Unchained. Seriously, why are we not abusing this skill?

I don't even know why I post here when apparently nobody bothers to read anything or have even a modicum of reading comprehension.

Like I have said and repeated, Unchained's duration is deliberately as long as it takes you to build another 5 stacks. For the third time --

Defiance + Unchained --> HS --> Maim(1) --> Eye(2) --> HS --> SS(3) --> BB(4) --> HS --> Maim(5) --> Deliverance + FC

That's 8 GCDs. 8 GCDs = ~20 seconds = the duration of Unchained.

So...

You are not forced to spend your stacks on IB/SC during Unchained.

You are not forced to spend your stacks on IB/SC during Unchained.

You are not forced to spend your stacks on IB/SC during Unchained.

You are not forced to spend your stacks on IB/SC during Unchained.

You are not forced to spend your stacks on IB/SC during Unchained.

And the reason why a WAR is in Defiance is because they need the extra eHP and effective healing. It's not necessarily to pop IB. Again, for the third time, you have 25% more HP, access to Equilibrium's healing, and receive 20% more healing. That's the combined effect of ToB and Convalescence. Do you even play WAR at any respectable level?

Reading is hard though! BabyRage

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Originally Posted by Brian_

Like I have said and repeated, Unchained's duration is deliberately as long as it takes you to build another 5 stacks. For the third time --

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For the third time, using 5 stacks for Unchained in the first place prevents you from using Fell Cleave. So, to use your "msot powerful defensive cooldown" you have to sacrifice one opportunity of using your most powerful skill. Is that clear now ? Now, tell me what DRK or PLD needs to sacrifice to gain 25% eHP for a short time ? Nothing. And especially none of their damage by being forced in tanke stance.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

Again, for the third time, you have 25% more HP, access to Equilibrium's healing, and receive 20% more healing. That's the combined effect of ToB and Convalescence. Do you even play WAR at any respectable level?

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Again, no. You don't have the combined effect of Thrill Of Battle and Convalescence, you just have the effect of...Defiance. Having 25% more HP and receiving 20% more Healing is less than the effect of Rampart.

You make it sound like tank stance has an awesome effect on mitigation, where, technically, it has not. Any defensive cooldown gives you higher mitigation than your tank stance. What makes tank stances good is the fact that they can have 100% uptime. But since you advise to stay in Defiance only for the duration of Unchained, then it loses that property. What also makes Unchained+Defiance less powerful than Rampart is that it doesn't increase your HP, so, you'd technically need to heal yourself, to really gain that 25%eHP. Will you burn another cooldown to gain the exact same eHP increase ? Equilibirum, maybe ?

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Originally Posted by Syhrwyb

Reading is hard though! BabyRage

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honestly these forums have been rather frustrating to go through lately. Same with healer forums too. Maybe brian was possibly including our little "argument" in my xeno thread, but there are a lot of people just saying stuff just to say stuff. They are arguing just for the sake of arguing and being childish/rude. When there are actual civilized debates with actual data/examples its really fun learning things (which is why I even bother coming here still), but some people just want to add their personal opinions into things and make it worse.

I even question if a lot of the people here actually raid or research before chiming in. This is why I wish the skill gap for the game was higher. Right now you could have a monkey play a tank/dps in expert roulette (OR BOTH) and completely get through the instance still. Its just a lot of people aren't punished except in raid content and don't know right vs wrong.

internet be damned.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

For the third time, using 5 stacks for Unchained in the first place prevents you from using Fell Cleave. So, to use your "msot powerful defensive cooldown" you have to sacrifice one opportunity of using your most powerful skill. Is that clear now ?

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In my very first post, I stated multiple times that YES, YOU PAY 5 STACKS FOR IT. Did I ever deny that? NO. I said in explicit terms that was the cost. You pay 5 stacks for what amounts to one of the best defensive CDs in the game.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

Now, tell me what DRK or PLD needs to sacrifice to gain 25% eHP for a short time ? Nothing. And especially none of their damage by being forced in tanke stance.

