Defender

[Kyrial]

Am I the only one who wishes that instead of Defender Recast (which is nearly useless since the recast is the same as the duration already anyway...), we could merit Defender effect? For example, defense +5% attack-5% per merit, for a total of defense+50% attack-50% with 5/5 merits. It'd be awesome for skilling up, which is something WAR can spend a LOT of time doing if you're addicted to blue numbers like me...

[Arcon]

I very, very, very much approve of this. Very useful, not game breaking, and it would finally give me a reason to spend 5 of my 20 fulltime merits to cap my group 1 merits. I almost decided to spend those on Warcry Recast, just so I can claim to have WAR "fully" merited, but once I sobered up I decided against it. I would really appreciate this.

[Byrth]

I don't think there's anything wrong with what you're proposing, but I have a question for you:
How would anyone remotely serious about WAR not already be at 5 Berserk and 5 Double Attack?

[Kyrial]

I don't think there's anything wrong with what you're proposing, but I have a question for you:
How would anyone remotely serious about WAR not already be at 5 Berserk and 5 Double Attack?
I think a lot of WARs don't bother with any category 1 merits besides 5/5 Double Attack rate. I sure haven't. Sounds like Arcon up there hasn't either. Ever heard of the term Bergressor? The 2 are practically one ability to me. Having different timers on them would drive me nuts. Maybe it's because I'm not one of those Abyssea-era WARs? :rolleyes:

[Byrth]

I think a lot of WARs don't bother with any category 1 merits besides 5/5 Double Attack rate. I sure haven't. Sounds like Arcon up there hasn't either. Ever heard of the term Bergressor? The 2 are practically one ability to me. Having different timers on them would drive me nuts. Maybe it's because I'm not one of those Abyssea-era WARs? :rolleyes:

Haha, agree that you aren't an Abyssea era WAR. Let me guess, Ridill is still the best?

[Arcon]

I don't think there's anything wrong with what you're proposing, but I have a question for you:
How would anyone remotely serious about WAR not already be at 5 Berserk and 5 Double Attack?

I don't see any merit in reducing Berserk recast at all. If you use it out of sync with abilities like Aggressor, Warcry, Blood Rage, Sekkanoki and Warrior's Charge, you're just gimping your own damage. So I'd like to ask the opposite, why would anyone remotely serious about WAR want to gimp their own damage by doing that? It was just a useless thing to merit before Abyssea as it is now. Sure, there's nothing inherently wrong with meriting it, but actually using it out of sync makes you worse at what you do, so why would you?

If anything, meriting Warcry would make most sense out of the category, since occasionally you would use Zergressor before Warcry, cause you're trying to save it for a WS or something, so that for the next time Zergressor is up, Warcry would be up as well. However, I didn't merit it for aesthetic reasons, I simply like all my timers to be on sync. It's also why my only PLD group 1 merit is Cover Effect Length, the rest just doesn't make sense to merit.

[kingfury]

Am I the only one who wishes that instead of Defender Recast (which is nearly useless since the recast is the same as the duration already anyway...), we could merit Defender effect? For example, defense +5% attack-5% per merit, for a total of defense+50% attack-50% with 5/5 merits. It'd be awesome for skilling up, which is something WAR can spend a LOT of time doing if you're addicted to blue numbers like me...
------
I'd merit it and use it :) Yes Please! There are times while tanking using -50%PDT gear where i pop Defender in hopes to further reduce the dmg but nothing's doin', and I'm like, "Awww C'MON MAN!! Reduce the damn dmg already!! It's called DEFENDER!" ><' lol
-----
It would be magnificent to have something push our DEF to the shear pimpness of what PLDs can reach, so I'm all for it ^^ /
-----
And I say let us have our old group 1 merits as they are and just add this in with the new lvl 90~ group merits wherever they are lol All I know is, there better be some serious friggin -MDT% option in those new merits to come lol

[noodles355]

Oh my god there is so much fail in this thread.
By lowering the recast of Berserk, and not stacking it with all your other job abilities at once you are gimping your damage? Are you insane? That is just completely incorrect.

Firstly: You don't even need agressor inside abyssea.
Secondly: If you don't have the skill to hit two different macros at two different times then quit the game and go play Hello Kitty online.
Thirdly: The damage you gain by having berserk up for longer (or rather not having berserk for shorter) outweighs the effects of stacking it with every other job ability you have.

But you must be one of those wars who thinks that because they stack all their JA together for one weaponskill every 5 minutes that they are an insane damage dealer and absolutely kick ass. Go home.

Edit: You're also using Sekkanoki wrong.

[Retsujo]

I whole-heartedly agree with giving Warriors the option to tank better.

