Current/Upcoming War changes and current tanks, let's talk about that.

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Originally Posted by PiedPiper

By using cool downs before death sentence begins to cast, its possible for paladin to space bulwark, rampart, sentinel and convalescence so that they can mitigate every single death sentence indefinitely. More, most of these will carry on longer than the short 20% warrior will have. Accordingly, warrior will not have a meaningful advantage on death sentence mitigation.

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How? Sorry, I just fail to see how this would be mathematically possible.

Why isn't 'fun' one of the reasons you put down for why people pick warrior? That's certainly the reason I picked it up, and as far as I'm concerned is the only reason I should be required to play something. I'm not here for a competitive sports team or something after all. I'm here to have fun and enjoy my free time playing a game :D.

On another note though, I would argue that while neither class takes much 'skill'(what a controversial word) to play, I would argue warrior takes more based on my definition of skill. My definition of skill would be based on how long, how much thought, and how much practice does it take for the player to understand how to adapt to a situation? This may be a poor example, so forgive me. I'll come up with an in-game example shortly, here.

Person A has a gun. Person B has a sword. Both persons need to figure out how best to eliminate an enemy up to 30 feet away. Person A has a very obvious and very clear way of getting through this. Just shoot the guy. Person B on the other hand may be required to approach the enemy quietly and without being noticed. Or he may choose to throw the sword, or find something else to make his job easier. But they essentially accomplish the same goal. One happens to be a little more 'to the point' than the other, but both can accomplish the same job nearly as easily assuming they both have practice, and are proficient at what they do.

Now for an actual in-game example. I'll use WP as a dungeon example. The PLD mobs all the way up to the birds, hits Cover on the WHM and hits Hallowed Ground(this is merely an example, mind you). That's a very 'to the point' strategy, and the PLD has very little other options available to himself that don't have SOMETHING to do with protection or mitigation. All his solutions to problems are pretty much the same. Don't get hurt by the enemies.

Warrior on the other hand, to make a similar or equal pull, may be forced to think for a bit. Rather than just go straight up and start mashing Overpower, he may notice that using Bloodbath and Vengeance together, along with Infuriate, and Berserk to maintain the stacks of wrath is required in order to do the same thing, as it will help keep his health higher up and easier to maintain. Again, what I'm saying here is that imo(and mind you, you're entitled to your own opinion), skill is something that is dictated by how much time, thought, and effort it takes on the player's part to do something. Even if it's something as simple as hitting a couple more buttons or moving a certain way, etc. In the end though? Neither tank takes a whole lot of skill to learn and master imo.

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Originally Posted by Pavise

But an active mitigation tank takes more skill to play then a passive mitigation tank does. You cannot deny the fact that warriors have to think a lot more and react much faster then a paladin would with using their combos properly and not just spamming 123 halone combos.

<-- Both tank jobs at 50 with relics and I stand by the fact that warriors are more involving and require more attention then paladin, and will be even more apparent in the next patch.

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Both classes pop something before a big hit, one has it up every 20ish seconds the other has to cycle through several options.

You could just randomly press a button on your tool belt as a PLD but you'd be bad, just like you'd be a bad warrior for using IB on CD.

A good tank is going to be putting just as much attention/involvement into what they're doing regardless of PLD/WAR and it will be a noticeable difference when compared to one that isn't.

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Originally Posted by Fallstrider

How? Sorry, I just fail to see how this would be mathematically possible.

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You could have just stopped once they put Convalescence in the same sentence as 'mitigate...death sentence'.


Why do people keep calling PLDs passive mitigation tanks when they have ONE single ability that provides passive mitigation, everything else is pro-active and to make the most use out of it requires a good understanding of boss ability timers/sequences/cycles.

A 2.1 WAR will have a much easier time running into a fight blindly than a PLD will, for sure.

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Originally Posted by Phreak

A 2.1 WAR will have a much easier time running into a fight blindly than a PLD will, for sure.

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How do you figure?

@Phreak

I don't agree with WAR being able to run in more blindly than PLD. I still believe that PLD will be the safer tank option for new encounters or to "blindly run in" as you put it. WAR will be just or close to as viable as PLD if you somewhat know the encounter. Time will tell though.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

But then we'd have nothing to do at work.

