The definitive WAR answer STR vs VIT... and stat caps

Is there an answer?

All I can tell from reading thread after thread is we have Team STR, and Team VIT.

I don't want to farm CM for hours upon hours to buy the wrong accessories.

Also do we a list of stat caps?

Team VIT exists because how dire the situation with WAR is. It's a mathematically-inferior tank right now, but it is in practice much worse with how WAR gets burst-instagibbed. On a continuous basis, STR is more efficient in terms of healing, mitigation, and damage; if you're farming easier dungeons, you're certainly better off going pure STR. However, when you hit Titan HM and BC, WAR gets rocked so hard that I can see how VIT would be preferred. 'Course, the true efficient solution to that endgame content is not to bring WAR at all...

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Originally Posted by Gamemako

Team VIT exists because how dire the situation with WAR is. It's a mathematically-inferior tank right now, but it is in practice much worse with how WAR gets burst-instagibbed. On a continuous basis, STR is more efficient in terms of healing, mitigation, and damage; if you're farming easier dungeons, you're certainly better off going pure STR. However, when you hit Titan HM and BC, WAR gets rocked so hard that I can see how VIT would be preferred. 'Course, the true efficient solution to that endgame content is not to bring WAR at all...

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Sad story... but very true :(

Gamemako hit the nail pretty much on the head, vit is a static buffer where as STR makes the skills that set the Warrior apart from the Paladin, whose static tanking eliminates the need for clutching defensive/self-healing during end-game. Warriors have more HP than paladins, however we're also more exposed than they are without activated abilities.

This being said, when we're using our abilities properly our stats exceed the paladin in virtually every aspect- briefly. My FC uses me as the main tank merely because I know what I'm doing, the paladin OT holds back his enmity to focus on using his additional silence that warriors don't have until he feels comfortable enough to main tank before switching over. For any other end-game team the thought of an unproven warrior tank in their pug is understandably frightening. If your rotations/macros aren't custom tailored before each fight you simply can't compare to a paladin that can 3 button spam and do everything a new warrior can't.

I would also point out that we out damage paladins, making us the ideal OT that can instantly become the MT should he go down long enough for him to throw a provoke and us to swap out of defiance if our DPS/Burst abilities are on CD.

I just cleared turn 1 coil with +1 Bravura with no problem at all because I have allocated all my stats to 30 VIT yielding me 7295 HP + food = 7495 HP in the end.

so basically, since we are so broken we have to stack VIT to become a HP sponge, when/if the mechanics worked properly/balanced we would more than likely stack STR.

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Originally Posted by Rokugo

so basically, since we are so broken we have to stack VIT to become a HP sponge, when/if the mechanics worked properly/balanced we would more than likely stack STR.

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No. VIT is just far to beneficial to begin with. 30 VIT gives you 550~ HP in Defiance. 30 STR gives you 2% Mitigation ( maybe ), and 7.5% damage.

As you start approaching full i90+full Gryphonskin Acc /w 5 Meld is the only time I would consider switching over to 30 STR. You really want to be around 7500 hp in Defiance, minimum for coils.

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Originally Posted by Exrage

I would also point out that we out damage paladins, making us the ideal OT that can instantly become the MT should he go down long enough for him to throw a provoke and us to swap out of defiance if our DPS/Burst abilities are on CD.

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No, we don't. A properly played PLD in Sword Oath will do more damage than a WAR outside of Defiance. Just check the math (link in sig).

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Originally Posted by Rokugo

Is there an answer?

All I can tell from reading thread after thread is we have Team STR, and Team VIT.

I don't want to farm CM for hours upon hours to buy the wrong accessories.

Also do we a list of stat caps?

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Here's my take on this exact question.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

No, we don't. A properly played PLD in Sword Oath will do more damage than a WAR outside of Defiance. Just check the math (link in sig).

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Your math is wrong. Brutal Swing is Off Cooldown for War, but not taken into account. Additionally, it's in a vacuum that doesn't exist in practical application. Spirits within is a Silence that builds DR. It is not part of any reasonably person's rotation on anything other then trash mobs, which should not be a realistic view on DPS.

That being said, PLD still does more more damage then a WAR on single target. WAR is much more effective against Multiple targets. I imagine if anything were to change with these two tanks, this would be the first thing.

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Originally Posted by Exrage

I would also point out that we out damage paladins, making us the ideal OT that can instantly become the MT should he go down long enough for him to throw a provoke and us to swap out of defiance if our DPS/Burst abilities are on CD.

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ffs, stop acting like you are a pro, you know that a PLD does just as much damage as a warrior, the math is there for you to read, and nother thing dont say a warrior is just as good as a PLD, you know just as well as us that a PLD outpreform a warrior in every aspect but AoE agro, - and they can fix that by granting the PLD Overpower!

