4.0 Warrior Feedback

When I saw all of the changes Square Enix planned for the Warrior in Stormblood, I was hugely sceptical. I, personally, don’t see the fun of preparing to use the same skill 4-6 times in a row. However, all scepsis aside, I wanted to give it a try, since I have been mainly playing Warrior since 2.3 or 2.4 - I dont really remember if I am honest, its been too long.
Thing is, while I played Warrior, there are some things that were made well and some other things that felt limiting in such a way that it made the class less fun to play. So, as to give some feedback and my thoughts as someone who plays Warrior in a casual raiding group and in dungeons a lot. In general, I refer to this feedback in my head as:
Warrior - the good, the bad, and the clunky


The good:

Not gonna lie, main tanking with the Warrior now feels pretty good, as long as I stay in Defiance, that is. When I was tanking Susanooh, between inner beast, raw intuition + awareness, rampart, reprisal and vengeance I felt like I always had a CD running. So, with that many defensive tools at my disposal, I could combine some of them with inner beast and ease the strain on my healers.

The sprint change in general is amazing. I tremendously enjoy popping sprint to charge into the next battle, throwing myself into the fray first and dishing out before anyone else does.

I like the fact that the Gauge does not decrease with time (though, constantly running around with the super sayan energy sparks around me gets old pretty fast).

The new changes of Berserk are nice to have, really. Its a bit weaker sure, but now its CD aligns better with some other skills, allowing me to use it much more efficiently.



The bad and the clunky:

It saddens me to see the "the good" part of my feedback cut so short. But, those are, at least to me, my biggest issues with the current Warrior are general clunkiness and, to be honest, design choices that have not been thought through properly.
First and foremost here is the Beast Gauge. While the theory is actually pretty solid, the actual implementation of the gauge is lackluster at best.
The biggest issue here is the penalty for switching stances. Halving the gauge when switching stances is not too big of an issue for Paladin, who only has 2 skills dependant on his gauge. But for Warrior, who has 8 skills depending on it (inner beast, steel cyclone, fell cleave, decimate, unchained, inner release, onslaught, upheaval), this is a huge hit to the general availability of my kit and the resources available to me.
For example, especially at the end of a pull, I used to switch to Deliverance if incoming damage was reduced enough, so I can regen some TP with Equilibrium to keep my TP high enough that I can keep pulling with no real downtimes. Now however I am hesitant to do just that, because then I would lose, at worst, 75% of my gauge. With so many skills tied to it, I really dont want to lose access to my kit. Speaking of TP, the fact that I have lost flash is another, albeit small, issue. Currently, due to gear etc, some DPS really create a lot of aggro. So, even with alternating my aggro combo and adding in the occasional overpower, I burn through my TP fast. I used to use flash to let my TP regenerate a bit. Now, without a melee goading me, I find myself more and more in the situation that I see my DPS getting painfully close to my aggro bar, with me not being able to do anything against it. Though perhaps this issue is also my fault for not managing the resources I have properly, I feel like it has become increasingly hard to hold myself against my DPS.
Speaking of OP and Flash, overpower needs a target to work, and only attacks things in a cone in front of me, so depending on enemy positionals, I don’t always hit everybody. This is another thing I used Flash for, to make sure the initial aggro is on me first and foremost before positioning the mobs. Usually, instead of Flash, I can also use Steel Cyclone, if I have enough gauge (or, previously, stacks). But, keeping the Gauge up for those situations and pulls, it also means stance dancing is even more out of the question.
Of course, I would also love to pull with my new gapcloser, Onslaught. However, this skill costs 20 Gauge and has a potency of 100 (+ increased enmity), and I would rather use that Gauge on Unchained during a pull, as I get much, much more of the points spent there.

Im afraid I was unable to use WAR a lot in trials yet, but what I did see with my Level 70 kit is that my entire combat is now revolving around berserked fell cleaves even more than at 60, to the point where I just get bored. In theory, fell cleaving so often would sound satisfying, but in reality, getting to press the same button 4-6 times for DPS is just... stale really. I don’t feel like I accomplished much here. With the old triple FC, it took me some thinking, planning and some stack management to pull it off, but it felt oh so satisfying. Now that hexa FC is easily achieved, I dont feel the same kind of satisfaction anymore sadly. All I bring in a Trial as an OT is some DPS, and nothing else really. Unlike DRK and PLD, I can’t protect my teammates from incoming damage (Reprisal being the one small exception).

Those are just a few examples. In general, I feel like the game seems to punish me for trying to use all of my skills. Warrior used to be a fun, versatile and dynamic class, giving me the option of changing what I do depending on what is currently needed. It had a nice fluent gameplay, and I feel like with 4.0, a lot of that has been abolished.

However, I keep asking myself, what can be done to at least improve the situation? Well, first and foremost (and most importantly), don’t nerf either Paladin or Dark Knight. I’m still unsure about DRK, but PLD seems to be in a genuinely good spot at the moment.
Rather, for Warrior, the imho easiest bandaid to these issues to remove the penalty from stance switching. DRK has no negative impact at all and PLDs impact is noticeable, but not as severe. Warrior gets the most from switching stances and loses the most when he does so, so I think changing this will give the class some versatility back.
Another nice thing would be to remove the gauge cost of Onslaught (perhaps at the cost of a higher CD of 30s like Plunge), so I don’t feel bad for wasting 20 gauge on that one.


