Questions about Warrior Cooldowns

Hey everyone, I'm just recently getting back into the game since launch, and am ever striving to improve my Warrior tanking technique. However, how to use my cooldowns has been driving me up a wall, mainly because I keep getting conflicting information about them. Thus, I have a couple questions for your Warrior vets out there:

1) Which bosses have damage spikes I need to save Inner Beast for?

2) How should I use my cooldowns on bosses without spikes?

3) In what situations should I be using Berserk and Unchained?

4) For weaker cooldowns like Foresight and Bloodbath, should I macro these to other skills, like Heavy Swing, in order to maximize their uptime?

5) Should I macro skills that synergize well with each other, like Thrill of Battle and Convalescence, together?

6) How should I be using Infuriate, and Wrath stacks in general?

7) Which cooldowns, if any, should I be using against trash packs?

Thanks!

1.) Titan, Twintania, T6 boss, T9 boss (fairly certain since he supposedly has a "Death Sentence")
2.) Whenever you need them. Low priority ones like Bloodbath, Foresight, and Featherfoot/Awareness can be used on cooldown. Vengeance when you expect to take a lot of damage soon. Thrill + Conv to get super pre heals/Stoneskins/Lustrates.
3.) Best aggro opener is Infuriate -> Unchained -> Tomahawk -> Berserk -> BB combo. You can also use Infuriate -> Tomahawk -> Steel Cyclone -> Storm's Path if you need SP up asap. You can macro a message on Berserk to alert your healers to Esuna the Pacification off you, or just let it rock and get some TP back. If Unchained and Infuriate are up again, that's when you'll want to use Unchained again - best paired with Berserk.
4.) Like all cooldowns, unless you need to combine two Right This Second, you should pop each one in between skills. So Heavy Swing -> Foresight -> Skull Sunder -> Bloodbath -> Butcher's Block.
5.) Nah, sometimes you'll need to use them separately. Not a good idea to combine them in a macro.
6.) If you don't need to use your stacks, don't use them. The crit rate increase is pretty great, so you'll only want to use IB when you NEED to. If damage is too high, crit shouldn't be your priority. Infuriate is used at the start, and then again whenever it's up and you've just used 5 stacks (or need 5 stacks NOW).
7.) Foresight + Awareness. Big huge pulls = Vengeance or Thrill + Convalescence.

1) Which bosses have damage spikes I need to save Inner Beast for?
All the extremes, and all coils T5 onwards. On anything else it doesn't mean so much. Additionally, on Leviathan extreme the nuke is so far apart you can happily use Inner Beast when it's up, and save nothing. In Moogle Ex it's much harder to predict, also, so these two extremes are a bit of an exception.

2) How should I use my cooldowns on bosses without spikes?
Save them for when the healer doesn't heal (so when you're low hp).

3) In what situations should I be using Berserk and Unchained?
When you pull, it's usually best to go Infuriate > Tomahawk > Brutal Swing > Heavy Swing > Unchained > Skull Sunder > Berserk > Butcher's Block, for some very high initial aggro, so you don't lose it to anyone at the start. Also, you absolutely should not be using cooldowns, except Infuriate, prior to pulling like the guy above me says, as you will waste precious seconds of them. Always aggro before using cooldowns, except for Infuriate because it can be treated as consumable, and not a duration-based cooldown.
Additionally, unchained isn't very commonly used, in that it's usually better to just use Inner Beast for its defensive purpose, or Steel Cyclone to AoE, but you could use it any time you pleased when you're not saving wrath stacks to Inner Beast before a specific nuke. The same goes for Berserk; use it as you please unless you're gonna need to Inner Beast a specific attack, in case you get Pacified and can't use Inner Beast.

4) For weaker cooldowns like Foresight and Bloodbath, should I macro these to other skills, like Heavy Swing, in order to maximize their uptime?
Personally, I don't use macros, but you could for these if you wish. That said, it's common in fights for you to not have a cooldown for a big nuke- you cannot always have cooldowns up for Twintania's Death Sentence (excluding Inner Beast), for example, so typically all these weaker cooldowns- foresight, bloodbath, awareness, convalescence, featherfoot, to name most of them- are used together to work as a pseudo-cooldown. If you're not planning on doing that, and instead plan on taking a naked nuke, sure, macro them to skills. These skills are pretty damn weak and so it doesn't really matter when you use them, so much.

5) Should I macro skills that synergize well with each other, like Thrill of Battle and Convalescence, together?
Read the above. Also, what on earth makes you think Thrill of Battle and Convalescence go together at all? I mean, with increased max hp, both Lustrate and Stoneskin are going to be healing you for much more, and both ignore the effects of Convalescence. Honestly, of any two cooldowns, I'd say these two work together the LEAST well.

