Let's Talk About Limit Breaks!

Hey fellow Eorzeans,

I figured it would probably be a good time to talk about Limit Breaks, a mechanic we have come to love in past Final Fantasies, and how it is going to be completely broken in a raid environment!

First, the ones that are pretty cool and nice for situational use:

Melee DPS:

1 - Braver:  A single-target attack with 2,300 potency.
2 - Blade Dance:  A single-target attack with 5,000 potency.
3 - Final Heaven:  A single-target attack with 9,000 potency.

Ranged DPS:

1 - Skyshard:  An area attack with 1,400 potency.
2 - Starstorm:  An area attack with 3,000 potency.
3 - Meteor:  An area attack with 5,400 potency.

Tank:

1 - Shield Wall:  Reduces damage taken by all party members by 10%. 10s duration
2 - Mighty Guard:  Reduces damage taken by all party members by 20%. 25s duration

Healer:

1 - Healing Wind:  Restores HP of all nearby party members by 25%.
2 - Breath of Earth:  Restores HP of all nearby party members by 60%.

Now, the problems...

Tank:

3 - Last Bastion:  Reduces damage taken by all party members by 50%. 12s duration

Healer:

3 - Pulse of Life - Revives and restores HP of all nearby party members by 100%.

You may be looking at those abilities and be like, "Holy shit those are amazing!  I can't wait to use them to save our raid!"  But, in all practical use, these 2 abilities in their current form are either too powerful or will cause us to depend upon them out of necessity.

I would like to outline 2 scenarios that could potentially cause the raiding scene in ARR to be less than challenging.


Scenario 1:  We will use Ifrit Extreme as an example here.  When killing Ifrit there is a phase where you must DPS down the nails, otherwise it will wipe your raid when he uses "Hellfire," his signature move.  Now, a tank can usually survive this since Hellfire would hit for a little over 3,000 damage.  Well if we use Last Bastion to reduce that damage by 50% for Hellfire then we can simply keep DPSing Ifrit and our healers can heal up that paltry 1,500 damage everyone took with a few aoe heals.  This essentially ELIMINATES the nail mechanic from Ifrit, breaking the encounter the way the developers designed it.

There are 2 solutions here, make Hellfire be an instant kill regardless of buffs which would be ok really, it would force players to do the mechanics of the fight properly.  Or, the development team could simply nerf Last Bastion to something that would not trivialize the only hard part of an encounter.


Scenario 2:  SE seems to be borrowing a lot of mechanics from other triple-A MMOs.  Let's consider a fight where there is a lot of aoe or some mechanic that can easily kill players like poison that has to be passed on before the timer expires.  Pulse of Life could essentially remove these mechanics from raiding just like Last Bastion would do to Ifrit's nails.

You've got half your raid dead from failing at a particular fight mechanic?  No worries!  Just Pulse of Life and everyone comes back at full health and you can keep beating away at that boss like he is a pinata made of concrete!

The only way I see this ability not being completely broken, is if the area of effect is pretty small, at least THEN it wouldn't be an encounter reset that does not reset the bosses HP.  As it stands, we pretty much have the opportunity to fight the boss twice without his HP resetting (more if that limit gauge fills quick enough).


So, are these abilities awesome and very unique to the MMO genre?  You bet!  They make all the Mi'quote girls panties wet (maybe the boys too).  BUT, they are new to the MMO genre because they are so stupidly over-powered.  Last Bastion doesn't even list a range of effect, it is just all members!

These are definitely some unique tools to Final Fantasy, but they will just be a crutch to so many Free Companies as they squeeze by difficult raid fights (if we even have any).  The fact that these 2 abilities are even in the game mean that we will never see any of the DPS Limit Breaks in a raid because who cares about slightly more damage when you can just get a full raid reset?!

Square Enix, please fix this!