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Originally Posted by Ninjiitstu

Your math is wrong. Brutal Swing is Off Cooldown for War, but not taken into account. Additionally, it's in a vacuum that doesn't exist in practical application. Spirits within is a Silence that builds DR. It is not part of any reasonably person's rotation on anything other then trash mobs, which should not be a realistic view on DPS.

That being said, PLD still does more more damage then a WAR on single target. WAR is much more effective against Multiple targets. I imagine if anything were to change with these two tanks, this would be the first thing.

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You can spam Spirits Within on the vast majority of mobs in the game with no issue.

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Originally Posted by Ninjiitstu

Your math is wrong. Brutal Swing is Off Cooldown for War, but not taken into account.

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Brutal Swing adds a whopping 4.167 potency baseline. If you honestly think that Brutal Swing is going to do *anything* appreciable to your total damage dealt, you're deluding yourself.

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Spirits within is a Silence that builds DR. It is not part of any reasonably person's rotation on anything other then trash mobs, which should not be a realistic view on DPS.

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So you say that Spirits Within shouldn't be counted but Brutal Swing *should*? Silence is *less* useful than stun so DR means a *lot* less. There's only one boss that I know of where silence means *anything* (Dhorne Chimera) and, in that fight, you also need stuns.

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That being said, PLD still does more more damage then a WAR on single target. WAR is much more effective against Multiple targets. I imagine if anything were to change with these two tanks, this would be the first thing.

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Anyone that acts like WAR is more effective at AoE has no idea what they're talking about. Yes, Flash does no damage so any kind of AoE damage situation is naturally going to favor WAR; this would be true if Overpower was potency *5*. What you (and pretty much everyone else who always brings this up) is that Overpower has a *lot* going against it: it's *hugely* expensive (net loss of *80* TP per GCD, compared to the 10-20 of every other attack; Flash is, for all intents and purposes, completely and utterly free), unwieldy (*targeted* cone rather than PbAoE circle), has no secondary benefit like Flash's blind (minor issue, but still), and is smaller (120* cone w/ 8y radius = 67y^2 area; circle w/ 5y = 78y^2 area). The only advantages it brings are slightly better burst enmity generation (which comes at the cost of enmity generation down the line thanks to the massive cost) and the little bit of additional damage (less than any of your single target attack) that gets *easily* drowned out by the damage capability of any DPS you might be running with.

On top of that, PLD also brings Circle of Scorn, which is flipping amazing: it's free, it's the same size as Flash, and actually deals an appreciable amount of damage (more than Overpower, in fact).

Overpower is not the Twelve's gift to AoE tanking. In fact, thanks to all of the stuff that it has going against it, it's a pretty fair balance with Flash and Circle of Scorn.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

So you say that Spirits Within shouldn't be counted but Brutal Swing *should*? Silence is *less* useful than stun so DR means a *lot* less. There's only one boss that I know of where silence means *anything* (Dhorne Chimera) and, in that fight, you also need stuns.

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ADS and it's adds in Coil needs to be silenced to avoid High Voltage. So generally that's two situations where you can't spam Spirits Within.

Otherwise I have no idea what Ninji is talking about. Spirits Within should be used as much as possible beyond those two cases.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

Brutal Swing adds a whopping 4.167 potency baseline.

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That would still make your math wrong, right?

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Originally Posted by Kitru

So you say that Spirits Within shouldn't be counted but Brutal Swing *should*?

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Im saying do one or the other. Don't pick one side and leave another sides abilities out. Common sense should dictate that.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

Anyone that acts like WAR is more effective at AoE has no idea what they're talking about.

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That is going to be my new sig. You are clearly inept in every way.

Overpower is 4 x damage x Defiance. That, even at 25% increased Enmity, is a potency of 5. At 2x, its 8. So, what again?

Also its a loss of 70, not 80. And the reason WAR is better at AoE is the combination of Overpower AND Flash. You haven't been to coils yet, clearly.

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Originally Posted by Ninjiitstu

Your math is wrong... That being said, PLD still does more more damage then a WAR on single target. WAR is much more effective against Multiple targets. I imagine if anything were to change with these two tanks, this would be the first thing.

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Actually, the math is not wrong. I found the same thing a month ago, before we even hit release. Additionally, you are also incorrect that WAR is superior to multiple targets, and I addressed that in the post from six weeks ago. You can only provide superior AoE DPS in a situation where you are spamming Overpower, and the TP cost is such that you'll be completely out of TP in 25 seconds -- obviously, you won't be doing this.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

No, we don't. A properly played PLD in Sword Oath will do more damage than a WAR outside of Defiance. Just check the math (link in sig).