6) How should I be using Infuriate, and Wrath stacks in general?
As said in 3), you can be using Unchained as you please, however you may prefer to spend wrath stacks on Inner Beast because of the defensive gain it gives you for a little while. Additionally, so you do not waste wrath stacks (as the increased crit rate is nigh worthless), you should be using one of the three skills whenever you have enough stacks to do so, except for when saving them for use of Inner Beast on a nuke, or Steel Cyclone for an AoE. On a related note, unless you know a big nuke is coming up soon (to Inner Beast for it), you should be using Infuriate whenever it's up and you have 1 or no stacks.

7) Which cooldowns, if any, should I be using against trash packs?
Bloodbath and Vengeance on very large pulls, possibly Holmgang too, when speedrunning. That's all.

Hope I helped, and I'd love to see what other people put as a response.

You won't be wasting any up time on any GCDs if you open with Infuriate -> Unchained as Tomahawk has an aggro multiplier attatched to it. Meaning you are boosting Tomahawk's aggro, and then when you use Berserk as you're moving you immediately go into Heavy Swing which gives 0 loss of up time on your buffs. If you don't need insane opening aggro, you can use both after you've put up Maim and get even more aggro.

10% increase to Crit isn't amazing, but it's pretty great when you get 1k BBs. Since Crit is chance based, it is more reliable to use IB whenever it's up - but holding Wrath does pair well with Internal Release when it's up.

Oh, also, you don't pair Thrill and Conv for powered up Lustrates lol. You get the powered up Lustrates from Thrill and you get More Healing from Other Heals. That's why you combine them. Thrill + Conv is a big cooldown set, like Vengeance is on it's own. Easy example is T8 before you pull the Dread (if solo tanking), lots of pre-heals and a powerful Stoneskin, then some powerful Lustrates and powerful heals while you're tanking both. It's a good combo, don't knock it~

Eh, if you're gonna use tomahawk immediately after unchained it's alright, but I've seen so many tanks using buffs like fight or flight, unchained and bloodbath, who just stand there for five or six seconds before actually pulling, for whatever reason. So it's good practice to not use buffs until after the pull. The point of my pulling rotation is to gain a tad of enmity to tide you over before your fully buffed Butcher's Block hits in, followed by two more, which'll put you very very far in the aggro lead.

I prefer to have more uptime on my 20% defensive buff, as well as minor healing on myself, than crit more as a tank. The only reason you'd want to crit more is for a marginal DPS increase, as you'll never be struggling for enmity.

And you're right, you absolutely do not pair Thrill of Battle with Convalescence for powered up Lustrates, because that doesn't work. So don't imply that that is what I was trying to say. What I was saying was that with Thrill of Battle active, both Lustrate and Stoneskin become more potent, which makes it the worst time to make the other spells more potent, as they cannot be used simultaneously. When you're begging for increased Stoneskins and Lustrates, don't go buffing Cure 2, because that's a waste of time. Thrill of Battle and Convalescence shouldn't really be paired up at all.

Some of these questions have already been answered satisfactorily so I'll stick just to the questions with answers that either I disagree with or feel need to be qualified.

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Originally Posted by Seaninator

2) How should I use my cooldowns on bosses without spikes?

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Use them actively but don't layer them on top of each other. Since there are no spikes, you should be using IB on or near CD. Since it provides you with ~25-30% uptime, you can manage to have either 1 CD (from ToB, Foresight, Vengeance, Convalescence, or Featherfoot) or IB up at all times. This will reduce your incoming damage on a constant basis. You should be using Bloodbath basically on CD anyways since there's no other way for it to really contribute appreciably.

If you don't have spikes, I don't really see a reason to hold your CDs in reserve given that CDs are most effective when they're used to preempt an emergency rather than helping you get out of one.

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3) In what situations should I be using Berserk and Unchained?

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Always use them together (Unchained then Berserk so that you don't waste the final GCD of Unchained on Pacification). Because of Berserk's Pacification, you actually get less out of it using it on CD than you do using it with Unchained (Unchained is a 33% increase in damage and delaying Berserk by 30 secs to link it with Unchained is a 33% decrease in effective value over time; delaying it decreases the Pacification penalty by 33% so you're getting the same benefits with a lower cost).

Unlike those previously mentioned, I've never had issues with aggro in the first 2-3 rotations whenever I'm MT. The fact that the MT gets into combat 1-2 GCDs before anyone else and opens up with a 3x enmity attack (your OT should not be doing this; if they are, they're being bad) means that, even without using Berserk/Unchained, I've got no problems keeping aggro for that time frame.