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Lol, agreed. +1

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Originally Posted by Phreak

You could have just stopped once they put Convalescence in the same sentence as 'mitigate...death sentence'.


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Convalesence basically negates the infirmity debuff, so yes, it does in many ways mitigate death sentence as long as you have the raw hp to survive the hit. Also, it ups the effect of adlo, meaning you will take less from the hit. Conv is extremely potent and often under estimated.


As to how it works out, its something like ramp - conv - bul - ramp - conv - sent - ramp - conv - bul. I more or less just do it. Reason precasting helps is it gives that much more time for fireballs and stuff to delay the DS recast or later on fire spit to givet hsoe few second you need for a cd to end. Very rarely one will come in you can't pop for, but... just SS yourself and call for virus.

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Originally Posted by Phreak

A 2.1 WAR will have a much easier time running into a fight blindly than a PLD will, for sure.

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I sincerely and respectfully disagree. PLD can pop a cd which are off the global cd whenever he wants. A Warrior will only have Vengeance available to them to be able to do the same thing. The Warrior will be forced to think about their rotation more and their wrath since both of their mitigation skills come from setup. Inner Beast will require 5 wrath, or alternatively, Infuriate to trigger. Storm's Path is at the end of a combo. With this in mind, I would argue that the Warrior will need to think a little more about their rotation than the PLD simply because PLD can just pop the cd whenever he wants. Both classes will be required to know how the fight goes though, and have the boss' pattern down. I would just argue that PLD has more leeway with his mitigation than Warrior.

So in Patch 2.1 from what I see, PLD is getting ZERO changes while every other class is?

Maybe I am wrong so maybe someone can inform me if any changes are for PLD in 2.1?

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Originally Posted by PiedPiper

As to how it works out, its something like ramp - conv - bul - ramp - conv - sent - ramp - conv - bul.

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Sorry, but this doesn't make sense, at least not without absolute perfect timing and a fair amount of luck. Not to mention that Bulwark won't always mitigate, and Convalescence does very little on its own if you get one-shotted, or take a quick combo. Warrior WILL have a more steady source of mitigation towards Death Sentence, however whether or not it will balance up Paladin's overall better mitigation I don't know.

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Originally Posted by AurickSchiffer

So in Patch 2.1 from what I see, PLD is getting ZERO changes while every other class is?

Maybe I am wrong so maybe someone can inform me if any changes are for PLD in 2.1?

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Be thankful. If PLD were to be changed, right now they would be getting nerfs.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

Be thankful. If PLD were to be changed, right now they would be getting nerfs.

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Maybe some reduced Cool Downs lol... Aww man, well thanks anyway for at least that, Guess that clarifies my answer... but also doesn't awareness have a bug that healers can't crit heal you either with it on? (Not sure if it was fixed, don't really use it)

Yeah, that's a bug fix rather than a change. I do think that needs to be fixed though.

Well that is cool, I really would have enjoyed any upgrade to a PLD but it's all good, I have a Level 50 DRG and PGL thanks anyway Paikis! :D

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Originally Posted by Fallstrider

Sorry, but this doesn't make sense, at least not without absolute perfect timing and a fair amount of luck. Not to mention that Bulwark won't always mitigate, and Convalescence does very little on its own if you get one-shotted, or take a quick combo. Warrior WILL have a more steady source of mitigation towards Death Sentence, however whether or not it will balance up Paladin's overall better mitigation I don't know.

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When discussing Twin, I feel we can both agree its fair to assume any tank seriously attempting the fight will be pretty well geared (7+ i90 pieces). At that level a pld and war will both have pretty high ehp. For reference I have 6781 hp, 579 parry, and 368 str (placing me in the next parry tier) at only 10/13 i90.

I did explicitly state that conv only works if you already have enough max hp to avoid being one shot out right. Which.. well regardless of class you kinda need that to reliably tank any fight. I did point out that conv does pair with scholar to help increase your ehp before the hit. Also, the most dangerous part of death sentence isn't the hit itself, its the debuff that follows it (as this makes it difficult for healers to replenish your hp). Conv directly counters this debuff, trivializing DS into little more than an ambitious mountain buster.

