Warrior defensive rotations with CDs please

do not macro any of your first tier mitigation tools like the above poster

2nd tier mitigation skills like: bloodbath, featherfoot, maybe even foresight sure but not your first tier

first tier would be:
Thrill
Veng
Convo

each of these should be used in high damage situations only

The only macro I use for WAR is for Featherfoot > Foresight; both are pretty weak, but they still have their value with Featherfoot being arguably stronger. With Featherfoot and Foresight, I will keep them on cooldown unless I know there are phases where all possible mitigation will be useful (eg; Sister phases on Garuda EX). For me, Bloodbath is normally kept on cooldown when any HP is missing or will be missing.

/micon Featherfoot
/ac Featherfoot <me>
/ac Foresight <me>



Veng., ToB and Convo. are all very strong in comparison and should be manually managed for highest benefit.

- Vengeance is completely proactive aside from the Wrath attached to it.

- Thrill of Battle is both proactive and reactive, but arguably stronger used proactively to stay out of that "oh shit!" zone.

- Convalescence is more so reactive, but it can also be use proactively to boost a Galvanize (Adloquium/Succor) shield.

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Originally Posted by Alwryn

Remember the theory of relevant mitigation.

It's not about how much damage you mitigate over the course of a fight that decides the outcome, it's survival. Every fight that could be called difficult has burst mechanics, wheelx2, MB, DS, incinerate spam, etc. These burst mechanics can kill even the best geared tanks, an unmitigated DS + auto can take me from full to zero in less then a second.

So the point is, just don't spam defensive cooldowns, know the fight and use them at the proper times.

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This guy knows his stuff. Listen to him.

A good time to pop featherfoot is on multiple adds attacking you in numbers greater than 3, so say spider's phases of turn 4. Also when your speed running and grabbing around 6 or more enemies at a time.

Combining featherfoot with bloodbath and vengeance on adds is also a good idea since they all feed off on each other. Blood bath feeds off vengeance hits as well as overpower spam/steel cyclone your likely to do, featherfoot will reduce the chances of successful enemy hits at least 1 on one of the enemies, and vengeance reduces of course the damage you take and as a added bonus helps kill the adds faster.

Bad times to pop featherfoot on single target bosses since these bosses have high accuracy on you and featherfoots effect on them is spotty at best.

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Originally Posted by Cessna

Combining featherfoot with bloodbath and vengeance on adds is also a good idea since they all feed off on each other.

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Featherfoot actually interferes with Vengeance because you have to be hit in order for Vengeance to deal the retributive damage (and cause Bloodbath to heal you for that little bit) and Featherfoot makes attack miss you (which renders any defense buff you might have active redundant). If anything, Featherfoot should only be used alongside Convalescence or ToB since those aren't reducing your incoming damage. If you explicitly *need* to use another CD on top of Vengeance for whatever reason, you'd be better served by using Foresight, ToB, or Convalescence.

I generally follow one of two mentalities concerning my tank CDs depending upon what I'm going to be tanking.

On tank swap fights, like Titan Ex and Ifrit Ex, where I can expect to be tanking roughly 50% of the time with a 30-40 active window, I'll use my CDs actively to make sure that I always have one up while I'm tanking (you've got 30-40 seconds of time on a regular basis where it doesn't matter if your CDs are up or not when you're not tanking so there's no reason to not get some use out of that time by having your CDs recharge). I use Featherfoot or Foresight right when I take over (because they're weak and you just want to reduce mean incoming damage to lighten healer load in the long term) and Conv/ToB/Vengeance when I'm 15-20 seconds away from no longer tanking based upon my tank buddy's remaining duration (since you really need the tank CDs when you've got 3-4 stacks of Suppuration on you, especially towards the end of the fight).

The general "rotation" for this is something like Foresight(20 secs)>Vengeance(15 secs)>Swap(~30 secs)>Featherfoot(15 secs)>Convalescence(20 seconds)>Swap(~30 seconds), which is a 130 second "cycle", allowing for a bit of overlap/flexibility, and keeps ToB in reserve for times when you're worried that you might drop through whichever CD is active (since it's only really effective for burst survival; the same applies for Holmgang).