But I would like to see it in maybe a group3 merit category. Meriting Berserk is pretty beneficial and I don't want to be torn between tossing 15 merits back and forth based on situational situations. I'm not going to be superficial and biased towards Berserk like the rest of the people here, but I do agree with their argument. I can understand the uniform recast timers (especially since you only lose a minute on the timer with Berserk at 5/5), but at the same time a minute is 60 seconds, and that makes more of a difference than you might imagine.

[Arcon]

Firstly: You don't even need agressor inside abyssea.

You mean, don't need it outside of Abyssea, at least not for accuracy. Inside of Abyssea, even with all the buffs, is the only place where there's mobs who still demand some accuracy at least. With proper gear you won't need it on most of it, but it's a nice bonus for those certain situations.

But especially with all those buffs you can't underestimate a WAR's evasion, not on NMs, but other mobs. Having evasion reduced helps with Retaliation. So if you really wanna do damage, without regard for taking any (which currently encompasses 90% or so of my WAR activities, both in- and outside of Abyssea), this helps nicely with generating TP. I have a 40% evasion rate against dynamis mobs, with Aggressor I can floor it. And not only will this give more TP to use while under Berserk, but it will increase Retaliation damage too.


Secondly: If you don't have the skill to hit two different macros at two different times then quit the game and go play Hello Kitty online.

That's not skill, that's ill planning (or being slept/stunned/amnesiad while you were using your other JAs). And why would I play Hello Kitty online? Crafting is even more annoying there.


Thirdly: The damage you gain by having berserk up for longer (or rather not having berserk for shorter) outweighs the effects of stacking it with every other job ability you have.

Got proof for that? Enhancing a higher value by the same percentage as a lower value yields exponentially greater results, which make up for the ~17% increase in relative duration (which is not a 17% increase in the actual effect, since some of it will be out of sync with the other effects, which would profit from it).

Unmerited Berserk:
0.6*1.25 + 0.4 = 0.15 = 15% overall increase
Fully merited Berserk:
0.6*1.25 + 0.23 + 0.17*1.25 = 0.1925 = ~19% overall increase

So you just gain a 4% overall difference, meaning even at 800 Attack, would only net you an additional ~30 Attack, averaged over time. But occasionally, you will have a lot less attack on the abilities and weapon skills that matter, WSs loaded with Warcry or Blood Rage, self-skillchaining with Sekkanoki and closing with a Warrior's Charge WS. That alone would probably be enough to make up for the entire 4% Attack increase, not to mention Warcry and Blood Rage last enough to get several WS in.


You're also using Sekkanoki wrong.

You don't know how I'm using it and I'm fairly certain I use it correctly.

[SNK]

Defender really doesn't need to be adjusted... It's decent as it is..

[Kyrial]

Haha, agree that you aren't an Abyssea era WAR. Let me guess, Ridill is still the best?
No, I'm not part of the hardcore endgame crowd either. :p Always been a Great Axe WAR. I'm just one of the people whose play experience doesn't revolve around leveling/meritting and NMs. If anything, it revolves around quests and missions, and when I don't have any of those I feel like doing, I tend to work on capping skills, making magian weapons, crafting, or collecting things like maps, abyssites, useless atmas, etc.

[Byrth]

I could describe myself the same way. I'm less than 100 from capping out all WAR 90 skills and 7 Atma from Savior. Investing that much time in quests and stuff while not spending 3 hours or less to cap your merits the right way is a little much though. For GAxe WARs, 5 Berserk/5 DA has been the best combination literally forever.

[Kyrial]

WAR is not my only job, though. I also have SAM, BLU, WHM, and BLM at 90, and THF at 77 (I abandoned THF, but some merits did go into it before I abandoned it).

[Byrth]

I'm DNC, WAR, BLM, RDM, BST, SMN, (and level 82 BRD and 75 RNG)

The things I choose to do just happen to generate xp. I capped my merits for all of my jobs (including re-meritting things) while I was level 80 just doing things like farming Dark Rings or skilling up. It's not hard to cap merits when NMs drop 5k xp and normal monsters net 1k xp per kill (including Ops).

If it's a priority thing that's fine, but 5 Berserk and 5 DA is what you would do if you wanted to be the best.

[Mirage]

Defender sucks because of diminishing returns on def when you get big def-values. Maybe instead, it should give a bit of -PDT%

[Kyrial]

To be honest, I'd be more interested in the atk- than the def+. Like I said, I just want it for skilling up. XD

And no, I don't care about being the best. As long as I'm not doing a bad job, I'm fine. :p My merits are far from being capped (well, not far, but there's still plenty I could spend I guess), simply because I don't do as much that generates exp. My skilling up has almost all been done outside Abyssea, I've only farmed Dark Rings once (not for very long either), I don't fight NMs very often (just when I catch a shout for seals or abyssites/atma that I want), and I almost never join PTs for exp/cruor anymore once I have my jobs capped again, since it's boring as hell to me.

