Ever noticed a bar at the top-left corner of your screen? That is the Limit Break bar. Limit Breaks can be defined as the ultimate abilities of any class which is only available to parties with a minimum of four players.
Limit Breaks are of various types and the Limit Break that you cast depends upon your role in the party.
FFXIV Online: ARR Limit Break
There are a total of four Limit Breaks in FFXIV: ARR
- Single Target Damage Limit Break – Created by Pugilists, Monks Lancers or Dragoons.
- Cure Limit Break – Created by Conjurers, White Mages, Archers and Bards.
- Protection Limit Break – Created by Gladiators, Paladins, Warriors or Marauders.
- Area of Effect Damage Limit Break – Created by Thaumaturge, Black Mages, Summoners and Arcanists.
These Limit Breaks are pretty much self-explanatory and it’s needless to explain them further.
There are certain restriction when it comes to using the Limit Breaks. Like I mentioned above, casting a Limit Break depends upon a particular player’s role in the party. Along with that, a Limit Break can’t be used at any given time. There is a Limit Break bar on top of the User Interface which needs to be full before you could use that.
Note: The Limit Break bar can be moved to any position as per your convenience.
You aren’t always restricted to only one Limit Break bar as at different occasions, you will have access to two or maybe even three of these. However, three Limit Break bars are very rarely seen and mostly appear during fights with imminent danger.
How to Use the Limit Break
To use your Limit Break you simply need to assign a hotkey to it and then use the key when it is the appropriate time. To assign a certain key to your Limit Break, go to Actions & Traits UI.
While you may have the Limit Break bar full and ready to cast, the real question is who should be the one casting?! During the scenarios when you have a single bar at your disposal, using it frequently won’t make any difference. But; while undertaking a dungeon’s boss, having 2 full bars will always work in your favor.
Damage Limit Breaks yield high amount of damage and can be used during a boss fight to bring him down instantly. However, AOE Limit Breaks comes in very handy while engaging a large group of enemies but you should let them gather around you for decent damage.
As for Protection and Cure Limit Breaks; they do offer nice effects, but they simply can’t be compared to the raw power you get from the Damage Limit Breaks.
Building the Limit Break
What exactly fills the Limit Break bar is unknown. The in-game description of what fill this bar reads, ‘Playing Well’.
It is quite certain that damage done by you and your teammates do fill this bar but there were some instances when I’ve witnessed it filling up by taking damage from the enemies. So the exact phenomenon still remains a mystery!
Another thing to keep in mind is; no matter how hard your party works to fill up the Limit Break bar, it only takes one player to use and drain it. Therefore, use it at right time so that you don’t waste it.
We do know that hitting Brink of Death while playing as a Gladiator fills up your Limit Break bar instantly.
Along with that, when your Limit Break bar has started building, it will usually build at a constant rate regardless of the numbers of monsters that attack you. But; each class has their own set of criteria as to how extra Limit Break points are added.
Our Take on Limit Breaks
To conclude the guide we’re going to state that the Limit Break system is fairly straight forward; not that difficult to understand and should certainly be used as often as possible as it makes difficult dungeons and instances a whole lot easier with the insane effects that it provides.
