WAR is Trash Tier Now

First of all, if you're just going to parrot Xenos' video, you may as well have just linked it.

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Originally Posted by BabyLeviathan

• Stance Dancing: Beast should not be reduced when you switch

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Swapping stances needs to have some kind of penalty, but halving the gauge is too severe, a 20 gauge cost would probably be more sensible.

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Originally Posted by BabyLeviathan

• Infuriate: Usable outside of combat instead of a jank tomahawk>infuriate> Unchained. If you do not register on threat list but are in combat the skill doesn’t work

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Do you seriously want to stand around for two and a half minutes before every pull waiting for a WAR to have 100 gauge? Because that's what will happen.

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Originally Posted by BabyLeviathan

• Shake It Off: Useless since zerk change, needs to remove stun and bloodbath’s ability put onto it as well

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Shake It Off should be Cross Role and we should go back to Rampart/Shadowskin/Foresight built in to each tank, with Foresight having its effect changed to mirror the other two.

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Originally Posted by BabyLeviathan

• Butcher’s Block: Needs to give 20 beast gauge instead of 10

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If you do this there's no reason to use Storm's Path whatsoever by sheer virtue of Shirk existing.

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Originally Posted by BabyLeviathan

• Onslaught: DMG loss either needs to cost no beast gauge

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Unless Onslaught's potency changes, I actually think it should be tweaked to generate gauge.

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Originally Posted by BabyLeviathan

• Inner Release: Needs to be taken off a shared cooldown with Unchained and have its cooldown reduced to 60 seconds.
• Berserk: WAR is currently buffed less of the time than the two other tanks
• Fell Cleave: Needs to have a buff as PLD and DRK average potency is around 70 higher so cleave needs to put up to around 600-700 potency

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This is disingenuous. WAR is buffed 100% of the time by Storm's Eye, the problem at the moment is that this only makes up for their lower potencies. Fell Cleave is fine, it will still do far and away more damage than Holy Spirit because Holy Spirit is a base 430 boosted to 516, while Fell Cleave is 500 base before it gets boosted by Storm's Eye, Berserk and Deliverance.

Leave Fell Cleave alone, buff WAR's weaponskill potencies instead, with the changes to PLD and DRK there's no reason for them to have lower potencies to compensate for their burst damage anymore. Then we can see if they need to change Inner Release.

Be it 20 gage or no gage please reduce or remove the stance dancing penalty.

That would straight up fix warrior. The only issue I have with the job now. Other smaller things, but we don't know an exact rotation so, might as well go for this as it defiantly removes a lot of the fun from Warrior.

The FLOW was part of what made Warrior fun.
This halving Beast Gage removes the flow :(

Just hit 70 and realized that the level 70 ability only works in DPS stance. Was going to try and make MT work based around this ability and inner beast to take back some of my sustain. Would not have been a perfect solution, but I'm not a not a meta player so I thought I could make it work. What a disappointment. Not a single tank ability gained in this expansion. Only DPS. Enmity is a problem and healing is too and I don't see it getting any better given our current kit.

I'll play WAR until I've gotten my Verity gear, but that weapon will be bought for my trusty paladin from Heavensward.

I don't agree with the notion that stance swaps on any of the tanks should carry a penalty. Prior to 4.0 being released, there was a lot of vocalization about the idea that, like WAR, PLD/DRK should have their stances made oGCD. Now that 4.0 is out, for whatever reason, there seem to be more voices declaring that a stance swap needs to come with a penalty. I don't see how that's good design, and I certainly don't see how that meets the dev team's stated aim of lowering the skill ceiling and making the overall player experiences more rewarding.

Regardless of what tank job you're on and regardless of your skill as a player, the fact of the matter is that you're still beholden to the actions of the people you're paired with in any given piece of content. Needing to jump back to your defensive stance because a DPS stood in the fire and the healer has to long-cast a raise for whatever reason, or switching to your offensive stance because the damage output from the rest of your party is lower than average and you want to help speed up the fight are options that should be available without punishment in the form of a resource loss.

As it stands right now it hardly feels like there's any kind of reward for playing WAR well. There are too many artificial limitations imposed on it compared to 2.x and 3.x, and if the developer's solution to the inequity between the tanks is to continuously cycle between making one of the three stand head and shoulders above the other two, they are not going to retain players interested in maining a tank role for very long.

If Heavy Swing generated 10 Beast gauge, the stance switch penalty would be almost negligible. because 10 seconds after switch, the loss would be replaced doing any 5 combo attacks in the right order. As it stands now, the minimum time to regain the lost 50 is 17.5 sec. If they fixed it to where either HS generates beast, or the cost is reduced so 10 sec of combo buttons would replace the loss (30 beast by my calcs), then it would be fine.

