WAR as DPS?

So I don't really like tanking but I like the whole 2h axe wielding thing. I wanted to know how viable is it to gear for DPS/skillspeed etc and not be in your tanking stance? Will the DPS be viable? Do your skills still generate extra threat when not in that stance?

I'm not entirely sure how the skills for Warrior work yet, just wanted to know if this will ever be viable. Oh and this is more towards viability for coil.

You'll hear mixed feelings on this. Most people will say "no, absolutely not".

Some people though have parsed Marauders (without the Job, so they have 10 crossclass DPS skills) doing about equal dps to similar geared DPS classes on fights like Titan Hard. It varies, it seems it IS possible to crank out certaily Acceptable DPS as a Marauder if required. You can do it as a Warrior too but you lose access to a lot of nice DPS crossclass skills like blood for blood and raging strikes.

However, it comes with three major issues.
1 - Your threat will be skyhigh as you still need to use Butchers Block combos to max your dps. Depends on your tank of course, but there's a good chance you wont be able to do your maximum dps without pulling aggro. Your skills still have bonus enmity on. It wont be as high as a Warrior in Defiance but it'll still be dangerously close to the tank's level.
2 - You wont ever be able to queue as DPS via the Duty Finder, so you HAVE to tank most content.
3 - To truly max your DPS you have to play as Marauder, not Warrior, which means you can't use AF2 gear or a Relic Weapon.

I'm sure that if you have a Warrior, you play well, and you gear appropriately with DPS jewellery, you'll be able to be a fairly valid contribution to a team as DPS (it's worth doing this if you're in an 8man team for fights that need only 1 tank anyway). But the difficulties in doing so really make this viable purely for a Side Project for someone that already likes the tanking aspect of a Warrior and wants to have some fun with some alternative gear sets.

I certainly would NEVER recommend rolling a warrior if you don't like tanking.

It's under any other normal DPS and every role for dungeons until 8 man raids you'll only be able to fill the tank role. In 2.1 they could add an alternate job for MRD that works as DPS, but until then you're better off playing a different class if you don't want to tank.

Also, in Coil you'll mainly be tanking as well. An example would be Turn 1 where an add spawns for the entrance node and when the snakes split.

I did not know that you can't equip a relic as a Marauder that kinda sucks. My main class is Scholar anyway so I just wanted a class on the side to have some fun with. My 8 man group is on turn 2 at the moment anyway and from what I've seen in coil so far Warriors take waaaaaaay to much damage. I might try it anyway, cos I do like 2H axe wielders (played Warrior in WoW) And I guess I could also tank if I have to sometimes

Your strongest combo (Butcher's Block) directly generates enmity.

Putting on my Peltast/Hetairos equipment mixed with Darklight gives high STR.

Warrior's combos have relatively high potency being 150 - (190/200) - (250/270/280) <- Dragoon's highest potency combo Disembowel is only (220)


Where we lack tools -> how do we increase damage output? - MNK stacks Skill Speed/Critical Hit/+DMG%/DOTs, DRG has supplemental Jumps and +DMG %, BRD has +DMG% Bloodletter 0 TP cost, SMN DOT/Pet/Spikes, BLM Spell Stack/Steady High DMG

Warrior's only damage increasing tools are - Maim +20% DMG, Storm's Eye -10% Slash Resist, Berserk +50% ATK, Internal Release (cross-classed) +20% Critical Rate

MRD loses out on roughly (10?) STR I believe, but you lose AF/AF2 (not really a loss if you're wearing Darklight/Hetairos/Peltast) Losing Bravura is catastrophic if you're playing with DPS that have their relic. As MRD you can access ARC's kit - Raging Strikes +20% DMG, Hawk Eye +20% Phys. Acc, and Straight Shot (140) Potency +10% Crit Rate

In short MRD might be able to put out semi-decent DMG - but it will never be considered a go-to pick for DPS because it's toolkit is too limited when compared with MNK/DRG/BLM/BRD/SMN and that gap only widens as those jobs gather AF2 or unlock their Relic weapon.

When I'm not tanking with my WAR, but still using my "tank" gear which is far from being optimal atm, I'm doing ~170 DPS, I'd say that you can reach at least 200 with propper accessories. This is decent, more than a lot of so called DPS you find in this game even, but it's far from being enough to be competitive.
BUT, sooner or later, we will get a DPS job so... Might aswell level MRD and see for yourself ?

One benefit of having a MRD DD is that we provide a slashing debuff which also improves the PLD tank's damage output and emnity. And since we would be running without a Soul Stone, we have access to some good utility that the job types don't. But, as others have said, you can't equip the relic weapon, so the best you can do is a HQ 70 2-star piece made by a BSM.

I can understand the thematic preference as I love my Arms Warrior in WoW. And right now, the MRD in FFXIV is in pretty much the same place as Arms was in Vanilla WoW - built to be a tank, can do OK damage wearing mail or leather but not really optimized for the role.

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Originally Posted by Corkafish

But, as others have said, you can't equip the relic weapon, so the best you can do is a HQ 70 2-star piece made by a BSM..

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Incorrect. You can ear the allagan great axe.

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Originally Posted by Ninjiitstu

Incorrect. You can ear the allagan great axe.

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Correction: You can't wear the Allagan Great Axe because no one has downed Twintania and so exactly zero exist across all servers.

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Originally Posted by Hachiko

Correction: You can't wear the Allagan Great Axe because no one has downed Twintania and so exactly zero exist across all servers.

