Future of Limit Break

[Lunalepsy]

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?

LBs need a major overhaul.

[Saraide]

I am not sure why people in this thread compare LB3 damage to their burst phase damage. You obviously wouldnt hit LB during your burst phase, you use it outside of one. Healer and Tank LBs are pretty useful in the right circumstances. The second flare&line stack on P2s is a great spot to tank LB to give more safety. Using it on the AoEs leading up to p4s phase 1 enrage is also some nice value and safety. DPS LB would be more damage but if accidents happen and people die to those aoes you are suddenly short on damage right before enrage. Healer LB is great on p3s life's agonies if you dont have an ast with you.

[NegativeS]

If any part of this conversation involves any changes to Astral Stasis' big shiny star ball, know I am wholeheartedly against it.

[Aurikai]

I'd rather they give everyone their own LB gauge and give you a buff on use (split from damage normal LB would do), like 25% extra damage for 10s, maybe have a power-up animation. As stated by OP current iteration is pointless for majority of classes outside of melee, considering a vast majority of raids/alliance raids are a single boss.

Alternatively they could just give 3 variations, one for single target, multi targets, AoE. Same for healers, maybe a shield buff, large HoT, mass rez. Having extra animations would be cool to see.

[TheMightyMollusk]

You leave Vermilion Scourge alone. I need some way to tell people I'm tired of scraping them off the floor, and if their eyes must suffer for it, all the better.

[Azuri]

LB is a very poor system. At least for DPS ones, I've never found it particularly fun pressing a button and picking my nose for 10 seconds while an animation I've seen a thousand times plays for over9000 damage. There is nothing engaging or interactive about this. If anything, it feels bad to have your rotation all wonky because of that atrocious animation lock. When LB damage does matter, I will press this button reluctantly and just feel bad about it. When it doesn't, I simply don't bother most of the time. Amusingly, out of all three DPS LBs I find ranged LB the most interesting one since it at least provides some consideration if you want to hit multiple targets with awkward positioning. And that's still pretty shallow.

LB generation is a highly obfuscated system with exceptions to exceptions and very shallow interactivity especially for the DPS player themselves. And the few ways of actively generating LB involve doing things that are highly counterintuitive - i.e. intentionally eating mechanics or removing and re-equiping your gear before the pull.

Tank LB feels like a pointless gimmick most of the time with SE remembering a couple of times per expansion to put in a forced tank LB mechanic like they do with Esuna or Interrupts. Such fun. And of course the one and only healer LB. The universal - "we get to not learn one mechanic per encounter" - tool. The one LB that actually does something mildly different and unique (except for LB1 and LB2 versions, lol). But is it really enough to carry the entire system and justify not replacing it with a single use duty action with the same effect? I'm honestly not sure.

[Raikai]

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?

I concur... Limit Breaks, to me only feel interesting to use as a healer, because it's a big adrenaline rush when you save a near failed run with the mass rez. The tank one is even more obscure, as the uses are really really niche.

The dps version, looks amazing but it's kind of just there? Most of the time is very inflexible as in to use just near the end of the fight... It saves what, 40 seconds of the fight? Plus more often than not puts the dpser at risk of dying of something.

I don't really hate the system, but in practice it feels uninspired for what the Limit Break is conceived in the Final Fantasy franchise. That impact only shows in the healer LB3.

I don't really know how to revamp it without disrupting or creating a balancing nightmare for the developers, but maybe it would be cool if the dps LB3 was actually finishing move if used against a boss in critical state HP (still being usable normally in other situations). Perhaps making the cast time a little longer to add in the adrenaline.

[Cabalabob]

I always thought it would be a more fun and co-operative system if every job got a personal LB and by using them in a specific order you could create a specific aftermath effect. Similar to systems like ffxi’s skillchains, 1.0’s battle regimen, or single player games like ff tactics combo system or ff12’s mist system.

For example every player could get a single LB bar that lets them use a job specific attack that’s just a powerful attack in its own right (not as powerful as a current LB but still worth using). Every person that uses one adds an aftermath stack and changes their LB button to “trigger aftermath”.

Aftermaths would basically be the current LBs and the more aftermath stacks you build the more powerful the resulting effect.

[Rufalus]

Never liked LB being a shared party resource. It's flawed so I assume at least some of the dev team are also not happy with it but keeping this way to avoid rebalancing other parts of the game.

[technole]

Healer LB is required in UwU for the doom mechanic. Some used healer LB for the heal mechanic in P3S

Tank LB is required in UCoB, and used quite a bit in savage, many used it for the last line AoE in P2S

All usable aside from DPS this tier, and they have done a good job at allowing raids to see more of the fight and even clear that don't involve melee. So no they really don't need to change anything, just keep being more creative that it's not only for damage