[Crazze]

So you just gain a 4% overall difference, meaning even at 800 Attack, would only net you an additional ~30 Attack, averaged over time. But occasionally, you will have a lot less attack on the abilities and weapon skills that matter, WSs loaded with Warcry or Blood Rage, self-skillchaining with Sekkanoki and closing with a Warrior's Charge WS. That alone would probably be enough to make up for the entire 4% Attack increase, not to mention Warcry and Blood Rage last enough to get several WS in.

If you are using Warrior's Charge for WS's then I am actually fairly sure you don't know what you are doing. Warrior's Charge gives better damage output if used to gain tp faster to do an additional WS not using it during a WS and getting a few extra damage from it.

[Arcon]

Using Warrior's Charge alone with the inherent JA delay will prevent you from doing an extra swing with a little haste (gear cap + spell is probably enough), losing one hit to (maybe) gain another. Remember that a good WAR has almost 30% Double Attack rate in their TP set anyway, which makes it useful only in 70% of all cases, the rest of the time you're just wasting it.

Theoretically, this would also apply to WS, but with Warrior's Charge up, you can ignore DA equip for WS and focus on ATT/STR. I doubt you'd change your melee gear mid TPing just cause WC is up.


[..] and getting a few extra damage from it.

You can get over 3k damage from it on WS, and on average you prolly get over 1k inside Abyssea.

You say I don't know what I'm doing, math says you don't know what you're doing. And if you get owned by math, better not flame about others.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Why would you ignore DA equip on a WS when you can DA more than once. Unless you're using a 1 hit WS, but then why are you using a one hit for damage at all. (Skilling up doesn't count)

[Arcon]

For Steel Cyclone. It's true that otherwise it would still makes sense, although returns are smaller.

If you belive the current theory that you can only DA on the first two hits, let's look at Raging Rush. With Warrior's Charge up, first hit being 100% and 3rd hit 0% regardless, that leaves a 30% chance to turn 4 hits into 5 hits. So a ~30% chance to get a 25% bonus, averaging at ~7.5% bonus damage. And without full DA gear you'd still get at least a 15% DA from trait/merit, and maybe even a bit extra DA on certain WS gear (Ravager's Cuisses +2 and Atheling Mantle come to mind), so you'd still have ~20% even without going for DA itself. So without gearing for DA, you'd get a ~20% chance to get a 25% bonus, meaning still a 5% increase on average. So with Warrior's Charge up, even on a multihit WS, you'd only get ~2.5% extra damage increase with DA gear. And that's thinking optimistically.

It may still be worth it, but can quite possibly be outweighed by good alternative WS gear. Sea gorget instead if Ravager's Gorget would be a good example. This still assumes that only the first two hits of a WS can DA, which I'm still not convinced of, but I believe it currently is the most dominant theory.

Anyway, it doesn't invalidate my point that Warrior's Charge damage on WS outweighs the extra TP gain you would get from it.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Sea Gorget wins regardless of WC being up or not. Ravager is only good for Tp phase if acc is capped and you don't need STP.

[Arcon]

Yeah definitely, I was just naming a piece of Double Attack gear that you would sacrifice for something else for WS. My point is, Double Attack gear on WSs isn't everything.

[Kuwabaraone]

Well, I will always stand by this creed for WAR: We are the Original Tanks. I'm not much of a Highend DD WAR as I use
Defender/Retaliation almost religiously. Been doing that ever since I got WAR to 60. Man, still remember the days I was on Full AF with Defender/Retal on. Could WS like the best of them; but I digress. Having a boost in Defender defenses is a good idea, but it probably won't be on the level for PLDs just yet. If anything, have Defender raise Parry rates for WARs with G.Axe equipped. Just a thought.

KB1

[Panthera]

At the very least, what needs to be fixed about is its duration.

Recasting a buff like this on Paladin/war is just tedious. Generally speaking, if you're gonna use Defender, you're going to keep it up full time, not up sometimes and down other times.

Take Scholar's Dark Arts / Light Arts. Scholars do not need to fool around with using the same Job Ability over and over again; Light Arts stays up almost for as long as they need it to.

Popping Defender every five minutes is just meaningless, repetitive button pushing adds nothing to gameplay. The duration should be increased to until the player zones or dies, in addition to any other adjustments.