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Actually by your own math WAR does more damage.
It is not until a WAR is in the group that a PLD's damage sees an advantage because of the Storm's Eye debuff. WHICH is a bit of a grey area....
Honestly it is not really fair to give PLD full credit for a DPS increase gained from an ability used by another class. Generally if x job provides the debuff than that job gets credit. So you can just as easily say that 'extra' damage a PLD does because of Storm's Eye belongs to the WAR NOT the PLD.

But to be fair as possible I find in such situations that since the WAR wouldn't get added damage without a PLD and a PLD won't get that extra damage without a WAR. That the dps increase is split 50/50. So if there is a 20 dps increase from SE then 10 of that is attributed to PLD and 10 of that is attributed to WAR. And since the difference between 10 and 10 is zero. You're back and square one with WAR doing slightly more damage.

And a little more on the topic, I don't know if you are unaware or simply find it inefficient. But WAR is able to go in and out of Defiance while in combat. What does this mean for WAR DPS?

It means once a minute a WAR can turn on Defiance, pop Infuriate, let loose Inner-Beast and turn off Defiance. To add a little icing on that cake, Internal release also shares the 60s cooldown. So every minute that can be a 300 potency attack with a 30% bonus to crit chance.

And also means every 180s a WAR can effectively turn on Defiance, pop Infuriate and then Unchained > Berserk, combo as normal and Inner Beast and turn off Defiance.

And on the topic of Brutal Swing. Yes its damage might be crap... but if you aren't worried about building up the enemy's stun resistance it is FREE crap. Just every 30 seconds between cooldowns free.

And on the topic of AoE damage. If you think a PLD can touch a WAR.... haha...ha...ha...hahaha. Yes, Overpower is expensive. But you act like a WAR has to spam it to the high heavens to compete with PLD. If you include Maim, OP has a potency around 144. PLD's CoS has a potency of 220-250. That means all a WAR has to do is use OP just twice every 25 seconds. Then you add in the buffs and the fact that because of the cooldown PLD can only fit two CoS in FoF and WAR can fit... roughly 7 into Berserk. And if they are taking advantage of their stance, every minute they can do the above stance dance but instead of using IB just pop off Internal released buffed Cyclones.

Since you like math I have a fairly simple word problem for you:

If a WAR engages, with Heavy Swing > Maim > Defiance > Infuriate > Berserk > Steel Cylcone > Click off Defiance > Spam Over Power until Pacified and then went immediately afk to make a sandwhich. How much time does the WAR have to make that sandwich until a PLD makes up the difference in AoE damage using CoS?


Of course threat wise arguing which is better between either class is just too derp-mode for me. End of the day both classes can successfully hold hate in their sleep. Its like arguing which is better to shoot fish in a barrel with... either way you end up with a bunch of dead fish.

As for the original point of this topic.... Vit is the easier option. Str you will struggle a lot but as someone said before str's returns gets better and better with gear. Same can be said for vit (higher defense means higher ehp) but in the end it boils down to playing style. If you are a reactive WAR who like sitting on your stacks and sticking to SE/BB, Vit will serve you better. If you are an active WAR who is less frugal with stacks and gets SP in whereever it can fit in, str will serve you better once you get the gear to make the most of your returns.

Well put Junk, couldn't build on that anymore if I wanted to. Merely a reminder that the Dev team uses one of each class when making/testing content for a reason- each plays off another's strength and the warrior is vital to more than just buffing the paladin.

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Originally Posted by Ninjiitstu

That would still make your math wrong, right?

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No, I specifically chose to ignore it. The math is correct. You may not agreed with the method, but the math is correct.

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Im saying do one or the other. Don't pick one side and leave another sides abilities out. Common sense should dictate that.

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Common sense would also dictate that they don't follow *nearly* the same use paradigm. Spirits Within deals a helluva lot more damage with a much less important status effect. Ignoring that difference is like ignoring the vast gulf in state between Flash and Overpower (which you also do, so I really shouldn't be surprised).

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That is going to be my new sig. You are clearly inept in every way.

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Really? Because it's pretty obvious that you can't even correct me correctly.

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Overpower is 4 x damage x Defiance. That, even at 25% increased Enmity, is a potency of 5. At 2x, its 8. So, what again?

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Overpower's enmity modifier is 2x, not 4x. That's 240 potency as enmity per use, pre-Defiance. I find it amusing that you're bringing up Overpower's numbers in a vacuum. You're acting as if 240 potency as enmity per GCD is somehow supposed to be monumentally high without even giving a point of comparison. If you want to claim that Overpower generates *way* more threat than Flash does, actually bring up a point of comparison because, unless Flash is complete and utter rubbish (on 3 targets, cycling the BB combo generates ~240 potency as enmity per GCD on each; Halone generates ~230; Flash needs to generate at least that much for it to provide meaningful enmity generation in realistic AoE scenarios; even at ~200, it would still be useful thanks to evenly distributing it rather than loading it on the third target), Overpower has nowhere near the absurd advantage that you think it has.

