Warrior Job Ability Suggestions

[GailC]

Some Warrior job ability ideas:

Instigator (War job ability)
Enhances Parrying and Shield Block rate but increases enemy Critical Hit rate. Allows a Warrior with Retaliation active to potentially retaliate after successfully Parrying or Shield Blocking an attack.

Rallying Cry (War job ability)
Reduces weapon delay Enhances Double Attack for the warrior and party members nearby (similar duration/recast/enmity generation as Warcry).

Vae Victas (War job ability)
Temporarily increases the Warrior's Skill ranking in the weapon he is currently using but lowers Parrying and Shield Block rates (cannot raise a skill above "B+" or scythe/sword rating, and has no effect on weapons already rated higher). Grants access to additional weaponskills (for example, the warrior would be able to use Sharkbite or Crossreaper for as long as Vae Victas remained active, but not Guillotine or Dancing Edge).

War Paint (War job trait)
Allows the warrior to Intimidate a monster currently under the effect of his Provoke ability affected by his Provoke ability. Only the monster affected by Provoke can be intimidated, and the ability to intimidate ends when the enmity generated by Provoke fades 30 seconds after the use of Provoke.

Edit: Here are some other ideas I had (8/29/11), figured I'd just post them here--

Blockade (War Job Trait)
Reduces enemy critical hit rate and the amount of TP an enemy accumulates when striking the Warrior while Defender is active.

Blood Haze (War job trait)
Adds a Regen effect to Berserk. The effect grows stronger at yellow, orange and red HP respectively.

Brace (War job ability)
Dramatically reduces the amount of damage taken by the next attack, but prevents TP accumulation while active (short duration, 15-30 seconds or until the next attack lands, 3 or 5 minute recast).

Wardance (or alternately, Skirmish, I can't decide which name I like better) (War job ability)
Enhances Enmity generation rate with each successive hit that deals damage to an enemy, but increases Weapon Delay. Critical Hits have a chance to stun the target while Wardance is active. (Note: enmity generation would raise to a reasonable maximum cap, and Retaliations count toward the enmity increase like normal hits).

[Gokku]

abillity 1 : outside of skilling up useless
abillity 2 : messes with stp for you and the whole party = useless
abillity 3 : nifty but broken
abillity 4 : thats not how provoke nor enmity works

[GailC]

abillity 1 : outside of skilling up useless

Because added damage reduction/negation + essentially turning Retaliation into a mini-Counterstance without the defense drop (and all this with no offensive penalty) is useless? I actually thought this would be the one people would think was overpowered. The idea is to bump War's Parrying and Shield up to a point where we might actually not get hit every time the mob swings at us. Giving us some measure of damage avoidance beyond the paltry benefits of Defender.

abillity 2 : messes with stp for you and the whole party = useless

So change it to "Enhances Double Attack" for party members in range. I only changed it to delay reduction because I figured it would be stepping on Corsair's toes. I had forgotten about delay reduction lowering TP gain.

abillity 3 : nifty but broken

No more broken than Scholar being able to raise it's Light or Dark Magic skills and then gaining access to spells temporarily it normally can't cast. This ability would affect one weapon, grant one weaponskill Warrior can't usually use, and these aren't even the best ones available to other jobs. The point isn't to give Warrior the most powerful weaponskills, but to make weapons we rarely use (except in abyssea) more useful in our hands, temporarily.

How exactly is it broken? I'm honestly curious, because I'm open to suggestions on making it better.

abillity 4 : thats not how provoke nor enmity works

I was under the impression that provoke added a sizable portion of temporary enmity to the monster you use the ability on, and that the enmity from provoke fades rapidly, so that by the time the ability is ready for use again, the enmity spike is mostly gone. I know that in Ballista, Provoke gives players you use it on a 'status' meaning that they are 'under the effect' of provoke, so I used that terminology here to describe the monster that's been provoked.

