Can SE do something about GNB's clunky movement during continuation windows?

[Kolsykol]

a new continuation to lightning shot, grant shot ready, shot lightning

I actually think something that would be cool and add more variety to Continuation vs Gnashing Fang/ Burst Strike is if Continuation was an explosive gun shot of sorts, if you swung your weapon shot mid-swing.
It'd be neat and kinda feel like you're slinging bullets almost and it could work at range too.

[Eorzean_username]

I agree that Gunbreaker's crucial burst windows are frustrating and uncomfortable during both necessary target movement, and when trying to activate defensives.

Regarding ways to address the "OGCD overload" issue, I don't personally have a strong opinion either way, but here's some questions for dedicated GNB to consider, to try to set some boundaries on what kind of solutions that you're looking for:

Continuation as a GCD?

How would you feel if Gunbreaker "got Summoner'd", and its OGCD overload was "solved" by just putting things on the GCD?

So, Gnashing Fang would lead to a 6x GCD sequence, rather than the current 3x GCD-OGCD rhythm.

Continuation generates stacks?

How would you feel if Gunbreaker got the Ninja Raiju treatment, and using Gnashing Fang combos or Burst Strike added +1 stack of "Continuation Ready", which lasted X seconds, and could be consumed to trigger Continuation attacks?

In this case, Continuation would probably have to change to a single animation with normalized average potency.

Continuation buffs can coexist?

How would you feel if Gunbreaker got "Dancer'd", and all of the "Ready to..." buffs could coexist?

So, you could have "Ready to Rip", "Ready to Tear", "Ready to Gouge", and "Ready to Blast" all active simultaneously.

Continuation would consume them in descending order of potency each time it was triggered.

Any OGCD triggers Continuation?

How would you feel if Continuation could still be triggered manually (with the "Continuation" action), but Gunbreaker also had a Trait that caused any other OGCD to also automatically trigger Continuation?

So, for example, you could have a sequence such as:

1. GCD: Gnashing Fang
2. (gain Ready to Rip)
3. OGCD: Nebula
4. (automatically consume Ready to Rip and cast Jugular Rip on current target)
5. GCD: Savage Claw
6. (gain Ready to Tear)
7. OGCD: Blasting Zone
8. (automatically consume Ready to Tear and cast Abdomen Tear on current target)
9. GCD: Wicked Talon
10. (gain Ready to Gouge)
11. OGCD: Continuation
12. (consume Ready to Gouge and cast Eye Gouge on current target)

This would preserve the current Continuation rhythm of GCD-OGCD-GCD, while enabling Gunbreaker to weave defensive actions freely during Gnashing Fang / Burst Strike windows.

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Again, let me clarify that I'm not personally advocating for any specific change. I'm just asking, "What kind of things could SE do? And how would you react?"

[Absurdity]

The simplest change, add more range to Continuation, 6 yalms instead of 3 would probably already do the job, and get rid of Hypervelocity.

Burst Strike was previously our movement tool when we needed to reposition the boss during our Gnashing combo since it didn't break the combo and allowed for a full GCD of movement, Hypervelocity threw a giant wrench into that.

Getting rid of Hypervelocity not only allows for Burst Strike to fill that role again, even if it's not really necessary with the increased Continuation range, but also reduces our forced oGCD weaves and allows us to use Burst Strike for easy double weaving of mitigation during our burst windows since we always have 1 Burst Strike guaranteed.

[Shurrikhan]

Continuation as a GCD?

I'd rather not.

Continuation generates stacks?

Better, but still not great; I like the particular flow of the Gnashing Fang combo's animations into their successive Continuation attacks.

Continuation buffs can coexist?

How would you feel if Gunbreaker got "Dancer'd", and all of the "Ready to..." buffs could coexist?

So, you could have "Ready to Rip", "Ready to Tear", "Ready to Gouge", and "Ready to Blast" all active simultaneously.

Continuation would consume them in descending order of potency each time it was triggered.

We should at least allow for Ready to Blast and Ready to Rip/Tear/Gouge to coexist and Ready to Blast to perhaps have a slightly longer buff time.

