GNB is TERRIBLE now!

[Luca_]

I really don't like these changes after giving them a chance in the normal raids last night, unfortunately. I don't really know how to properly describe why it feels off, but it's like they took a belt sander to the job for the sake of people who don't actually play it.

Pretty disappointed since I've been pretty much onetricking GNB since the beginning of Endwalker when I started raiding. I think I'm gonna end up swapping to DRK.

[Daralii]

I'm not sure about the changes of yet as I'm not much of a Gunbreaker player and I'm also not sure how strong or weak it is now.

But at the very least, this new "overcart" thing was very confusing to look at. Gold bullets are two bullets? We needed The Powder Gauge to extend and actually show 6 bullets.
Too much visual information going on, for a job they were attempting to simplify, it just felt overwhelming.

It's a very weird and stupid attempt to copy the Brotherhood "overchakra" from MNK, only they turn gold instead of red. The big difference is that the chakra gauge was already a full circle, while the powder gauge still only uses a third of the actual cylinder. Here's a remarkably shitty mockup I cobbled together in Paint:


For the simple gauge, the extra cartridges could just be below the normal ones. I wish they'd revert it, but they're very stubborn when it comes to their worst ideas.

[Azurarok]

Would I perform much better with the job with these changes? Absolutely.

Did I need help reaching the skill ceiling for a tank job I don't even main? Absolutely Not.

[Immut]

8.0 patch.

Why stop there? Bring in Ys bump combat.

[Carstien]

It is a bad design to make another tank fall under 1 minute, PLD/WAR already fall under one minute, if you take a second to look GNB and PLD are even more similar now because of it which is a bad thing. Tanks should generally feel different enough.

Doesn't the Gnashing fang changes actually restrict gnb under level 100 to only use it twice during no mercy? I could be wrong. I'd be more in favour of it having two charges if they accounted for any content below 100 ever but they don't, it took them ages to give PLD a gap closer at 70 content instead of 80 content and to give dark missionary at 70 content.



Regular 1, 2, 3 shouldn't be filler.

Rotations like samurai's filler should be filler having different combos, Procs like dancers should be filler, a 1, 2, 3 is not a good example of filler, not on a tank, healer or a dps it's just bad and frankly boring.

I strongly disagree that making them run on a 1 min loop is a bad thing, there is no real reason that it would be. When it's a 2 min loop, because of tanks having less complicated rotations than a melee dps they begin to feel slow and stale. Look at DRK, the only one left on a 2 min loop, it's slow until you get there and then it's a frenzy. Evening it out is not a bad thing, in my opinion, and doesn't really change balance too much. I think the tanks feel different enough while also having the tools to compete. GNB has a faster paced 1 minute, WAR is slower but heavy hitting with the satisfying crunches and complete freedom of choice in the order you use the skills and PLD's is magical and can be done at ranged with a slight bit of flexibility. They maintain their identity without being polar opposites, imo.

Gnashing isn't restricted like that, no. You can only fit 8/9 GCD's under NM so that is one gnashing fang combo, lionheart combo, double down, sonic break. That's 8 total, add in a burst strike or if you really want to optimize time your gnashing fang so that the last GCD is under NM if you have a fast enough skp but it's a minor gain and otherwise you're free to just gnashing when you feel you have the time because of the charge system. I like to play on slower SKSP because I use PLD a lot and it needs 2.50 so I will never get more than one gnashing under NM, making the second completely free in my rotation.

The 123 combos are all filler, they just are. Yes, they are the backbone of the job but also filler, you use them when you don't have your stronger, better GCD's available. I don't see how this is even considered debatable for any of the tanks, or any job. When your burst and stronger gcd's are on cooldown, you resort to the filler. There may be exceptions, won't deny that but it's the general rule of thumb.

[Servebotfrank]

I think people are confusing "rigid/strict and punishing" with difficulty when they don't have anything to do with each other. Gunbreaker has never been a difficult job, it was just a strict job. There wasn't any complex decision making to make with the rotation to account for downtime, you just had to eat the downtime (accepting the damage loss or drift) or greed to make sure you didn't drift. No one considers Reaper to be a difficult dps job, it has a very simple rotation, but it is an extremely punishing job to make mistakes on.

What's changed with Gunbreaker, you can burst more often now and you have more flexibility with gnashing fang. Wouldn't allowing players to adjust their rotation based on the fight be a better expression of skill other than "yeah my ping allowed me to greed this mechanic like a maniac to get gnashing fan off without eating a damage down because I lived on the West Coast."

[Daralii]

On the other hand, such a change to the job may just bring more people to play GNB, and the job would be more active during uptime.

They've been constantly redesigning jobs for people that don't play those jobs since SB, and it only works when the jobs have significantly higher DPS than the rest of that role. SMN had high numbers after its lobotomy, was highly desired during EW, and then became one of the least played jobs in the game once it fell behind other casters.

