Warrior in Frontlines

Hi I usally play blm or whm in front lines andI enjoy it a lot. Today I was thinking about gearing up and jumping as my Warrior that has been collecting dust for months. How do you guys like playing warrior in front lines? Do you have any pointers?

Tip #1: Play Marauder, not Warrior.

Why Marauder?

The only thing you gain from going WAR are tank related skills.

Defiance drops your damage by 25%, raises HP and gives you extra healing received, but the smart player doesn't focus a tank down first. The two weapon skills are nice, but hardly make up for your general rotation attack skills doing 75% dmg. Yes I know about Unchained. You can only pop it 7-8 times in a match for 140 to 160 seconds of true DPS. About 70-80 attacks with mostly MRD only dps CDs.

As a MRD, you would be an effective burst DPS however. They lose out on some bonus stats but gain a great deal of DPS and utility CDs.

I prefer:
Internal Release, Raging Strikes, Featherfoot, Invigorate, Stoneskin, Eye for Eye, Awareness, Convalescence, Mantra

You gain several skills you can throw on your healer, something WAR doesn't add.

Pop CDs, Holmgang a healer to your team, stun and end them.

Ran out of post space.
In comparison, PLDs are very useful to their team. They can shield bash people repeatedly, going around interrupting casters and dps alike. Healer being focused? Tetsudo is great! Cover is great! Your mana pool lets you Stoneskin your healers repeatedly, giving them breathing room to cast, same with Cover.
Need to deal extra damage? Pop Sword Oath and Fight or Flight. Being focused? Shield Oath and whatever tank CDs you feel like. They lose nothing for using their oaths and swapping as needed.

Tempered will gives you a mini purify against binds and gravity effects, plus knockback skills (incredible for leading the charge up the ramp on mid!)
Flash also blinds when used by a paladin, exceptional against people focusing your healers down.

I love both MRD and PLD - and pick whichever is best suited for my team.

Defiance is only a DPS drop in the description of the skill. In reallity Defiance at worst, leaves your DPS the same, most cases, increases it. Inner Beast is a good burst skill with Infuriate, Internal Release and Berserk on. Will smash most fragile DPS and will force a healer into "oh shi-" status. The damage overall stays and you win survivality, lots of it. Which is really useful because staying alive inside the banners is what matters here. A WAR which is alive and is annoying everything and everyone and you can`t get him off the banner is much more annoying than below average burst MRD which doesn`t do half the damage a MNK or DRG do which is already half what BRDs do...

Last I looked, 25% is not chump change for damage reductions. We make up for lack of crit from wrath with internal release. We get full effect from maim and path. 20% off raging strikes. We lose out on our 300 potency attack every 5 wrath stacks - but we make up for it with our Butchers Block (still a 280 potency) and Skull Sunder hitting way harder.

We definitely don't do less damage.

This also ignores the fact that MRD can pull better healer defense than a WAR. Keeping your healer alive and pumping out medicas or fairy heals is better for survival than being the last man standing on flag.

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Originally Posted by Phenidate

Last I looked, 25% is not chump change for damage reductions.

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Passive percentage of damage reduction is always the key in PvP. This is not Wolf's Den where Marauder will shine because of its unique circumstance. This is Frontline where you will receives damage from all directions.

If you're getting focused down early in the fight either the enemy teams an idiot or you're not with your party.

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Originally Posted by Phenidate

Last I looked, 25% is not chump change for damage reductions. We make up for lack of crit from wrath with internal release. We get full effect from maim and path. 20% off raging strikes. We lose out on our 300 potency attack every 5 wrath stacks - but we make up for it with our Butchers Block (still a 280 potency) and Skull Sunder hitting way harder.

We definitely don't do less damage.

This also ignores the fact that MRD can pull better healer defense than a WAR. Keeping your healer alive and pumping out medicas or fairy heals is better for survival than being the last man standing on flag.

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And 25% Defence reduction, HP reduction, Critical Hit increase (which already makes for all the 25% reduction of damage) and both skills, Inner Beast and Steel Cyclone. Frontlines is closer to PvE than Wolf`s Den. First, you are playing a tank, second an area control class, third a crowd control, last a DPS. Is about perfecting a role. Going MRD is forcing the class to make the class do what is not made for. You will reduce your party area control, you will your own survivality and i bet (because already happens in PvE) you will also reduce your own DPS.

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Originally Posted by Phenidate

If you're getting focused down early in the fight either the enemy teams an idiot or you're not with your party.

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Frontline is not Wolf's Den. You are there to group control as Warrior and Paladin. How can you group control if you die so fast as Marauder? Marauder is working effective in Wolf's Den is only because Warrior is not as good as Paladin in group control in small scale team pvp environment. Marauder is able to provide enough damage pressure to make up the weakness control ability.

