GNB QoL and Balance Suggestions:

[Mithron]

I'd really like to have Draw and Junction do a debuff again.

If used on tanks, cause them to take 10% more damage.
If used on healers, cause them to heal others for 10% less.
If used on DPS, cause their damage dealt to be decreased by 10%.

[Tobias_Azuryon]

GNB has the LB, but as you have pointed out there may be time where u can't even get to the stun.

But I think giving GNB some CC would be welcome.

I propose removing CD on D&J but remove Powder Barrel. Make Burst Strike a separate skill that can stun for 1 sec instead of having it tied to a combo. Make D&J able to target allies.

The Stun being on the CAST of the LB but not lasting for longer than maybe two hits of the vuln would at least provide an opening window that lets you reliably cc and do damage without being stupidly busted, and provide more team utility. As of right now it can just be guarded/sprinted/teleported/ran from, and you have to land that last hit

I think powder barrel feels like trash to use as well. Junction back into my melee combo to then go to continuation just doesn't "Vibe" with me for some reason. I feel like burst strike should be either a long CD charge use or something that doesn't involve being able to live long enough to land 4 hits to use hypervelocity which is a key part of the Draw/Junction Kit. (or maybe add effects to burst strike too? I dunno)

Feels like doing twice the button presses to do a fraction of the things other classes can do by default as opposed to NIN that feels like it takes planning your approach or planning out the offense with your moves based on the scenario. I know GNB isn't a NIN but NIN has doton if you need to defend a point or group up guys with fireball, Raiton stun for 1v1 with bunshin/mug/etc, and can attack at range to keep pressure while it recovers its burst, etc

I feel GNB should be designed similarly, without the range in mind since they're supposed to be defending the point/their team.

I'd really like to have Draw and Junction do a debuff again.

If used on tanks, cause them to take 10% more damage.
If used on healers, cause them to heal others for 10% less.
If used on DPS, cause their damage dealt to be decreased by 10%.

Or even debuff if target, but buff if friendly. ACTUALLY give them the utility they pretend to have by being able to buff a cotank or buff a healer or buff a dps while still granting junction. It'd be interesting to see what kind of shenanigans and decisions could come from that.

[Ixon]

It's kind of funny how a move like Double Down did not get the same treatment as RDM Resolution: 20s, 8k damage, Frontal AoE that either Silences or Binds based off your White or Black Stance. Or how WHM gets a 15sec, 12k nuke.

[Ixon]

It's also kind of funny that one of the *best* stances is the DPS stance, which on paper is arguably the worse. You don't have enough of an affect on the battlefield in Tank or Healer to justify those stances a lot of the time, but the 20k(22k with No Mercy buff), snapshot damage is enough to either kill an unsuspecting player, or at least make them panic burn Recoup or Guard. Though even with this, you are still a worse DPS, and a weaker DPS, with no defensive options.

[Tobias_Azuryon]

Though even with this, you are still a worse DPS, and a weaker DPS, with no defensive options.

Yeah i started comparing SAM to GNB kit out of curiousity and was like "Oh so they have a better nebula and more sustain and cc without a gimmicky junction system dependent on enemy team makeup....neat."

[Ixon]

Yeah i started comparing SAM to GNB kit out of curiousity and was like "Oh so they have a better nebula and more sustain and cc without a gimmicky junction system dependent on enemy team makeup....neat."

One of the saving graces is GNB gets it's LB FAST. Like, if someone is able to do a complete testing, it's definitely one of the fastest to generate for sure. I very often get mine before anyone else, and it can help turn the tide in the beginning because the 3sec stun plus vuln up is a killer if purify and guard are down.

[Metallus]

I find GNB to have decent sustained, steady dmg in dps junction (although squishy), with an average of 10k dmg per gcd, but not much in terms of burst dmg, so the role I find myself playing mainly is to put pressure on targets or annoy clustered groups of enemies, but 3 main things render this job very annoying:

1) The LB is a channeled walk that can be stopped with CC or just kited away; considering that terminal trigger still goes off at the end even if you get CC'd (and so CC is really just stopping your 3k swings), I don't see why it shouldn't just make you immune to CC during the channel in the first place. It's called relentless rush, yet you're going slow like a snail and can easily get stopped. The LB doesn't even deal that much dmg compared to others, so I don't see any reason to further handicap it.

