war = overpowerful

[Arcon]

Abyssea is not as successful as people make it out to be. Emphasis on is. It used to be, when it was released, it may have even saved FFXI to some degree, because right after it was released, the game had the right balance. HNMLS still had the advantage of having more dedicated players and getting all the goodies sooner than most other people. However, even casual players had a better chance at obtaining good stuff and fighting the hardest NMs, because pop items were easy to come by, respawn timers were lower than anything they knew before, and once people figured out weakness targetting, it was even possible to get the rarest drops.

It was something new, something that expanded people's experience, gave them new things to do, made EXPing a lot easier, people were able to level other jobs with ease, it seemed like everything was right for a while. However, that didn't last. By making more and more broken Atmas and buffs, Abyssea developed in a way that left some aspects of the game completely in the dust. The new experience became monotony, new and exciting NMs became tedious time wasters on the way to obtain armor and weapons.

By now, lots of people are jumping off again, maybe even more than Abyssea managed to reel in. I know many people who finished pretty much everything they wanted now, and it hasn't been a year since Abyssea was released. Casual players get frustrated to find people to do things with, because most people either have a static to do stuff with, or already got everything they wanted. Even I, and I consider myself a casual player (especially for the last half year), have almost all the things I wanted. Sure, it's not that easy for everyone, but it's only a matter of time. I even know whole HNMLS are tired of grinding for empyrean weapons, and they have nothing else to do anymore.

So we're looking at approximately three month completion time for each Abyssea area, and it would probably be even less, since it took people a while to figure it out. Even releasing more Abyssea expansions wouldn't help, since they would have to introduce massively new content, otherwise they would be finished just as quickly. Abyssea is just AF3/Empyrean farming ground, the actual end game content will need to be in the form of new expansions, long lasting ones. Think CoP or ToAU in scope, otherwise it will end up just like Abyssea, completely devoured of content in a few months. And I'm pretty sure SE is aware of that.

And to say something on topic, I do think WAR was supposed to be one of the hardest hitting, if not the hardest hitting DD. DRK was supposed to be a counterpart to PLD, offensive not just through brute force, but also by magic. SAM was supposed to be more of a tank than WAR ever was. If anything I'd say DRG was supposed to be the heaviest DD, followed by (or on par with) WAR. WAR has always had low defensive capabilities, the only thing they ever got to tank was Defender and part of their AF1 set. All other abilities focus on pure DD, often sacrificing defensive capabilties completely. Berserk and Aggressor make tanking efficiently impossible, Retaliation (unlike Counter, native to MNK and SAM) doesn't mitigate their own damage, instead just uses it to inflict more on the opponent (which is more than can be said for DRKs, since the damage they take from Souleater is mitigated by Blood Weapon, not to mention Dread Spikes). WAR literally has no means to stay alive for any period of time if they're on their own, subpar defense, evasion, no healing/blinking abilities, nothing to save them from dying. Just look at the names of their abilities: Berserk, Aggressor, Warcry, Blood Rage, Savagery, Warrior's Charge, Mighty Strikes. Does any of that even sound defensive? Everything about them is offensive, including their weapons, which are as brute as it gets. Nothing says hurt like a huge axe to the face.

The only thing that speaks for WAR as a defensive job is Defender and its access to a line of heavy defense gear, PLD style. Which, btw, DRK can wear too (Iron Ram, Valhalla, many miscallaneous items), the only notable exception being the Koenig set, WAR/PLD exclusive. Apart from that, they're almost all WAR/PLD/DRK, including many swords and shields. I'm not even sure where the myth that WAR made good tanks came from, maybe it was because it holds true for lower levels, however that can be said of most jobs. At 75, WAR/NIN occasionally made good tanks, but that wasn't because of their survival capabilities, but because they kept hate and with some skill could keep a somewhat stable Utsusemi cycle up, not any more than any other job though.