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Also its a loss of 70, not 80. And the reason WAR is better at AoE is the combination of Overpower AND Flash. You haven't been to coils yet, clearly.

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TP generation is 60 per 3 seconds. The GCD is 2.5 seconds, which equates to 50 TP/GCD. 130 - 50 = 80. If you want to math, math properly.

As to needing both Overpower and Flash, I seriously have to wonder why the hell you would ever need 3-4 uses *per fight* of a single, non-damaging AoE that provides no debuff. While I haven't been to Coils yet, I find it hard to come up with a situation where you actually *need* Flash, considering how little WAR actually gets to use it.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

As to needing both Overpower and Flash, I seriously have to wonder why the hell you would ever need 3-4 uses *per fight* of a single, non-damaging AoE that provides no debuff. While I haven't been to Coils yet, I find it hard to come up with a situation where you actually *need* Flash, considering how little WAR actually gets to use it.

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Again, Go to coils before you give your opinion on what you need or don't need as a WAR. I do appreciate the math though, despite you still being wrong.

http://valk.dancing-mad.com/?page_id=231

4x. Thanks for playing.

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Originally Posted by Junk4Brains

Actually by your own math WAR does more damage.

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One of the major things that people bring up is that WAR does more damage, enough to make their inferior damage soaking capability justified. Even if WAR does *slightly* more damage or enmity (which is what happens in the "lone" scenarios), the difference is so minute that it doesn't make one whit of a difference. People have made varying claims that WAR does anywhere from 30-100% more damage than a PLD does. That's blatantly untrue, which is what my math was intending to demonstrate. Honestly, the difference between the two is small enough that player skill has a greater impact than class choice.

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It is not until a WAR is in the group that a PLD's damage sees an advantage because of the Storm's Eye debuff. WHICH is a bit of a grey area....
Honestly it is not really fair to give PLD full credit for a DPS increase gained from an ability used by another class. Generally if x job provides the debuff than that job gets credit. So you can just as easily say that 'extra' damage a PLD does because of Storm's Eye belongs to the WAR NOT the PLD.

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The basic reasoning I used is that, if you're bringing double WAR, you're not getting that additional damage. The WAR buffs its own damage and tangentially improves the PLDs, much like DRG improves itself and tangentially improves BRD. It is, admittedly, a bit of a fuzzy area, but I stand by how I labelled it, especially since the WAR doesn't actually benefit in any of the tangential ways from the added damage afforded to a PLD whereas the PLD itself does.

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And a little more on the topic, I don't know if you are unaware or simply find it inefficient. But WAR is able to go in and out of Defiance while in combat. What does this mean for WAR DPS?

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PLD can do this just as easily with Sword Oath. Since neither Sword Oath nor Shield Oath require any build up or CD usage, stance dancing is, honestly, an advantage of the PLD.

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It means once a minute a WAR can turn on Defiance, pop Infuriate, let loose Inner-Beast and turn off Defiance. To add a little icing on that cake, Internal release also shares the 60s cooldown. So every minute that can be a 300 potency attack with a 30% bonus to crit chance.

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The 25% damage debuff from Defiance would negate any real advantage afforded by the higher potency of Inner Beast. You're turning what is a 300 potency attack into the equivalent of a 225 potency attack. Since it's only available once every 24 GCDs and the average base potency per GCD for non-Defiance WAR is 213.85, all that you're affording yourself is an additional .464 potency per GCD.

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And also means every 180s a WAR can effectively turn on Defiance, pop Infuriate and then Unchained > Berserk, combo as normal and Inner Beast and turn off Defiance.

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This is the only way that dancing into Defiance could be useful, mainly because you're directly countering the -25% damage penalty which renders the previous use of Inner Beast so irrelevant. Of course, in this case, it's the 72 GCD pulling you down: the per GCD advantage of Inner Beast in this context is 86.15; once every 72 GCDs means that it would provide an extra 1.20 base potency per GCD. Once again, largely irrelevant, especially considering the windup and CD resource usage required.

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And on the topic of AoE damage.

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Outside of tank stance, yes, a WAR is going to do more damage than a PLD, but I've never claimed that PLD and WAR have equal AoE *damage*, nor was I remarking at all on DPS stance AoEs. I specifically referenced AoE as it pertains to tanking, which is much less focused on damage and instead focuses almost entirely on enmity generation.

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Yes, Overpower is expensive. But you act like a WAR has to spam it to the high heavens to compete with PLD.

