GNB QoL and Balance Suggestions:

[Ixon]

All in all I'll give it another shot but I just was not happy when I was getting rejected by a BRD of all things in 1v1, maybe I stacked things wrong. I'll try it again!

I haven't 1v1'd every job yet, but I can only really hold my own as GNB in Junction Tank stance. The DPS and Healer stances don't have enough damage or sustain to go toe to toe against most jobs. Most of the time you are just waiting for your fast charging LB to try and defeat them then with a good combo anyways.

Still climbing slowly on GNB through the Crystal ranks. Tank stance is still the way to go, but lately I have been having to keep an eye out for if I am getting focused at all, or force myself to be the target. By this I mean if I can get my tank stance, I will toss myself out to the enemy with Nebula rolling as bait, and while they wail on me, they are taking the retaliation damage, I am soaking up damage and CC, and am praying my team can secure a kill in the meantime. Sometimes this fails and I just die from good burst and CC(mostly WHM polymorph of course) but it usually has good results. On the flip side, if the enemy is focused on everyone but me, I will willingly swap to DPS stance because my sustain and Nebula mean nothing if I am never targeted.

Healer stance is still the weakest imo. Your teammates almost never are grouped up enough for the AoE heals to hit them, and it's lower personal sustain and damage than the other two. The only time it's semi viable is like overtime brawls on the Lava map where your team is huddled a lot closer. I've been getting better in the matches where the enemy has no tank, going DPS stance and playing very burst like. Only going in for Double Down, Blasting Zone, and Gnashing combo, immediately retreating due to no sustain, and doing the process over again. The nice 26k burst in DPS stance makes it very good for diving a half HP or less target and securing a kill.

What has been nice is I am almost, or the, top DPS in the majority of my games. The amount of damage GNB can do is still pretty high if played well, so I don't feel as much of a detriment to my team. GNB LB has been growing more and more on me as I have been playing it, to where I only wish there was some anti-CC on it, but really nothing else much. Most people don't look for it, or can't see it. So often people will just stand there and let me wail on them for free, getting that easy 20% vuln up that combing into a Double Down almost always secures a kill. That and the map buffs on the wind and lava map make it so much more powerful. The lava map buffs give you your LB faster, while adding a slight damage boost, making times where I have wiped the point solo with just my LB into Double Down. The black chocobo feather give you perma sprint speed that works while in LB, so you can beyblade spin people do death very easily and very comically.

My wish list is still:
-Allow GNB to DnJ self and party members as well as enemies.
-Add sustain regardless of stance to help DPS stance feel closer to the other DPS jobs.
-Increase the AoE healing radius of healer Junction from 10yalms to 15yalms, and maybe give Aurora the same "Purify one type of CC" like with Aquaveil or The Warden's Paean.
-Some anti-CC on LB would be nice.

The more I play, the more I am fine with GNB as is in terms of design. That of it being the brawling tank who excels in damage over sustain(PLD) or in it's ability to crown control(WAR), it just needs slight buffs in it's current design so that it stands on equal footing regardless of Junction stance.

[Shikiseki]

My hope is still that you'd be able to stack and store the benefits of junction up to 3 times and you "cast" the benefits of said junction as soon as you use one of your Draw Ability (so up to 3 charges, reverts to the last gained junction)

I feel that's the only way to stay as faithful to the mechanical FF8 inspiration while still maintaining their versatility as flexible brawler without just making them flat out just a pure dps with benefits (cough redmage cough)

[Kiyosuki]

I've used GNB quite a bit in crystal conflict and honestly I think the biggest thing the job needs is Heart of Corundum. I think it's a bit silly that the other tank jobs have access to their utility defensives like Blackest Night, Bloodletting etc but Gunbreaker is the one exception. I suppose they felt like the stances would be enough but they just aren't.

The biggest problem with the job is that it generally lacks the presence needed for a tank. I rarely ever use a stance other than the DPS stance because the damage burst that Blasting Zone and the enhanced Gnashing Fang combo bring is the only thing that really makes me a threat in a fight, as it makes a near character killing limit break combo possible as well as consistent damage harassment.

