Thoughts on Bloodfest, 3 Cartrides and Gunbreaker Going Forward

[RobinBobobbinGoblin]

Good afternoon,

I wanted to share my thoughts on the gameplay of Gunbreaker thus far, now that we are at the end of Endwalker. I have thoroughly enjoyed the job in Shadowbringers personally and have done a variety of content on the job, including:

Dungeons
PvP
Ultimates
Extremes
Savage
Deep Dungeon
Exploration Content (aka Bozja and Eureka)

I've put a lot of hours into the job and after the changes in Endwalker, I have some thoughts that hopefully convey my hopes for possible changes going into the next expansion.

I want to preface this by saying these are just my opinions on the job after having mained it both in Shadowbringers and Endwalker. So the developers and other players will probably have better ideas for the job going forward.

The Good

The core concept of Gunbreaker in that being a fast DPS-focused tank with exceptional personal sustainability I still enjoy. I think the job still does well defensively and offensively and don't have any issues in that department from my experience.

I do think it could've been possible to differentiate Heart of Light and Dark Missionary by adding a regen to Heart of Light and something like a Mini-TBN to Missionary, but for now it's fine, not a huge deal.

I think Double Down is a really cool ability, though if you're bursting during a movement mechanic it can be a tad annoying to slot in if you need to get off the boss for an extended period of time with its small range.

Hypervelocity I don't mind, it looks cool. I enjoy the nuance of its survivability being spread throughout its kit compared to being more concentrated like Paladins' Magic Phase or Warriors' select abilities.

The Bad

Right now, the two main issues I have with Gunbreaker are Bloodfest and 3 Cartridges.
Adjusting Bloodfest to 120 seconds was a step in the right direction, however, as many know that have raided this expansion, reopeners typically occur during mechanic heavy phases, which is a part of the difficulty I do understand, but on some jobs, at least notably Gunbreaker, it feels downright uncomfortable at times.

For example, in P9S, your first reopener is during a tank swap + getting ready for knockback stacks. If you don't want to burden your healers like I don't, you're pressing 2 Defensive CDs at minimum alongside your reopener, which includes a Gnashing Fang combo + Bloodfest + your off-GCDs + Shirk/Provoke + Burst Strike into Hypervelocity + An additional burst strike ideally after a solid barrel.

Gunbreaker during those moments feels less like a fast-paced tank and more clunky and overburdened.

In Shadowbringers, for me, your burst felt over in a matter of seconds, while now in Endwalker, it feels like I'm praying for the reopener to be over.

This combined with 3 cartridges adds the issue of recovering from a death, making it that much more punishing and the rotation feeling bloated compared to its previous iteration.

[RobinBobobbinGoblin]

Suggestions

I want to put out a few suggestions, from unlikely to more likely, when I think of how the team operates when it comes to job design.

Unlikely but would be very unique: Why not adapt Bloodfest to be like its PvP iteration, Draw and Junction? Without the DPS option because of balance issues, and I imagine everyone will just choose the DPS option regardless.

In PvE, you could Draw and Junction yourself or your co-tank to gain a small bit of mitigation during your Gnashing Fang combo, and Aurora instead becomes an extra defensive ability.

While when you're Junctioned to a healer, your Gnashing Fang combo does either a bit of personal or party-wide healing, and Aurora remains the same.

I can imagine people choosing healing during progression or AoE damage-heavy fights, or Junctioning a tank for fights with more damage onto the tanks.

Less likely: Going back to 2 cartridges would certainly alleviate some of the bloat and rotation fluidity in my opinion, but wouldn't solve the root of the issue. But I'm not against this change.

More likely: A more reasonable change I can see happening is reducing the number of things you need to press during your burst, like combining Sonic Break and Bow Shock, or having them work similar to Dark Knights' Carve & Spit and Abyssal Drain, where you use either one according to the situation.

Overall, I still really love Gunbreaker and hope the team alleviates some of the concern over Gunbreaker come Dawntrail.

Thanks for your time!

I hope this is helpful.

[DRKoftheAzure]

I'm just going to point you towards here; https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...aker-Bloodfest.

Also the idea of Sonic Break and Bow Shock sharing a cooldown is a TERRIBLE idea, and would be 1 reason I would stop playing Gunbreaker...

[Arohk]

I have made another thread about this, Bloodfest should be 1 minute and grant 2 cartridges, this will give a much more flexible rotation and better recovery from death.

[CKNovel]

I don't mind merging Bow Shock and Sonic break, both those buttons do the same thing: placing a dot.
I don't like having too much dot on a single job, while it can help with damage variance, it also hurts the job's DPS during short phases and also became a gamble on wether you use it or not on an add.

Here's how I would personally do this:
-> Delete Bow Shock
-> Make Sonic Break work like Expiacion and dealing AoE damage+short aoe dot

-> Remove damage from Dashes

With this we're already 3 oGCDs down from what we currently have.
We also need to make Continuation more flexible and I think DT GNB will be golden.

But one problem remains, Blasting Zone tends to naturally drift.
For that there's multiple idea:
-> Have Blasting Zone on 5s CD but only available for 15s after using Gnashing Fang.

