Greetings!
Hope you're all doing well and do not worry, I will catch up on the Elena review. I know many people have been asking for it.
Main reason many reviews lately have been coming out rather late is that I've focused more on streaming and haven't adjusted my schedule properly, my working out routine also became a lot more erradic since then.

Today we have an awesome looking fella, the badass judge from FFXII himself: Gabranth. We never got his 6* version in GL even though he should've been in GL for a looong long time. Instead we got Zargabaath.

At least this time we actually get him and despite many people saying he's pretty unnecessary, we should still check if that's the case.

Unit Review: NV Gabranth Gabranth -Neo Vision- NV Gabranth (BS) by Memel0rd

Trust Master Reward : Errant Hound (Materia) - Increase HP (30%)
Increase equipment DEF (50%) when dual wielding

STMR : Gabranth's Armor (Heavy Armor) - 500 HP, 15 ATK, 115 DEF, 65 SPR, 30% HP

Vision Card : Judge Magister:
Lvl 1-10: 400~800 HP ; 40~80 DEF
Lvl 4: 10% DEF w/ Helm & Heavy Armor
Lvl 7: 10% DEF w/ Helm & Heavy Armor
Lvl 10: 20% DEF w/ FFXII units

Overview:

I'll just call him Gabranth instead of Gabranth NV or -Neo Vision-. We don't have any other versions of him anyway.

Gabranth's base stats are what you expect of a physical tank. High HP and high DEF. Or rather monstrous DEF. His SPR is okay-ish, but luckily his offensive skills scale with DEF.
Through his innate passives and TMR he gains a total of 180% HP, 170% DEF and 60% SPR. Meaning for a physical tank, especially with his Vision Card, he'll be extremely easy to set up but his SPR passives are lacking a bit. If you don't care about his damage, that's extremely easy to patch up. He has 70% innate provoke, which is great in case you own Vaan's STMR as with only one Sword slot he can get up to 100% provoke while gaining 30% evasion, too. Otherwise, just use Moogle Charm for that sweet 100%.
If you don't mind giving up the shield spot that can give a lot of SPR, Gabranth also comes with an innate 200% DEF TDW. And yes, that will make a huge difference. If you swap out a weapon for Ziedrich on my suggested build, he'll lose roughly 700 DEF. Sadly no 6x chain cap though.
Shouldn't forget to talk about his guts passive, though with his NV levels of tankiness most likely isn't required.
Gabranth is resistant against confusion, petrification, blind and paralyze, leaving confusion and sleep open thus likely has to be prepared for them. He also has an innate 50% fire and dark resistance making gearing against these elements much easier.

Gabranth can W-/T-Cast all of his abilities but will lose his T-Cast after Turn 1. Still extremely nice to have on Turn 1 as it makes him an incredibly fast set-upper as a tank. This can be nice to use in fights with break gauges as Gabranth can T-Cast a 500% break damage ability on Turn 1.

In his normal state he's focusing a lot more on tanking, yet still has the ability to chain with both Stardust Ray and Bolting Strike, working well with Paladin Cecil or support other chainers such as Starlight Elena or Loren in Dark Visions.
Both his chains scale with DEF, Spinning Blade increasing his provoke in case you lack passive provoke gear with a 4800% modifier and Sentence for a neat 8600% modifier, also increasing his LB gauge by 8 for each cast, making it much easier to get his LB.

His on-demand AoE cover is a big step up from old ones. The higher chance isn't too important, but the cover mitigation went up from a somewhat regular 60% or 70% mitigation up to an average 77.5%, which is much much higher. Pair that with his big stats and you have yourself a tank.

But Gabranth also offers a variety of damage mitigation buffs. You can either have an on-demand AoE 45% physical mitigation buff, which is great as a provoke tank working alongside a magic tank or three times per battle can unleash an AoE 1 turn 80% physical mitigation. Which also is really good for cover bypassing attacks, too.

If you're not happy with that, both his CD ability that also covers with a 6 turn cooldown and his LB, which you can easily fill up by himself, he offers an AoE 50% mitigation buff, which always is appreciated.

For additional support, both of his remaining CD abilities, Guardian Flame and Grounded Fortitude can be nice tools to have. Even though they can't be maintained due to their higher CD (5 / 6 turns) compared to the 4 turn buff timer, the effects themselves still stand out with either an AOE fire dark resistance buff or an AoE 250% DEF/SPR buff, currently rivaled by Yoshikiri.

Brave Shift:

His Brave Shift is available on Turn 1 with an infinite duration while you can already turn back to normal the turn after. Do keep in mind though that you'll have to stay in his Normal Mode for 2 turns until you can Brave Shift again.

In his BS form, he loses 50% HP but gains some DEF and SPR in return. Due to his high mitigation and big stats you likely won't notice the drop in 50% HP.
If you're facing humans, his innate 150% human killer will actually make a difference.

He keeps his break damage attack, his two previous chains as well as his AoE physical mitigation buff, but loses both his on-demand and CD cover as well as his 50% mitigations from the CD and Limit Burst.

In return, he focuses much more on offence and gains a permanent T-Cast, which might be handy if you go into short fights, apply the covers and then swap to either T-Cast support chain or focus a bit more on damage.

He also gains a Stardust Ray chain that isn't stuck with a 4800% modifier but instead bumps up to 9200%, later on 10200%. He also gains a Stardust Ray dark imbue for himself. Though losing some DEF off a weapon for an element isn't that bad.

