Gunbreaker gameplay hope and expectations

[Lyth]

Are people still claiming that WAR is at some sort of a defensive disadvantage? In what content?

If we're talking prog/early content clears, WAR tends to be (perhaps surprisingly) the best tank defensively. That's because defensive stances (and IB) actually do get used in brand new fights before mechanics are known and fight guides/timestamps get mapped out. The safest bet in blind prog is probably to use a WAR with PLD support, unless you can be certain that you're going to be getting a lot of value out of DM). If we're talking farm content, there isn't really anything that can't be solved with Holmgang and Vengeance, so WAR is no slouch there either. If you feel forced to use IB/Defiance in farm, then the problem isn't the job.

"Utility" is a meaningless buzzword. If you're using it to refer to raidwide mitigation, WAR has the edge because of Shake it Off. But it's not just the defensive value of Shake and Veil that make them powerful. It's the large amounts of LB that they can generate from shielding critical raidwide damage, which in turn shaves down fight-time when you plan for their usage well.

If you're using "utility" to refer to Cover, then yes, PLD can do some interesting things every so often with it, either in how it interacts with boss abilities (the old Earthshaker trick) or by letting someone else do a mechanic for you and taking the damage on their behalf (like the enmity resets in O4S part 2). But these are just alternate solutions that provide PLD with a bit of extra convenience. You can still work around not having it.

It's not utility that you want. "Utility" was a pretence. The reason why WAR mains brought up "utility" pre-4.2 was because they wanted to be uncontested at dps. "If we lack 'utility' (vague term) then you must give us dps to compensate," they insisted. They got both, even though they didn't really care all that much about the former.

The problem to date is that we've placed tanks on this spectrum. PLD is the "defensive tank". WAR is the "offensive tank". DRK sits somewhere in-between. Every tank needs to be able to clear content, so there's never really a situation in which a tank is at a true "defensive" disadvantage. You're not being forced into tank stance on WAR in farm content (if you are, perhaps you need to re-evaluate what you're doing). But if another tank starts to shine offensively, there are riots.

I think this is where Gunbreaker needs to come in. Rather than having this spectrum, you have four separate tanks, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. No tank dominates offensively or defensively. We break down these privileged positions like "best offensive tank" for good, and replace them with actual niches.

I'm not really sure what the best niche for Gunbreaker would be, but after watching the trailer, I want them to be extremely mobile, and to see fights that let them take advantage of that.

[shao32]

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well i don't need to add anything of what phoenicia says excep when you use defiance you double weave equilibrium and then you have full insta benefic of you tank stance without the help of anyone, and you are wrong about Grit, yes is oGCD deactivate the skill but you have to wait the whole GCD to deactivate it with will oviously clip no matter what you do with the next action.

even without inner beast WAR have a complete set that can be mixed in many forms to get similar leves of mitigation that the other 2, with rampart, vengeance, thrill of battle, raw intuition and holmgang equals DRK set and surpass PLD one, if 5 skills are more that 4 then in what world WAR have less CDs that PLD?

[LeonTrifang]

I want it to have a move like “Heal Bullet” or “Soothing Rain” I only play classes I can heal others with lol limiting I know, but I love healing others.

[Lubu_Mykono]

Hope its like rune fencer in FFXI, if the bullets are like runes then you are gonna have to use bullets to either boost dps or defence on the fly.
Offensive off-tank plz to go together with 6x FEL KLEAV

[Burningskull]

I had an idea pop into my head today. Since Gunbreaker uses a "trigger" mechanic to expend ammo and use actions, what if Gunbreakers Tank stance allows you to do defensive abilities such as Rampart and Sentinal (Using those names as examples.), but when you are in Neutral Stance / DPS Stance your defensive abilities become damage abilities?