-> 2 Charges on Blasting Zone
-> We're okay with using Both in NM window: Okay as long as we remove potency on the jumps, we're still -1 oGCS, -2 if we remove Bow Shock.
-> We're not okay with both BZ in NM window: Either ties its use to Gnashing Fang / Give a reason to use it as soon as possible outside raidbuffs.

[DRKoftheAzure]

I don't mind merging Bow Shock and Sonic break, both those buttons do the same thing: placing a dot.
I don't like having too much dot on a single job, while it can help with damage variance, it also hurts the job's DPS during short phases and also became a gamble on wether you use it or not on an add.

Here's how I would personally do this:
-> Delete Bow Shock
-> Make Sonic Break work like Expiacion and dealing AoE damage+short aoe dot

-> Remove damage from Dashes

With this we're already 3 oGCDs down from what we currently have.
We also need to make Continuation more flexible and I think DT GNB will be golden.

But one problem remains, Blasting Zone tends to naturally drift.
For that there's multiple idea:
-> Have Blasting Zone on 5s CD but only available for 15s after using Gnashing Fang.

-> 2 Charges on Blasting Zone
-> We're okay with using Both in NM window: Okay as long as we remove potency on the jumps, we're still -1 oGCS, -2 if we remove Bow Shock.
-> We're not okay with both BZ in NM window: Either ties its use to Gnashing Fang / Give a reason to use it as soon as possible outside raidbuffs.

Unless your idea is actually making Bow Shock a Continuation skill for Sonic Break to try and make button bloat not a problem while also making Sonic Break a cone AoE, which is probably the better solution anyway, you ideas already suck and I'm not going to bother sugarcoating it...

Yes both Bow Shock and Sonic Break are both DoTs, they both have the same cooldown(with no skillspeed btw) but they have different duration timers, and by your logic, it's okay to merge Machinists charge skills into one button, merge the Heat Gauge Burst buttons into one button as well.

Let's go even further by doing this to ALL JOBS in the game. And people will STILL complain about the homogenization because of how boring it is.

Also I would rather Gunbreaker be the active charge tank than whatever the hell your trying to cook up for Gunbreaker...

[CKNovel]

Unless your idea is actually making Bow Shock a Continuation skill for Sonic Break to try and make button bloat not a problem while also making Sonic Break a cone AoE, which is probably the better solution anyway, you ideas already suck and I'm not going to bother sugarcoating it...

Yes both Bow Shock and Sonic Break are both DoTs, they both have the same cooldown(with no skillspeed btw) but they have different duration timers, and by your logic, it's okay to merge Machinists charge skills into one button, merge the Heat Gauge Burst buttons into one button as well

Then start explaining why it sucks instead of creating a strawman.
GNB needs to shave oGCDs, the dashes and Bow Shock are the perfect candidates.

Removing Bow shock wouldn't change a lot about GNB either, you just need to press it during buff window, which is on cooldown.
Sonic Break and Bow Shock may have different duration but if all that separates them are the duration of the dot, then there's no need of having two of them. Make Sonic Break dot a 15s, longer duration can be screwed by downtime.

Let's stay we instead break Sonic break in 2 GCDs and they both do the same thing, have the same cooldown but different dot duration.
Would that make Gunbreaker more challenging? No.
Would that make Gunbreaker more skillbased? No.
Is it just adding button bloat for not real purpose? Yes.

Apply the reversed question to merging Bow Shock and Sonic break.

[DRKoftheAzure]

Then start explaining why it sucks instead of creating a strawman.
GNB needs to shave oGCDs, the dashes and Bow Shock are the perfect candidates.

Removing Bow shock wouldn't change a lot about GNB either, you just need to press it during buff window, which is on cooldown.
Sonic Break and Bow Shock may have different duration but if all that separates them are the duration of the dot, then there's no need of having two of them. Make Sonic Break dot a 15s, longer duration can be screwed by downtime.

Let's stay we instead break Sonic break in 2 GCDs and they both do the same thing, have the same cooldown but different dot duration.
Would that make Gunbreaker more challenging? No.
Would that make Gunbreaker more skillbased? No.
Is it just adding button bloat for not real purpose? Yes.

Apply the reversed question to merging Bow Shock and Sonic break.

I am going to repost something I said from a different thread that LITERALLY ALREADY covered everything from not only THAT thread, but that THIS thread as well, with quotes by the way.

As someone who mains Gunbreaker, I am just going to keep things on topic of the thread, which is Gunbreaker AND Bloodfest.

Starting with Bloodfest since that seems to be the focus; I am okay with with Bloodfest having 2 charges on a 90-120 second cooldown, but would require some other expansion level changes that I also see being possible if this happens.

Now with that out of the way Gunbreaker as a whole for level 90-100; I would like to see MOST Gubreaker exclusive skills getting a second charge and reduced cooldown timer, which would easily fit the theme Gunbreaker might want to have since it has a gunblade, which would be a very active charge tank(though you would need to remove charges from the last two skills Dark Knight gets near the end of Endwalker, but no one likes Dark Knight on a gameplay level, especially after Stormblood, so no real loss there).