I've always taken the term "jack of all trades" for WAR to mean other weapons, not between offense and defense. And even while that was very true, it was not "master of none" because with a Great Axe, WAR excelled in the DD category, only beaten by great SAMs. Assuming roughly the same gear and skill, an average WAR would almost always beat an average SAM. SAM had more offensive capabilities though, stemming mostly from gear and Overwhelm, which boosted their strengths exactly where it was needed, which is why, used to its full potential, a perfect SAM would beat a perfect WAR. DRK may have been great before my time (from what people told me), but ever since I hit WAR75 two years ago, I never found a DRK that even came close to my damage (or that of an average SAM or DRG for that matter), so can't really vouch for them. From my experience, WAR has always been the second best DD, after very skilled SAMs.

I don't think having WAR in pole position for DDs is that much of a stretch, especially if you consider what I said before and look at Abyssea as a thing of the past. Inside of Abyssea WAR may indeed be overpowered, but outside of Abyssea WAR isn't that much better than other DDs, certainly not worth having to adjust. If anything, I think Empyreans themselves (for every job) are overpowered, but WAR in relation to other jobs is just fine the way it is.

[StingRay104]

Ya you haven't been playing long enough or don't know enough about stuff before your time to be makin a comment about war's true intent was. First off war was one of 6 jobs to be released originally before zilart came out, and war was intended to be a job that could handle offensive and defensive but not be the best of either, mnk was the high dd and thf was the spike dmg dealer. When they released zilart war stayed in that niche while Drk became the heavy hitter, sam became the ws/sc master, pld became the tank, Drg became the hard hittin dot job with pet assistance, mnk became the highest dot but with lots of small hits, bst was master of the solo leveling, and thf stayed the same. After the first expansion things started to lose balance constantly, tp gain became an issue with multihit ws's, soboro nerfed sam a grand total of 5 times, and bandwagon jobs were born (First being DRG and it was rmt's constant use of drg that coined the phrase loldrg and thus started the lolinsertjobhere phrase). In all this time war and even war/nin has been a decent tank, granted not the best for endgame as we know it nowadays, but still good at it, and I have had several good war tanks in my shells through the years and it is for this reason I say that claims of war not being a decent tank are ridiculous, I've seen it, you can argue that was just a case of a great war with great gear, but it still doesn't change the fact that it can be done, besides its become alot easier to get great gear, and I'm sure lots of great tank war's utilize the magian trial axes to make them awesome.

As for drk's tanking, well yes drk's can take some hits, but they suffer from worst def than warrior. True we have access to most the endgame tank gear war has, but that wasn't the point behind my statement, because after all who wants a drk tank? Answer no one. Drk isn't good at tanking, and its spell dread spikes is only meant to keep the drk alive during its short time of maintaining hate from high dmg til the tank can regain control of the enemy, also it has a long recast time and only handles up to half the drks max hp in dmg convert and can be resisted. As for sam, until seigan sam was not meant to tank, the introduction of hasso and seigan was much later than sams initial release, and it was then that sam become a somewhat reliable tank, though its all random on how well they tank, I've personally have had good times and bad times at seigan tanking. In truth War is always a viable option as tank, as is pld nin mnk and sometimes sam.