On straight up tank fights, I'll keep my big CDs (Conv, Veng, ToB) in reserve but use Bloodbath, Foresight, and Featherfoot whenever I expect to be attacked for the full duration and I don't have another CD up at the time. Foresight isn't strong enough while it's active to really be noticeable as a tank CD in the short term and Featherfoot just isn't reliable, which is something you want out of an emergency CD. They're still quite nice because you can just use them all the time without worrying as to whether you're wasting them or might need them later on since you're not going to in either case.

In either case, I try not to layer CDs on top of each other unless it's a major emergency since I think it's something of a waste otherwise (stacking multiplicative mitigation buffs actually ends up diminishing their real value: reducing damage by 30% via Vengeance results in taking 70% of incoming damage, throw Foresight on top of it and you're taking ~63% for 15 seconds and 90% for 5 seconds; if you used them separately, you'd have gotten 15 seconds of 70% and 20 seconds of ~90%). ToB is something of an exception to this because all it does is increase eHP so it doesn't really have an appreciable mean contribution for you to worry about (it doesn't reduce incoming damage; it just makes sure you can survive spikes).

Like Most People have already said, you want to know the fights and use your best abilities right before those Big Hits or Whichever fits the situation.

What I like to do is Always Make sure Storm Path is Up.

And....

For Big Hits:
1. Inner Beast + Second Wind
2. Vengeance + Blood Bath
3. Thrill of Battle+Foresight
4. Convalescene+ Featherfoot
5. (Bonus) Mega Potion of Vit

The Combination of the skills above provide Great Synergy for me. I rarely have times where a big hit is coming and I dont have any way to mitigate it. Unless you blow them back to back, which I never do.


Inner Beast is My Bread and Butter, I stack alot of Skill Speed so I can use it about every20secs or so, thats why I combine my Big CD with my little ones since I can use Inner Beast so frequent. BUT in fights that require alot of mitigation, I save wrath to use IB right before thoses big hits so I dont have to waste other CD's.

I also save Infuriate for moments when I dont have 5 Stacks of Wrath to use or all of these Cool Downs are on timers. (Very Rare)

Well warrior have it both tough and easy.

Easy because if you are full on vit, you will have so much HP you will not get one shotted like a pld caught off guard. So face tanking is a lot more forgiving.

Tough, because warriors suck at damage mitigation. IB is not an Off-CD skill making that 6 seconds even worse (It's coming...omg CD!).

Vengenace is too long a CD to rely on more then once, and foresight is crap due to only being physical. Conv is limited since you already have massive healing surplus, and blood bath won't really do that much nor 2nd wind (and it's 700hp heals is it even worth a slot?).

Thrill is probably useful but limited, and realistically a war shouldn't be one shotted even unprotected.

So really, It's Inner beast/Vengeance or nothing. Foresight maybe if it happens to be physical, but everything else you might as well be used on CD, as the impact the fight very minor comparatively (though obviously some phases are more intense then others).

There isn't as many tricks as pld, for a war. Just gotta live on being good for IB when crap is coming.

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Originally Posted by kukurumei

Well warrior have it both tough and easy.

Easy because if you are full on vit, you will have so much HP you will not get one shotted like a pld caught off guard. So face tanking is a lot more forgiving.
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PLD and WAR have the same eHP so No matter if WAR has more HP, They will both get hit for the same % of Damage unmitigated if they are equally geared.

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Originally Posted by OmegaSinX

PLD and WAR have the same eHP so No matter if WAR has more HP, They will both get hit for the same % of Damage unmitigated.

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I can tell you a 6k Pld will die to a burst, but a 8k war will not die to the same burst. And this is before you are stacking on those storm path debuffs

Not all types of damage are the same.

There's a huge difference in on shotting between wars and plds.

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Originally Posted by kukurumei

I can tell you a 6k Pld will die to a burst, but a 8k war will not die to the same burst. And this is before you are stacking on those storm path debuffs

There's a huge difference in on shotting between wars and plds.

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I don't think so.. 6k PLD would be 7.5k War. It would take a 7500 damage hit to one shot both in their respective tanking stance. Less damage and both of them should still survive.