The obvious skills that would not have reduced recast timers and charges, would be Superbolide(because if it did every tank would complain about that wasn't Gunbreaker, so that would be one way of balancing Gunbreaker with other tanks) Double Down, Gnashing Fang, and Blasting Zone, mostly to balance the DPS on Gunbreaker and so that the devs can actually attempt on making DPS rotations for the other tanks actually be interesting, at least on GCD side of things.

Of course this means that Gunbreaker DPS goes up a lot in training dummy fights since No Mercy, Sonic Break, and Bow Shock would also have a second charge but that's the point.

Speaking of those skills, they would be the only skills that have a second charge, but not a reduced recast timer, to try and balance out the fact the you might have to move away from the boss since the Devs really like making tanks and healers suffer more with Vuln stacks and instant death stacks(by the way I never did like the instant death ones since they are 100x worse than vuln stacks) even though Gunbreaker REALLY wants uptime.

As for Aurora which already has a second charge, instant cure potency of 800 or something on top of the regen, that's all the devs can really do with Aurora.

Heart of Light could be buffed to apply Cure potency of 600 that also applies Brutal Shell buff equaling the amount healed for the entire party and Aurora buff, for those meaty raid busters.

Maybe direct potency buffs for Continuation skills if devs are feeling spicy.

That's basically all I expect from 7.0 Gunbreaker, and that's the best case scenario I can potentially come up with.

But you probably don't care about anything I would have to say anyway and just want to be proven right if I ignore you, which only proves my point that you don't actually care about tanks getting any identity that isn't Warrior clone number 666.

[Shurrikhan]

I have made another thread about this, Bloodfest should be 1 minute and grant 2 cartridges, this will give a much more flexible rotation and better recovery from death.

I actually really like that Bloodfest is on a separate CD from No Mercy and Double Down...

-> Remove damage from Dashes

Consolidating Bow Shock and Sonic Break seems fine to me. You lose a button that, unless holding for an add spawn, offered no complexity beyond just 1 extra button hit per minute. I'd expect buttons to have more forms of complexity, across an average fight (not just the rare outlier to still have add spawns that'd sync up well enough to oblige CD-holding, etc.) than their button count consumed, so I'm fine with losing Bow Shock and giving that component of complexity over to Sonic Break instead.

But I see absolutely no point to making Dashes a purely situational skill, rather than carrying any sort of net-optimization between retaining just enough charges to not lose uptime as a result of blowing them all during damage-amp windows. I'd honestly rather have kept Shoulder Tackle, even, than have gotten Thunderclap, for that same reason; for a skill useful only for mobility to be worth spending a button on, every fight would have to pull its value from it, but when it can also serve an inferior but always-(at-least-somewhat-)useful purpose, that button's always worthwhile, and more so than any other basic damage CD.

Unless your idea is actually making Bow Shock a Continuation skill for Sonic Break to try and make button bloat not a problem while also making Sonic Break a cone AoE, which is probably the better solution anyway, you ideas already suck and I'm not going to bother sugarcoating it...

Yes both Bow Shock and Sonic Break are both DoTs, they both have the same cooldown(with no skillspeed btw) but they have different duration timers, and by your logic, it's okay to merge Machinists charge skills into one button, merge the Heat Gauge Burst buttons into one button as well.

This seems quite the over-reaction.

Bow Shock only offers two potential points of complexity: (1) hit in on CD (/ +1 APM), (2) wait for adds to spawn if the damage thus gained will be greater than the damage lost to desync or losing a ST use over the course of the rest of the fight. The second is usually irrelevant, since so few fights have adds.

Consolidating either one into the other (greater direct damage and DoT duration to Bow Shock on its primary target / first target struck, or fall-off damage and reduced duration to other enemies on Sonic Break) loses none of that save for +/- 1 APM. You can make one the Continuation action of the other to retain that 1 APM, sure, and we may as well if we're concerned that GNB would otherwise have just too darn much space to pop defensives during its damage bursts, but that's hardly the main point.

Having two buttons do the same thing (hit them on CD once per minute) does not add to identity. GNB is not unique or iconic in that redundancy, nor is either skill unique or iconic (both due to each other, and due to obvious analogs within the other Tank jobs.) Sonic Break and Bow Shock are essentially just... a more fragile Goring Blade and a double-CD Expiation/Orogeny. They do not have any distinct identity.

By all means, let's keep them separate since it costs us nearly nothing to do so, but... of all elements of GNB, I don't understand why anyone would point at these two and think "Ahh, yes, no matter what they're replaced with, this will be the blow to GNB's identity!"

[Derio]

Sonic Break and Bow shock being consildated would be great but would be hard to do so I think it is mostly unlikely. I dont think they will change the way 2 minute burst line up with big mechanics or TB. That is bad for any tank especially when combined with the second pot window.

If they add another cartridge in DT or give an upgraded version of double down they may need to look at increasing the no mercy window. Heart of light needs something extra, especially since it only covers magical damage which usually 1 of the 4 savage fights per tier has a boss that does mostly physical raid wide damage while the other 2 tanks have group mit for every fight.