Essentially, War Paint augments Provoke to allow the warrior to intimidate a monster he has provoked, acting for 30 seconds as if he had the appropriate Killer effect. The ideas is that you have to keep provoking the mob in order for War Paint to remain active. Once your provoke timer is up, the intimidation ability disappears.

I recently came back to the game after about two years out. The last I read on it, people were saying that the enmity from Provoke essentially decreases rapidly, where as actions such as dealing damage or curing injuries creates enmity that decreases more slowly. Has there been better testing since then? If that's not how the hate from provoke works, then I'd like to know how it does so I can reword the trait.

[Arcon]

I was under the impression that provoke added a sizable portion of temporary enmity to the monster you use the ability on, and that the enmity from provoke fades rapidly, so that by the time the ability is ready for use again, the enmity spike is mostly gone. I know that in Ballista, Provoke gives players you use it on a 'status' meaning that they are 'under the effect' of provoke, so I used that terminology here to describe the monster that's been provoked.

Essentially, War Paint augments Provoke to allow the warrior to intimidate a monster he has provoked, acting for 30 seconds as if he had the appropriate Killer effect. The ideas is that you have to keep provoking the mob in order for War Paint to remain active. Once your provoke timer is up, the intimidation ability disappears.

I recently came back to the game after about two years out. The last I read on it, people were saying that the enmity from Provoke essentially decreases rapidly, where as actions such as dealing damage or curing injuries creates enmity that decreases more slowly. Has there been better testing since then? If that's not how the hate from provoke works, then I'd like to know how it does so I can reword the trait.

There's two kinds of enmity, commonly referred to by the playerbase as cumulative enmity (CE) and volatile enmity (VE). Most actions give VE, curing and dealing damage give CE, along with some abilities (Provoke not being one of them). CE doesn't decrease naturally, but only after you take damage. VE on the other hand decreases by an amount of 60 every second. Provoke gives you 1800 VE (unmodified). So the enmity gained from Provoke will decrease after 30 seconds (JA recast).

However, there's no real means to distinguish Provoke enmity for other enmity. The status effect that Provoke inflicts is believed to only be on players, not on monsters. From what I recall it was added specifically to give Provoke at least some usefulness in Ballista. So they'd have to add a new status effect that Provoke inflicts that lasts for 30 seconds.

People have enmity all figured out these days, largely thanks to this guy:
http://kanican.livejournal.com/13235.html

Aside from that I like those ideas.

[GailC]

Thanks for the info
I remember reading about Volatile and Cumulative enmity, but that's a very good point about not being able to differentiate the hate from Provoke from other sources of VE. I decided to change it to a flat 30 second duration on the Intimidation effect. The other option I was toying with was to allow Provoke a small chance to Terrorize the target, but I thought Intimidation would be more useful.

I went ahead and altered the other powers a bit based on the criticism they've received. Any other suggestions are welcome!

[Tamoa]

Why is warrior and shield even mentioned in the same sentence? I don't think I ever used shield as war, and it was my first 75 job. And if I did, it was such a long time ago I don't even remember it anymore. While being able to retaliate after parrying an attack would be nice, it wouldn't really add anything amazing to the job. Increasing enemy crit hit rate also sounds like a major no-no. Retaliation is pretty "broken" as it is already - and I use the term broken loosely because I love the JA and don't really want it changed in any way.

I honestly think that war, much like sam, has more than enough JAs already. And I can't say I find either of the proposed JAs would be worth adding, I'm sorry.

[Leonlionheart]

Honestly I don't see WAR needing anything, at least at the 95 cap, to maintain it's super-power status.

DRG is the only one that can compete at the moment, even more so now that Wyvern's are near invincible.
DRK is lol as ever. Really nothing is going to be added this update that makes it remotely close to other DDs.
SAM can hold it's own, yeah. However I don't see it beating out Ukko's Fury anytime soon, maybe if Kaiten gets another similar sized boost at 95. Though, this job has pretty significant defensive capabilities that WAR lacks so I don't know if it really should beat out WAR anyway.
WAR? Another tier of Attack Bonus. Probably more useful than what the other jobs are getting.