Because all hits against a paladin are checked for a parry, and if that fails then checked for block, having bulwark up amounts to an extremely high chance to either parry or block the hit. Even should you fail to block the DS itself, odds are heavily in your favor to block the hits surrounding the DS. In this respect, bulwark is a powerful and reliable cool down (After all, a block is actually stronger than rampart at this gear level as you will block for 27%+ and parry for 24%+). Anecdotally, in our month on twin, I have yet to fail to block a DS when bulwark was up (as you already have a very high chance to block with i90 shield).

As to the timing... its not really that bad. If you get the timing correct on the first cycle, all you need to do is use them almost as soon as they come back up as you will already be in line with her attack pattern. Just because something is hard doesn't mean we can't expect it to be done.

One thing in warrior's favor: IB will be much easier and more forgiving to ensure you have it up for every death sentence. Its short duration, however, will make even small timing mistake quite costly as well as mean that most of the time you are under the effect of infirmity you will be taking full damage hits. Again, the danger on DS is the difficulty in returning your health to full, not so much surviving DS itself (normally you will die to the first few hits after ds, not just ds as the healers struggle to catch up).

I could be wrong on this point: I read someone else's math, and did not check it, but my understanding is that if you assume both IB and rampart are used absolutely as quickly as possible, over time, rampart does end up with a slightly higher up time. My intuition is that IB might have slightly better up time, but that it will be quite close. In either case, IB will not make up for the 4.5% healing advantage that shield oath has versus defiance.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

Be thankful. If PLD were to be changed, right now they would be getting nerfs.

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I do not see a reason to nerf Paladin.

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Originally Posted by Leiron

I do not see a reason to nerf Paladin.

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Well you wouldn't. However the Devs do:

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Originally Posted by Game Developers

A:
Warrior
We're hearing a lot of talk saying that warrior is weak compared to paladin, but there are a couple of points I'd like to go over, so I'll go over them one by one.

First, I'd like to talk about the boss monsters in the Binding Coil of Bahamut Turn 1 and 4. We designed them so that even tanks could not withstand their attacks when they have buffs stacked; however, at the moment only paladin is able to survive through a method we had not thought of. Our original vision for this was that players would clear these encounters by properly removing enemy buffs or kill them all before it got to the point where they would one-shot players.

Since this is content that has already been released and strategies have already been established, we won't be making adjustments to these encounters. Instead we'll be looking into making adjustments to warrior so they can withstand this like paladin is able to.

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I really like how you take the devs at their word.
Paladin is able to survive through a method we had not thought of.

What was this mysterious method?
Using their cooldowns?
There was no method they didn't think of, they did faulty testing. Which is the same thing they did with Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden.
Unless you believe that the community of FFXI could not find the "right' strategy in all the time PW was around, and was only killed the "right" way after a level cap bump.

Don't try to suggest that WAR is in their rightful place or that PLD's were overpowered.
WAR's were horribly underpowered, and while it might be a shock to your pride, they needed to be changed from the get go.

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Originally Posted by Leiron

I really like how you take the devs at their word.
Paladin is able to survive through a method we had not thought of.

What was this mysterious method?
Using their cooldowns?
There was no method they didn't think of, they did faulty testing. Which is the same thing they did with Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden.


Don't try to suggest that WAR is in their rightful place or that PLD's were overpowered.
WAR's were horribly underpowered, and while it might be a shock to your pride, they needed to be changed from the get go.

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WARs are fine as is and Paladin is overpowered. I also think I am in a much better position to say this than you are. God forbid you have to actually get some gear to tank the last fight in the game, instead of being able to do it in full Darklight. I still think they should have just nerfed PLD.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

WARs are fine as is and Paladin is overpowered.

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Okay and where is your justification?
I just illustrated that the statement made by the dev is full of holes.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

I also think I am in a much better position to say this than you are.

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Thinking isn't your forte if this is what you believe.
Experiencing the content does not beat out mathematical data.
You can't "magically" beat math when that is what the game is at its core.
And you're not doing anything to support your argument besides state "I've completed t5."
That's not an argument, that isn't evidence, thats just you trying to desperately to avoid having your fault argument made even more obvious.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

God forbid you have to actually get some gear to tank the last fight in the game, instead of being able to do it in full Darklight.

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Except that the gear that should have been there, which was Crystal Tower gear Could not be obtained.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

I still think they should have just nerfed PLD.