I've given plenty of info on how MRD extends their survivability in PVP. You just keep blandly saying they die easy, but frankly I see plenty of other MRDs doing just fine. The only thing WAR gets for using Defiance is a bit more HP and a heal buff, and a little bit more damage mitigation. But then again, MRD also gains mitigation from elsewhere as well.

WAR can pvp just fine sure, but keeping defiance up all the time and thinking you're going to be as useful at disrupting the team as a PLD is ludicrous. MRD atleast provides pressure with excellent burst damage and reasonable survivability. No other class or job in the game has access to as many DPS boosters as a MRD - there's a reason MRD excell at bursting down people in both Den AND Frontlines.

Now, this argument is going in circles - make whatever counter argument you want but I'm dropping it here.

Go MRD, Totes OP and good fun.

Phen is right, no one does WAR who rocks PVP.

Critical Hit increase: Rises and falls with your wrath, from 2% to 10%.

Internal Release: Increases Crit by 10% with no need for build up time. Your wrath stacks don't do anything that Internal doesn't already do for MRD.

Area Control? From what, using Cyclone? Overpower? MRD can do everything a WAR can do except reduce their damage by 25%, increase their health and healing received. Deal a 300 potency attack and an ok AoE nuke every ~20 seconds if they manage to land every single attack in their combo

Me?
I pop my CDs, I holmgang your healer. Every attack hits hard and doesn't rely on wrath or skills that ignore the self inflicted damage penalty. All my skills boost my damage. When I'm done and it hits the fan, I pop my cooldowns.

You want to talk about tricks of the trade, I'll give em to you.

Defance Potencies
Heavy Swing 112.5
Mercy Stroke, Skull Sunder 150
Butchers Block 210
Maim 142.5
Storm's Eye 202.5
Brutal Swing 75
Fracture 75, 15 dot
Inner Beast 300
Cyclone -> 200 (AoE)
Over Power -> 90
Example rotation: Hvy->Maim->Eye->Hvy->Sunder->Butchers->Hvy->Sunder->(Innerbeast/Butchers)
20us for this rotation total (varies by skill speed)
War:
Heavy x3 337.5
Maim 142.5
Eye 202.5
Sunder x2 300
Butcher 210
Finish with a Inner Beats, 300
War: 1492.5 total potency dealt
+2% Crit every weapon skill (excl. Heavy) At least every 20s

MRD:
Heavy x3 450
Maim 190
Eye 280
Sunder x2 400
Butcher 560
Finish with another Butchers Block
MRD: 1880 total potency dealt
Internal Release every 60s, 10% crit for 15s

AoE? With Internal Release MRD can spam Overpower with impunity, for the full 130 potency. 2 overpowers, 260 TP will do the same as a Cyclone with the requirement that they be in the cone before you (and boy is it a wide cone). Invigorate.

Edit: For those actually interested in what I posted on the matter, I was incorrect on part of this. Part of my math was flawed, because I mistakenly believed that Inner Beast was off the GCD. MRD does about 10% more DPS w/o even using CDs than a Warrior using Defiance does, making MRD the all-around better class for Frontlines, except for in survivability.

My own two cents: even if what some are implying about WAR being greater overall DPS than MRD is true, WAR BURST is NOT better than that of MRD's. There is no arguing that. At all. At level 40, my (admittedly twinked out) MRD can crit for 800-1000 damage (and crits a LOT) during my burst CDs, and I'm still missing one of them (the DRG one). No WAR can ever do that at that level. The same will also apply at the level cap, because the stats will still be similarly comparable between MRD and WAR.

The bottom line for comparison between WAR and MRD is that MRD loses out on WAR Job skills and about one piece of gear's worth in every attribute, of which only STR, DEX (for Tomahawk - yes, DEX increases its damage, same with GLD Shield Lob) and VIT actually matter at all. So, let's take a look at WAR Job abilities, shall we?

Reference (WAR)
Reference (MRD)

As a WAR, over a MRD, you gain Defiance, and four abilities that only work when it's active. Between a WAR's higher STR, access to Inner Beast, and ability to use Unchained (though, remember, you're using this INSTEAD of Inner Beast), I could imagine a WAR's overall DPS being on par with MRD, give or take a few percent depending on how, exactly, Wrath's crit bonus works. Assuming a WAR starts at 0 Wrath, and that the average rotation to 5 Wrath is: HS > Maim > SE > HS > SS > BB > HS > SS - then, due to defiance, the WAR loses out on approximately 397.5 Potency. Let's assume that 5-stack Wrath gives an additional 10% chance to crit altogether (not sure if it does this or just increases your Critical Strike Rate stat by 10%). The amount of potency lost lowers to roughly (a little over, I believe) 300, which can be made up for by Inner Beast usage. The higher STR values of WAR should bring its overall DPS to more or less where MRD would be.

