GNB QoL and Balance Suggestions:

[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)

[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.

[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

[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.

[Ixon]

Tbh, the more I think about it, the more I don't want them to just add the ability to target allies as I originally had thought before. I already have 5 Draw and Junction macros so I can swap stances on the fly to specifically the right enemy without having to target them. To simply add the ability to target teammates with Draw and Junction would mean I would need even more macros, up to an additional 5, so I can accurately be in the right stance at the right time. Versus just having a singular button like the RDM shift idea. I would still like to have the ability to swap in the end, as it's core to the enjoyment I have with the job and think it suits it fairly well, we will just have to see what can be done about it in the future while still retaining the enjoyment from playing it. Someone convince Yoshi to main it.

[Gserpent]

Tbh, the more I think about it, the more I don't want them to just add the ability to target allies as I originally had thought before. I already have 5 Draw and Junction macros so I can swap stances on the fly to specifically the right enemy without having to target them. To simply add the ability to target teammates with Draw and Junction would mean I would need even more macros, up to an additional 5, so I can accurately be in the right stance at the right time. Versus just having a singular button like the RDM shift idea. I would still like to have the ability to swap in the end, as it's core to the enjoyment I have with the job and think it suits it fairly well, we will just have to see what can be done about it in the future while still retaining the enjoyment from playing it. Someone convince Yoshi to main it.

An alternative would be to simply ensure all three D&J abilities (Blasting Zone, Nebula, and Aurora) are available at all times, and they continue to share the cooldown. Blasting Zone is 6000 potency without DPS, 10000 with. Nebula doesn't have the thorns damage without Tank junction. Aurora is 4000 healing and 2000 regen without Healer, 8000 healing and 3000 regen with.

Blasting Zone would probably never get used without DPS junction (6000 damage on a 20 sec cooldown is pretty bad), but I'm not convinced that's necessarily a bad thing. The main thing is to ensure that all three "class" skills are available at all times, and that they continue to share a cooldown.