Again, no. You don't have the combined effect of Thrill Of Battle and Convalescence, you just have the effect of...Defiance. Having 25% more HP and receiving 20% more Healing is less than the effect of Rampart.

You make it sound like tank stance has an awesome effect on mitigation, where, technically, it has not. Any defensive cooldown gives you higher mitigation than your tank stance. What makes tank stances good is the fact that they can have 100% uptime. But since you advise to stay in Defiance only for the duration of Unchained, then it loses that property. What also makes Unchained+Defiance less powerful than Rampart is that it doesn't increase your HP, so, you'd technically need to heal yourself, to really gain that 25%eHP. Will you burn another cooldown to gain the exact same eHP increase ? Equilibirum, maybe ?

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Every good tank views their tank stance as an additional defensive CD. Unfortunately, for PLD and DRK, that defensive CD comes at a very high cost so it's their last option. As Layla Bell and Xeno put it, using Grit is like using an IB that deals no damage, doesn't heal you, and then gimps your damage. WARs have the benefit that their equivalent does not have so extreme a cost because of Unchained. You speak of Rampart and Shadowskin as if those two CDs aren't also 2 of the best defensive CDs in the game. Or, that Defiance + Unchained isn't basically the same.

Thrill of Battle boosts your max HP by 20% and heals you for that amount.

Convalescence increases the healing you receive by 20%.

Defiance boosts your max hp by 25% and the healing you receive by 20%. Gaining access to Equilibrium's heal is much better than ToB's healing component because you can control when you get that burst of HP back rather than have it front loaded.

So, come again about how it isn't their combined effect or better in practice.

But really, if you want to look at theory, then let's look at theory --

Do you know how ShO and Defiance compare?

25% max HP increase boosts your eHP the same exact amount that 20% damage reduction does. Do the math.

What is not equivalent is the value of healing. That is why Defiance has the healing boost that it does. All in all, the gap in healing is in the single digits. So, the effective survivability is basically a wash -- a point that people have always said about Defiance vs. ShO. It really doesn't matter that Defiance doesn't heal you unless you are in a situation where you need the max eHP immediately (in which case you can just Equilibrium).

So you pay what amounts to ~370 potency worth of DPS over the duration of Unchained for a defensive CD on par with Rampart and Shadowskin with slight side-perks like a boosted party shield with Adlo + deploy, significantly better enmity generation, and flexibility with self-healing. Also, what people don't often mention is how the massive ballooning of tank HP vs. the lesser scaling of damage has influenced this balance. When you have 34k HP + Equilibrium, you can live a long time with only supplementary healing from HoTs and fairies. That's a big boost from 27k HP + no Equilibrium. Your healers can top you off and then go to DPS town with little worry.

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Originally Posted by Syhrwyb

Think you misunderstood what I meant. WARs will sit there in Deliverance making me go into Shield Oath, I never start off in that stance.

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I think it's the stigma that WAR is the bonafide OT and that it is expected that the other 2 Tanks are almost always going to be the MT of the instance. Since the 2 get the most out of their kit in MT role.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

Every good tank views their tank stance as an additional defensive CD.

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It is, but in your case, you're not talkin just about Defiance, but Defiance + Unchained, which means that you're restricted by a cooldown. Besides, what makes WAR great at mitigation is Inner Beast. Without it, it has clearly less mitigation tools than PLD or DRK. So that defensive setup, in this situation, is cheaper for PLD and DRK than for WAR.

I'll make calculations on how PLD and WAR would compare on these 20 seconds :
Let's suppose that both tanks are in DPS stance, with every combo already active (Maim, Eye, Goring Blade, Halone...)

As a WAR, you pop Defiance+Unchained, then do the combo you mentionned : Eye combo (150+190+270) - BB combo (150+200+280)+ HS (150) + Maim (190) for a total of 1580 potency. With buffs, you have 1580*1.2(Maim)*1.1(Eye) = 2085 potency with a 25% eHP increase thanks to Defiance.

