Tank LB and fight design

[Kalise]

Yeah, LB's in general just are in a particularly rough spot.

It's basically a binary option of either it's 100% useless or 100% useful (In the case of Tank/Healer LB's)

Then outside of that it's basically mDPS LB's > rDPS LB's because most of the time you're wanting to LB a boss, in which case the higher damage ST ones from mDPS are better.

Making LB's individual, while not only causing a huge balance issue (Since, either every class would be designed with completely unique L1/2/3 LB's and balanced around how quickly they generated LB's) or it would change very little as Tank/Healer LB's would still be binary useless/useful. The major thing would be pushing more mDPS to be in parties for multiple ST burst LB's.

Honestly, if they want to make all LB's useful, without just slapping in mechanics that force specific ones to be used or its a wipe, would be to enhance the less desired LB's in some way.

An example could be directly buffing some LB effects. Such as making damage mitigated/healed by Tank/Healer LB's give a proportionate damage boost. Or making rDPS LB's debuff the enemy increasing damage taken.

Or an alternative could be something like being able to Combo LB's. Taking inspiration from Ungarmax (The Squadron LB where all 4 members channel together for DD and a damage boost). What if instead of LB's being a one shot of a single person gets to use a LB and that's it, what if classes from other roles could, after that one person has started their LB, could ALSO LB to create new effects?

Such that you could end up comboing in different ways for different effects. Such as DPS > Healer > Tank would produce a different outcome to Tank > DPS > Healer.

Which, yes, would require a lot of balancing to incorporate, but once done would mean that all roles would have viability to use LB's without situations like currently where they are either pointless or absolutely needed, if of course the effects ended up balancing out each of the 3 DPS types (mDPS/rDPS/magDPS) so that mDPS wasn't always the superior one for bosses.

[saber_alter]

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I feel that while making LB more like adrenaline will result in some problems, i feel it also frees up more options for everyone that isn't a melee dps. caster and ranged LB can be used for extra burst damage on adds without sacrificing potential damage to the boss. tank LB can be used to by the tanks as additional mitigation for raidwides or to block a tank buster, reducing the strain on healers who have trouble with CD planning. Healer LB could even potentially keep multi rez, at the cost of reduced range and imposing weakness onto all revived. Honestly i feel it would be better for the game in the long run.

[Shurrikhan]

Making LB's individual, while not only causing a huge balance issue (Since, either every class would be designed with completely unique L1/2/3 LB's and balanced around how quickly they generated LB's) or it would change very little as Tank/Healer LB's would still be binary useless/useful. The major thing would be pushing more mDPS to be in parties for multiple ST burst LB's.

Honestly, if they want to make all LB's useful, without just slapping in mechanics that force specific ones to be used or its a wipe, would be to enhance the less desired LB's in some way.

This. To be fair, if each job had a couple LB options or were more flexibly based, we could probably manage individual LBs and have a more interesting game for it, but the easiest way is definitely just to make the lesser used LBs more useful, including rank 1 and rank 2 LBs in general.

Right now the best mitigating factor of the tank LB's usage is how much can LB gauge can be recovered over the mitigated strike, as defensive percentile absorption (or eHP of absorption) will supply gauge. A more nearly linear growth of its % mitigation would probably help as well. At present it scales 20-40-80. It should probably be nearer to 25-50-80, or even 30-55-80, so that the first LB can actually meet significant breakpoints, even if that means reducing its gauge pay-off to compensate as to be a viable option without being an obligatory gimmick.

Healer LB needs something more as well. Greater immediacy would be an obvious start, or even HP-splitting, healing from a minimum to maximum % on each target, with the total healing (based on party HP) distributed to most wounded members. Perhaps we could include partial mana restoration or debuff cleansing as well. And, of course, the healing itself should supply proportionate gauge. (To be honest, healer LBs in particular give me strong hopes for the prospects in individual LBs, or effects which could replace them entirely.)

[HyperiusUltima]

I feel that while making LB more like adrenaline will result in some problems, i feel it also frees up more options for everyone that isn't a melee dps. caster and ranged LB can be used for extra burst damage on adds without sacrificing potential damage to the boss. tank LB can be used to by the tanks as additional mitigation for raidwides or to block a tank buster, reducing the strain on healers who have trouble with CD planning. Healer LB could even potentially keep multi rez, at the cost of reduced range and imposing weakness onto all revived. Honestly i feel it would be better for the game in the long run.

I’m one to agree to disagree. Until they come up with a way to fix the current LB problems we have(Shields) there can’t really be a lot of thought put into this without it sounding really unbalanced like Ungarmax was.

Once that’s resolved around Tokyo Fanfest hopefully, we’ll be able to see what can be done.

[Phoenicia]

I think tank LB got to a decent spot now. Yes it still can be better, but defensive tools are, by nature, meant to be for preemptive use.

Aren't we using LB so we don't do fist mechanics in O11S? It is not a requirement where we wipe if we don't use it as that mechanic is definitely doable by staggering the firsts and lots of healing. Tank LB saves us the effort of handling the mechanic and the healing attached it to for a total net gain.

On Male and Female in O12S, we willfully ignore handing the same mechanic twice by "cheesing" them with tank LB. Again, not a requirement, just saves us the effort of doing the mechanic and the healing requirements attached to it.

I don't think LB is as binary as people make it sound here (where it is either required to survive 1 mechanic or wipe) because the only time this happens in this tier is O11S transition.

Can it still use improvement? Definitely, but is it as bad as we make it sound? I don't agree.

[Grimoire-M]

Allowing for Tank LB cheese strats I think is fine. O11/12S are good to me. I don't even mind the mandatory LB3 in O11S either. What we don't want is something like Healer LB3 in A4S. Where it's clearly not intended, yet makes the fight easier by a mile by completely circumventing several mechanics throughout the entire fight instead of an isolated moment that's more of a tradeoff. I am keeping in mind that had more to do with the fact that Gordias was overtuned and Pentacle lacked a proper fallback strat. While the overtuning made it 'mandatory', the latter is what allowed it to exist.

The part that's annoying is many of those same tank LB3 strats can also be beaten by dedicating resources to a SCH/WAR Critlo Deploy combo instead. Which just screams "Remove Critlo" to me more than "Wah Tank LB3 is bad".

Really though, isn't the problem that LB3 is usually the 'only' thing that we shoot for? Why not improve LB1/2's relative value instead? The way to do that I think would be to increase LB Generation based on how many times you LB (regardless of the level used) in a fight, then tune up the value of LB1/2 slightly on tanks/healers a bit so that they're more worthwhile compared to the current DPS LB1/2s in certain situations.

[aqskerorokero]

Job gauges are already like individual limit break....something you build up with different method...

[Mortex]

I mean there is a tank strategy in omega 12 s f/m. Were you stack with meteor and arrows and tank lb. and it’s more or less the common one. But yeah the possibility to use lb on non forced mechanics to get more dmg or make them more easy is a neat idea.

[Derio]

I think the job gauge will expand to where individual limit breaks will be pointless