These are just my thoughts and my own feedback, but of course, I don’t mind hearing others as well. What do you think of 4.0 Warrior?


Edit - 3rd July 2017

After playing some more, Im copying what I wrote on another thread what my "whishlist" is:

Changes I would implement

• Remove cost of stance swapping
• Storms Eye now generates 20 Gauge
• Storms Path now generates 10 Gauge
• Storms Path now reduces target damage dealt by 5% for 10s
• Infuriate is now usable out of combat
• Beast Gauge depletes by 5 every 5 seconds when out of combat
• Onslaught Aggro Modifier halved
• Onslaught CD increased to 30s
• Onslaught now generates 10 Beast Gauge, using it does not cost Beast Gauge.

WAR is missing out on a lot of utility. Returning a weaker Storms Path to the kit would make the class more viable in 8 man content.

To ensure that Path is not being overused, the extra Gauge generation should be given to Eye.

Generating stacks between pulls is not a bad thing. However, to make sure WARs dont keep the group waiting for a minute to generate 100 Gauge, it should fall off before Infuriate is back up again.

Onslaught needs to be improved imho, its lackluster compared to Plunge. I consider those changes good enough as a combat initiator and extra Gauge generator.

Not going to do a good vs bad thing here, just going to list the changes I remember and what I feel about them.

The skills we lost: Some like fracture was hardly ever used so removing it make sense, it was always a weak dot. Others like bloodbath and our stun was used a lot, big pulls without bloodbath feels more risky now since more then a few healers seems to have missed this, removing the stun from both war and drk while letting pld retain their spammable one seems questionable. Loosing access to flash will hurt our tp.
Another strange thing is how pld got something new for skills lost while war and drk alike got nothing.

Skills changed: Maim and eye I have no problem with them changing, it does however make things more difficult for low level tanks who will now be without this tool that made it easier to generate agro, less damage = less agro. Removing the damage down from path I understand, it was a easymode thing to do during progress. The increase to inner beast potency is a good news even though the decrease in how much hp it gives back is a rather bad news seeing as we now lack bloodbath.

The beast gauge is a good addition I would say, however the cost of changing stance is way to high. If not removing the cost they should at least lower it. As it is now you want to empty it as much as possible before switching and that is something that in later fights will require way more planing from a war then from any of the other tanks. Switch at a bad time and you lose either damage or mitigation. The reason why it did not cost us anything to switch previously I guess has to do with the fact that while the other tanks gain the benefit from their tank stance the second they have changed we require heals to gain use of our higher hp pool since it does not fill itself as we change to tank stance.

And so the new skills.
Onslaught: This one is down right useless as it is now, cost vs benefit is not even close to making it worth pressing. Said this before and I will say it again, increase the potency to at least 200 or remove the cost.
Upheaval: A tricky skill, for best effect you want to use it in tank stance with thrill of battle and at max hp. During those situations it is a great skill.
That passive one: I like it, useful in tank stance but feels like it messes with the berserk window in dps stance. This might just be my opinion.
Shake it off: Having tried using it during different fights I have come to the conclusion that it is what I always thought it would be, a waste of skill space. If you are in a habit of being hit by bad breath then it is great as it removes those, it does however do nothing at all against anything a boss does. Oh and it does not prevent any new debuffs being added to you for even a single second. I do not think there is a good fix for this skill as it is broken by design, best to remove it and give us something else like perhaps a utility skill.
Inner release: Is a good skill that is hampered by sharing cooldown with unchained.

All in all I feel that SE have some work to do here. Are we useless? No. But did we gain anything in the way of mitigation or utility in this expansion? No. It feels to me like SE had run out of ideas when they came around to war, look at our charge that is animation wise close to the monks, look at upheaval that reminds me a lot of a certain pld skill that cost them zero resources while having the same potency and same recast, look at shake it off... well just look at it.

I agree onslaught costing beastgage was a terrible idea. They could have just as easily made onslaught the replacement for the DPS loss from losing brutal swing and make it not cost anything towards the beastgage. I'm not high enough yet to give any other kind of feedback but onslaught needs changed, I really can't even understand what the devs were thinking with this skill. You cant even use infuriate unless your engaging a target to get some beastgage in the first place... the irony.

Remove the cost of stance swapping (on all tanks).
Remove BG cost and potency of onslaught
Remove cooldown share from unchained and IR

With those changes I would be happy

First and foremost, the stance change penalty needs to go. I don't know who thought this was a good idea, but they clearly did not think for very long.

Second, Shake it Off needs to be redone completely or else have some secondary effect (really, the cleanse would become the secondary effect, in all likelihood).

Third, Inner Release and Unchained should not share a recast. This is a huge nerf to Unchained and it honestly just feels bad that one of our new skills conflicts with an old one entirely.

