Gunbreaker: thoughts and suggestions

[ReiMakoto]

Personally im very happy with gunbreaker, it does everything it needs to do, and trades off power on camouflage for slightly higher dps. Ive seen a few people suggest bow shock and sonic break share a cd and im like, why? Sonic Break is great on the gcd as you can pop it and weave blasting zone and bow shock before going into the gnashing combo where you'll be weaving the combo/ rough divide.

[MarvelousInRed]

I personally have no issue with Superbolide. The Benediction-Superbolide problem happened exactly once to me, because I make it a point to alert my healers at the start to save their cooldowns because I'll pop Superbolide before I want them to use their cooldowns. I find a lot of issues with this game is because people don't tend to communicate properly during dungeons/fights. I would welcome a change that cuts HP to half instead of 1, but that isn't too necessary IMO.

The bigger issue is that the Gunbreaker's mitigation is a little lackluster compared to the other tanks. It has no "big mitigation" button NOR a "big heal" button. WAR, DRK, and PLD get Equilibrium, Abyssal Drain, Clemency, but Gunbreaker gets Aurora? Superbolide would be much easier to deal with as a tank if I had an easy heal button to mitigate what is, essentially, a self tank buster. Also, WAr, DRK, PLD get Shake It Off, Blackest Night, and Passage of Arms. Gunbreaker has no equivalent. Again, why? Considering that even normal 4-man dungeons routinely have tankbuster mechanics, this just seems like it hamstringers my mitigation potential more than other tanks.

My other issues are smaller:

Bloodfest: I feel the CD on this should be 60 seconds. Having it be 90 seconds makes what is, essentially, a one minute rotation into a THREE minute rotation. It just doesn't seem to line up well with the rest of your kit.

Camouflage: It feels really underwhelming. Either boost the parry rate to 100% or boost the damage mitigation to 20%. Some people will compare this to Shelltron, but there's one important difference: block is far and away better than Parry in all instances, and Paladins have exclusive access to it.

[WhyAmIHere]

... Also, WAr, DRK, PLD get Shake It Off, Blackest Night, and Passage of Arms. Gunbreaker has no equivalent. Again, why? Considering that even normal 4-man dungeons routinely have tankbuster mechanics, this just seems like it hamstringers my mitigation potential more than other tanks.

While weaker than those skills... aint that what Heart of Stone operates as?

[Jandor]

Also, WAr, DRK, PLD get Shake It Off, Blackest Night, and Passage of Arms. Gunbreaker has no equivalent. Again, why? Considering that even normal 4-man dungeons routinely have tankbuster mechanics, this just seems like it hamstringers my mitigation potential more than other tanks.

While weaker than those skills... aint that what Heart of Stone operates as?

Yeah, roughly.

Heart of Stone is your equivalent to the Blackest Night.

Heart of Light is your equivalent to Shake it off and Passage of Arms.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Brutal Shell: This buff could use some tweaking. My suggestion would be to make the cure and shield effect based on damage dealt, rather than a low (and weak) static potency. Given its combo potency in the rotation, I can’t foresee this ability dealing overpowered levels of damage at higher gearing. As it is, the effect is less-than-lackluster.

Brutal Shell's problem is lack of Tenacity in builds. More Tenacity and you will see it producing stronger shields that take longer to break as Tenacity increases damage done, reduces damage taken and increases amount healed and shielded. Brutal Shell is the way it is currently in order to reduce the benefits of Crit, Det and DHit.

[Awful]

The only thing I want for GNB is Sonic Break to be an OGCD instead of a GCD other than that the class is pretty amazing.

[Kolsykol]

I hate Superbolide...
I can understand that people don't trust each other 110% in dungeons when it's random people, but I run into GNB's quite a bit who pop it the moment after I've healed them up to full from low hp >_<.............
They're at like 30%, and I heal them up to 100% and then they're immediately down to 1% again out of nowhere and it freaks me out and also makes me waste mana ( in worst case scenario you might not even have anymore mana.. ).

Some tanks are extremely twitchy and think that just because you're bellow 80% hp or something like that you're in danger and that the healer is afk:ing... Giving those people Superbolide was a bad idea imo.

[Bright-Flower]

I wish they had a cartridge spender for aoe sooner.


I'm also in the 'superbolide is bad' camp. Not only can the timing potentially waste healer cooldowns like bennediction, as it's optimal to use it when at low hp which is also when a healer might go 'oh crap' and start healing you intensely, but sacrificing hp like that is just bad tank design. It's why they didn't give drk 'trade hp to deal damage' in this incarnation of the job despite it being a staple of the job.

I get that they don't just want to give them Hallowed Ground and want to have the tanks have different takes on their invuln skills. But they really ought to come up with something better. This also means that not only can it potentially be wasted with poor timing like any cooldown in the game, but is at a net loss of hp saved if you wouldn't have died without using it or you don't take your full HP worth of damage in the time.

It just feels like backwards design for a tank cooldown. Maybe if there was something else to it like, 'you heal back all the damage you take during the invuln period' when it expires so that you get healed back if used to tank massive damage, or put up a shield when the timer was up based on damage taken. But right now it feels like they couldn't think of a good creative way to make it stand out from hg/hom/living dead and just slapped this on there.

[Chiami]

I wish they had a cartridge spender for aoe sooner.


I'm also in the 'superbolide is bad' camp. Not only can the timing potentially waste healer cooldowns like bennediction, as it's optimal to use it when at low hp which is also when a healer might go 'oh crap' and start healing you intensely, but sacrificing hp like that is just bad tank design. It's why they didn't give drk 'trade hp to deal damage' in this incarnation of the job despite it being a staple of the job.

I get that they don't just want to give them Hallowed Ground and want to have the tanks have different takes on their invuln skills. But they really ought to come up with something better. This also means that not only can it potentially be wasted with poor timing like any cooldown in the game, but is at a net loss of hp saved if you wouldn't have died without using it or you don't take your full HP worth of damage in the time.

It just feels like backwards design for a tank cooldown. Maybe if there was something else to it like, 'you heal back all the damage you take during the invuln period' when it expires so that you get healed back if used to tank massive damage, or put up a shield when the timer was up based on damage taken. But right now it feels like they couldn't think of a good creative way to make it stand out from hg/hom/living dead and just slapped this on there.

Speaking as a healer here it is imo EVEN worse than already mentioned. I had tanks pop it at nearly full health with a lovely comment like "lol lets wake up the healer". Superbolide, the troll ability of GBN. GREAT....

I can see how it is MEANT to be used (which is imo nonetheless sub-par compared to the other invulns), but I still have to see half as many GBNs in DF use it correctly over the amount of facepalm-worthy or downright trollish uses I've encountered.

So please dear devs, for the love of all the Twelve and frustrated healers... change Superbolide into something that hasn't so much potential for BAD use and downright, trollish ABUSE. Great idea on paper, horrible idea with the realities of PUGs, DF and troll tanks.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Brutal Shell could be a lot better, yes.


Superbolide could have duration increased to 10 seconds.


Danger/Blasting Zone is fine although it could be a line AoE.


Camouflage should be 25% damage reduction with no parry chance increase, but that's just me...


Sonic Break is fine as well since you use Bow Shock after and Blasting zone after Bow Shock.


Tenacity stat is one of those stats that REALLY NEEDS TO BE BUFFED...


I do see Bloodfest getting buffed to where it resets Gnashing Fang recast but that's like next expansion expectation.