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No, I don't. I act like Overpower has an inordinate cost that, even if you use it only 2-3 times, has a drastic effect upon your ability to deal damage down the line thanks explicitly to that high resource cost. Flash, from a long term DPS/enmity standpoint, not just free; because it costs no TP, it actually provides a net gain of 50 TP per GCD, which extends your effective resource time 3.75 GCDs. Every time you use Flash, you're buying yourself more than an entire Halone combo's worth of net TP. Each use of Overpower provides a drain of over ~7 GCDs worth of single target TP consumption. When the total burn time from full to resource dry is ~76 for each, Overpower consumes ~9% of your time to deal optimal DPS every time you use it. Using Overpower even *once* has a massive detrimental effect upon your ability to deal damage. Unless you have regular TP recovery periods, it's going to screw you over hard.

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If you include Maim, OP has a potency around 144. PLD's CoS has a potency of 220-250. That means all a WAR has to do is use OP just twice every 25 seconds. Then you add in the buffs and the fact that because of the cooldown PLD can only fit two CoS in FoF and WAR can fit... roughly 7 into Berserk. And if they are taking advantage of their stance, every minute they can do the above stance dance but instead of using IB just pop off Internal released buffed Cyclones.

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First off, if you're going to bring up buffs, bring up all of them. Maim is factored into the end multipliers. Defiance hits Overpower harder than Shield Oath hits CoS and Fight or Flight provides more for CoS than Berserk does for Overpower. If you're going to bring up direct comparisons, do it correctly and include all factors on both sides.

Secondly, your comparison of CS and FoF to Overpower and Berserk is monumentally one sided. Using Overpower 7 times in a row is going to very nearly bottom out a WAR (At 80 TP net loss/GCD, you just burned through more than half of your total resources even at full) so, unless you just don't care about the damage you deal 2 minutes from now, you just cost yourself a crapton of damage output. Overpower's limitation is *specifically* its resource cost. Comparing it to an ability that has no cost but is on a CD is *obviously* going to create a massive artificial advantage for one over the other. You're not even *trying* to compare the two equally.

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Since you like math I have a fairly simple word problem for you:

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And I have a counterargument: how many DPS would be able to pull off of either a WAR or a PLD blowing their respective loads to maximize AoE enmity generation? Redundant enmity generation is just that: redundant. It doesn't matter how large your enmity cushion it; it only matters that you have *more* enmity. The WAR you refer to in your "word problem" would be screwing itself over because of resource costs. Sure, it blew its load nice and early to make itself look fancy, but, 2 minutes later, it's going to be sitting around doing nothing because it doesn't have the TP.

Once again, I feel compelled to point out that nowhere have I ever said that PLD does more or even *as much* damage as a WAR is capable of in the short term if that WAR is willing to sacrifice performance later on. People seem to get focused upon my statement that WAR and PLD have balanced AoE capability without actually understanding what I'm saying. WAR has the ability to put out a lot of AoE damage (still nothing compared to even a bad DPS, which is another one of the things that people continually forget about; even OT damage pales in comparison to a *real* DPS's) in a short confines at great cost, if it so chooses, but, over the long term, the PLD will do both more damage and generate more AoE enmity because Overpower is just too damned expensive.

CoS generates the same enmity as a use of Overpower for free. Flash acts as a substantial net gain on TP whereas Overpower represents a massive net loss. To match AoE DPS, a WAR need only use 2 Overpowers every 10 GCDs, but that comes at the cost of increasing their TP usage by roughly 100% so that WAR ends up having slightly more than half of the operable time as a PLD.

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Of course threat wise arguing which is better between either class is just too derp-mode for me.

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Arguing about AoE damage dealing is just as derp-mode, especially when you ignore the monumental delayed costs incurred by Overpower. The DPS provided by a tank is nothing when compared against a DPS's. Try comparing what a WAR or PLD can do, even when temp buffed, to any other job out there: a healer will blow you out of the water with Holy/DoT+Bane, especially since healer gear actually improves DPS efficiently whereas tank gear is mostly focused on it tangentially.

It's just like arguing that bringing a tank that deals 10% more damage than the other one is really providing all that much when tanks account for all of 10% of total DPS on a good day. You're basically arguing that a 1% improvement in total DPS is going to make or break *anything*.

The only thing that matters is that Tank DPS and enmity, both AoE and ST, is close enough that there is no appreciable advantage to bringing either, as far as damage/enmity is concerned. Mitigation is most definitely a lopsided construct that favors PLD heavily.

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Originally Posted by Ninjiitstu

http://valk.dancing-mad.com/?page_id=231

4x. Thanks for playing.

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That lists the tank stance enmity modifiers as 2x and the Defiance damage debuff modifier as .65. Neither of those is true and they've been tested numerous times on live servers. Old numbers are old.