Fourth, Onslaught is too costly. I am actually coming to like Onslaught quite a bit for snap aggro more than gap closing, but 20 gauge for it is a bit much.

I would like to see Bloodbath return to WAR (if not all tanks) as well, but I don't think it's going to happen.

I have zero issues with new WAR and love how much simpler it is to play now. Stance switching cost is a good idea, because it discourages excessive stance dancing and lets you focus more either or tanking or dps-ing. Onslaught cost is also logical, because it don't see why this skill should be spammable in first place. As for pulls - tomahawk still here.

Removal of flash makes perfect sense too. WAR's main emnity generation skill always was overpower and steel cyclone as extra help. And to have flash on top of that was a bit excessive. You have problem with that? Focus more on tanking instead of dpsing and stance dancing!

Next. Blood bath was skill that made WAR too overpowered. Inner Beast, Storm Path, equilibrium... + dmg mitgation skills - not enough? Why there's healer in party? For dps?

Upheaval is another great skill that has potential to hit harder than Full Cleave!

Penalty removal for Berserk is also godsend. Inner release also very useful skill without any downsides.

Overall I feel WAR got balanced really well and not made him weaker than he was, but more streamlined and easier to play.

I'm a brand new Warrior and a brand new tank, so anything I say I have zero experience in the way things were prior to 4.0.

First to get it out of the way yes I had war at 60 already and have been messing with it since 1.0 but I never took it seriously. I only used it in 50 roulettes because it involved zero effort to pull everything to a boss let DPS kill stuff.

Maybe this is something I'm not doing yet but I'm not having any real TP issues in dungeons. I was having agro issues but when using my CD / hate moves I'm not really loosing hate. Now I am loosing hate if I am trying to gather group enmity and my I don't target the right single mob for single target combo, which case a provoke + op + combo solves that issue.

I'm using Upheaval a lot and am rushing to my targets because I find it easier to not have the OP cone miss. I'll Onslaught take a quick jump and they've rotated for OP. I rarely don't have enough beast gauge to do anything, but I'm doing so much more that I always have 30 +.

Maybe it's b/c I don't Stance dance, which is something the warriors are all suggesting to do now but from what it seems it's not as easy as it was before. I might need to get to 70, and I'm also not restricted by the feel of previous warrior in depth play style so that comes into play too!

I look forward to actually learning the tank role and warrior especially.

I miss Fash a lot. Right now all we have is TP based enmity generation. And our only AoE is conal - not practical enough. I used to alternate Flash and Overpower a lot to manage TP/MP. Now all we have is TP drain constantly. Grabbing a huge lot of mobs with OP only is insane. Flash or any circular AoE makes it so much easier. Ultimatum is useless for most things, too long a cooldown, and your mages who keep nuking get hate back in 1 hit. They totally ruined WAR in this update as a tank.

It's fun as solo to DPS, and OK to tank with on single targets, but pretty much useless for larger groups of mobs. What do we have MP for now? Not a single skill that we can use it for. Why?

Also miss Bloodbath - it helped regen a bit of HP while DPSing - now we lost that too. With these changes it seems they want WAR to be a DPS rather than tank. A tank's main role is to keep hate on ALL mobs. While it's nice to DPS, it's not the job's primary role.

All of the good changes OP listed I am in agreement with.

Especially the loss of flash was a hit. It could maybe be mitigated a bit if overpower wouldn't break combos and especially didn't require a target. But it's just a bit too annoying to line up just right at the start of a pull before everything has grouped up.

Onslaught, while fun to use, isn't that useful. Its cost is too high for what it does, and with sprint changes, its not very useful. Over all I don't use this much except when I feel lazy after a knock back.

Upheaval is disappointing too. Impact wise I hardly notice it and almost always miss the damage it does somehow. But even when I do pay attention I notice if I'm not topped off or close to full its damage is pretty garbage. And seeing how more often than not in dungeons healers don't keep you at full health, its very difficult to ever get the full damage from it. About the only time I am consistently at full health for it is at the start of a pull, otherwise I just leave it unless I manage to get to full health while its up.

The trait is nice, so not much to say about it.

And I can't comment on the last 2 abilities as I have yet to reach them, but I suspect Shake it Off to be meh, and Inner Release to be really nice.

As for old abilities. I am saddened we lost the utility from storms path without anything in return. I'm afraid the lack of utility may be a detriment to WAR now. Path as it was needed to go, but with no utility in place we can only hope we edge out in either OT DPS numbers or MT mitigation numbers to stay competitive. I'm expecting WAR to not be meta anymore (then again I hardly have looked at DRK and its position), but at least I don't think the gap is anything close to bad.

Overall WAR is decent right now. I think they just need some QoL changes and some buffs to Onslaught/Upheaval to make them more usable. And maybe a singular utility unless they have just beastly mitigation/DPS to bring to the raid.

Really the only thing I'd change to war would be that stance dancing should cost a flat 20BG (but not required to switch, if you have 10BG you'd drop to 0) since we rely a lot more on our gauge.
Onslaught is "ok..." and definitely has some dps benefit by allowing to increase uptime and better line up BG to Zerk burst. Improving it would be nice but not core to the job.