In both the other stances, that isnt the case. If you're in tank stance, Nebula barely gives you the defense to last against a concentrated assault and the shields you gain from Gnashing Fang combo are decent but the problem is no one has to really pay attention to you, because you're not a threat. You're just slightly (and I mean slightly) harder to kill, but you have nothing that allows you to disrupt the enemy's efforts to go around you and kill the rest of your party. You don't have the damage either.

The healer stance has a little more utility but it's really dependant on the makeup of a party and how much they cluster together. Aurora's regen doesn't have that much impact on a fight because of the sheer amount of damage being doled out, and inbetween fights people might as well just pop Elixiers. And again, biggest issue is no one has to pay attention to you because you're not a major threat. IF everyone clusters together to get healed off of your combo there can be some value to that, but even then the healing isn't so substantial that a party made up of the currently most powerful jobs can't just cleave their way through it, or focus you down.

If you ask me, what would instantly fix this job is to do away with the Draw and Junction idea, streamline GNB into its DPS stance with Blasting Zone always being available, and give the job Heart of Corundum and Heart of Light. That would make GNB a tanky bruiser who can support team mates with defensive cooldowns, which would instantly give them presence in a fight. They could add more CC ability to make the GNB harder to ignore, but even the above on its own I think would be enough.

If we were to keep the draw and junction idea alternatively, then Nebula and Aurora have just got to do more. IMO they should give some hard benefit on activation, such as Nebula maybe acting as a second purify, or Aurora healing not just you but others around you with a burst heal. Even Blasting Zone should honestly be a stun or at least a slow to synergize with the speedup they get. And even if Draw is kept, I still think GNB should get Heart of Corundum as a baseline ability.

I think GNB is fun to play in PvP for sure, but it does have major issues in that it's too passive for a tank. Even as a pure DPS, it has fundamentally nothing another job doesn't have and usually more. The job can hit real hard but its just too passive right now.

[threadspool]

One thing I'd really like to see is CC immunity while channeling its LB. If WAR can have immunity for the whole 15s of its LB, surely GNB can for its 4s of Relentless Rush. As it is, if someone stuns you, you can't even Recuperate or Purify because the channeling effect is still running, and you're rendered completely helpless for what is already a risky-to-use LB for mediocre output.

I'd also like some token CC outside of its LB. Applying varied weaker CC options to its Junction Casts would help it be more useful in a disruption sense. An AOE draw-in on enemies near a Nebula cast or a silence around your Aurora target would be pretty nice, and lend more usefulness to Junctions other than DPS.

[Ixon]

Another thought that might help with DnJ clunkiness:
-Have DnJ usable on self, party members, or enemies.
-Make it a 1sec cooldown so you can swap whenever you want
-Put the Powder Barrel effect on the Junctioned Cast(Nebula, Aurora, Blasting Zone)

Right now you want to use DnJ on cooldown for the extra Burst Strike + Hypervelocity, so sometimes when I want to change I can't because it's on cooldown. The change I listed above will allow for on-the-fly changing of stances, with no initial benefit as the Powder Barrel will have been moved to the 20sec cooldown of Junctioned Cast. You could even change Burst Strike from Savage Claw potency to Gnashing Fang potency if you feel the 20sec cooldown of Junctioned Cast adds too much damage from the 30sec current DnJ cooldown.

As always, my wish list in addition to what I mentioned above would be:
-Allow GNB to DnJ self and party members as well as enemies.
-Add sustain regardless of stance to help DPS stance feel closer to the other DPS jobs.
-Increase the AoE healing radius of healer Junction from 10yalms to 15yalms.
-Anti-CC on LB.

[Ixon]

Idea I had earlier. What if you just made Draw and Junction act like RDM Manashift where you can toggle from Tank to Healer to DPS stances? Start the game off in Tank stance standard, then you just press the Draw and Junction button one time to get to healer, or two to get to DPS? Remove the Powder barrel effect off of it, put it on Junctioned Cast if need be, but this will remove a majority of the clunkiness involving Draw and Junction as it is now. This will also remove the issue of not being able to go tank when there is no tank on the enemy team, and will create unique situations where you can change on the fly to fit a certain need without it being too strong.

