A recent thread in the general discussion forum sprouted this idea, and I am curious to your thoughts, feedback, and criticism. Thread can be found here:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...t-Break-system
In short, the thread refers to changing up LBs to increase their utility and I kind of changed it up entirely and proposed to keep the group LB system as is, and instead implement an additional general action that gives each job it's own unique limit break. The idea came from that I feel it is a bit unfair that tanks and healers so seldom get to use their LBs, and as a result may not be ready to when the situation calls for it.
Similar to our current LB system, these individual LB gauges fill based on the actions of the player, favoring offense. It serves to reward the player for playing well with a unique ability to their role and job. DPS are not left out, and still get their own unique LB, but to balance things with the current monopolization of the LB system, theirs are less powerful when compared the healers and tanks. To compensate, they get to use theirs more frequently since the gauge favors offense. So they too are rewarded for optimizing their rotations.
For healers and tanks, all actions contribute to the gauge, but something like low level heals for healers, and flash for tanks generate very little. While actions like switching stances and using offensive spells and mitigation cooldowns contribute a modest amount to the gauge.
The limit breaks themselves are nothing too powerful, but without question very useful and come with a really cool animation. It gives two gauges for tier 1 and tier 2 LBs. Tier 2 should not be a stronger version of tier 1, but rather a second ability that is more rewarding than the first.
In search of a diplomatic route to encourage all players to try and optimize while having fun doing it, I thought that something like this might be a step in the right direction, and the idea of giving a player a cool abilities to use by filling their own gauge goes back to the earliest fighting games, if not before. And iirc, very well received.