Am I the only one who dislikes the GNB changes?

[AddictedToWitches]

The new GCD combo is cool and all but once you get it, it fundamentally changes your entire opener and rotation, in what is in my opinion a bad way.
GNB has always been kind of a busy tank job, with a number of ogcds and the worry of fitting your big damage cooldowns all into your no mercy window
With the Reign of Beasts combo, this now makes the no mercy window even tighter to the point where it's honestly screwing with my enjoyment of the game
The new standard GNB opener fits 9 GCDs into your no mercy window, but in order to manage this you need to pop no mercy at the very end of your gcd, without clipping, in order to leave enough time to fit the 9th gcd in, and this also requires enough skill speed for a 2.4-2.45s GCD.
Moving along, because Bloodfest now procs reign of beasts, you can no longer just pop bloodfest for cartridges on cd anymore, but you have to make sure you use it for your no mercy window every time, which is every other no mercy.
All of this makes the job feel much busier, much more stressful. It feels like I have no wiggle room.
I think a good change for this would be instead of reign of beasts replacing the bloodfest button when used, it instead replaces burst strike, and acts as a burst strike replacer, using a cartridge and all. Adjust potencies as needed for this change.
Like this, you wouldn't have to worry about fitting an actual normal burst strike into your no mercy window, and can still just do the ol tried and true gnashing fang > bloodfest > double down > burst strike/reign of beasts.

[BigCheez]

Late weave no mercy has literally always been a thing unless you're playing slowbreaker, which you'll be able to do as soon as we have gear to support it - in which case you won't need to late weave NM any more.

You've been supposed to use bloodfest during no mercy since it was changed to a 2 minute cooldown during Endwalker. This isn't a Dawntrail change.

The GNB changes are objectively good and address the main issue that the job had in Ew, which was cart economy. Making the lionheart combo consume carts would literally just undo all of the progress.

You never had wiggle room. NM, gnashing fang, double down and your oGCDs MUST be put on cooldown as soon as they're available - always. That's just how the job works and has been for years at this point.

[CoiledLamb]

i completely agree with OP. bloodfest used to be a button that i didn't feel the need to press off cooldown, just something i had whenever i needed more carts. now it's this awkward button that fundamentally reworks my entire burst, making half my gnashing fang hit out of no mercy and throwing it out of sync with blasting zone, leading to the entire job feeling less fun to play.

[Oizen]

Outside of Trajectory I don't mind what GNB got.

[GoatOfWar]

Gnb is the only tank that's still worth playing, but not really by much.
But that's more of a Warrior being overpowered problem.

[EponaTBHSMH]

I always thought Bloodfest was also used on cooldown at level 90?

Whenever Bloodfest CD was under 60 seconds meant you could Burst Strike as much as you want, until it perfectly lined up with Gnashing Fang again in the reopener at 2mins, was that not optimal?

[CKNovel]

GNB has been my main since late ShB and I'm very happy with the changes.

You press Bloodfest exactly like before, spend your 3 ammos then press Bloodfest during your No Mercy for maximum burst.
The difference is that you use Lion heart combo instead of Burst strike.
You're now also free to use Sonic Break whenever you want in your burst window without delaying it.
The interesting part is the ammo management completely changed and the filler window now has 2~3 extra cartridges.

On the surface, barely anything changed from EW GNB to DT GNB, you don't have Rough Divide anymore and the 3 burst strikes in other NM are replaced with the Lion heart combo.
The few downsides I see are the dash animation, dash can't be used on allies, a third charge would be welcome and big potencies can go wild with crit/dh rng.

[DRKoftheAzure]

You press Bloodfest exactly like before, spend your 3 ammos then press Bloodfest during your No Mercy for maximum burst.
The difference is that you use Lion heart combo instead of Burst strike.

This change is good, though I do wish I could use the Lion Heart combo outside of Bloodfest AND No Mercy, but that's just me not liking the overreliance of 1-2 minute burst META... Maybe if the devs reduced the cost of Double Down to 1 cartridge and making it a 30 second cooldown, while adding a 1 cartridge cost to Lion Heart combo with 30-60 cooldown, would it feel a lot better.

You're now also free to use Sonic Break whenever you want in your burst window without delaying it.
The interesting part is the ammo management completely changed and the filler window now has 2~3 extra cartridges.

You could already do that BEFORE Sonic Break got locked behind No Mercy, and this the one change I don't like as a 30 second cooldown reduction on Sonic Break makes more sense at this point... with Bow Shock also getting a Duration increase to 30 seconds and a cooldown reduced to 30 seconds as well...

On the surface, barely anything changed from EW GNB to DT GNB, you don't have Rough Divide anymore and the 3 burst strikes in other NM are replaced with the Lion heart combo.
The few downsides I see are the dash animation, dash can't be used on allies, a third charge would be welcome and big potencies can go wild with crit/dh rng.

This is true, though not a lot of players like the removal of Rough Divide, Plunge, and Spineshatter Dive(ESPECIALLY that last one because Dragoon is known for jumping A LOT and it makes NO SENSE to get rid of one of their jump skills) and it kinda shows... at least give Gunbreaker at least 4 new Continuation skills during burst.

[Oizen]

Yeah thats a point I can get behind. I kinda wish the Lionheart combo had continuations in it. Even if the effective damage was the same as now.

[CKNovel]

You could already do that BEFORE Sonic Break got locked behind No Mercy, and this the one change I don't like as a 30 second cooldown reduction on Sonic Break makes more sense at this point... with Bow Shock also getting a Duration increase to 30 seconds and a cooldown reduced to 30 seconds as well...

No, before you couldn't delay your Sonic break otherwise every next use would suffer from that delay.
In EX1 you can delay Sonic break use in a 60s window to have it on the add rather than the boss that is about to disappear.
Next NM window, you'll have Sonic break not delayed and able to use it earlier. And since SB has a 30s dot, it's great to be able to shift it around in your NM window.

Another example: On MCH you can also use Chainsaw on cooldown but hold Excavator to strike both the feather and the boss.
We have more flexibility on tools rather than blindly using them on cooldown or delaying them and having them permanently delayed.

Yeah thats a point I can get behind. I kinda wish the Lionheart combo had continuations in it. Even if the effective damage was the same as now.

Lionheart exactly exist for the purpose of removing the oGCD bloat GNB suffered.
Remember that in EW, Gunbreaker 120s had 8 oGCDs spread over 8 GCDs during its NM window. When you needed to kitchen sink mitigation, it simply sucked.
In Ultimate it was especially tiring.