The definitive WAR answer STR vs VIT... and stat caps

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Originally Posted by BattleShipSkyLobster

Anyone looking for actual information about this game should never try to learn from these forums. They are full of bad information and an obnoxious amount of complaint and QQ posts.

1. Put all your points into vitality, WAR or PLD.
2. Anyone who disagrees with that, is bad, and wrong.
3. Warriors are fine and completely balanced, and if you disagree you are a bad who needs to l2p.
4. Yes i'm serious.
5. We have cleared turn 4 with a warrior tank, and it is substantially easier than with 2 PLD due to WAR snap aggro on adds.
6. People should stop saying PLD can dps the same as a warrior. There is no tanking situation in the entire end game where
sword oath is viable whatsoever while tanking. And obviously AoE damage the WAR brings significantly more to the table.

That's all.

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You strike me as the kind of guy who fulltimes Defiance. Am I correct?

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Originally Posted by poh

I have a WAR and PLD, my highest crit on war is 992, the pld gets 315. You guys really think pld has higher single target dps? Play both classes before you compare them.

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Spike damage is rarely a good measure of DPS, even assuming those numbers are accurate and gathered under identical conditions.

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Originally Posted by poh

I have a WAR and PLD, my highest crit on war is 992, the pld gets 315. You guys really think pld has higher single target dps? Play both classes before you compare them.

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Are you...honestly trying to state that...the DPS a warrior does is entirely better based upon the damage of a single ability?
Damage per second = damage over time

Warrior does have greater burst, but it means nothing given that its overall damage is just the same as a Paladin's.

Edit: misread post

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Originally Posted by HiirNoivl

The flawed Logic of Vit stacking is the idea that your HP points make you a better WAR. It adds a lot to your surviving, but in the end a Vit-stacked WAR is just a Terrible PLD.

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To be an effective tank, WAR must at a bare minimum do three things:

1. Hold aggro
2. Reduce healer load sufficiently that healers can manage
3. Not die

WAR can do 1 no sweat. WAR is inferior to PLD at 2, and STR (marginally) helps this. However, STR-built WAR is unable to complete 3, which makes that WAR unable to function as a tank at endgame. That is why people are migrating to pure VIT. I've said it many times: STR will make you a better tank than VIT for all pre-endgame content. However, once you reach a certain damage threshold, all the STR in the world won't prevent the inevitable and unavoidable wipes. That threshold is reached in BC, and adding VIT is mandatory until gear is sufficient to reduce damage threshold such that your tank can withstand the big hits without keeling over.

It's not really that complicated. Because the job has no direct mitigation abilities, WAR has to be able to absorb hits innately before it drains the health back, and WAR has no more eHP than PLD. This is the gaping hole which forces WAR to dump everything into VIT to be viable. Once you have reached an HP number which give you enough of a buffer to survive, you can dump points into STR at your leisure.

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Originally Posted by BattleShipSkyLobster

Nonsense

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*headdesk*

Because eHP is identical, there is actually no reason to dump all PLD points into VIT if the game can be tanked at all with WAR. WAR does not out-damage PLD when you compare Sword Oath to non-Defiance WAR. It only outdamages PLD in tank stance, and one tank isn't using a tank stance much of the time. WAR self-healing is less than Wrath's healing bonus, and PLD is stomping Wrath's healing bonus in terms of eHP as well (15% for 5 stacks of Wrath, effective 25% for Shield Oath). They are not remotely balanced. But please, regale us with the mathematical proofs that you don't have because you haven't bothered to consider the issue at all.

You're one of those people who just believes that everything is magically innately balanced because developers are, like, totally infallible and stuff. News flash: developers are people too, and they make mistakes. WAR is gimped. Get over it. If you like playing a gimped class, then more power to you, but don't come here spouting bullshit.

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Originally Posted by Ysarel

You strike me as the kind of guy who fulltimes Defiance. Am I correct?

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He has a level 2 Marauder. He's a PLD who is main-tanking everything and probably never turns off Shield Oath. He's going by his FC, not by his own experience, which is probably why he doesn't consider the use of turning off Defiance.

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Originally Posted by Gamemako

To be an effective tank, WAR must at a bare minimum do three things:

1. Hold aggro
2. Reduce healer load sufficiently that healers can manage
3. Not die

WAR can do 1 no sweat. WAR is inferior to PLD at 2, and STR (marginally) helps this. However, STR-built WAR is unable to complete 3, which makes that WAR unable to function as a tank at endgame. That is why people are migrating to pure VIT. I've said it many times: STR will make you a better tank than VIT for all pre-endgame content. However, once you reach a certain damage threshold, all the STR in the world won't prevent the inevitable and unavoidable wipes. That threshold is reached in BC, and adding VIT is mandatory until gear is sufficient to reduce damage threshold such that your tank can withstand the big hits without keeling over

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I know that's what I said!

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Originally Posted by HiirNoivl

I know that's what I said!

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Oh? I apologize if I misunderstood you, then. I thought you were saying that going with a balanced approach was the goal, rather than building to the reserve threshold.