I'll agree that the cost is excessive, but there should be a cost for stance switching. The bad design was that it never had a cost to begin with. The worse design compounded on the bad is that they introduced a cost, but didn't really make either stance so much more compelling that they can justify adding the cost. If Deliverance added 10% more dmg or Defiance added 10% overall (magic and physical) dmg reduction IN ADDITION TO what they both currently do, then a cost being added makes sense.

It's definitely something to tweak, but again, stance switching, being as powerful as it can be, should have some cost associated with it to pay for the power it returns. IMHO, YMMV.

Trash tier implies the job can't hold hate, can't do damage, and essentially can't function in its intended role, which is simply not true.

It's not a god-tier job but calling it trash tier is such typical forum hysteria.

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Originally Posted by bounddreamer

Trash tier implies the job can't hold hate, can't do damage, and essentially can't function in its intended role, which is simply not true.

It's not a god-tier job but calling it trash tier is such typical forum hysteria.

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This.

All that changed is WAR are no longer #1 OP tank. PLD are now. But WAR are still perfectly viable for tanking. There is no way there is any content in SB that the devs intentionally designed such that only PLD can possibly tank the encounter successfully. No way.

And they will get tweaked an adjusted in some upcoming patch, so I agree this is just a bunch of forum hysteria.

I'm not sure if this has been said yet. I'm seeing lots of complaints about Warrior and how it should be changed, and then a bunch of people commenting on how "Warrior is fine" and still playable. But see, that's not the problem. It doesn't matter if Warrior can tank properly. The fact of the matter is that currently, Paladin and Dark Knight just bring so much to the table, that a lot of people will deem it pointless to ever have a Warrior in their party. And THAT'S the problem. When you start having parties discriminate against Warriors on their party finder settings, I think that's when something should be done. I feel like people will rather have DRK/PLD or even dual PLD than have a Warrior.

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Originally Posted by BluexBird

The fact of the matter is that currently, Paladin and Dark Knight just bring so much to the table, that a lot of people will deem it pointless to ever have a Warrior in their party.

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PLD and DRK do bring a lot to the table, but it's still so obvious when you'd want to bring a WAR. If your comp contains RDM, you want a SMN and BRD to buff their magic, and a DRG to buff their melee (and BRD). This leaves nobody to put up slashing, except for the WAR. If you opt for double melee (NIN/SAM) you take DRK instead.

Something WAR does really well, and still continues to do will in 4.0, is pull. Having WAR MT at the start of a fight using unchained is almost always a DPS gain for the tank roles and eliminates any threat issues.

Finally. The real endgame isnt even out yet. Anyone who thinks they're able to determine the raid viability of any of the jobs using these EX primals as a baseline is an idiot. These EX primals are a joke.

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Originally Posted by Felorr

Something WAR does really well, and still continues to do will in 4.0, is pull. Having WAR MT at the start of a fight using unchained is almost always a DPS gain for the tank roles and eliminates any threat issues.

Finally. The real endgame isnt even out yet. Anyone who thinks they're able to determine the raid viability of any of the jobs using these EX primals as a baseline is an idiot. These EX primals are a joke.

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With Shirk, you really don't need a Warrior to build a lead in enmity anymore. But your last point was pretty valid. Maybe they'll give tanks a reason to wear VIT accessories and stay on tank stance during raids and end-game bosses.

Why would SE do that? Cause they did so in the past? Nope. Cause SE learns from their mistakes? Nope.

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Originally Posted by Felorr

PLD and DRK do bring a lot to the table, but it's still so obvious when you'd want to bring a WAR. If your comp contains RDM, you want a SMN and BRD to buff their magic, and a DRG to buff their melee (and BRD). This leaves nobody to put up slashing, except for the WAR. If you opt for double melee (NIN/SAM) you take DRK instead.

Something WAR does really well, and still continues to do will in 4.0, is pull. Having WAR MT at the start of a fight using unchained is almost always a DPS gain for the tank roles and eliminates any threat issues.

Finally. The real endgame isnt even out yet. Anyone who thinks they're able to determine the raid viability of any of the jobs using these EX primals as a baseline is an idiot. These EX primals are a joke.

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The 2 slashing DPS bring the debuff as part of their baseline rotation (RDM is all magic damage, even their melee attacks). Which means the ONLY reason you would bring a WAR over a PLD/DRK would be so the PLD or DRK could have that slashing buff. They offer nothing other than a debuff that the classes that would benefit from it also bring.

