Future of Limit Break

[Malthir]

Something that has irked me for years is how limit break feels very meh.

It's basically just used by melee dps 90+% of the time, occasionally it's for healers to save everyone from a wipe and once or twice an expansion they have the obligatory boss the tanks need to lb3 on your the party wipes.

Personally I would love to see a system similar to LOTRO's fellowship maneuver. If you've never played that game it's a system that when triggered the whole party the option of a damage attack, DoT attack, Heal or mana back move. Depending on what each person presses a different big animation attack occurs with different effects.

I'm not suggestion exactly like that, just think that limit break system feels abit boring for most players, wanted to see if anyone else feels the same and what you all think should could be done that would be more enjoyable and involve the whole party or even have independent limit breaks for each character?

[MilkieTea]

Independent Limit Breaks would have to be nerfed to high hell. Imagine every DPS getting the same damage that our current limit break does. Could take an EX from 15% to 1% in no time.

There are uses for Tank LBs, especially in higher end prog where you want to see mechanics. And Ranged LBs are really fun to use in clutch situations- IE a party forgot to use LB, we’re at 1% and about to hit enrage, and a Chad RDM blinds everyone and kills our boss.

[Malthir]

Independent Limit Breaks would have to be nerfed to high hell. Imagine every DPS getting the same damage that our current limit break does.

O yeah I was never suggesting keep the damage to what it currently does, just think giving everyone some form of actual usable limit break would be nice or some form of limit break in which all party members are included, change up the limit break animation based on party comp, just something to make everyone feel involved. Or even potentially weaken the limit break but cause it to fill faster, have moves that Dps can use that put the boss in a state that a tank move combos with causing the bar to fill faster etc, in general if it's meant as a party bar make the party feel like they are all doing something instead of generic build over damage and melee nuke stuff.

[Floortank]

O yeah I was never suggesting keep the damage to what it currently does, just think giving everyone some form of actual usable limit break would be nice or some form of limit break in which all party members are included, change up the limit break animation based on party comp, just something to make everyone feel involved. Or even potentially weaken the limit break but cause it to fill faster, have moves that Dps can use that put the boss in a state that a tank move combos with causing the bar to fill faster etc, in general if it's meant as a party bar make the party feel like they are all doing something instead of generic build over damage and melee nuke stuff.

This would be tantamount to just giving everyone another ability button they're forced to add to their rotation, roughly eight times weaker than a normal LB3. Not only is it as boring as what we have now, but it's also more annoying.

How about we get rid of Limit Break and give tanks the power to defend against Alex 12 and Seat of Sacrifice and Spoilerboss mechanics without it?

Limit Break is just a slavish attempt to make the game feel more FF without actually providing the impact of a real Limit Break.

[Jonnycbad]

This would be tantamount to just giving everyone another ability button they're forced to add to their rotation, roughly eight times weaker than a normal LB3. Not only is it as boring as what we have now, but it's also more annoying.

How about we get rid of Limit Break and give tanks the power to defend against Alex 12 and Seat of Sacrifice and Spoilerboss mechanics without it?

Limit Break is just a slavish attempt to make the game feel more FF without actually providing the impact of a real Limit Break.

Thanks for being the only one who gets it. It would literally just be a cool down. In that regard, we have DPS/Tank/Healer LBs with capstone skills like Seraph/Stardiver/Hallowed Ground, etc.

[MagiusNecros]

Current endgame content only does like 2% on bosses in the raids. I can do more damage on Reaper by just attacking the boss with my regular attacks. Most of the time I don't even use Limit Breaks anymore.

[LittleImp]

Current endgame content only does like 2% on bosses in the raids. I can do more damage on Reaper by just attacking the boss with my regular attacks. Most of the time I don't even use Limit Breaks anymore.

Trust me, that 800 or so total raid dps lb3 contributes can be vital in meeting checks week 1. Timing it outside of burst is important, so that the loss doesn't outweigh the gain of course.

That said, the strict nature of many of this games rotations tends to make using lb3 a huge chore, and you'll frequently see melee DPS arguing about who has to do it. You'll often see someone die or accidentally take a damage down, and then offer to lb3 knowing their run is already dead anyway.

[Sove92]

Current endgame content only does like 2% on bosses in the raids.

LBs don't get weaker and regular attacks don't get stronger as boss HP increases. 300k damage is still 300k damage.

[Gemina]

Current endgame content only does like 2% on bosses in the raids. I can do more damage on Reaper by just attacking the boss with my regular attacks. Most of the time I don't even use Limit Breaks anymore.

You understand that is a crazy amount of damage to do on a raid boss, correct? Even if you want to count every single GCD you could spend while locked in LBs animation, nothing you have can come close to that kind of damage in the same amount of time. Maybe during your burst phase you can get to LB1 kind of output; but once LB2 and LB3 come into question, it no longer is one.

Simply put, LB is a resource. And the odd thing about it is no one wants to break their rotation to execute it, despite the utterly MASSIVE boost to overall damage. Same thing happens with interject/head gaze, and stuns as well, and those are off global skills.

2% by itself sounds small, and it grows exponentially depending on what that 2% is a part of. Losing 2% of a dollar is nothing. Losing 2% of 1 million is going to sting a bit. An activity that has a 2% injury rate? MUCH higher than if it was 1%. These type of things don't need to be explained unless someone tries to skew the meaning of a number to fit their own ends.

tl;dr? Use the friggin LB resource.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Current endgame content only does like 2% on bosses in the raids. I can do more damage on Reaper by just attacking the boss with my regular attacks. Most of the time I don't even use Limit Breaks anymore.

Literally impossible.

A quick vid of a P4s clear on youtube shows LB doing about 300-330k damage, give or take.

Cross referencing multiple RPR vids, The total damage from an enshroud usage sits around 80k-150k depending on Crit/DH RNG. With RPR's accelerated GCD during enshroud, they can land 5 GCDs during LB3's 8.2s cast time, or basically a single shroud usage, so double shroud is irrelevant. (Not to mention the obvious point of why you'd even use LB3 during a burst window, you'd save it for after or use it before so you can maximize raid buff gains, so realistically you'd be comparing LB3 to your non-enshroud damage, but whatever, it's fun to put it into frame by showing RPR at its best can't compete with it.)

LB3 damage is so high there is literally nothing any melee can do that can compete with it during it's 8.2s window. It's always a dps gain to use it. The only questions when it comes to LB3 is 'Which melee loses the least from using it?/Am I the only melee in the group' & 'When should we use it?'/'Does using it during my burst allow for another melee LB3/Melee LB2 at the end of the fight, or do we get a single use of it and thus can plan for downtime in rotation?'.

Not using an melee LB3 when you're the only melee in the group (or if the other melee doesn't want to for some reason) is literally throwing away a faster clear time, or in the worst case, causing a wipe if the group's dps is a bit under the enrage requirement. Even on RPR, you're not doing anywhere close to LB3's damage in that same 8.2s timeframe.

Edit: I thought this sounded familiar, I even did a whole fun experiment back in SHB when someone else thought melee LB3 was a dps loss for some jobs by giving godhax to SAM to showcase how ridiculous their logic was:

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#