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They didn't nerf Paladin because Paladin didn't need to be nerfed.
It was in a position that was good, because it would constantly scale with the encounters.
WAR did not, which means that even if they chose to leave things alone, WAR would have continued to fall further and further behind as encounters became more and more damage intensive.
That is just the reality.

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Originally Posted by Leiron

They didn't nerf Paladin because Paladin didn't need to be nerfed.

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They didn't nerf Paladins because they didn't want their servers to rust when the tears from all the Paladins caused global sea level to rise 20m over night.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

They didn't nerf Paladins because they didn't want their servers to rust when the tears from all the Paladins caused global sea level to rise 20m over night.

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This is incorrect. It would be the tears of all Coil teams who now couldn't run content because SE forgot that 40% damage reduction is a huge amount.

Obviously Warrior teams would not be affected..but no one runs two Warrior anyway, because it's inefficient and pretty sure Warrior gets skull fk'd if only full i70.

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Originally Posted by Exstal

This is incorrect. It would be the tears of all Coil teams who now couldn't run content because SE forgot that 40% damage reduction is a huge amount.

Obviously Warrior teams would not be affected..but no one runs two Warrior anyway, because it's inefficient and pretty sure Warrior gets skull fk'd if only full i70.

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I did everything up to turn 4 with Darklight as a WAR, and cleared turn 4 with just the myth chest/helmet... so I dunno what the issue is. If I can do it, I'm certain other people can too.

ITT: WAR doesn't have DR. PLD does.


DR scales with damage.

Pre-patch:

PLD proactively uses CDs to survive, their DR scales with content, DR does not scale with gear.

WAR reactively uses damage to return HP, damage scales with gear - damage does not scale with content.

PLD gains initial and fundamental advantage over WAR via DR due to most people starting endgame content in il60/il70 gear; theorycraft/math and healer/player opinion shows this.

Time passes; PLD is mainstay/efficient tank in Coil still in il70 gear. Some WAR begin to clear turns at OT and even MT if they overcome awkward WAR itemization - skill speed rather than accuracy; need for STR to up healing/damage factor - but no il90 gear provides enough of both. Turn to il70 crafted accessories to raise both baselines.

WAR begin to have il90 gear and/or il70 melded accessories STR/VIT - on par with PLD in il70. Suddenly WAR is able to start completing content more readily.

Patch explanation comes out;

SE notices imbalance; pushes to implement proactive longer CDs DR and proactive Combo/Wrath mechanic DR to WAR - DR still slightly lower than PLD but WAR maintains HP boost and solidifys healing factor and keeps lowered HP return abilities to equalize eHP in equivalent gear without changing itemization. Enmity base is raised to compensate for healing factor being native to tank stance. (Theorycrafted - we'll see if this works out properly in game or not. All eyes on SE's ability to test their content more accurately)

PLDs: Freak the fuck out they're not the exclusive tank.

WARs: Freak the fuck out because their play style is slightly altered.

Me: Oh hey they saw math and player trends and noticed the imbalance and decided to make some changes. Cool.

Forums: RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

I did everything up to turn 4 with Darklight as a WAR, and cleared turn 4 with just the myth chest/helmet... so I dunno what the issue is. If I can do it, I'm certain other people can too.

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It's detrimental to the game to back pedal, however. If you're (not you specifically) are going to balance content, there's a reason for really good testing. SE didn't do this and that's where we are now. Since people had been clearing turns 1-4 weeks before it was heavily apparent that Warrior was significantly inferior to Paladin, it would just cause many people to straight up quit. Weeks of progress completely invalidated doesn't bode well with anyone.

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Originally Posted by Dhex

kkkk

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I liked this post

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Originally Posted by PiedPiper

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you severely overrate convalescence, hell, you severely overrate bulwark. Anecdotally, in my however many weeks on twin bulwark has fucked me over several times, i need to call out that it's the specific cooldown i'm using now as it's unreliable damage mitigation for death sentence. I honestly prefer foresight over it, specifically against death sentence.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

They didn't nerf Paladins because they didn't want their servers to rust when the tears from all the Paladins caused global sea level to rise 20m over night.

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You are just a very angry WAR player to make such a statement.