[Jettinson]

Well with 6.11a, i can't be that excited. It is a start giving DR on its LB but gotta test how stronger No Mercy is in general.

I don't want the class to be constantly getting higher potencies for wrong reasons, the Draw and Junction kit could use a change, have its 3 roles as preset choices and maybe get a passive instead of Powder Barrel.

[Ixon]

Was thinking about this the other day; I am assuming when they were designing GNB for this expansion, they wanted to keep as much of Draw and Junction as possible as it was such a key component to the jobs skill ceiling and enjoyment. Now, we don't know if they took into consideration how often a GNB would NOT be fighting against not standard(if we assume the standard is at least one of Tank, Healer, DPS) compositions, but I assume because they wanted to preserve some piece of original Draw and Junction(that of targeting an enemy for a desired effect), they most likely did not see it as larger issue. Unfortunately, even with the reduced role responsibility compared to Feast, there still isn't enough tanks(specifically) or healers in queue to guarantee that you will get put against a standard composition so GNB can utilize it's kit to it's entirety. I am also assuming we won't see a fundamental change to Draw and Junction till a major patch as it will require them to not just tweak current Draw and Junction, but code in an entire new ability.

It seems they still want GNB to be the "DPS Tank", providing large amounts of damage instead of consistent crowd control like WAR, or a major utility like PLD's Cover, to which I am personally fine with it as you can see equivalents of this in other roles when you look at jobs like SGE and DRG. The extra damage is of course always nice to have, and just the extra 10% can make certain combo's really put the hurt into the enemy team. The extra healing is nice as well, boosting the shields you get in Tank Junction, the heals from Healer Junction, and of course buffing Recuperate from 15k to 18k helping with GNB general survivability. This will also make Healer Junction stronger in those situations where you use it, which of course is nice to have. The mitigation on LB is ok at best. I would have personally rather had anti-cc as it is usually cc that will mess up a good GNB LB, but again I can't say no to free mitigation on a fast charging LB that can be devastating in the right circumstances.

Personally, I think if they could just change Draw and Junction now the job wouldn't need anything else. Going back and repeating that if they could make Draw and Junction akin to the Black/White Shift on RDM, where you had a 1sec ability that allowed you to swap between Tank, Healer, and DPS on a loop, that would be perfect. They could just add the Powder Barrel charge attached to current Draw and Junction to Junctioned Cast, so it's not completely lost. In my opinion GNB does more than enough damage, and it's survivability is good enough that it covers the lack of cc or utility the other jobs have, they just need to address the Draw and Junction jank.

[Gserpent]

I definitely agree that D&J should be the design focus for changes to GNB. It's never been a "bad" class, but the clunkiness of how they're using D&J makes it artificially limited, and so smarter money was to just play MNK since it's a "DPS tank" in the same way that GNB is, but with fewer gimmicks to work around. Normally hotfix patches are only for simple numbers tweaks and significant changes are pushed to full patches, but they added a whole new effect to BLM ulti with this hotfix, so I'm not sure that "let D&J target allies" would have been outside the scope of this patch.

That's what I would have done. Let D&J target allies, and add in the No Mercy buff, and see where things lie.

[Jettinson]

Personally, I think if they could just change Draw and Junction now the job wouldn't need anything else. Going back and repeating that if they could make Draw and Junction akin to the Black/White Shift on RDM, where you had a 1sec ability that allowed you to swap between Tank, Healer, and DPS on a loop, that would be perfect. They could just add the Powder Barrel charge attached to current Draw and Junction to Junctioned Cast, so it's not completely lost. In my opinion GNB does more than enough damage, and it's survivability is good enough that it covers the lack of cc or utility the other jobs have, they just need to address the Draw and Junction jank.

Yeah maybe they'll settle with RDM stye and still keep Powder Barrel.
Damage wise it is fine that's why i was worried, just an unpowered Double Down plus Blasting Zone is scary enough and acts as Blu Monk with Rough Divide with the speed buff along with cartridge combos

Hopefully something can be done