*is hot for Kit*

I made a 3 part Blog post about STR and VIT (as well as other stats)

You can read it here. But I'll post it here because it is relevant.

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...26/blog/263765

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There is a controversy about WAR stats that really shouldn't exist. Should a Warrior Tank Stack VIT? Or STR? What about DEX? Well, hopefully I can clear the air and help people stat their WAR a bit better.

On the side of VIT are folks who want to get as much HP as possible. They say that a WAR can't survive unless he has a huge pool of HP. They don't view self-healing as something as important as being able to take the biggest hits in the game. They cite as references the damage that they can take in Coil. They are the vast majority of WARs. "Damage dealt as a tank is not nearly as important as the damage taken as a tank." is their motto.

In the other corner are the STR stacked WAR. They hail that their self-cures are great! They mitigate damage by killing the mob faster that they can survive and not be a drag on the mages. They say that even with stacking STR, they don't suffer that much in HP loss. Their enmity is unbreakable and their attacks unyielding. "Kill it before it kills you! With self heals, you have as much HP as the mob you're fighting!" Is their motto.

So who's right?

The truth is they both are.

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Vitality -- HP in numbers
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To start with, let's look at Vitality stacking, the most common stat allocation of WAR tanks. It's easy to see why it's so popular. With enough HP, you don't have to worry that much about Self-heals. The WHMs will be able to fill your HP so long as you mitigate in other ways, like having a good Parry-rate and dodging. On Titan, they are happy they can actually survive the multi-hits before during and after Mountain Buster with plenty of HP to spare. It's hard to see any downside to this. The worst tank ever is a dead tank.

But that doesn't mean there aren't any downsides. WARs that are VIT stacked contribute barely more Damage dealt than a PLD with similar stats. Worse, they aren't actually mitigating any damage with the self-heals, which are a paltry amount even if they tried. They are little more than meat shields...and poor meatshields at that. They rely only on Thrill of Battle to increase their HP pool and Infuriate to boost the heals received from mages. All other self heals are less and not really worth using at all.

This puts pressure on the mages to continually fill a growing HP pool that's getting big bites taken out of it with no mitigation at all. It's easy to see the disadvantages to this and why so many people prefer PLD over a VIT-stacked WAR. Stacking Vitality is a pre-emptive way to taking more damage, but in the end it mitigates almost no damage taken.

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Strength -- HP in skill
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Strength stacked WARs take a different approach. Instead of pouring all their stats into the HP pool, they go for the amount of damage dealt and boosted mitigation. Their HP is less so they may dive deep in the the red more often, but their also more easily filled by the mages since they have the same benefits from Wrath V, as well as a sturdy self-heal ability. A Strong WAR will be able hit for more, Crit for more, Parry for more and hold more enmity more quickly as well as kill the mob faster.

But there's an obvious downside as Vitality-stacked WARs (and PLD who are against WAR) will be quick to point out. For STR-stacked WAR, survival is more tenuous. If you have put the majority of your points into STR, you won't break far over 7k even with Thrill of Battle. There's no way you can deal with the hits of Coil and even Titan will sometimes one shot you.

So which to choose?


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Why not both? The Balance of Damage Taken and Damage dealt
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It's clear that both these stats contribute to a WARs survival. That's why I advocate Stacking both STR and VIT as equals. Imagine a set of scales. On one side is damage taken and the other side is damage dealt. You want to max your HP as well as your mitigation. You want to max your damage dealt as well as your survivability. One should not outweigh the other and throw things out of balance. So if you stack Vitality in your allocations, wear jewels that will stack Strength to balance it out. Or make your allocations both STR and VIT... but don't go too far in one direction.

But you can only take this so far. Vitality and Strength are main stats, meaning that if you HQ gear, then they are pre-capped and you can't add any more. In addition, while food can increase VIT there's no food for STR. So you must take other approaches to keep things in balance.

Once you have your VIT and your STR as high as it can be for your item's level, start adding secondary stats for damage dealt and taken. Parry will increase the amount of times you Parry. This syncs with the Strength you have added that increases the amount of damage your parry mitigates. You'll see a nice increase in the amount of damage you can take. Of course, if STR was not your priority you won't see much by the way of damage mitigation from Parry. So you can see the advantage of taking a balanced approach with VIT and STR. If you are currently working stuffing as much VIT as possible onto your gear, you only stand to benefit to adding some STR.

If you add Critical Hit Rate buffs to your stats, you will also see that you will be able to mitigate quite a bit more as well. The Critical Hit Rate on WAR is higher than other classes thanks to Wrath V buff to critical hit rate. The more you crit the more damage you deal and the more you can heal yourself for. This adds to your mitigation but not necessarily to your survivability. If you are a STR stacked WAR, you will only stand to benefit from adding some Vitality before heading to Crit Rate.