Gabranth gained two new CD abilities.

One of them is available at Turn 3, is another Stardust Ray chain with an 10800% modifier that'll also increase the modifiers of his other main chains by 1000% and his 200% DEF buff chain by 2000% for 2 turns. It's a slight damage upgrade.

The second one is much more interesting. Remember Gladio? Yup, Gabranth has a 4 turn ST cover with a 70% mitigation on a 4 turn cooldown. It also buffs DEF/SPR by 200% and since Garland will be tanky anyway, even if you're using him as only a provoker, you could just use it on e.g. a frail mage.

His LB isn't as good as it was before. Even though the damage went up by almost double the amount, it's locked to dark damage and doesn't apply an AoE 50% mitigation, rather a ST 80% one.

How does he fare in the meta?

It's hard to say how good he fares. The way that would summarise it well is: an unnecessary sidegrade. As weird as it sounds.

Currently AoE physical tanks are not used much and dodge builds have been trivialised with STMRs, so getting a tank up to 100% dodge is quite easy.
Of course you can do the same with him, too. But by then it's more important which unit can tank attacks that bypass everything or magic attacks that aren't yet blocked by a magic tank as well as obviously supportive aspects.

And even if Vaan isn't a tank by default, he can be built into an evade provoker. An evade provoker who also happens to be the best breaker in the game while having chains, too. So in Dark Visions, Vaan with proper set up would already be more slot efficient than Gabranth, though to be fair, Gabranth does bring a good touch of damage with him.

The damage aspects are definitely behind the meta by a good margin and won't age that well, but currently do make it easier to hit better DV rankings. In terms of damage that is. Vaan with another AR unit can already provide 100 chain rankings whereas Gabranth can't.

His TMR is extremely unique with 50% DEF TDW, but as long as we only have him as the real DEF TDW user, there's no reason to use it on other units besides himself.
His STMR can also be argued whether or not to be worse than Wilhelm's. You gain 500 HP and 10% HP but lose out on roughly 50 SPR in return. For phys eHP it's definitely better, but again, another sidegrade.
His Vision Card is perfect for physical tanks or to slap onto your healer if needed. 800 base HP with 400% HP equals a 4000 HP increase as well as a bunch of DEF and DEF passives with the right gear. Definitely great for him.

Build Maths:

Normal Build:
https://ffbeEquip.com/builder.html?server=GL#246ce5b0-07df-11eb-b649-3b5a7868e9c3

Brave Shift Build:
https://ffbeEquip.com/builder.html?server=GL#2a8801f0-07df-11eb-b649-3b5a7868e9c3

Gabranth -Neo Vision- Damage

DEF post 200% buff: 4013
Assuming spark chains


Rotation:
[BS] Turn 1: Spinning Blade   Earth Splitting Darkness   Mist Blade
[BS] Turn 2: Enrage x3
[BS] Turn 3: Guardian's Tenacity   Enrage x2
[BS] Turn 4: Enrage x3


[BS] Turn 1: 4013^2 x 48 x 3.556   4013^2 x 48 x 4   4013^2 x 120 x 4 x 1.6 = 18208790638
[BS] Turn 2: [ 4013^2 x 92 x 3.556   4013^2 x 92 x 2 x 4 ] x 2.2 = 37666594857
[BS] Turn 3: [ 4013^2 x 108 x 3.556   4013^2 x 102 x 2 x 4 ] x 2.2 = 42516706760
[BS] Turn 4: [ 4013^2 x 102 x 3.556   4013^2 x 102 x 2 x 4 ] x 2.2 = 41760789950


Average Turn 1-4: 35,038,220,551
-> 62% of Rain -Neo Vision-'s Damage ( 56,143,626,895 )
-> 61% of Cloud (FFVII REMAKE)'s Damage ( 57,334,002,032 )
-> 59% of NV Lasswell's Damage ( 58,610,034,955 )
-> 55% of NV Cloud's Damage ( 63,896,292,660 )
-> 51% of Awakened Dragon Akstar's Damage ( 69,099,512,095 )

Character Design: 9/10
Sprite: 10/10
Chainer: 5/10
Tank: 9/10
Trust Master Reward: 7/10
STMR: 9/10
Vision Card: 8/10
Arena: 6/10
Limit Burst: 8.5/10
Future Proof: 8/10
Dark Visions: 7/10
Free 2 Play: 9/10
Pay 2 Play: 7/10
Personal Rating: 8/10
Optimal Rating: 8/10

Conclusion

While I personally love Gabranth from his game, his looks and his kit, I can't say he's as important of a unit as you'd expect from the first NV tank.
Of course he has merrits. He has a ton of mitigations in his kit, he has very useful support chains for meta units, he has Triple-Casting capabilities and outside of that W-Cast, which are big for physical tanks and is easy to gear.
With STMRs he also is much easier to use, can easily be geared for evasion while maintaining high HP and SPR. He can also gain a ton of DEF through STMRs. But that won't bump up his damage to meta levels.
Currently with tanks not needing upgrades, with physical AoE tanks being rarely used and provoke tank options being so incredibly good and slot efficient, Gabranth can find niches in the meta but is entirely skippable and doesn't add that NV powerspike you'd expect. I mean on many teams, a well geared Vaan will do better.
Once we do need physical tanks though, especially if bosses can bypass evasion, he will be much much more valuable.

Gotta give him one thing: he looks awesome as heck.

Memel0rd out​