I don't necessarily want to be able to hold onto all of them together, however, especially before I have time to map out what that'd do to our optimal rotations.

Any OGCD triggers Continuation?

How would you feel if Continuation could still be triggered manually (with the "Continuation" action), but Gunbreaker also had a Trait that caused any other OGCD to also automatically trigger Continuation?

So, for example, you could have a sequence such as:

1. GCD: Gnashing Fang
2. (gain Ready to Rip)
3. OGCD: Nebula
4. (automatically consume Ready to Rip and cast Jugular Rip on current target)

This seems to better make the case for just certain actions being removed of their player-animation component, instead providing only VFX, while under the effect of Continuation (or rather, any "Ready to" buff). Which I'd be very much for.

That and again allowing Blast Strike to be used for positioning by letting us delay Ready to Blast would by then cover a huge part of our needs.

_________________________

More broadly, though:


I think we can agree first off that XIV in general needs to deal with the doubled penalty from latency on weave space. Now, assuming we could actually get that...

I'd rather not remove Hypervelocity. Perhaps give it a conditional, secondary Continuation to be usable from range (up to 15 yalms or so), or just make do with the above allowance to hold onto Ready to Burst, but... let GNB do GNB things, including making an oGCD spectacle of itself.

A job will perform well enough or not based on its overall tuning far more than whether it managed to get a final 170p oGCD into No Mercy. Heck, we might as well double down on it further; give Fated Circle, too, a Continuation move.

If GNB wants to be the especially high-apm tank, I'm fine with going deep into that theme, so long as it seems a feature, rather than merely... an apm-tax. Siphon some of GNB's defensive kit towards Continuation, or perhaps even Burst Strike and the Gnashing Fang combo itself.

But that also increases the already significant need for some further flexibility surrounding Gnashing Fang. I'd propose giving Gnashing Fang 2 charges but also a manner of soft cooldown by giving Wicked Talon, say, a 25-second 10% Haste buff. Such would accelerate GNB's macrorotation by (exactly) 2 GCDs per minute, yes, but that would also give reason to keep Gnashing Fang combos apart, rather than squishing them together under No Mercy casts.

Naturally, siphon a bit of potency as needed away from the potency of Gnashing Fang's combo and its Continuation casts and from No Mercy's percentile towards this increased number of filler attacks and their potency as needed to really cement that flexibility over blowing everything under stacked buffs.

Apart from that, perhaps also give Continuation conal cleave with fall-off atop a slightly longer range? It doesn't feel great to have no use for your burst combo while in AoE, and that'd only become more the case if it were to provide an Attack Speed buff to give it its (soft) internal cooldown / interval of use.

[KariTheFox]

The issue with "continuation generates stacks" to me is - how many stacks will it generate? Am I just going to be encouraged to hold as many continuation stacks as I possibly can going into No Mercy, and spend them all there? I feel like there would be no room to weave any mitigation into my NM windows at that point, and the most optimal way to play GNB would be as blue dps.

[Eorzean_username]

The issue with "continuation generates stacks" to me is - how many stacks will it generate? Am I just going to be encouraged to hold as many continuation stacks as I possibly can going into No Mercy, and spend them all there? I feel like there would be no room to weave any mitigation into my NM windows at that point, and the most optimal way to play GNB would be as blue dps.

Probably not. There are a lot of ways to control that at the design level, such as putting a timer on the stacks that's shorter than the Gnashing Fang CD. If really necessary, can also just cap stacks at 3, maybe 4. After all, the goal is just to allow a Gunbreaker to not feel like they're sabotaging their performance if they need to insert a defensive OGCD at the "wrong" time, etc. Not anything fancier.

In fact, to be honest, you could probably make the timer pretty short, like 5s or 10s — usually, you only need one GCD of "breathing space", because Gunbreaker tends not to be a constant wreck of collisions, it just has a few "rough" moments.

Personally, I'm not thrilled with the idea, because it would break up the Gnashing rhythm... but I guess it would still preserve the "GCD-Continue-GCD" rhythm, just allow it to be optionally-displaced from Gnashing GCDs.