Suggestion: either make GNB fully immune to CCs during LB, or grant increased speed during the channel to better chase targets


2) The job lacks any sort of CC outside of LB which is clunky and can be stopped or kited, making the job of keeping pressure on targets or chasing people very hard, as they can easily stunlock you or just run out of range

Suggestion: make rough divide add a 50% heavy on the target for 3s. This would greatly help in keeping on top of a target or securing a kill


3) Keen edge combo is useless because GF comes off CD while you're in the middle of KE combo, but if you do GF combo in between, then KE combo resets and you never get to solid barrel or burst strike. This results in you only ever getting Keen edge or Brutal Shell off before having to go back to GF combo, and that's bad design.

Suggestion: either increase the time window during which your combo does not reset (in pve we can sit in a combo for 30s without it resetting, in pvp it's more like 7s), or remove keen edge and brutal shell, and just turn that button into Solid Barrel -> Burst strike, which will fill the 2 gcds during which GF is on CD, and won't end up being reset.

In addition to these QoL changes, some other buffs that would considerably increase GNB's value in a team would be to either put more dmg into our single target abilities (our highest hitting skill hits for 12k, whereas pretty much everyone else has access to skills hitting for 16k), or relegate GNB to the niche of burst aoe dmg (in which case, making BZ a line aoe would combo very well with LB -> DD -> BZ to punish clustered groups of enemies).

[Ixon]

Bumping for the small chance SE puts in a PVP balance update this Tuesday with Ultimate. GNB is still the worst tank, perhaps even the worst job. At least PLD has shown some promise in light party matches where GNB still has no place, solo or team.

[Cpt_Jack_Irons]

After playing a decent amount of PvP as GNB i have to say that Draw and Junction feels clunky as hell to use

Second Combo feels kinda useless due to lackluster damage

Having no ranged attack is annoying as everyone will just eventually just run away from you with no means to stop them

[Tobias_Azuryon]

GNB is still the worst tank, perhaps even the worst job.

I agree. They're garbage at everything. Despite feeling like the most busy/annoying class to balance things for, with rough divide having no mercy, the cd on Junction/junction cast being offput and weird, and the gnashing fang combo just shoved in there while no mercy doesn't even last for its entirety it's just a class that is needlessly convuluted to pull off a fraction of what every other class in the game can do way better. It's bonkers how bad it is.

After playing a decent amount of PvP as GNB i have to say that Draw and Junction feels clunky as hell to use

Draw and Junction is terrible because not only is its timing just nonsense (the cast can be on a longer cooldown I GUESS, but the swap needs to be instant like current pvp kardia is) but it isn't potent enough to make a difference, especially with it being potency locked. Bloodwhetting is not only on a small 20s cooldown, but it converts the damage dealt into hp on top of a 20% hp shield, AND a buff to your dps abilities. If Junction for example granted you No Mercy for 10s or the junction healer potency was more than a pittance, it might change the battle. But because it's linked to an entire ridiculous combo, in a game with stunlocking and server ping you end up more often than not just NOT getting the intended buffs/heals/shields and just getting melted anyways.

Nebula lasts 1 single second longer than SAM's Chiten and yet only denies 25% instead of 50% of damage, and doesn't feed into its LB like SAMs does or provide the same damage buffs

Doubledown is useless. It does a flat 10k aoe damage. This seems like it COULD be good until you realize that classes like WHM have an instant 12k 15s cooldown button from range at any time to a target, ignoring their LB, Sage has Pnuema which does 12k in a straight line from range, RDM has a simul bind/silence move that does 8k in a line in front of them, etc. This means that not only is Doubledown basically worthless unless you're on top of the enemies but because you have no mitigation to speak of is barely worth using outside of niche scenarios where your team has somehow managed to weaken all the party simultaneously.

Draw + Powder barrel is one of the most hilariously janky mechanics I've seen in the game to be honest as it basically means you have to junction and hten almost immediately use it and because hypervelocity is one of your junction affected skills means either you lose a heal or potency or shield unless you use it RIGHT when you cast which isn't always viable, and the cooldown being jank means burst strike outside of melee is kinda useless.

It does everything worse than every other class in the game in pvp and it does it while also having one of the most hilariously ignore-able LBs in the mode. It's crazy.