Warriors still inferior?

Hi there, i haven't played for a good amount of time now because when the game launched and i leveled up my warrior i was in the process of packing and moving, well ive moved now and ive been settled into my new place for a couple of weeks and decided to come back to the game to check some things out.

So i assume warriors are still inferior to paladin's? is there any thing new coming in this up coming patch that fixes them any? basically im asking if they are worth playing at all at this point or if i should just reroll pally or something.

Read the patch notes or any of the tank forums threads. Warriors are getting buffed in tomorrows patch.

Patch Notes

I wouldnt say inferior. With the patch i would say close to on par.
its just that in this game mitigation is king and pld is the king of mitigation.

least now wars wont be a half baked tank dps class and atually be practical.

If you get boners off of 2-3k inner beast overheals then yeah it's inferior now because you won't be seeing those numbers.

Outside of that, it's a general buff which pretty much puts it on par with PLD now for end-game content.

Ty o3o, my biggest concern is just them being practical, i know pallys are pretty much the gods of mitigation and thats fine but prior to this coming up patch obviously warriors were not practical so.

If this patch makes them practical finally, good.

Our cd suite is still terrible compared to pally

we still wont be as strong mitigation wise as paladins, but we will be viable, and that 10% damage reduction debuff is too nice to not have a warrior around

Well, warriors can now have 30% mitigation for every death sentence, it's a strong tool, especially combines with ur high hp and extra heal. Stronger than paladin is stretching it, but I think pld/war combo is probably going to be the strongest setup now with path mitigation.

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Originally Posted by Dlewis1986

Our cd suite is still terrible compared to pally

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Not really. While the WAR CDs are explicitly *weaker* than the PLD CDs, they are also on lower CDs:

WAR gets...
Foresight (~10% reduction in physical damage taken) with 20 sec duration every 90 secs (22.2% uptime)
Vengeance (30% damage reduction) with 15 sec duration every 120 secs (12.5% uptime)
ToB (20% +hp, amounts to a 16.7% reduction in percent of total hp taken) with 20 sec duration every 120 secs (12.5% uptime)
Featherfoot (15% evasion) with 15 sec duration every 90 secs (22.2% uptime)
Convalescence (20% +healing) with 20 sec duration every 120 secs (12.5% uptime)
Holmgang (can't be reduced to less than 1 hp) with 6 sec duration every 180 secs (3.33% uptime)

PLD gets...
Foresight (~10% reduction in physical damage taken) with 20 sec duration every 120 secs (12.5% uptime)
Rampart (20% damage reduction) with 20 sec duration every 90 secs (22.2% uptime)
Convalescence (30% +healing) with 20 sec duration every 120 secs (12.5% uptime)
Sentinel (40% damage reduction) with 10 sec duration every 180 secs (5.56% uptime)
Bulwark (60% +block, with 20% based block chance and 25% block value, equals ~14.3% reduction in physical damage) with 15 sec duration every 180 secs (8.33% uptime)
Hallow Ground (100% damage reduction) with 10 sec duration every 420 secs (2.38% uptime)

WAR manages a CD coverage of 85.23% (toss in the ~20-26% uptime we'll have from IB and it's well over 100%) while PLD manages 63.47% (that's 31.1% higher potential uptime; if you get rid of the Holmgang and HG as emergency buttons, it goes up to 34%). So while PLD gets *stronger* CDs, WAR gets to have ours up a helluva lot more often which means that, if you look at the mean contribution, the 2 CD suites provide nearly identical benefits over time: WAR manages an effective mean mitigation over time (from CDs, ignoring Holmgang because it's just really weird) of 13.9% while PLD manages 15.25% (it's only 12.9% if you ignore Hallowed Ground like we're ignoring Holmgang).

So, yeah, after 2.1, it's an outright fallacy to say that the PLD CD suite is explicitly better than the WAR CD suite. Once you factor in Inner Beast, you can't even say that PLD's have a distinct advantage in short term CD mitigation (outside of Hallowed Ground).

2.1 IB will offer great "snap" damage mitigation; any warrior who knows/learns his fights well enough can make amazing use out of 20% reduced damage for six seconds. The problem before was warriors surviving longer encounters due to such heavy reliance on a self heal and so few cooldowns for sticky situations. I'm happy to see that won't as much be the case now.

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Originally Posted by SaucepanKaoz

Well, warriors can now have 30% mitigation for every death sentence, it's a strong tool, especially combines with ur high hp and extra heal. Stronger than paladin is stretching it, but I think pld/war combo is probably going to be the strongest setup now with path mitigation.

