Future of Limit Break

[Caurcas]

Really they should shift them to being personal and basically change them to act as supers/DTs for an individual to use as they see fit to optimize.

[Mika_Zahard]

It's basically just used by melee dps 90+% of the time,

Because melee LB (specially 3) does the most damage of all of them. I really suggest you to look at the wiki to see why that happens.

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki...sy_XIV)#Braver

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

...occasionally it's for healers to save everyone from a wipe and once or twice an expansion...

Well you said so yourself, healer LB3 has very specific purposes: Save a run/prevent raises from getting the 25 or 50% stat debuffs, and full heal the party.

...and once or twice an expansion they have the obligatory boss the tanks need to lb3 on your the party wipes.

And this one is a design choice from Devs.
If you have a problem with those, you should suggest something .. better for Devs to take into account.

You suggested DoTs, but people dont like dots, specially keeping them up (check old SMN complains).

[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#

[Mika_Zahard]

As the poster above, melee normally will use their lb on raids when its "safe" and "required".

I play melee a lot as of late, i normally play blinding mage (rdm), and before we reach LB3 bar i always pay attention to the state of the battle, if i see we're doing well and there's no risk of a wipe or something going bad quite soon, i'll use LB on cd to try to stretch for a LB1 later in the same fight. IF i see the healers are struggling or people are standing too much in bad, i will delay LB3 application till i can see the fight has gone long enough to safely use it.

You say you see a lot of melee doing it .. its very common for melee to do so in certain dungeon bosses (Specially final bosses) and in other AR bosses, but not all cases.

There's certain fights where one doesnt normally use LB3 sans healer, to leave the fully lb2 for the trash that will come next in AR. Best examples i can come with are the iron guard bots on Ridorana Lighthouse, the large bots after 1st boss in PvP murder bunker, and some may save LB2 for 2P clones after Hanz/Gret or after Red Girl in Tower.

[SenorPatty]

I feel like limit break should actually live up to its name: a pnce per combat, all stat enhancer that is also a double edged blade. It can be something as simple as tripling next spell/ability/weapon dmg by 300% but unable to use skill for 5mins. Or like old school Berserk except in this case, you boost all your stats by 150% then get pacified for a couple seconds

[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.