[shao32]

I had an idea pop into my head today. Since Gunbreaker uses a "trigger" mechanic to expend ammo and use actions, what if Gunbreakers Tank stance allows you to do defensive abilities such as Rampart and Sentinal (Using those names as examples.), but when you are in Neutral Stance / DPS Stance your defensive abilities become damage abilities?

well that can work if they remove complety the damage penalitations of the tank stances or gunbreaker being the one that have none, still put GUN in a situation that want to use the minimun defensive skills atached to his anmo for the sake of doing more dps puting the job as a eternal OT, but i will see it work it more if GUN have defensive anmo and ofensive anmo and being indepent of each other and being able to be used again independ of each other any time they want as long they have that kind of anmo like 3 defensive anmo and 3 ofensive anmo.

edit: as i saw in the trailer they shoot to the air and create a barrier so who knows.

[Nedkel]

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So why there is so big disparity in stats between the two?
Im not overcomplicating, im pointing out the reason why war has less DPS than DRK in the table.
Despite the 2 jobs sharing the exact same equipment expect weapon, those two has totally different values.
Why warrior has a tenacity but DRK doesnt, and why does warrior needed it and DRK not? Why DRK has DH? What melds did they used.
Those small things matters, and the table does not represent the best values of each job, because of the stat differences between each. And no, its not like comparing the MNK to the NIN, because DRK and WAR share the exact same equipment and the bis stats are the same, Crit first followed by DET, SKS is not a preferable stat due to the low impact it has on the DPS and how big role it could play on DRK with increasing the skill ceiling with double weaving being more difficult the lower GCD DRK has, Warrior doesnt need sks either, even with IR the window is wide enough to dish out 5 FC in it even with 700-1k of stat. DH is out of date, tenacity is useless but it somehow is in the war eq.

My question is, how the test looked like? Did they made several runs? Was it being made by two different people? At what point and time did they stopped dpsing the dummy, did they recored the DPS after or during DPSing, how long does the single run lasted? What latency both of them had?
Those things are really important, because some of them could bias the results completely and lower the total dps by several %, especially if warrior was using onslaught as a dps tool, since it could drop dps by several hundreds.

I dont think those numbers represent a real picture at all, it doesnt show the best damage value, there are so many variables in those tests done that i would not call them reliable, you should not really base your statements on those numbers.

[Izsha]

You are not understanding. War and drk bis are NOT the same. Direct hit is actually terrible on warrior. If you have a skill that makes you direct hit 100% of the time even if you have 0 direct hit, why would you equip direct hit? You dont. That's war. They also have different skill speed requirements to get an extra hit in under their different length buffs. So already you have a change in bis. Drk will meld direct hit and they will both aim for different levels of skill speed. This changes their entire gear set to fit those requirements.

Of all the things to fight over for tanks, the damage formulas is one of the few fact based things that doesnt have any space for debate. We know exactly how to calculate damage, rotations, and buffs on paper, then go to the field and test them and have found them true. The BIS fir tanks is not the same because the tanks benefit from different stats and on top of all that have different stat weapons. Combine all that and they look very different.

If you really want to know all the nitty gritty details because you dont believe, then go read al the theoryjerks work on reddit and the balance discord. They explain in painstaking detail how they developed the formulas. How they tested them. You can see the formulas used in the excel sheets (instead of a screenshot) and download them yourself. It's all there. Go research if you dont believe it.

[Chrono_Rising]

First: Damage and DPS:

I've been out of this conversation for awhile and I'm going to be catching up on multiple pages I'm sure, but I would at least like to point out here that the current tier of War damage is a bit off because of its 405 Weapon substats. Much like Dark Knight in the final tier of Alexander, the true warrior BiS won't change until a new 405 weapon emerges. Yes, substats are a way of "balancing" but gear dependence doesn't paint the entire picture, and does not represent this expansion as a whole.

The same calculator can be used to calculate raw potency generated. But the class being held back by its only available 405 weapon doesn't really capture what people are discussing on this subject.

[Phoenicia]

Yes, substats are a way of "balancing" but gear dependence doesn't paint the entire picture, and does not represent this expansion as a whole.

Well, it depends really. WAR's 405 Axe isn't the best axe it could've been because it's not Crit & Det (WAR's best stats). But that doesn't mean WAR's BiS is screwed. WAR has only 1 bad stat: Direct Hit. And it isn't available in Fending gear. WAR needs a minimum SkS in its final BiS. As such, you can lower the SkS from other pieces and get it from its weapon. Det is WAR's second best stat still. So the only "bad" thing about WAR's axe is the fact it's not a Crit axe.