[GailC]

Why is warrior and shield even mentioned in the same sentence? I don't think I ever used shield as war, and it was my first 75 job.

They gave us Shield Defense Bonus at level 80, and Fencer at level 45, plus our AF 1 hands have shield skill bonus on them. Our rank in the skill isn't stellar, but it's at the point where a small increase would make it viable.

Granted, we've never used shields, and we have no use for them in the current iteration of the game, but that's part of why I added it into Instigator: originally I was just going to have it increase Parrying rate, but I didn't see it as overpowered to add in Shield block rate as well; the added defensive power wouldn't be stellar, but it would be significant enough, I think, to make Instigator a viable defensive move. The Crit Hit + on there is a balancing factor: less hits would get through, but the hits that do land would have a higher chance of critting; in the end the Warrior would still have a net gain in terms of damage reduction/avoidance.

Perhaps I should add an Enemy Crit Hit Down effect to Blockade? It would require Defender to be active, but with Wardance active, holding hate with defender up would be viable. Just a thought.

Retaliation is pretty "broken" as it is already - and I use the term broken loosely because I love the JA and don't really want it changed in any way.

I feel much the same way, actually. I had toyed with the idea of adding a random proc stun effect to Retaliations, or some other ideas about augmenting the ability, but in the end I didn't want to change it, since I also love the ability and think it's fine as it is.

The added Retaliation rate on parries/blocks is there because without it, using Instigator would adversely affect Retaliation rate, since normally you have to get hit to retaliate. I actually don't know if you can retaliate on a shield block (because some damage does get though). Goes to show how little Warriors use shields

And that's part of why I suggested the ability, to give us more reason to vary up our kit.

I honestly think that war, much like sam, has more than enough JAs already.

Honestly I don't see WAR needing anything, at least at the 95 cap, to maintain it's super-power status.

This is part of the reason why many of the abilities/traits I suggested were defensive in nature: our offensive power is already top notch, so adding more damage dealing capabilities (which is actually in line with the developers new vision for the job) would probably be unbalanced. However, I think that increasing our defensive capabilities is not only in keeping with Warrior's original design (flip between offense and defense as required), but would allow us to have more utility for future developments in the game that don't require straight up zerg tactics, and also would allow SE to add new abilities to the job that won't break it.

I agree, I don't think warrior NEEDS new abilities, at least not given the current state of the game. But it would be kind of lackluster if we didn't get anything from 90-99, and the abilities the developers have hinted at are rather bland. So I'm looking at lateral growth, as opposed to just giving us more crit and attack power.

[Leonlionheart]

This is general, but I honestly think we need more customization.

99 should bring new merits and meritables, and personally I'd be very pleased if it wasn't so black and white like it is now.

Essentially the only thing WAR's even have an option over, is whether or not they want 1/5 Tomahawk, 4/5 Savagery, or 5/5 Savagery. That and 3/5 Aggressor, or 3/5 Berserk (though admittedly 5/5 Berserk is the real way to go).

Honestly something like a "skill tree" would be ideal in my opinion. Tier 1 merits, basic things. Maybe things like blood rage duration. Tier 2 merits, new job traits. Tier 3 merits, new job abilities. However I see this as a SLIM possibility, or VERY far in the future. A lot of work and balance goes into skill trees.

[Arcon]

Essentially the only thing WAR's even have an option over, is whether or not they want 1/5 Tomahawk, 4/5 Savagery, or 5/5 Savagery. That and 3/5 Aggressor, or 3/5 Berserk (though admittedly 5/5 Berserk is the real way to go).

Personally, I'm more than fine with that. I guess it's a matter of preference, but I hate options and choices, at least if they involve compromises. I want the one right, best way to do things, and that's one of the things I like about WAR, in terms of merits. I hate the merit system for these restrictions it applies, personally I think you should be able to merit everything, however it should increase in cost dramatically once you're over the current limit. But that's just me, as I said, I think it's a matter of preference.

Edit:
I'm not a commie.