Warrior Tanks: Maximizing DPS Output

[Warrlordd]

would you want your DPS to help heal? would you want your healers to help tank? nope and nope. so no thank you, but ill just let my tank do the tanking

[Skull_Angel]

would you want your DPS to help heal? would you want your healers to help tank? nope and nope. so no thank you, but ill just let my tank do the tanking

Nope, but most Healers can and do contribute to DPS and, as a tank, if you can without compromise why not?

[SkyHighDN]

Will a Summoner be required to do a raise if one of the healers dies in an 8 man raid? I think so.......

So would you want a DPS to heal.... in that circumstance? YES

[bokchoykn]

would you want your DPS to help heal? would you want your healers to help tank? nope and nope. so no thank you, but ill just let my tank do the tanking

Whether you are a Tank, DPS or Healer, your job as a member of the Party is to maximize your party's chance to succeed.

To answer your question, no I would not want my DPS to help heal or my healers to help Tank because their abilities don't allow for them to optimally do either of those things.

If a Black Mage or Summoner casted Physick, it would come at a huge compromise to their damage output.

If a Healer was taking hits from mobs, their low HP and lack of defensive stats & abilities means that there is a huge risk of dying.

If you can't see the difference between the above examples and a Warrior pushing as much damage as he could, without any significant compromise to his primary job, then I don't know what else to say to you.

If a Warrior is doing 90 DPS when he could be doing 140 DPS, but he thinks it's okay because his class icon is Blue (Tank) and not Red (DPS), he's simply a bad Warrior.

[Warrlordd]

yeah good point to make. I still feel like you are missing the REAL reason why WAR can do as much DPS as it does. Because all our self heals are off AP. So, without necessarily agreeing with your motives, I think optimizing damage output optimizes defense output as well.

[bokchoykn]

Have you even played Warrior? Self-heals are complete ass. Optimizing damage output is useful because it kills faster.

[Warrlordd]

have YOU ever played a WAR? over the time of a whole fight, your self heals do enough healing to matter. Nothing that'll save ur life, but enough to be considered. CLEARLY though, you seem to have undervalued the overall effect of second wind, inner beast, bloodbath and storm's path.

[Kitru]

Max Enmity: Butcher's Block combo only - This is what you want to be doing to start a fight in order to build a healthy enmity lead on the rest of the party. For tank swaps, a couple of combo'ed Butcher's Blocks is enough to solidify aggro.

Not true. The highest enmity rotation for a WAR is SE>BB>BB>BB. BB spam generates 716.67 enmity potency per GCD ((150 + 200 * 3 + 280 *5) / 3). SE>BB>BB>BB generates 748.11 epot/GCD ((150 + 190 + 270 * 1.2 + (150 + 200 * 3 + 280 * 5) * 2 / .9 * 1.2 + (150 + 200 * 3 + 280 * 5) * 1.2) / 12). It also ends up doing more damage: BB spam is 210 potency/GCD ((150 + 200 + 280) / 3) while SE>BB>BB>BB generates 260.17 ((150 + 200 + 280 * 1.2 + (150 + 200 + 280) * 2 * 1.2 / .9 + (150 + 200 + 280) * 1.2) / 12).

There's no reason whatsoever to spam BB: it's worse damage *and* worse enmity than other options. Hell, SE>BB>BB is higher damage (268/GCD) and maintains virtually identical enmity generation (718.37/GCD; it's actually slightly better because Maim buffs auto-attack damage, providing an extra ~17 / GCD). I honestly have to wonder if you actually did any math for the attack strings or just went with what you use instead of what is actually best.

These are the actual optimal attack strings:

SE>BB>BB>BB (high enmity)
Enmity: 850.88 / GCD ((150 + 190 + 83.33 * 2 + (270 + 83.33) * 1.2 + (83.33 * 3 + 150 + 200 * 3 + 280 * 5) * 2 / .9 * 1.2 + (83.33 * 3 + 150 + 200 * 3 + 280 * 5) * 1.2) / 12)
Damage: 362.94 / GCD ((150 + 200 + 83.33 * 2 + (280 + 83.33) * 1.2 + (83.33 * 3 + 150 + 200 + 280) * 2 * 1.2 / .9 + (83.33 * 3 + 150 + 200 + 280) * 1.2) / 12)
no SP debuff

SP>BB>BB (standard)
Enmity: 729.77 / GCD ((83.33 + 150 + 190 + 250 + (83.33 * 3 + 150 + 200 * 3 + 280 * 5) * 2) * 1.2 / 9)
Damage: 324.44 / GCD ((83.33 + 150 + 190 + 250 + (83.33 * 3 + 150 + 200 + 280) * 2) * 1.2 / 9)
SP debuff

SP>SE>BB (solo tanking standard)
Enmity: 594.66 / GCD (((83.33 * 6 + 150 + 190 + 250 + 150 + 200 * 3 + 280 * 5) / .9 + (83.33 * 3 + 150 + 190 + 270)) * 1.2 / 9)
Damage: 369.48 / GCD (((83.33 * 6 + 150 + 190 + 250 + 150 + 200 + 280) / .9 + (83.33 * 3 + 150 + 190 + 270)) * 1.2 / 9)
SP debuff

SE>BB (high damage)
Enmity: 724.44 / GCD ((83.33 * 6 + 150 + 190 + 270 + 150 + 200 * 3 + 280 * 5) * 1.2 / .9 / 6)
Damage: 386.66 / GCD ((83.33 * 6 + 150 + 190 + 270 + 150 + 200 + 280) * 1.2 / .9 / 6)
no SP debuff