As for wars capabilities outside of abyssea this once again kinda predates you, but I'm sure you have heard of if not experienced it personally idk, but they are still quite strong outside of abyssea. 3 years ago I was at the top of my endgame searching and I found a great LS that did all endgame, I had lots of fun doing all the endgame things like Sky, Sea, Einherjar, Limbus, Dynamis, HNM, VNM, KSNM99, and sometimes Salvage, It was in Einherjar that overall dmg was a must. It was necessary for us to do as much dmg as possible in the short 30 min time frame in order to win that chamber, and so we always had some parsers goin on so that we could tell how each persons dmg was and would look to improve our performance to accomplish the task. Everytime we did a parse the wars were on top, this was at least 2 years prior to abyssea, and wars were at the top of dmg tiers say for Kclub drk's who would use souleater blood weapon to destroy something in 30 secs, which 30 secs of ultimate dmg every 2hrs isn't viable, but war was always top tier dmg despite all the claims of sam being broken, my ls leader was a sam and he had tons of super high end sam gear and he couldn't out due these wars. On another point I've done several merit pts with wars with fortitude axes, now this was just absolutely unfair, virtue stone weapons are for super fast hitting and tp gain in exchange for reduced dmg but in the long run dot will be higher, yet the wars were hitting 1.5k+ ws's constantly and very fast while my sam was doin 800+ gekko's at a slower speed, hell my drg which was piercing against birds couldn't compete, my rng could match the dmg but not the speed. All was evident before that war was overpowered but ppl kept insisting that sam was still broken despite numerous nerfs. Now as I've clearly stated I don't want nerfs, they aren't gonna help only hurt, and my purpose for this was to stand by the statement that war is in fact overpowered and other jobs need to be brought to their respective power lvl considering that war is the jack of all trades, master of none job. Of course I'm sure you wouldn't like that concept because who doesn't want to stand at the top, but its been to long and unbalanced gameplay is what is driving ppl away from FF11, I've been playin since the beginning of 2005, I've closely followed the game since its launch in japan trying to decide when was the best time to start, and I've seen lots of ppl come and go, hell most my friends list has left the game, and some of my old friends have shown up again, it happens, and the reason is balance, I'm not saying drk should be top ultimate dmg, but it should be a lil bit better than war at dmg, and war should be a lil bit better at tanking, and gear and skill choices should be the ultimate deciding factor on how well a job does not just well this job just so happens to have this and therefore its better than yours.

THIS IS NOT A CALL FOR A NERF THIS IS A CALL FOR BALANCE WITHOUT NERFING, BALANCE IS WHAT WILL BRING PPL BACK TO THIS GAME AND MAKE IT MORE FUN, HELL THE ONLY REASON PPL ARE UPSET IS THAT ABYSSEA MADE IT UNBALANCED BECAUSE SOME JOBS HAD MORE ADVANTAGES THAN OTHERS, WHICH IS WHY WE NEED TO FOCUS ON BRINGING BACK THE BALANCE, IF YOU ONLY READ ONE PART OF MY POST THEN READ THIS.

[Kuwabaraone]

THIS IS NOT A CALL FOR A NERF THIS IS A CALL FOR BALANCE WITHOUT NERFING, BALANCE IS WHAT WILL BRING PPL BACK TO THIS GAME AND MAKE IT MORE FUN, HELL THE ONLY REASON PPL ARE UPSET IS THAT ABYSSEA MADE IT UNBALANCED BECAUSE SOME JOBS HAD MORE ADVANTAGES THAN OTHERS, WHICH IS WHY WE NEED TO FOCUS ON BRINGING BACK THE BALANCE, IF YOU ONLY READ ONE PART OF MY POST THEN READ THIS.

The Balance is broken. Accept your fate.

KB1

PS. Even with WAR being overpowered, it will never be enough, and you KNOW IT.

[Leonlionheart]

tons of dirbble

oh god, I hope this stupidity doesn't continue. WAR has always been the big end DD. GA has always had the biggest damage output with the safety of SATA Steel Cyclone and good gear, it just used to be that that gear only came from incredibly hard to get HNMs like Nidhogg, so not everyone could be doing 3k Steel Cyclones.

Now everyone and their grandmothers are making Maschu's and Ukonvasara's and are busting out high numbers with minimal work.

[Kuwabaraone]

oh god, I hope this stupidity doesn't continue. WAR has always been the big end DD. GA has always had the biggest damage output with the safety of SATA Steel Cyclone and good gear, it just used to be that that gear only came from incredibly hard to get HNMs like Nidhogg, so not everyone could be doing 3k Steel Cyclones.

Now everyone and their grandmothers are making Maschu's and Ukonvasara's and are busting out high numbers with minimal work.

Doubt gear has any testiment to skill, but more on dedication to the job and craft. That aside, WAR still isn't powerful enough. When M.Strikes drops it needs to push 5k per hit on Great Axe, NOT WS, Regular ol' whacks to da face! WS on M.Strikes need to peek out on 100k damage on Great Axe! THAT'S RIGHT! I SAID THAT! Hate/Flame/Troll me all you want!

KB1

[TheBarrister]

To the admins and devs, Warrior is right where it needs to be. Good balance of offensive abilities with multiple weapons. Not able to trigger every single Blue!!, and not able to be both an offensive and defensive powerhouse at the same time.