So I'm not sure what your point is here.

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Originally Posted by Tila

The 2 slashing DPS bring the debuff as part of their baseline rotation (RDM is all magic damage, even their melee attacks). Which means the ONLY reason you would bring a WAR over a PLD/DRK would be so the PLD or DRK could have that slashing buff. They offer nothing other than a debuff that the classes that would benefit from it also bring.

So I'm not sure what your point is here.

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I guess I was misinformed because I've been reading where some RDM attacks are considered piercing.

War pull wouldn't be as good as before unless you have a nin (in which case you can do the tomahawk > equilibrium > deliverance pull followed with eye combo and 2 bb combos), since unchained shares cd with inner release, making the dps "cost" of unchained pull rather high.

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Originally Posted by Felorr

I guess I was misinformed because I've been reading where some RDM attacks are considered piercing.

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Their unenchanted attacks melee skills are piercing.

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Originally Posted by bounddreamer

Trash tier implies the job can't hold hate, can't do damage, and essentially can't function in its intended role, which is simply not true...

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Ok, so that's how you define "Trash Tier". The community will define it differently. TLDR: It's not impossible, but that alone does not rescue WAR from being trash.

Lack of sustain requires more Storm's Path and Inner Beast and less enmity and DPS. Keeping aggro itself is harder with Warrior (depending on the pull you waste GCDs putting you behind in DPS and/or sustain based mitigation). No 360 AOE enmity generator forces directional reliance on overpower, interrupting combos and requiring more movement to capture mobs in the cone. Even when it works out and the above are managed (and overpower is not needed), you still take more damage than DRK/PLD. Damage requires more heals that could be better used on the group and, in the end, my healers prefer me to play my PLD.

For MT, it's not just about holding aggro or mitigating/sustaining. It's about doing both. That alone looks to make WAR a trash tier to other players when they can push harder by having 2 PLDs or a PLD/DRK. These failings and fighting against them take away satisfaction of WAR class and make it feel janky in rotation execution.

I reserved judgement til 70+ but after some hard realizations, WAR is just not smooth or fun to play. I'll finish getting the Verity gear, but the weapon I buy? Pretty sure it'll be a sword. Hope I'm wrong.

Can we get a sticky or compilation of war grievances? At least let us know you're, ie SE, is looking into it.

If we could have Bloodbath back, and have it be the mirror to Inner Release instead of Unchained, so in Defiance we can maintain the sustainability. If Overpower could have a wider spread and maybe not require a target to use, and if OP and maybe even Tomahawk could generate a small amount of Beast Gauge, how much better WAR would flow.

The good is there, the Beast Gauge is a greater evolution of the stacks, we just need be given some nurturing here.

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Originally Posted by BabyLeviathan

• Stance Dancing: Beast should not be reduced when you switch

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What would you change in both the stances besides the reduction? Would you add anything to Deliverance or Defiance to balance out why they made the large penalty?

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Originally Posted by BabyLeviathan

• Infuriate: Usable outside of combat...

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I'll admit, I do tap that button outside of combat so I could see that being in there, but what would you adjust to outside of that? Would you increase the timer? decrease it? increase the amount?

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Originally Posted by BabyLeviathan

• Shake It Off: Useless since zerk change, needs to remove stun and bloodbath’s ability put onto it as well

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I'm far from a veteran tank, do you find yourself as a tank in any other situation where you need to use a self Esuna? Do you think that an Esuna + Bloodbath syncs well? Maybe it needs to be re-done entirely.

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Originally Posted by BabyLeviathan

• Butcher’s Block: Needs to give 20 beast gauge instead of 10

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Just this? You don't think additional beast gauge from other moves would be helpful? Just a chunk at the end? Or do you think spreading it out to other moves in smaller portions? Or you just want the giant 20 at the end of BB?

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Originally Posted by BabyLeviathan

• Onslaught: DMG loss either needs to cost no beast gauge

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So you're not big on the pro side of it, do you think that if additional beast gauge was given like in your previous point, that would help? Remember if you get the additional gauge buff, would you notice that 10 for this move as harshly as you do now?

I do not understand the Berserk one from the wording but maybe that's my fault.