SP>SE(offtank, minimum enmity)
Enmity: 377.77 / GCD ((83.33 * 6 + 150 + 190 + 250 + 150 + 190 + 270) * 1.2 / .9 / 6)
Damage: 377.77 / GCD ((83.33 * 6 + 150 + 190 + 250 + 150 + 190 + 270) * 1.2 / .9 / 6)
SP debuff

For comparison, BB spam
Enmity: 800.00 / GCD ((83.33 * 3 + 150 + 200 * 3 + 280 * 5) / 3)
Damage: 293.33 / GCD ((83.33 * 3 + 150 + 200 + 280) / 3)
no SP debuff

SP>SE>BB is a better attack string than SP>BB>BB if your other tank isn't riding your ass on enmity since it's easily enough to keep aggro off of DPS but it's substantially lower than RoH spam or any other non-OT attack string. If you're running with another WAR that is kind enough to be running the OT rotation, which keeps up the SE debuff constantly, SP>BB>BB is the better one to use since you only use SE in order to provide the ~11% increase in damage to your own BB and SP.

SP>SE is the OT rotation because it deals nearly as much damage as SE>BB (only 9 potency/GCD less), keeps up both debuffs on a permanent basis, and generates low enough enmity that you pose no threat to the MT's enmity generation even if you overgear them.

As for Fracture, this is somewhat arguable but I keep Fracture up when not tanking (provided that the target won't die or become invulnerable for the next 30 seconds) and otherwise don't bother using Fracture when Defiance is up.

Fracture is a 300 potency hit that you can throw out once every 13 GCDs (12 GCDs for the DoT duration w/o breaking combos and 1 GCD for itself). Considering the average potency/GCD from special attacks of most of those attack strings is ~200, assuming you're not messing with Maim/SE debuff uptime, you're getting an extra 100 potency every 13 GCDs, which is 7.69 potency/GCD. Assuming a baseline potency/GCD of ~370 (SP>SE>BB, which is the median), that's a 2.08% increase in DPS (it's actually lower than this because using it would interfere with Maim and SE debuff).

The problem with Fracture, however, is that it is expensive. The WAR combos all consume 63.33 TP/GCD ((70 + 60 + 60) / 3). As such, throwing in Fracture every 13 GCDs equates to a cost of 64.61 TP/GCD ((63.33 * 12 + 80) / 13), which is a 2.02% increase in TP cost.

As such, in any TP constrained scenario (any prolonged fight without regular periods of doing nothing, e.g. Titan HM and EX, coil), Fracture doesn't really do anything and, in fact, will end up reducing your damage by stopping you from reapplying Maim/SE when you're TP starved. If TP isn't a consideration at all, it's a tiny DPS increase that you probably wouldn't notice.

Offensive cooldown management is pretty much based on common sense. They are strongest when used in conjunction with each other. Use them as often as possible, but also make sure that you have them for the key moments in the fight. Unchained and Berserk are good for starting fights, for tank swaps, and snap-aggro on newly spawned adds.

You actually don't want to use Berserk on CD because it ends up contributing less over time than if you only use it once every 120 seconds while you've got Unchained. The reason for this is pretty simple: the 33% damage increase from Unchained balances out the loss of contribution from artificially increasing the CD by 33% (90->120) but it also reduces the loss in damage from the Pacification effect from it by 33% for the same reason.

If you've got IR, you want to use Unchained>Berserk>IR in that order whenever you've got Unchained up and use IR on CD otherwise (it's a 60 sec CD compared to Unchained's 120).

[JeTaisNoobie]

Text

Like you said, you "think" tanks should get rid of that mentality. This shows that you yourself feel it is not entirely worthwhile to go the extra mile of getting crafted accessories.

Your idea is great, having more dps and all, but I never did say that since we are tanks, DPS is not important to us. There is a really large difference, just FYI.

[Gamemako]

[INDENT]Max Enmity: Butcher's Block combo only

Kitru debunked this already. This just isn't a good idea, ever.

Standard Tanking: Storm's Path, Butcher's Block x2, Repeat

You lose Storm's Path for at least 1 GCD, probably two, three if you're using IB and Fracture both. Unless you're hurting for aggro, you should just alternate SP and BB to maintain SP permanently or use SP-SE-BB for the damage boost. If I really need to generate more enmity, I'd rather use Unchained + Berserk + SE/BB/BB to get a big lead at a time when I can afford it (with Bloodbath to account for the lost mitigation), then fall back on SP/BB for staying alive.

Max Damage: Storm's Eye, Butcher's Block, Repeat

Much more important use of this: it's what the OT does when you have two WARs. MT can use SP/BB and OT can use SE/BB. Both buffs stay up, max damage is achieved.

If you're going for optimal melds (8 Vit, 6 Det/9 Crit, 6 Parry, 6 Parry, 2 Vit):

Don't meld critical hit rate for WAR. It is the least-valuable of all secondary stats. Skill speed is best up to a point, especially if you're using Sauteed Coeurl. The extra hit in Berserk alone is more than you can get in total from CHR. Max damage and mitigation rate come from skill speed, but you also get increased resource drain. Determination is a good compromise, especially if you're going to mix-and-match with i90 at times and can't guarantee enough skill speed to get the extra hit off. Critical hit rate just plain sucks for WAR since all crit bonuses are flat.

[INDENT]Garuda EX (MT): i90 VIT - As Main Tank, Double Wicked Wheel is the main hazard in this fight. Whether you try to dodge or mitigate it, it's safer to go with max VIT. This is somewhat arguable.

You can do double WW with 6500 HP. If you're doing any other method, it's even less damage. You absolutely do not need i90 VIT for Garuda EX.