[bic12]

I think people are confusing "rigid/strict and punishing" with difficulty when they don't have anything to do with each other. Gunbreaker has never been a difficult job, it was just a strict job. There wasn't any complex decision making to make with the rotation to account for downtime, you just had to eat the downtime (accepting the damage loss or drift)

This is not true. Back when cartridge was harder to manage, one of the biggest optimizations you can do on fights with irregular downtime is figuring out how many burst strikes you can use. Another is learning when to optimally use the AoE combo in order to get cartridge, as it required one less GCD. Burning cartridge through the AoE also presented another avenue for optimization. This is fairly significant on P6 in DSR where downtime, AoE uptime (you aren't between both dragons all the time in P6) and managing bursts all coincide in a way that no other tanks had at the time.

[ForsakenRoe]

I strongly disagree that making them run on a 1 min loop is a bad thing, there is no real reason that it would be. When it's a 2 min loop, because of tanks having less complicated rotations than a melee dps they begin to feel slow and stale. Look at DRK, the only one left on a 2 min loop, it's slow until you get there and then it's a frenzy. Evening it out is not a bad thing, in my opinion, and doesn't really change balance too much.

Maybe the problem, then, is the 2min meta forcing everything to burst at a common denominator of 60s? WAR used to burst at 90s back in SB. DRK used to have some 45s CDs in its kit, etc


As for me, I tried new GNB in a Trials Roulette (got Necron). It felt like it pretty much played itself. Lionheart was especially sad-feeling to me, both because it's used twice as often (feels less special) and the potency nerfs. If SE wanted to lower the potency on each of the hits (to reduce how much impact getting vs not getting Crits had), they could have given it a set of Continuation actions of its own, to mirror the Gnashing Fang combo. You know, the system that makes GNB unique from the other Tanks? Changing how often we use it to fall directly in line with... oh right, EVERY other Tank, why? What issue was there that GNB bursting at 2min had, that it bursting at 1min magically solves?

Hell, why don't we just rip the bandaid off now, and make Lionheart combo guaranteed to Crit/DHit? If every Tank is fated to just trend towards elements of WAR's design, why not just go all in now, and make the rotations perfectly identical in potency, different only in VFX? Then we can have WAR, WAR with big sword, WAR with shield, and WAR with sword but it sometimes explodes. Worked well enough for Healers, right?

[Carstien]

Maybe the problem, then, is the 2min meta forcing everything to burst at a common denominator of 60s? WAR used to burst at 90s back in SB. DRK used to have some 45s CDs in its kit, etc


As for me, I tried new GNB in a Trials Roulette (got Necron). It felt like it pretty much played itself. Lionheart was especially sad-feeling to me, both because it's used twice as often (feels less special) and the potency nerfs. If SE wanted to lower the potency on each of the hits (to reduce how much impact getting vs not getting Crits had), they could have given it a set of Continuation actions of its own, to mirror the Gnashing Fang combo. You know, the system that makes GNB unique from the other Tanks? Changing how often we use it to fall directly in line with... oh right, EVERY other Tank, why? What issue was there that GNB bursting at 2min had, that it bursting at 1min magically solves?

Hell, why don't we just rip the bandaid off now, and make Lionheart combo guaranteed to Crit/DHit? If every Tank is fated to just trend towards elements of WAR's design, why not just go all in now, and make the rotations perfectly identical in potency, different only in VFX? Then we can have WAR, WAR with big sword, WAR with shield, and WAR with sword but it sometimes explodes. Worked well enough for Healers, right?

You're not wrong, there are many ways they can even out the potentcy variance of lionheart, each with it's own problems. Talk about making it feel like WAR, that's what making it autocrit would do as you know. Giving it a continuation and lowering potency just turns it into gnashing fang. Not a bad thing but at that point why?

A 1 minute burst though, is something that works for tanks because of the downtime between burst windows and how much less active every tank rotation is by design. They'd have to change that whole design to make it a bad option and as for the 2 min burst window itself, that isn't changing. It was made that way for a reason, so all jobs can feed into it or from it with consistency. That's why 90s buffs were generally removed, why anything but a 2min buff is pretty rare in jobs now. No matter what time frame you put for the raid buffs though, whether standardizing to a 1 min, 2 min, 3 min, 90 sec, etc...it doesn't matter. People will save their strongest skills for that window giving the option no matter where it is, after using in the opener, or they will complain that their best skills fall out of it. Look no further than MNK for an example that uses a redundant skill in the opener so they don't end up with their most powerful outside of raid buffs, where it would fall if playing as designed. If you've never tried it just look up double lunar opener for MNK.

Ultimately there is no perfect solution for everybody but I think this one is pretty clean for me with my 1 day of experience in it. That's all I got.