Quote Originally Posted by Gemina View Post
How is that a bizarre metric? We're talking a single button press with LB in comparison to the myriad of presses that goes into an opener/burst phase, or enough skills to equal that damage. In terms of comparisons, I was thinking more along the lines of LB2; however, I have at least a handful of encounters where LB1 literally made the difference between a phase transition or a wipe. I can't think of any situation where an LB does not provide a beneficial boost to the player and party's DPS.

In the case of SAM, what you're neglecting to mention is that burst damage is not on demand. The SAM has to build up the resource to use Setsugekka, and Tsubame is on a 120s cooldown. LB is also a resource that has to be built up, but the situation we are dealing with here is an already full LB gauge. I also should mention on my SAM, my burst phase ends with my potion, so the entire rotation lasts around 30 seconds. I would need to do some math, but I believe I would need a third hard hitting Setsugekka to get close to or surpass the damage from Blade Dance during that window, but perhaps someone who has actually done the comparisons will come forward.
Well the issue with LB2 is that outside of 8 man content you only get it for the last 2% of the final boss of the dungeon, which by that point might as well not use it since the difference in kill speed is abysmal, and LB1 is only really worth being used by ranged and caster jobs on pulls, except that normally tanks aren't in any danger of getting killed by the mobs they pulled so the extra damage isn't really needed.