What is the warrior job fantasy?

What are supposed to be Warrior's defining characteristics?
I see a lot of ''homogenisation bad'' talking points when it comes to tanks, so let's start with the developer's favourite tank; Warrior.

What are supposed to be Warrior's strengths and weaknesses? What sort of fights is it supposed to thrive in, and where should it fall short?

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

What are supposed to be Warrior's defining characteristics?
I see a lot of ''homogenisation bad'' talking points when it comes to tanks, so let's start with the developer's favourite tank; Warrior.

What are supposed to be Warrior's strengths and weaknesses? What sort of fights is it supposed to thrive in, and where should it fall short?

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According to devs, it seems it's supposed to thrive in every category because reasons.

Honestly, I'm okay with it being the easiest tank in the job to play, it gives it that unga-bunga feel that Warriors traditionally have. The falling short should be having the lowest dps of the tanks next to PLD, of course not to the point it isn't taken into high-end, but the lowest.

Obligatory nerf the hell out of Shake it Off, there shouldn't be any tank that heals the party this much. The eHP from the shield alone is sufficient.

I think, currently, the split between magic and physical damage negation is key if we want weaknesses and strong points.

DRK and GNB could provide magic defense, WAR and PLD could provide physical defense, for example. (Though...really it makes more sense for PLD to provide magical defense). Ideally this would only apply to party utility since issues would be ran into if, say, Vengeance only reduced physical damage.

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Originally Posted by GoatOfWar

What is the warrior job fantasy?

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In terms of fantasy, they are supposed to channel their inner beast (their rage) either into doing attacks (Fell Cleaves) or into defending others. In a real life context, you can think of it as having anger issues and finding positive ways to channel it, such as specific targets or protecting others.

The job certainly achieves that feeling if you get into it. Spamming Fell Cleave and doing as much Fell Cleave is a fun past time for many Warriors and it's still very much about that, except in one of the expansions they made a button that lets you spam Fell Cleaves instead of it all being about wrath stacks / gauge.

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What are supposed to be Warrior's defining characteristics?

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That they take that damage like an angry beast with abilities like Holm Gang or Thrill, but then heal it right back up. Whereas other tanks would actually mitigate it, such as PLD using Hallowed Ground/Sheltron/Bulwark/Passage plus PLD used to have a 40% mit instead of 30%, or DRK would have TBN for everything to prevent the damage in the first place.

But this kinda changed in Endwalker since now they have have a lot of mitigation and shield on Bloodwhetting (which is half as strong as TBN) and mitigation in general had a cooldown reduction over time (used to be less frequent, especially before 5.1).

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What are supposed to be Warrior's strengths and weaknesses? What sort of fights is it supposed to thrive in, and where should it fall short?

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Where it would often fall short is in a fight that needs constant heals that PLD can achieve with Clemency, because WAR's heals are limited to their cooldowns unlike Clemency which is unlimited if you can maintain MP. Or where mitigation could work better than heals. But again this has changed with Endwalker and there being more of a variety on Bloodwhetting. Their heal also only used to be this good if they used it on something like Inner Chaos or Fell Cleave, whereas now it's good on anything.

Well, in ages long since past, when the tanks were still more different from each other and tank stances had other effects than just enmity...

They all reduced damage done, but gave other bonuses... Both PLD and DRK had as a part of Shield Oath and Grit reduction on damage taken, meanwhile WAR's Defiance gave them more max HP and healing received.

And for when not taking, PLD had Sword Oath, which essentially just increased auto-attack damage by 50%... And WAR got Deliverance which increased all damage done by 5%.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

Well, in ages long since past, when the tanks were still more different from each other and tank stances had other effects than just enmity...

They all reduced damage done, but gave other bonuses... Both PLD and DRK had as a part of Shield Oath and Grit reduction on damage taken, meanwhile WAR's Defiance gave them more max HP and healing received.

And for when not taking, PLD had Sword Oath, which essentially just increased auto-attack damage by 50%... And WAR got Deliverance which increased all damage done by 5%.

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Man they don't even have to bring enmity management back I would take the stances bringing unique effects to the tanks in itself

To clarify, its aether powered instinctual fighter. Most people think rage, but it also invokes the natural protective instincts, hence its a tank. That's why fighting without purpose causes the inner beast to fail.

In terms of combat, its supposed to be building up to heavy hitting strikes, and tanking blows through simply not dying and finding more stamina ie hp, to keep the fight going. In other words raising your current hp and getting healed better.


Which is why warrior is accused of stepping on all the other tanks while simultaneously being the tank the devs use as a template. It shouldnt have life steal or a regen over time, it should have more "I raise my max/current hp"
Dark should be lifesteal
Pld should be healing spells
Gnb should be shield/regen over time.

Warrior in 2.0 was a reactive tank. You got the hit unmitigated into the face and then you used your self heals to shrug the damage off and return fighting.

It also was the dps tank, so the job did more damage than Paladin.


That concept didn't work, so they gave Warrior a similar defense kit like Paladin but kept the damage and selfheal fantasy intact, while slightly nerfed.


And ever since Warrior is too powerfull because they want to keep the fantasy of damage and selfheal but have to give him the defense of the other tanks to make the job work.

hit thing with axe

Being too fucking angry to die.

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Originally Posted by Tint

Warrior in 2.0 was a reactive tank. You got the hit unmitigated into the face and then you used your self heals to shrug the damage off and return fighting.

It also was the dps tank, so the job did more damage than Paladin.


That concept didn't work, so they gave Warrior a similar defense kit like Paladin but kept the damage and selfheal fantasy intact, while slightly nerfed.


And ever since Warrior is too powerfull because they want to keep the fantasy of damage and selfheal but have to give him the defense of the other tanks to make the job work.

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Let's be fair, it's not that the concept didn't work, it's that they didn't even try it... they never tried to fix the most obvious mistakes like relying on Wrath stacks for increased healing received at the same time that you "wanted" to use those stacks for Inner Beast (wanted between quotes because the skill costing all 5 stacks at once and healing being based on your damage was also a bad decision).