Now, while WAR may be able to pull off similar DPS to MRD, MRD has MUCH higher burst. A WAR's strongest attack should be Inner Beast which, when beefed up by CDs (unless I'm misunderstanding how potency, Attack Power, and damage multiplying buffs react to one another), hits for approximately 594 Potency. If a Warrior were to use Infuriate right after the first fully-buffed Inner Beast, that equates to 1188 Potency from just using Inner Beast twice. This is assuming that Attack Power from Berserk and the damage bonus from Maim react multiplicatively, and this is excluding the slashing resistance reduction from Storm's Eye, since I have no idea how to factor that in. A MRD on the other hand, with access to the same offensive CDs/buffs/debuffs as WAR but without Wrath and also with the addition of Internal Release (which should make up for the lack of Wrath), Strait Shot (ARC), Raging Strikes (ARC), and Blood for Blood (LNC), will have his strongest attack, Butcher's Block, hit for 665.3 Potency on average.

What does this mean? This means that WAR and MRD's strongest abilities hit nearly as hard under perfect circumstances. However, since WAR's damage outside of Inner Beast is reduced by 25%, and MRD's is NOT, WAR's overall burst damage during offensive CDs is around (with guesstimated math) 15-20% lower than that of MRD's.

In addition to higher burst, MRD also get access to many important utility CDs such as Hawk's Eye (ARC), which makes all attacks always land on their target (never miss and the like), making MRD burst more reliable and usable through effects like Blind; Invigorate (LNC) which regenerates 400 TP instantly, which ACTUALLY brings MRD's overall long-term DPS for long fights HIGHER than WAR's AND gives them the ability to use Sprint TWICE (when considering the PvP action that does the same thing) in a short span of time nearly risk-free; Feint, which is a reliable, spammable Slow effect; Featherfoot (PUG) and Keen Flurry (LNC), both of which help counterbalance MRD's lower health pool than WAR by increasing survivability elsewhere; Virus (ACN), which lowers STR/DEX of a target, which can be used to weaken enemy DPS in a pinch and possibly save a healer/other teammate; Eye For An Eye (ACN) which can be used, again, to help save a friendly healer/party member; Mantra (PUG), which increases healing taken by your entire nearby party by a small amount; and, lastly, Stoneskin, which can be used 2-3 times per full MP bar as MRD and is, again, a great support spell to use on a focused/in danger party member.

So, let's compare Pros, shall we?

WAR
* About the same single target DPS as MRD.
* Higher potential AoE DPS than MRD.
* Higher personal survivability and easier to heal.
* Very painful one-two punch in fully beefed IB > Infuriate > IB.
* A painful one-two punch AoE in the form of a fully beefed SC > Infuriate > SC.

MRD
* About the same DPS as WAR.
* Some of the highest burst damage in the game while offensive CDs are active.
* MUCH more defensive utility for use on teammates. Can save a key player with certain cross-class skills and can debuff enemy DPS to lower their damage.
* More offensive utility, through the ability to always hit reliably (Hawk's Eye).
* More mobility, through being less restricted by TP due to Invigorate, allowing more Sprints without forsaking damage.
* Longer damage sustain for long fights, also due to Invigorate, but at the cost of using that TP for a sprint.

And...that should be about it, unless I missed something. It should be fairly obvious that both WAR and MRD have their own valid roles in Frontlines. MRD is all about taking out key targets with that insane burst and doing moderate single-target pressure DPS while supporting your allies with its various cross-class CDs during downtime. WAR, being much more straight forward, is all about aiding another bursty DPS in taking out key targets (with that mega 1-2 punch on an already injured target, followed up quickly by a Mercy Stroke) and dealing high AoE damage (through the similar 1-2 aoe punch) in attempts to finish off already injured targets or force healers to AoE heal to compensate for that sudden AoE damage that was just dished out to their entire team.

Neither WAR nor MRD are better than the other in Frontlines, given these (admittedly loose) numbers (gotten via napkin math). They are just different and fill different roles.

As for the actual topic of this thread... Well, OP, read what I said about either WAR or MRD and decide if that sounds worth it to you. :P

Edit: For those actually interested in what I posted on the matter, I was incorrect on this. The AoE DPS of MRD is actually greater due to Invigorate which, despite it already being mentioned numerous times, I forgot to take into account as a offensive-utility ability for AoE damage. I mention this in a later post on page 3 of this thread. I'm leaving the rest of my post unedited for posterity and to remind myself to avoid saying phrases like "in fact" unless I'm 100% sure I'm right. :P

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Originally Posted by Phenidate

[potency math]

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There are a few factors you forgot on both sides, such as using Infuriate for an extra Inner Beast/Cyclone during burst or an initial Unchained before burst as WAR and the potential crit from Strait Shot for MRD. But you math nonetheless expresses more or less what mine found, just above this post.