As a PLD, you pop Rampart, then do (at worst) Halone Combo (150+200+260), RA combo (150+200+340)+FB (150) + RB (230) for a total of 1680 potency. BUT, you also have a tick of Goring Blade and Sword Oath for approximately each GCD adding up to 800 potency. I'll remove two ticks of Goring because the GCD is lower, so 700. So 1680+700 = 2380. For the same eHP increase thanks to Rampart. On top of that, PLD will probably have Sheltron available to stack.

So, if the mitigation from your tank stance is enough to survive those 20s, then WAR is actually weaker than PLD on that window (And keep in mind that I didn't count Storm's Eye for the PLD). So, it would be better to let the PLD tank for that time, in SwO with Rampart, and use those abandon stacks for Fell Cleave while staying in Deliverance.

No, what makes WAR great at mitigation is the fact that they are a WAR. Like I said earlier, WAR has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to mitigation and that is the reason why we do not need to dig deep enough in our toolkit that Unchained becomes relevant. So, IB or no IB, WAR is more than adequately equipped for all the current content in this game. As a raiding WAR, I never use IB. But, because you are just running your mouth on topics you don't understand, of course you wouldn't know this.

Between Holmgang having a 180s recast (as opposed to the 300s recast of LD and the 420s recast of HG) and Vengeance / Thrill having a 120s recast (as opposed to the 180s recasts of Shadow Wall and Sentinel), WAR has a very easy time with mitigation. The only time where they don't have adequate mitigation without IB is in the hypothetical scenario where you are taking a magic tank buster that demands high mitigation on a <120s recast in a situation where you cannot tank swap. That situation will remain hypothetical because the PLD is even more hopeless given those conditions.

What you fail to comprehend is that Unchained + Defiance exists in addition to a toolkit that is already over equipped for current damage intake.

Rampart does not.

And great, PLD does more damage than WAR over a very selective 20s window. If only you structured tank swaps in raid content in 20s intervals.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

As a raiding WAR, I never use IB. But, because you are just running your mouth on topics you don't understand, of course you wouldn't know this.

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So you're not using IB and only stay in Defiance for the duration of Unchained ? Great...then a PLD can do better than you.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

Between Holmgang having a 180s recast (as opposed to the 300s recast of LD and the 420s recast of HG) and Vengeance / Thrill having a 120s recast (as opposed to the 180s recasts of Shadow Wall and Sentinel), WAR has a very easy time with mitigation.

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How convenient to forgot that Sheltron gives a better eHP increase that Thrill Of Battle, right ? And has a recast of 30s, allowing it to be paired with every other mitigation cooldown.
It's not that difficult to calculate that Thrill Of Battle + Vengeance + Raw Intuition offer less mitigation than Sheltron + Rampart + Sentinel + Bulwark. Do the math...

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Originally Posted by Brian_

What you fail to comprehend is that Unchained + Defiance exists in addition to a toolkit that is already over equipped for current damage intake.

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That's exactly where you're wrong. Unchained lowers your mitigation toolkit.

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Originally Posted by JackFross

//EDIT:

WAR is not ~4800, but actually ~6178.41 potency during a properly executed triple-fell-cleave Berserk. Much better than 4800, but still below the two shown above and likely most - if not all - other DPS Jobs. They /might/ be able to beat MNK and NIN burst, but I'd be shocked if they beat a proper BRD, BLM, or SMN opener. I just can't be arsed to calculate all of these.

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Calculated BLM and SMN

BLM: Full BLM opener gets 6269 pot over about 23 seconds, with 6 fire 4 and 1 fire 3 under RS.


SMN: I got 3 potential numbers, a regular opener will give you 7115 potency with 4 ruin 3s and 3 af actions during RS. Using 6 af actions gives you 7950 potency. Sit down for this last one, using 6 af actions, rouse&spur, and enkindle nets you 8900 potency!(not sure if it's even possible to get all those skills in). If you add in book slaps SMN could easily be over 9000. If you align your af actions better SMN could end up closing in on 10000 potency.