What about Skill speed and Dexterity? What about Determination? You can sprinkle these in if you would like, however, all three of these stats are like the dessert at the end of the meal. They all will add something, but not very much. So pick whichever one you like or feel free to skip them completely.

Now that you've added these stats to your gear, add others for situational problems. For example, you need more accuracy for Coil, 470 at the bare minimum (I recommend 475 really). Many Accuracy jewels are quite balanced between STR VIT and Parry so you don't lose much when you switch out accessories to increase your accuracy. Food also can increase accuracy quite a bit but can be expensive if you don't make it yourself.

Hopefully, this gives you some ideas about what you should gear and allocate your WAR and what stats you should be focussing on.

As a summary:

Strength and Vitality in equal or near equal measure.
Parry and Critical Hit Rate next
Accuracy, Skill Speed, Dexterity and Determination last.

* I have not completed Titan *

I ran it once. That said, I read everything.

I don't agree with all VIT and I don't believe it is the intention of a WAR to go all VIT. I believe this is a sorry excuse but to be empathetic to our healers who already, obviously, have a strenuous role as is. It's been said several times that there is a VIT threshold that we should have and for that, I do agree.

But, tell me, and by that I mean to be enlightened, at what point do we ask ourselves that perhaps the healer(s) and tank(s) shall be in perfect unison. I ask because I've know of 2 Warriors beyond T3. Their healers did not quit on them.

Lastly, I do love all these threads in regards to theory crafting. Anyone that deters these analyses please disregard. They're still reading I assure you.

i am bad at math, can someone simplify this for me? :P

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Originally Posted by EvilHippie

i am bad at math, can someone simplify this for me? :P

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For leveling 1-50 and doing content where your gear is on par with or above the level of the content at hand, you should allocate your points to STR. If you're undergeared for the content at hand, VIT is a good way to improve your safety margin. If you're doing a bit of both, VIT is the way to go. I do not advocate listening to recommendations to "balance" your stat points as it misses the fact that the stats are not necessarily 1:1 in value and their priorities will vary from situation to situation and person to person. Middle ground arguments are often a logical fallacy; I would argue that this is not one of the exceptions.

The flawed Logic of Vit stacking is the idea that your HP points make you a better WAR. It adds a lot to your surviving, but in the end a Vit-stacked WAR is just a Terrible PLD. By your very nature, thanks to Enhanced Vitality, adding more VIT will give you a bigger boost to your HP. There's just no reason to stat all the way VIT and lose out on the benefits of STR.

If you're VIT stacked, you only stand to benefit from adding some STR to that.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

The 25% damage debuff from Defiance would negate any real advantage afforded by the higher potency of Inner Beast. You're turning what is a 300 potency attack into the equivalent of a 225 potency attack. Since it's only available once every 24 GCDs and the average base potency per GCD for non-Defiance WAR is 213.85, all that you're affording yourself is an additional .464 potency per GCD.

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Inner beast, like the super useful steel cyclone, ignores the defiance damage debuff, and does 300 attack potency damage straight out.

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Flash, from a long term DPS/enmity standpoint, not just free; because it costs no TP, it actually provides a net gain of 50 TP per GCD, which extends your effective resource time 3.75 GCDs. Every time you use Flash, you're buying yourself more than an entire Halone combo's worth of net TP. Each use of Overpower provides a drain of over ~7 GCDs worth of single target TP consumption. When the total burn time from full to resource dry is ~76 for each, Overpower consumes ~9% of your time to deal optimal DPS every time you use it. Using Overpower even *once* has a massive detrimental effect upon your ability to deal damage. Unless you have regular TP recovery periods, it's going to screw you over hard.

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Aha! So might I imply from this that you're finally warming up to my idea of having flash as a cross class skill? ^_^

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Originally Posted by EvilHippie

i am bad at math, can someone simplify this for me? :P

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By putting bonus stats in VIT - equipping Jewelery with Crit and STR - wearing DL Body stuffs - and with Relic

You should be sitting at ~6500 HP with Defiance
be able to self heal with Inner Beast (IB) for ~1050 HP @ 20s intervals
be able to self heal with IB for ~1365 HP with the Buff/Debuff from Maim and Storm's Eye @ 20s intervals
be able to self heal with IR, IB, Infuriate, IB by ~2700-3800 HP (Maim+SE) @ 60 second intervals.