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Originally Posted by BabyLeviathan

• Fell Cleave: Needs to have a buff as PLD and DRK average potency is around 70 higher so cleave needs to put up to around 600-700 potency
• STR/VIT: 270 STR accessories > 310 as STR bonus is better than VIT

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These two I put together for a question. Remember, I'm here for information because I'm new. So Dark Knight & Paladin have a higher overall potency? I am learning more about these potency stats. So I'll need to go back to educate myself because I see a few factors in the main weapons but nothing huge, along with the other jobs major heavy hitters but nothing outstanding. But wouldn't some of the changes above make the 700 potency a bit too high? Or wouldn't that allow it to be lowered?

Just curious on these thought processes here, just remember they did some things for a reason so stay within those boundaries where it is acceptable. I personally wouldn't mind IR to be away from Unchained and have its own Defiance boost when used. I'd like to see my eyes glow red a bit more! Then there's always the need to adjust the other jobs if you believe it will hinder them at all to make something balanced.

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Originally Posted by Lewtskie

If we could have Bloodbath back, and have it be the mirror to Inner Release instead of Unchained...

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I can understand this, so you're asking for the ability to sustain ourselves back a bit more in return for the lack of dmg -% we don't get from our stance? IR having a blood bath boost to Defiance mode and not use up Unchained? I'd like to see that, if anything the bloodbath + iron will combo would be nice to have for Defiance.

I wish all you warriors luck with proposing these issues to SE, and be careful!

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Originally Posted by Leigaon

What would you change in both the stances besides the reduction? Would you add anything to Deliverance or Defiance to balance out why they made the large penalty?

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Defiance should mitigate 10% more dmg and Deliverance should add 10% more DPS. Just that would make a 50 beast cost feel more appropriate.

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Originally Posted by Leigaon

I'll admit, I do tap that button outside of combat so I could see that being in there, but what would you adjust to outside of that? Would you increase the timer? decrease it? increase the amount?

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Infuriate would be a good way to deal with the stance swap penalty. I'd leave the timer at 60s, but either have Defiance/Deliverance trigger a 15s timer reduction, or have Infuriate fill the beast gauge completely. Leave to "in combat only" but extend its power in order to tweak the stance swap.

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Originally Posted by Leigaon

I'm far from a veteran tank, do you find yourself as a tank in any other situation where you need to use a self Esuna? Do you think that an Esuna + Bloodbath syncs well? Maybe it needs to be re-done entirely.

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I think fights where stacking debuffs happen give Shake It Off its purpose. Not sure how many of those kind of fights are in the 68+ content because I am not there, but that would seem to be it's best intended use. Stuff Esuna cannot get rid of, but SIO could? It needs a shield, dmg reduction or heal added. Nothing major, but something like 1/3 of Equilibrium in Defiance?

WE need bloodbath back !! , specaily for the lower instances
and overpower is shit for tagging mobs with its cone effect everything runs past it

I could buy into the idea of Shake It Off having a use in higher-end content if we hadn't already been down this road since ARR's launch with PLD's Tempered Will. DRK has no native means to divest itself of status debuffs, and as such, we are not going to see content designed around inflicting multiple stacked detrimental statuses when only two of the three tanks have that ability.

The point about WAR no longer bringing anything of value to the table remains valid. What little WAR brings in the form of the slashing down debuff is easily accessed by including NIN/SAM in a group, and both PLD/DRK can approach WAR's damage output without the long setup or the punishing resource losses. You need entirely too many GCDs to both set up and execute six successive Fell Cleaves, and as has been articulated previously, Inner Release sharing a cooldown timer with Unchained practically removes Unchained's utility and eliminates any incentive to use it. Like it or not, the community is going to push WAR aside and all meta group comps are going to favor PLD/DRK.

I'd much rather be rid of Shake It Off and get something like Thrill of War. Honestly, I'd much rather all three tanks bring some kind of unique party-wide utility in addition to standardized utility; i.e. slashing resist down being applied from a second-stage weapon skill combo, and a standardized damage down debuff being applied from a third-stage. This FotM nonsense has to end, and the developers need to think long and hard about how to give options in the form of party-wide contributions from PLD, DRK, and WAR alike.

Yeeeeah, I took a year off from this game, but then the Stormblood hype finally bit me hard and now it's time to blow the dust off my warrior and go RAAAAAAAAGE against the empire--

Wait. WHAT? What is happening here?? I'm confused and scared! I don't like this Beast gauge. It doesn't make me feel beastly at all!

The night is so long and cold.

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Originally Posted by CaptnYesterday

Ok, so that's how you define "Trash Tier". The community will define it differently. TLDR: It's not impossible, but that alone does not rescue WAR from being trash.

