once during a boss fight and twice (at the most) during a long dungeon. Given that, I'd say a 7min recast would be ideal (depending how fast the gauge fills).

[Shougun]

Blackmage must be one sad puppy when Summoner can whip out three pets that do about a quarter of his dps each. :P

I like using super powered spells but at the same time you'd expect the devs to design around them if they do exist, you'd get more clutch moments because of them (I imagine at least).

[Vorpal_Spork]

Grants permanent Infuriated status for 10 seconds.

[Chiramu]

SMN LB3 should be to summon the primal, the alternative of meteor for BLM. That is what I thought when SE were saying they will be making different LBs for classes.

[coldreactive]

None of these would be usable in PVP due to balance reasons. Not that it matters, I hate PVP and don't want to touch it, ever.

[Alistaire]

I'm no theorycrafter, so I don't know how balanced any of these would be.

If you're no theorycrafter, why do you take the time to just throw out ridiculous ideas like these? And it's not just you, pretty much every post on this entire forum that goes in detail on someone's "dream abilities" are just way out there.

They're going to keep it simple, DPS will either do a single or AOE DPS hit, tanks will mitigate damage, healers will heal. The only problems with the current system is that BRD got classed as a healer for some reason, there's just 1 animation between MNK and DRG, when neither even uses a sword, and if you're at the point of needing a healer LB to raise, that leaves people too vulnerable for too long.

Basically your suggestions would make any content that required such LB use for its level of gear practically undoable.

SMN LB3 should be to summon the primal, the alternative of meteor for BLM. That is what I thought when SE were saying they will be making different LBs for classes.

imo one big massive ruin-ball would be cool as well

[Percimont]

Basically your suggestions would make any content that required such LB use for its level of gear practically undoable.

It also risks completely unbalancing all existing content. Unless these skills are sufficiently weak (and some of them seem to be) that they really shouldn't even be considered limit breaks, if every player in the party or alliance is able to fire off 1 or 2 of these apiece during a boss fight, it would dramatically change and likely break existing fights.