[Babekeke]

Well, I will always stand by this creed for WAR: We are the Original Tanks. I'm not much of a Highend DD WAR as I use
Defender/Retaliation almost religiously. Been doing that ever since I got WAR to 60. Man, still remember the days I was on Full AF with Defender/Retal on. Could WS like the best of them; but I digress. Having a boost in Defender defenses is a good idea, but it probably won't be on the level for PLDs just yet. If anything, have Defender raise Parry rates for WARs with G.Axe equipped. Just a thought.

KB1

You talk like you remember back before PLD and NIN were introduced and you were tanking on war with retaliation... but retaliation was only introduced in March '08 lol

[Nemesio]

At the very least, what needs to be fixed about is its duration.

Recasting a buff like this on Paladin/war is just tedious. Generally speaking, if you're gonna use Defender, you're going to keep it up full time, not up sometimes and down other times.

Take Scholar's Dark Arts / Light Arts. Scholars do not need to fool around with using the same Job Ability over and over again; Light Arts stays up almost for as long as they need it to.

Popping Defender every five minutes is just meaningless, repetitive button pushing adds nothing to gameplay. The duration should be increased to until the player zones or dies, in addition to any other adjustments.

How in the world is pushing a button every 3 minutes tedious?

[Invasion]

I'm getting a great deal of lulz reading these forums.

[Kuwabaraone]

You talk like you remember back before PLD and NIN were introduced and you were tanking on war with retaliation... but retaliation was only introduced in March '08 lol

Yeah, that is true. Still, would be nice if Defender did raise the rate at which a WAR parries. That bonus could also work with just Great Axes too, since that's a WAR's Best weapon.

KB1

[Relyk]

I'm getting a great deal of lulz reading these forums.

^^ ¥€s

And anyone who merited on war back in the Lolibri days will confirm that only 2/3 hits ever double attack.

[Harukusan]

This thread makes me want to punch a kitten. Seriously, I'm actually sickened and offended by the things people admit to the way they play WAR. I wanted to believe that people knew better and that they didn't need much help to learn how to play. But this really further brought my suspicions to reality.

The WARs sporting full Perle and sun rings and stuff still reign supreme as the "majority." While you guys are enjoying doing your 600 dmg Raging Rushes once every few minutes, I'll be out there one-shotting your exp mobs in an attempt to prevent you from contaminating the minds of other players, leading them to believe you qualify as a role-model, when they have a real urge to learn how to do things right.

If you want real advice on the job, don't use this thread as a reference.

[Arcon]

And anyone who merited on war back in the Lolibri days will confirm that only 2/3 hits ever double attack.

I can't confirm this. I've had some memorable (though few) moments of 21 TP return on WS. And yes, I'm very sure I wasn't hit in that time, also, the damage I dealt pointed towards a 6-hit as well. I clearly remember a 2.3k WS on a Mamool Ja with 21 TP return. It's also happened in Dynamis recently with a 3.4k RR.

I don't know what caused it, I didn't have Store TP rolls and every normal melee hit I did gave 16.x TP (and I had the same Store TP in WS gear, Brutal + Rajas). A convenient explanation would be a threefold Double Attack. Or it was an exceptionally critical double hit when Conserve TP kicked in, to return this weird value. I'm not sure, but it's happened more than once, enough to cast a shadow of doubt on that statement.

Also, assuming you had capped accuracy and full Double Attack merits and would WS in useful Double Attack gear, the chance for this to happen would be way under 1%. So on average it wouldn't even happen once in over a 100 WS. And chances are occasionally you won't notice, or conserve TP would kick in and ruin the value, or you'd get hit right after and your measure would be off, etc. There's a high chance you wouldn't notice it even after quite a few merit parties.

Again, not sure what it really was, but those incidents really had me confused and I can't explain them any other way.

[Byrth]

I'll lay it out for you brotha.

21 STP during WS with a 504 delay GA like Perdu Voulge (13.7 base TP) from Brutal, Rajas, and /SAM gives:
16.5 TP from the main swing
17.7 TP if you land one extra hit
18.9 TP if you land two extra hits
20.1 TP if you land three extra hits
21.3 TP if you land four extra hits (2 DAs)

I did a lot of Raging Rushes in Abyssea with 34% Double Attack and 0% Triple Attack during Visions of Abyssea and never saw a 3-DA return (should have been a 3% chance with capped Acc).

Myth busted.

[Jkr]

25% chance to completely defend against dmg might be more useful, but the loss of attack really makes this job ability a waste, just like the merit category... -6 seconds whoopdy

[Relyk]

I'll lay it out for you brotha.