As such, my goal with Unchained and Berserk is simply to maximize their enmity contributions over time. My highest enmity opening attack string is Tomahawk>BB combo>SE combo(Vengeance)>HW(Unchained)>SS(Berserk)>BB(Internal Release)>BB combo>BB combo>Inner Beast(Infuriate)>Pacification>Inner Beast. The enmity it generates is obscene. Using it, I've actually stolen aggro from other tanks who have had 30-40 seconds to generate aggro on a target without ever using Provoke (on t4, it's something of a game for myself to try to pull aggro on the final dread during the final burn; it's basically a 50/50 chance as to whether I'll do it and, even if I haven't, I'll generally be right on the dread tank's ass).

Doing this actually allows me to use lower enmity combos that do more damage or are simply more useful in general (like SE>SP and SP>BB) throughout the rest of the fight because it generates such a massive enmity cushion. For Levi EX, I don't even touch BB outside of this attack string. If I see that people are riding my ass, I'll just use the attack string again the next time that Unchained, Berserk, and Internal Release are up since it basically provides me an enmity cushion so large that it will last me for 2 minutes.

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6) How should I be using Infuriate, and Wrath stacks in general?

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You should be using Infuriate as much as possible and immediately after using an existing Wrath consumer so that you're not "wasting" Wrath stacks. If you use it on CD, it basically increases your number of available Wrath consumers per minute to 4 from 3, which is nothing to sneeze at.

As for your Wrath stacks in general, you should generally be using them immediately (the increase crit rate isn't as valuable as the simple increase in damage you get from one of your Wrath consumers) unless you have a specific need to hold them in reserve. Examples of the value of holding them in reserve would be preparing for the snake to split in t1 if you're OT (as soon as the snakes split, use SC and you won't have to worry about healers pulling off of you or figuring out which snake you should be tanking), preparing for an AoE phase in t4 if you're the add tank, or any time you're able to predict a nice big damage spike (EX primals, t5, etc.). Any time you're holding your Wrath stacks "in reserve", unless you know that there will be a *significantly* more valuable occasion to use it within the next 17.5 or so seconds (re: the time it would take you to build back up to 5 Wrath stacks), you're wasting them.

Though some people only believe in using IB, don't be afraid to use Unchained or SC. SC is absolutely *incredible* for every AoE scenario in the game because of the enmity and damage it provides, on top of the significantly lower cost compared to Overpower, and, as I said before, if you use Unchained properly, you can generate incredible enmity over short periods of time, allowing you to coast along with lower enmity rotations. Also, don't be afraid to use IB for damage purposes. In any fight where it's simply high sustained damage, the increased damage is going to be just as valuable as the short duration of decreased damage taken.

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7) Which cooldowns, if any, should I be using against trash packs?

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All of them (except Holmgang, but that should be self explanatory; the only time I'd use it on trash is if you have a single ranged enemy that just refuses to move where you want them to, at which point you're using it for the pull and not for the survivability it affords). Vengeance is amazing for damage purposes on top of the mitigation when you're AoE tanking; ToB and Conv will give your healer some leeway and, if they're not bads, some time to swap into CS and throw out some damage; Foresight, Featherfood, and Bloodbath are all relatively low burst value contributors so there's no real reason to hold them in reserve. In all likelihood, by the time you get done with the trash packs and on to the boss, one or more of them going to be recharged anyways and most, if not all, will be recharged by the time you actually *need* to use one of them in order to survive.

It's important to remember that all of the WAR tank CDs are on exceptionally low timers compared to the PLD tank CDs. The only way that they're going to provide the same value as the PLD tank CDs, over time, is if you're using them as much as possible. Your tank CDs are much like what I discussed earlier about Infuriate and your Wrath consumers: unless you are confident that you're going to *need* to have a CD available or that there will be a significantly more valuable time for that CD to be used, you're wasting the value of that CD by letting it stay unused.

PLDs have to be comparatively conservative with their tank CDs because they have long CDs. WARs don't. Use them liberally. About the only restriction about using them that I can recommend is that you shouldn't layer them on top of each other since, most of the time, you're simply decreasing the value of the other CD.

As an addendum, Thrill of Battle is different from the rest of your CDs. Every single other one has value in that it allows you to decrease the amount of healing your healer has to provide you with. Thrill of Battle doesn't. Thrill of Battle is *all* about letting you survive for longer before you get healed. As such, you should hold it in reserve until either you know there's some risk that you could die without an extra 2.3k (or so) hp.