Are DPS LB3 becoming useless in certain large raids?

[Gemina]

Let's run some numbers, shall we?

Checking a quick DRG POV vid of a full i530 party doing E12s pre-echo, LB3 does about 857k across 8.2s including castbar + animation lock. That's roughly 4 GCDs lost.

For a fun comparison, let's theoretically break the limits and give a SAM a supernatural godmode where their sens never run out during those 4 GCDs so they can chain Midare back to back every GCD, let's even say their Tsubame CD is up so they can throw it in on the first midare as well for fun, and say every Midare is Kaiten'd. Checking another vid of an i530 SAM who had dance partner, their Midare un-crticial'd, un-dh'd, does about 72k-80k (we'll use 80k to give as much advantage to the SAM as possible). Their Critical-DH ones do about 150k.

Assuming nothing crits-DH's, that SAM, given godhax Sen powers, can only do about (80,000 * 5) = 400,000 damage, less than half of LB3's damage. But let's just crank up the godhax further and say they get Inner Release, so now everything is doing 150k.
Even giving them insane godhax, they're still only doing (150k * 5) = 750k damage. They're still doing less damage than melee LB3 in the same timeframe.

Melee LB3 is fine. It does literally 4-6x damage than you could possibly do during that timeframe depending on your job, melee LB3 is always a net dps gain.

Even checking LB2 in a vid of Matoyas relicit, it still does roughly 420k with a lockout of 6.86s, or a bit over 3 GCDs lost. Our godhax'd Samurai just barely falls short if nothing CRTs or DHs. For an actual realistic rotation, Melee LB2 is still doing far more damage than you can personally output in the same timeframe, it isn't even a contest. Melee LB1 is the only one where its use is sketchy. Melee LB2 & LB3's only actual discussion is whether firing it during raid buffs would net you another use of an LB2/3 by the end of the fight or not and if you have multiple melee dps in your group, which of you is the lowest dps and thus the LB user.

Total lockout times on LB's sourced from this lovely document by the allagan studies group: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...Z7-WubKI/edit#

LB3 is a no brainer, but I think you're right about Blade Dance as well. I think only a melee burst phase will do more in the same amount of LB lock time, but not entirely positive. I have waived off a few wipes with LB2, but again, my burst phase wasn't up. Even then, I am going to feel much safer going with Blade Dance if the group needs high deeps quickly unless I am mid burst, in which case I am going to finish it out for sure.