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Also incorrect. There was atleast one kill of Twintania, and since the information surroudning how the bug happened was released, it would shock me if it has not been killed since then as well, using the same method.

That being said, not exactly the best way to go about things, but it is entirely possible. If your planning on MRD DPS, your probably planning for the long road as you need a LOT of coils drops to begin with, so waiting on a twintania kill isn't the worst thing in the world.

MOST players would want the WAR class to do more damage so it should be a DPS and take off the shit gear they gave us at level 50 that PLD wear...(I wear also lol)
2h axe wielding = dps
class's that might come in final fantasy XIV samurai and dark knight (who knows what other class's that going to 2 hand wield)

I Pull 180 DPS on Demon Wall, Anataboga and Psycheflayer without defiance (minus infuriated>unchained>berserk for the 15% crit). For comparison good DPS pull about 230 onwards (seen 300+) and about 150 on my Paladin in sword oath. That is as a warrior in FULL DL tank gear (including accessories), 15 into str and a Bravura +1 (my pally has +0 str and no +1). These are short fights though, and favour the high burst berserk puts out (especially on Demon Wall).

With DPS jewellery I could probably push over 200. Storm eye combo only does 20 total less potency as is acceptable to use as a DPS rotation, rotating a butchers block in when you're behind on threat by a stretch. I assume if you get the ilvl 90 axe (Twintania one) you could actually compete to a degree as a Marauder. I'm not saying this *proves* anything, but it appears to be in the realm of possibility if it is approached in the right manner.

I used log parser not FFXIV-App for those that are curious.

You would be entirely useless in any AoE situations, unless you like face planting after a few over powers by ripping threat from the PLD tank.

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Originally Posted by Phreak

You would be entirely useless in any AoE situations, unless you like face planting after a few over powers by ripping threat from the PLD tank.

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If your healers knew it was coming and you'd be tanking, you would trash the packs so quickly. You still have the heavy armour+a defensive or two. Manageable in most situations.

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Originally Posted by Vecayse

I did not know that you can't equip a relic as a Marauder that kinda sucks. My main class is Scholar anyway so I just wanted a class on the side to have some fun with. My 8 man group is on turn 2 at the moment anyway and from what I've seen in coil so far Warriors take waaaaaaay to much damage. I might try it anyway, cos I do like 2H axe wielders (played Warrior in WoW) And I guess I could also tank if I have to sometimes

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I'm a Warrior.

We just downed Turn 2 last night.

Working on Turn 4.

Tanking fine on Turn 4 (Our overall DPS needs to be higher, that is our only problem on Turn 4 right now).

Thanks.

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Originally Posted by RapBreon

If your healers knew it was coming and you'd be tanking, you would trash the packs so quickly. You still have the heavy armour+a defensive or two. Manageable in most situations.

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So in order to DPS your entire group has to work around you, that defeats the point of being a viable DPS option. Also with current gear availability to >MRD< wanting to attempt to play as a DPS you wouldn't be wearing heavy armor and you would only have one ability reducing incoming damage (Foresight) the rest of your cross class skills would be slotted for DPS boosts since you're DPSing not TANKing, I'm sure healers would really enjoy hard swapping to the lolMRD dpser during coil trash whose taking hits upwards of 700-800 a swing.

Does anyone know if Storm's Eye stacks? I have some... rather crazy thoughts bouncing around my head.

No, it does not stack. It just gets overwritten by the most recent cast.

I'm curious to see if Marauder/Warrior can perform as a beefcake DPS in PvP. A DPS that can also take a beating can actually be quite viable in PvP if setup right.

I've tried WAR/Marauder dps quite a bit and I always parse a fair amount below actual dps classes. It's definitely not even with them. That said it's not totally terrible and I don't see why a group with a WAR or Marauder dps couldn't work except for one thing: enmity.

Since defiance and shield oath nerfed to be a flat 50% bonus to threat, a WAR/Marauder in DPS gear is going to be generating far more threat than any tank possibly could unless you hold off by using the maim+storm's eye combo over and over again instead of skull sunder+butchers block. This is a HUGE dps loss when you already don't do as much dps as real dps classes.

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Originally Posted by Phreak

So in order to DPS your entire group has to work around you, that defeats the point of being a viable DPS option. Also with current gear availability to >MRD< wanting to attempt to play as a DPS you wouldn't be wearing heavy armor and you would only have one ability reducing incoming damage (Foresight) the rest of your cross class skills would be slotted for DPS boosts since you're DPSing not TANKing, I'm sure healers would really enjoy hard swapping to the lolMRD dpser during coil trash whose taking hits upwards of 700-800 a swing.

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This may come as a surprise, but a serious TEAM, would have no issues with this if (the real question here) it increased efficiency. If you're a fledgling group who has no trust in each other whatsoever, I wouldn't recommend trying anything even remotely different. So If I said I'm about to tank this next pack I'll be focus target for heals, they respond and they would enjoy it, if, like I said; it increased efficiency. Also nobody takes trash seriously anyway, this should be tested on a boss (probably not T4 :P).

I did mention the iLvL Allagan Axe would be necessary for this to be worth considering. I also personally would still wear heavy armour even as a DPS MRD, because it has STR on it and often another DPS Stat. Secondary stats aren't as important at the moment as primaries. They often have accuracy on them, sometimes Crit and even (gross) skill speed. Though ideally I would choose on a piece by piece basis, assuming I had access to all of them, fitting in heavy armour where I could.