Should we be demanding use for Tank LB?

[Ekimmak]

There's one thing that really bugs me about limit breaks, and it's that I never have a reason to use the tank limit breaks.

Melee Limit Breaks are best for hitting a boss hard.
Ranged and Caster Limit Breaks are used when the melee forget to, or when large groups of adds need to die.
Healer Limit Breaks are a patch-up for the group, but I only see the LB3 version of this, so apparently it's only good with a raise attached.
Tanks... we never get to use ours.

Should this change? Should we be demanding mechanics that require us to blow the Limit Break gauge to protect from a skill that would otherwise wipe the party? I really want to see these come to use, but I also worry that it'll be to the detriment of endgame content as a whole. DPS limit breaks help get through enrage timers for lategame raids, would it be fair to force groups to conserve it for a specific mechanic? At the moment, limit breaks basically just bonus damage, but if there's a mechanic that specifically required it...

I don't know. Can I get some other opinions on whether Tank LBs should be made viable?

[Donjo]

If I recall correctly, it was mentioned once that one of the design decisions in the game was that limit breaks would never be explicitly necessary in order to win any particular battle. Could have heard/read wrong though.

[Sida]

While healer limit break is used to patch situation where most people have died for some cause, often a failed mechanic which the healers have had no chance to bounce up from, I have also seen tank lb uses to avoid just such thing from happening. For example, heading into party wide big hit where possibly one healer is missing and the party is not on the best condition to face the incoming damage. That it doesn't happen more often, I'd say, is because tanks in general have not trained themselves to be aware of those situations as much, or the mindset that it should be saved for raising.

[LDR]

Long past are we the days of early 2.x primals where a Tank LB was a legit strategy in order to survive certain moves in things like Garuda/Titan.

Not that it -couldn't- be done without but i do remember a fair few ones back then using it without question.


Sadly only the highest "tier" of content could ever be made in future to incorperate a tank LB use, but then raid teams will just devise a way to skirt around that to use it for more DPS, and thus everyone else wont think to use it for tanks and just wait to outgear it.

[Kabooa]

It's binary.

You either need it or you don't, and damage never follows this. MOre damage output is always better. More damage reduction is not, neither is more healing. If we want interesting limit breaks, the damage oriented ones have to go, and in general all limit breaks need to change in function.

And healer limit breaks are trash until 3 because they don't heal enough and aren't instant. It boggles my mind that the pure healing LB1 and 2 aren't instant.

[Rawrz]

You used tank lb for ultimas ballad for orbs, when it was relevant. O.O

[Lyth]

Interesting that you should mention this. In the final phase of Nidhogg Ex, there are situational uses for all three LBs. The DPS LB is ideal, but is not necessary to clear. If you're down several party members, there may be a role for a healer LB, unless you're about to get hit with Akh Morn. If you try to healer LB just before Akh Morn, Nidhogg will destroy your stack while your party members revive, and proceed to individually oneshot everyone else. As such, there's also no point in separating someone from the stack as a sacrifice unless the initial target is either a PLD or ideally a DRK (which is theoretically possible, but I suspect that he preferentially targets non-tanks, as I've never seen this happen unless we're down to two members). The solution: Tank LB. Once you survive, your healers can proceed to slowly rez the rest of the party in preparation for the next part of the dance. It's a nuisance, but you can recover from it.

Nidhogg Ex is a fantastic fight to do as a tank (especially on DRK). There are so many ways that you can help your group recover from seemingly fatal mistakes. It almost makes you want to farm it on PF.

T13 is the only fight that I can think of which mandated the use of a Tank LB when the fight was relevant (and it was one of the highlights of the fight). Tank LBs were also very helpful for Ultima HM and T11, but there were workarounds. You could also use Tank LBs to potentially recover from a few potential wipes, such as in Garuda Ex if you killed Spiny too early during phase 3.

[TallonOverworld]

In fact, tank lb can be much more useful than dps or healer. Tanks use it because guides tell them so. For example Ultima, in the last set of orbs, tanks used lb so the party could handle this mechanic much easier but we did it because a static used it and it proved useful... Lets just say that there is an invisible rule about lbs.
Boss hp < 15-20% --> Melee Lb (Finisher)
Most people dead --> Healer Lb
Saving party from death -> Tank Lb

As you can understand, tank lb can be used in many many occasions in the game just it requires from tanks to know the fight perfectly and being able to improvise and use it. SE will never tune a fight for tanks to use their lb or you wipe 100%.

[MahoSenshi]

Yes, Nidhogg EX if >1 people died to bombs/eyes (esp. if one of them is a healer) and you have incoming Akh Morns.

[AsunaStrife]

Yes, Nidhogg EX if >1 people died to bombs/eyes (esp. if one of them is a healer) and you have incoming Akh Morns.

No need for that if all remaining people stack up, have somewhat relevant gear and the healer knows what he's doing, 6 people are fine for the stack... if more died than 2 then it turns into a "if" scenario, yea. But then again, if your team does it properly, it is not needed. There simply are no fights at this point of the content that need a tank LB, ever. Only if your team / raid chooses to do so (which shouldn't be the case).
Back in the past tank LB's were common in some Primals or t13 progress. Nowadays the only real consideration of a tank LB is A8S for the second intermission to cheese it, other than that I don't think you need it anywhere, not even if a healer is dead in just any scenario.