Welp, if we're in agreement, then nothing to see here. Moving on! :p

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Originally Posted by Gamemako

I've said it many times: STR will make you a better tank than VIT for all pre-endgame content. However, once you reach a certain damage threshold, all the STR in the world won't prevent the inevitable and unavoidable wipes. That threshold is reached in BC, and adding VIT is mandatory until gear is sufficient to reduce damage threshold such that your tank can withstand the big hits without keeling over.

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Well said.

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He has a level 2 Marauder

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Ha, I didn't even catch that. Shield vs Sword Oath is a reasonably similar question then since PLD is his only 50.

It's not a hard concept to grasp, but I see tanks fulltiming their defensive stances in some fairly ridiculous situations and slowing the group down for nothing. Substantially higher cost of switching stat allocations aside, it's not all that different from allocating STR vs VIT.

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Originally Posted by Tronic

Inner beast, like the super useful steel cyclone, ignores the defiance damage debuff, and does 300 attack potency damage straight out.

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Never noticed that. With that taken into account, you're still only managing a 3.59 increase in base potency.

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Aha! So might I imply from this that you're finally warming up to my idea of having flash as a cross class skill? ^_^

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No. Flash on a WAR is, as far as I'm concerned, as waste: you simply can't use it often enough thanks to the highly limited mp pool and intelligent use of Overpower (and Berserk, if you're worried about Pacification) allows you to mollify the problems with Overpower enough that it's not a major concern.

Using 1-2 Overpowers is not going to completely and utterly demolish your resource management; the costs incurred by limited usage are well within the ability of you to recover from in the enforced downtime all of the primal fights and most bosses have as part of their mechanics. It's only when you use Overpower *unwisely*, generally in the ways that are often described to make it seem like WAR has some overwhelming AoE damage/enmity advantage, that Overpower screws you over. Rather than comparing the use of Overpower to Flash over a 10-15 second time frame, compare it over a 2 minute time frame. If you use Overpower in such a way that you're still capable of attacking for that entire time frame, Flash + CoS and Overpower are going to achieve rough parity on enmity and damage.

A WAR doesn't need Flash to AoE tank effectively; it just needs to know how to use Overpower rather than spamming it freely like PLDs do with Flash.

P.S. You would be inferring my meaning or intent from a message, not implying it; if what you were inferring were true, I would have been implying it. Basically, you infer something that someone else implied.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

No. Flash on a WAR is, as far as I'm concerned, as waste:

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You'll join the dark side one day.

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P.S. You would be inferring my meaning or intent from a message, not implying it; if what you were inferring were true, I would have been implying it. Basically, you infer something that someone else implied.

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Ah, yes, I should've said infer.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

No. Flash on a WAR is, as far as I'm concerned, as waste:

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What the hell are you talking about? Could you please, PLEASE, step foot in coils before you give advice on what is needed or not needed.

Flash is instant hate, which is why it is good for warrior. When you have multiple drop in adds spread out in a small space that can aoe 90% of your groups health, you NEED flash.

Your math is great and all, but its based soley on paper. Try some endgame content before you give advice to people. Most of the WAR's that come to these boards can do dungeons fine. They want advice on builds specifically for HM Primals, and Coils. If you don't have experience in those, you should refrain to comment. You are only hurting, not helping, in this instance.

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Originally Posted by Ninjiitstu

Your math is great and all, but its based soley on paper. Try some endgame content before you give advice to people. Most of the WAR's that come to these boards can do dungeons fine. They want advice on builds specifically for HM Primals, and Coils. If you don't have experience in those, you should refrain to comment. You are only hurting, not helping, in this instance.

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First, it's based upon my practical experiences in everything *except* for Coil of Bahamut (I've done everything but that), and I've never made any claim about what is best for anything beyond that. Furthermore, concerning Flash as it applies to being used by a WAR, I refer to personal opinion. I posit my reasons but that's as far as I go. I specifically said "as far as I'm concerned". That's not claiming it as fact; it's personal opinion.

Secondly, you've brought up a single case where Flash is actually effectively required (and I don't have any experience to refute it, so I won't bother). People have also brought up a single case where Provoke is effectively required (there's a boss in Coil that requires a tank swap, afaik). Neither of these change my opinion of Flash or Provoke: I will not use either of them outside of the *specific* fights where they are required. I'll drop Awareness and pick up the single requisite ability before swapping back after the fight.

I do not claim that I will *never* use Flash or Provoke, but, barring the specific situations that require it, I'm not going to use it because, outside of those *very* specific circumstances, they take up space that could be occupied by something I'll actually use.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

First, it's based upon my practical experiences in everything *except* for Coil of Bahamut (I've done everything but that), and I've never made any claim about what is best for anything beyond that. Furthermore, concerning Flash as it applies to being used by a WAR, I refer to personal opinion. I posit my reasons but that's as far as I go. I specifically said "as far as I'm concerned". That's not claiming it as fact; it's personal opinion.

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You are correct. I could make a argument that Provoke is usable outside of coils as well ( two bosses require tank swaps in coils, Turn 2 and Turn 5 ). Flash is needed for Turn 4.

On the other hand, what else would you use in place of them? It isn't like there is a whole lot of superior options that you can just throw in.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

-snip -

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Feel this thread is getting a bit derailed from its original point so I've posted my reply here:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...vention-Thread