Lack of sustain requires more Storm's Path and Inner Beast and less enmity and DPS. Keeping aggro itself is harder with Warrior (depending on the pull you waste GCDs putting you behind in DPS and/or sustain based mitigation). No 360 AOE enmity generator...

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That was where I stopped paying attention to you. What do you think steel cyclone is?

Throwing around reactive terms like trash tier exaggerates the discourse. Competent tanks and good warriors can still play the job well, and I know I'm not alone in that. Complaints about lack of added utility aside, it's still both a good main tank and off tank. Are there things that could be improved? Absolutely. Is my raid team demanding I switch to DRK? No. Am I going to bring it into Omega? That depends. I'll certainly get it ready as a backup plan, but we've had zero issues clearing and farming the content available so far.

Give Square feedback on job improvements by all means, but this kind of inflammatory rhetoric drags down the whole argument and leads to people kicking or excluding good tanks for no reason.

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Originally Posted by ed3891

the developers need to think long and hard about how to give options in the form of party-wide contributions from PLD, DRK, and WAR alike.

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This so much. Just a clear, basic design philosophy as to why you pick each tank class. Like:

WAR - Single-target, great at DPS against one target but worse at large group pulls.

PAL - Crowd control, great at handling large groups, DPS against single target isn't great.

DRK - Interference, great at preventing mechanics, shutting down enemies, so on. Maybe a more subtle play style than the other two.

I'm not saying those are THE ideal ways to design them, but there needs to be that kind of thinking. Then, different tanks will have different specialties for different situations, but they'll all be useful in raid groups and normal content.

I was thinking about this too. Honestly I'd like to see them move towards wow tank archetypes.

Paladin being damage mitigation and casted heals aka paladin

Dark knight being more blood death knights with corruption debuff and leeching like a vampire

Warriors more savage like druids with more emphasis on high health and instant cast heal over times.

Running with these archetypes, I'd give dark knights bloodlust and rename it bloodthirst.

Wars, I get rid of inner beast and decimate and keep fell cleave and steel cyclone. Then make it so that being in defiance gives those abilities enmity. I'd let the defiance damage penalty affect those abilities.

With inner beast gone, I'd give warriors a new tanking ability that costs rage.

With warriors now having access to rampart, I don't think they need another damage mitigation cooldown. Instead, I'd give them a heal over time. 50 rage cost xxxx health restored over xxxx seconds.

With this new HOT, equilibrium and thrill, the war as a druid, self healing tank is firmly established.

Thrill can be used preemptively for damage spikes, the hot to smooth fluctuations in the wars health, and eq for emergency heals.

Make stance switching free during inner relase so wars can switch and do their fell cleave spam. This way, they can build max rage, inner release, blow it, then switch back.

Probably change the stance passive to accomdate this play style. Like a flat passive of some kind that doesn't fluctuate with rage levels.

Also the hot would be useful to wars off tanking and not have access to eq for self healing. Sacrifice some off tank dps for those instances where u need a heal ut the healer is busy trying to keep Mt alive.

Okay. Should I take storm's path off my bar? It doesn't do anything anymore, right?

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Originally Posted by Galgarion

Okay. Should I take storm's path off my bar? It doesn't do anything anymore, right?

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Not sure if trolling, but no. Storm's Path is your best combo.

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Originally Posted by Felorr

Not sure if trolling, but no. Storm's Path is your best combo.

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Not trolling. Had display action pop-ups disabled on my bars for three years. Forgot I could turn it back on to read descriptions of abilities. Yeah, it's nice. I guess.

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Originally Posted by Galgarion

Yeeeeah, I took a year off from this game, but then the Stormblood hype finally bit me hard and now it's time to blow the dust off my warrior and go RAAAAAAAAGE against the empire--

Wait. WHAT? What is happening here?? I'm confused and scared! I don't like this Beast gauge. It doesn't make me feel beastly at all!

The night is so long and cold.

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Nothing beastly about it anymore

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Originally Posted by Galgarion

Yeah, it's nice. I guess.

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Better than "nice, I guess."

If output dmg is the goal, HS->Maim->SP is the winning combo. SE is the dmg buff combo, BB is the enmity and SP is the straight best DPS. Do the math, and SP wins the DPS race (assuming the SE combo leads all fights for the buff/debuff).

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Originally Posted by bounddreamer

That was where I stopped paying attention to you. What do you think steel cyclone is?
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(Followed by autistic screeching and virtue signaling rants about how we all just need to WAR better "like me"

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I think I paraphrased pretty well :D . Yeah, obviously steel cyclone. That should be obvious in any case. My point is still valid and the community agreed. Sorry for your feelings.