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It's 20%. Inner Beast is 20%, Vengeance is 30%, but the cooldown is much longer.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

effective mean mitigation over time

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Is a completely worthless number, because incoming damage is not an average, it is spikey.

WAR will be able to reduce all spikes by less, where PLD will be able to reduce almost all the spikes by more and the spikes they can't reduce they will have Convalescence for anyways.

PLD cooldowns are strictly better, but the WAR cooldowns are good enough.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

It's 20%. Inner Beast is 20%, Vengeance is 30%, but the cooldown is much longer.



Is a completely worthless number, because incoming damage is not an average, it is spikey.

WAR will be able to reduce all spikes by less, where PLD will be able to reduce almost all the spikes by more and the spikes they can't reduce they will have Convalescence for anyways.

PLD cooldowns are strictly better, but the WAR cooldowns are good enough.

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I didn't say only inner beast did I, storms path buddy.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

Is a completely worthless number, because incoming damage is not an average, it is spikey.

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It's a method for comparing CD suites as a whole against one another. How else are you going to compare the PLD CD suite to the WAR CD suite in a non-heuristic manner? The abilities can't be compared on a one-for-one basis because most are not mirrors of one another (try comparing Featherfoot to Bulwark) and, even then, it's just comparing single abilities multiple times, as opposed to quantifying the full suite.

Also, saying that because damage is spikey, calculating mean contribution of a CD suite over time is inappropriate is simply ignorant. They are CDs so they're *meant* to be used to mitigate spikes rather than used on a constant basis. It would be like saying that tracking DPS with CDs factored in is inappropriate because you want to use the CDs at discrete intervals rather than regularly.

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Originally Posted by Kitru

It's a method for comparing CD suites as a whole against one another. How else are you going to compare the PLD CD suite to the WAR CD suite in a non-heuristic manner? The abilities can't be compared on a one-for-one basis because most are not mirrors of one another (try comparing Featherfoot to Bulwark) and, even then, it's just comparing single abilities multiple times, as opposed to quantifying the full suite.

Also, saying that because damage is spikey, calculating mean contribution of a CD suite over time is inappropriate is simply ignorant. They are CDs so they're *meant* to be used to mitigate spikes rather than used on a constant basis. It would be like saying that tracking DPS with CDs factored in is inappropriate because you want to use the CDs at discrete intervals rather than regularly.

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That's a poor comparison with DPS.

DPS will regularly be using their cooldowns unless there's an upcoming burn phase, so they won't hold them unless they get better benefit from stacking them. However, there's rarely more than a couple burn phases to a fight, so a DPS will also rarely have to hold their cooldowns and thus can be assumed to use them on cooldown in most situations.

A Tank will likely have to deal with large damage spikes over the course of a fight with much more regularity. As such, you have much greater incentive to save your CDs for big moments. Aside from that, DPS will regularly want to stack their cooldowns since they tend to multiply their benefits together for an even bigger benefit. However, in situations where you have consistent damage, consistent mitigation is generally preferable to stacking all your defensive cooldowns at once, so there's some incentive to spread them out. These sorts of factors make tank comparison more complex. For the purpose of such comparison, average mitigation is a very crude method of doing so. However, it IS a valid comparison, crude as it may be and can be useful in pointing towards larger discrepancies like the ones we saw between WAR & PLD in 2.0.

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Originally Posted by theunknowing

So i assume warriors are still inferior to paladin's? is there any thing new coming in this up coming patch that fixes them any?

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This is my analysis of the buffed WAR. It suggests WAR will be balanced in 2.1. For the record, this is a similar analysis of the 2.0 (pre-buff) WAR showing the large discrepancy between the two tanks.

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Originally Posted by Paikis

Is a completely worthless number, because incoming damage is not an average, it is spikey.

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Your healer still has to take care of all of it. In terms of burst damage, the only concern is whether or not you die, not how much healing need you've mitigated. You can generate a duration-specified eHP pool for any self-healing as well.

so you're telling me a guaranteed 20% damage reduction buff for 6 seconds every 20-30 seconds is inferior?

I would say that Warriors and Paladins are roughly on par. One is better in some circumstances, one in others, but both can do anything in the game pretty equally (I think). Warriors now seem to be a little ahead on paper, but the biggest difference will probably not be the job itself but the person behind the keyboard. Their complimentary skills combined with the new nerf to LBs for groups that bring more than one of a job on a run means that on tough content most groups will be looking for one of each. Which is as it should be.