By putting bonus stats in VIT - equipping Jewelery with Parry and VIT - wearing DL Body stuffs - and with Relic

You should be sitting at ~7200 HP with Defiance
be able to self heal with Inner Beast (IB) for ~870 HP @ 20s intervals
be able to self heal with IB for ~1131 HP with the Buff/Debuff from Maim and Storm's Eye @ 20s intervals
be able to self heal with IR, IB, Infuriate, IB by ~2100-3100 HP (Maim+SE) @ 60 second intervals.

By putting bonus stats in STR - equipping Jewelery with Crit and STR - wearing DL Body stuffs - and with Relic

You should be sitting at ~6000 HP with Defiance
be able to self heal with Inner Beast (IB) for ~1140 HP @ 20s intervals
be able to self heal with IB for ~1482 HP with the Buff/Debuff from Maim and Storm's Eye @ 20s intervals
be able to self heal with IR, IB, Infuriate, IB by ~3000-4200 HP (Maim+SE) @ 60 second intervals.

Both extremes and a middle - choose your poison :p

I converted to Flash myself.

Mostly because Overpower sucked TP and gives you no Wrath. :(

Thank you, but i do wonder if, with the release of 2.1 we will have to re-allocate our skill points to one or the other. I remember reading somewhere that it was possible, though difficult to do so. Has any Information been released on that?

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Originally Posted by EvilHippie

Thank you, but i do wonder if, with the release of 2.1 we will have to re-allocate our skill points to one or the other. I remember reading somewhere that it was possible, though difficult to do so. Has any Information been released on that?

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10k seals at your local Grand Company. You are looking for an item called Keepers Hymn. I think it only resets the points for the job you are on. If you already stacked your bonus on VIT though, may as well leave it.

Thank you again. No i mistakenly put some points where they didn't belong(in dex, don't judge it was early on). I have a mostly strength build but am rethinking it after reading the forums. I have yet to hit endgame content and would like to be prepared.

Anyone looking for actual information about this game should never try to learn from these forums. They are full of bad information and an obnoxious amount of complaint and QQ posts.

1. Put all your points into vitality, WAR or PLD.
2. Anyone who disagrees with that, is bad, and wrong.
3. Warriors are fine and completely balanced, and if you disagree you are a bad who needs to l2p.
4. Yes i'm serious.
5. We have cleared turn 4 with a warrior tank, and it is substantially easier than with 2 PLD due to WAR snap aggro on adds.
6. People should stop saying PLD can dps the same as a warrior. There is no tanking situation in the entire end game where
sword oath is viable whatsoever while tanking. And obviously AoE damage the WAR brings significantly more to the table.

That's all.

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Originally Posted by BattleShipSkyLobster

Anyone looking for actual information about this game should never try to learn from these forums. They are full of bad information and an obnoxious amount of complaint and QQ posts.

1. Put all your points into vitality, WAR or PLD.
2. Anyone who disagrees with that, is bad, and wrong.
3. Warriors are fine and completely balanced, and if you disagree you are a bad who needs to l2p.
4. Yes i'm serious.
5. We have cleared turn 4 with a warrior tank, and it is substantially easier than with 2 PLD due to WAR snap aggro on adds.
6. People should stop saying PLD can dps the same as a warrior. There is no tanking situation in the entire end game where
sword oath is viable whatsoever while tanking. And obviously AoE damage the WAR brings significantly more to the table.

That's all.

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I'm going to take your suggestion in your first line... and ignore all the "bad information" you provided after. I mean you say they all(all would include yours) have bad information then expect people to go with your "bad information"? Really?

Edit: I'm not saying your info is bad... just pointing out that you are calling your own information bad.

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Originally Posted by Derza

I'm going to take your suggestion in your first line... and ignore all the "bad information" you provided after. I mean you say they all(all would include yours) have bad information then expect people to go with your "bad information"? Really?

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Sez the guy in the moogle cap. EDIT: Awww it went away... durn it. I just find it sometimes funny what people wear on the forums when it disconnects from the serious-business tone of their posts.

Even though we disagree that Vit has no cap on its usefulness, I pretty much agree with the rest of it.

I think the post several pages back explains it better than I ever could, but basically I feel that once you reach a certain "tier" of Vitality you stand to benefit more from Strength than adding more Vit. That said, once you get into Turn 4 of Coil I can imagine that Vit suddenly will be something you want to stack again.

Congrats on your FCs success Julius. I hope to get as far as you soon. ^_^

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Originally Posted by HiirNoivl

Sez the guy in the moogle cap.

Even though we disagree that Vit has no cap on its usefulness, I pretty much agree with the rest of it.

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Lol what does having a moogle cap on have to do with anything? Oh and read my edited post... ( i edited it like 10 secs after i posted guess you refreshed really fast!)

I have a WAR and PLD, my highest crit on war is 992, the pld gets 315. You guys really think pld has higher single target dps? Play both classes before you compare them.