On the other hand, DRK and PLD DO have bad stats that come naturally in fending gear: namely Tenacity and SkS (PLD gets hurt bad by SkS). And DRK's 375 and 345 weapons were TERRIBLE in Sigmascape (det&SkS) and Deltascape (det&ten). Neither of those 2 weapons had NEITHER of DRK's 2 best stats. If anything, DRK's bad weapons might be part of the reason why people think it's been bad.

Snip.

Mate, slow down and read CAREFULLY what I typed. I have been formatting my walls of text, they take effort and if you're gonna ignore all of it I won't bother typing again.

It is simple: The table shows you the BEST gear available to each job.

1- Crit: Everyone's best stat. All these sets are trying to get the max of it while keeping other conditions in mind. So jobs may not necessarily go max Crit.
2- SkS: Certain jobs want a certain GCD time to meet some requirements (Ping, 5 FCs in IR, 1 more GCD in BW, etc), so they build only enough SpS until they reach it without melding for it.
3- DH: This stat is BAD for WAR. IR cuts its weight by 40%. This stat is VERY CLOSE to Crit on DRK and PLD.
4- Det: This is WAR's second best stat. WAR will go for Crit/det pieces when it can and even meld for it.
5- Ten: Again, Ten is BETTER on WAR than DH. WAR will meld Tenacity when it can't meld Crit or DH. In the table linked earlier, some melds were made to pass a threshold and gain an added 1% DPS.

Yes, you are overthinking all these stats anyway. The deal here is VERY simple: Best gear = Max DPS value.

This means for Job A it may have less X stat in favor of Y stat for compared to Job B. (Again, BLM wears LOTS of SpS, RDM and SMN opt for 0 SpS). Putting WAR in DRK's gear means it WILL lose damage compared to the BiS in the table. Even then, that would prove my point MUCH further.

The collection of some of the very best players on The Balance Discord used stat tables to form a few different sets of gear.

Then used those sets to get a few "best options" based on GCD values (i.e. fast, standard) for people with different pings to choose from, also the people's ability to clear o12s and/or pentameld crafted accessories.

Those people formed meta-comp groups to receive the relevant buffs (slashing resist down, trick attack, litany, voice, embolden, chain stategim and balance) and DIRECTLY TESTED IT ON A TEST DUMMY with 3rd party programs to parse EXACT values of DPS.

Those are NOT just numbers plugged onto sheets.

The simple result is: The MAXIMUM DPS option available to WAR, is 2.7% lower than the MAXIMUM DPS option available to DRK or PLD.

If you want to still complain about stats in gear, go to SE.

Also I don't know who said FFLogs says it's different, I will quote myself:

What a bout FFLogs percentiles? They are a bad guideline. Why you ask? Here is why:

1- Number of parses matter a LOT. WAR is vastly over-represented whereas DRK is under-represented. WAR+ either tank much more popular than PLD+DRK comps. And PLD is much more popular than DRK for reasons I will get to at the end. This affects percentiles heavily. Less players over all means less opportunities to get the highest and lowest ends on either and as such move the median up or down, which dictates what makes an average parse, average.

2- Padding exists. A lot of us don't like it, but it does. Add in the fact there are more WARs than either tank, this greatly inflates the top percentiles. You could parse 5200 in a fight as PLD and score an orange, then do the same on WAR and find you're not even grazing the 90s. Even what people consider "padding" is different. For me it is when single target balance and other buffs are directly fed to someone as opposed to just having general AoE balances and raid buffs.

Make of it what you will.

If people think that WAR is SO far ahead of the other tanks with no problems of its own, go play WAR yourself and SHOW us how OP it is. Show us how you can EASILY get a 95th percentile in EVERY fight in Alphascape without straining your healers or being padded to shits. Otherwise, Stop complaining on the forums and hijacking threads that are NOT EVEN ABOUT WAR based on baseless crap. It is really annoying.

Cheers