21 STP during WS with a 504 delay GA like Perdu Voulge (13.7 base TP) from Brutal, Rajas, and /SAM gives:
16.5 TP from the main swing
17.7 TP if you land one extra hit
18.9 TP if you land two extra hits
20.1 TP if you land three extra hits
21.3 TP if you land four extra hits (2 DAs)

I did a lot of Raging Rushes in Abyssea with 34% Double Attack and 0% Triple Attack during Visions of Abyssea and never saw a 3-DA return (should have been a 3% chance with capped Acc).

Myth busted.

Thank you, I knew if it was possible I would have seen it at some point. I don't have parses of TP returns or anything but my sample size was rather large.. If you know what I mean ;)

[Arcon]

I'll lay it out for you brotha.

21 STP during WS with a 504 delay GA like Perdu Voulge (13.7 base TP) from Brutal, Rajas, and /SAM gives:
16.5 TP from the main swing
17.7 TP if you land one extra hit
18.9 TP if you land two extra hits
20.1 TP if you land three extra hits
21.3 TP if you land four extra hits (2 DAs)

I did a lot of Raging Rushes in Abyssea with 34% Double Attack and 0% Triple Attack during Visions of Abyssea and never saw a 3-DA return (should have been a 3% chance with capped Acc).

Myth busted.

That explained a lot, I never thought to apply the Store TP value to the additional hits. Although that brings up more questions..

This model skips 19 TP return, which I have quite often. If you applied the Store TP values before rounding down to 13.7 (13.72) then it would skip 18, which I also have very often, most actually. But it does make sense, I'll just have to pay more attention now that I know and see my results. Although I just added more Store TP with Ravager's Lorica +2, so the progression should be 17 > 18 > 20 > 21 > 22. So if I see any 19 TP returns I'll come bother you again.

[Byrth]

That explained a lot, I never thought to apply the Store TP value to the additional hits. Although that brings up more questions..

This model skips 19 TP return, which I have quite often. If you applied the Store TP values before rounding down to 13.7 (13.72) then it would skip 18, which I also have very often, most actually. But it does make sense, I'll just have to pay more attention now that I know and see my results. Although I just added more Store TP with Ravager's Lorica +2, so the progression should be 17 > 18 > 20 > 21 > 22. So if I see any 19 TP returns I'll come bother you again.

Ok~! Remember that you probably don't use a 504 delay GA anymore.

[Relyk]

That explained a lot, I never thought to apply the Store TP value to the additional hits. Although that brings up more questions..

This model skips 19 TP return, which I have quite often. If you applied the Store TP values before rounding down to 13.7 (13.72) then it would skip 18, which I also have very often, most actually. But it does make sense, I'll just have to pay more attention now that I know and see my results. Although I just added more Store TP with Ravager's Lorica +2, so the progression should be 17 > 18 > 20 > 21 > 22. So if I see any 19 TP returns I'll come bother you again.

Nor do you WS in ravagers Lorica!

[Yarly]

This thread explains all the full perle warriors at 90.

[Arcon]

Ok~! Remember that you probably don't use a 504 delay GA anymore.

I actually do. My playtime is too restricted lately to even begin to try for an Ukonvasara and even if it wasn't, grinding makes my soul die. I'm too much of a casual player these days to bother much with that. I even tried holding on to some scales when I got them randomly on some +2 farm, so I could turn them in eventually, but someone at SE headquarters had the glorious idea of not making them stackable. And my inv being a horror as it is, I decided to toss them again, so for now at least, Ukonvasara is out of the question.


Nor do you WS in ravagers Lorica!

I do as well for now. And until I get an affordable HQ Grim Cuirass I'll keep doing it too, or whatever else the next update has in store. Despite people's claims that gil is useless these days I actually have a good use for mine and I don't like blowing it on temporary items. If I got a Grim Cuirass just a while ago I would have lost several million already, and at this point I would want to sell it again. I don't mind gimping it out for a while for the greater good, I play too casually to care too much at this point, especially with lots of free and easy to get gear that's still great and will hold me over till the game stabilizes again.

[Byrth]

In Abyssea, Zahak's is going to beat Lorica +2. Outside of Abyssea, Zahak's may be best again, or twilight in weird situations.

[Neisan_Quetz]

With RR, even Perle Hauberk is better than Emp body (only thing I can think of that's potentially worse is Haubergeon). NQ Cuirass would beat Emp Body last I checked as well, and definitely Zahak's inside Abyssea. Outside Zahak's and Twilight Mail assuming high but not quite capped dDEX ( still doesn't exist for me) and even Adaberk picks up some steam but is still not worth aiming for unless you already had one.

[GlobalVariable]

Screw defender. Let me merit retaliation in its place.