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Originally Posted by Phenidate

AoE? With Internal Release MRD can spam Overpower with impunity, for the full 130 potency. 2 overpowers, 260 TP will do the same as a Cyclone with the requirement that they be in the cone before you (and boy is it a wide cone). Invigorate.

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This is irrelevant, since any good WAR would turn off Defiance before spamming Overpower for AoE damage in PvP and would do so after using their Wrath stack in some way. WAR potential AoE DPS is, in fact, higher than MRD's.

On your first point: Every 60s you get to pop a free 200 potency AoE or a 300 potency attack that ignores your damage reduction. MRD without the damage penalties out does that in a single Eye/butchers combo by close to 200 potency.

The tanking benefits of Inner Beast only comes into play when you're being attacked, and Second Wind + Featherfoot are used to reinforce there.

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Originally Posted by Vandril

This is irrelevant, since any good WAR would turn off Defiance before spamming Overpower for AoE damage in PvP and would do so after using their Wrath stack in some way. WAR potential AoE DPS is, in fact, higher than MRD's.

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If you turn defiance off you lose the use of all WAR weaponskills until it's turned back on. You can not accumulate wrath. You're reduced to using MRD skills and your meager selection of cross class skills.

A MRD can overpower for longer than WAR can. Invigorate, Enliven, up to 1250 potential TP at your fingertips to WAR's 750 (assuming you specced enliven). Internal Release, Raging strikes to boost your damage past what a WAR can do. Since you said defiance is off, you lost your crit stacks.

Edit: And I think the take away here is that compared to a PLD, WAR is an inferior tank for his team; no blinds, no tetsudo, no cover, no stoneskin, no spammable stun to use on everyone around you and stunlock for 6s until DR resist kicks in. Counting on damage to kill dps and keep your healers safe? Compared to a MRD he is inferior in both burst and sustained DPS.
WAR suffers in Frontlines and Arena. Luckily, all WAR are a crystal away from MRD.

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Originally Posted by Divinemight

Frontline is not Wolf's Den. You are there to group control as Warrior and Paladin. How can you group control if you die so fast as Marauder? Marauder is working effective in Wolf's Den is only because Warrior is not as good as Paladin in group control in small scale team pvp environment. Marauder is able to provide enough damage pressure to make up the weakness control ability.

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If you want control you go Paladin. There is literally no reason to ever go Warrior over Marauder in PvP at all. No Frontlines is not closer to PvE where Defiance magically becomes good. All you have a stun, a knockback PvP skill and Defiance. Thats not a very good controller.

Phenidate is 100% correct, Marauder > Warrior in PvP easily. If you all dont want to believe the truth, thats fine :]

MRD gets invigorate, WAR does not. Enough said. kthxbye

Edit: For those actually interested in what I posted on the matter, I was incorrect on part of this. Part of my math was flawed, because I mistakenly believed that Inner Beast was off the GCD. MRD does about 10% more DPS w/o even using CDs than a Warrior using Defiance does, making MRD the all-around better class for Frontlines, except for in survivability.

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Originally Posted by Phenidate

On your first point: Every 60s you get to pop a free 200 potency AoE or a 300 potency attack that ignores your damage reduction. MRD without the damage penalties out does that in a single Eye/butchers combo by close to 200 potency.

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No, it outdoes WAR damage by about 300 potency BEFORE you take into account the stat difference and usage of Inner Beast/Cyclone. I calculated the potencies of every attack needed to get 5 Wrath on a WAR, then compared that potency to the same rotation on a MRD, and that's what my result showed me.

Rotation: HS > Maim > SE > HS > SS > BB > HS > SS

Now, we take potency measurements. We ignore the Maim buff, since both MRD and WAR would have it, so it shouldn't effect the overall end result by comparison, thanks to the Distributive Law of Multiplication.

For MRD, we just add all the potencies together.

MRD: 1590

For WAR, Defiance and Wrath stacks complicate the math, which, assuming critical strikes are double and Wrath increases your chance to crit by a flat 2% per stack rather than just increasing your Critical Strike Rate stat, results in a formula like the below:

0.75(150(1.0) + 190(1.0) + 270(1.02) + 150(1.04) + 200(1.04) + 280(1.06) + 150(1.08) + 200(1.08))

Then we tack on an Inner Beast to the end, modified by the average crit damage gained by the Wrath stack of 5.

0.75(150(1.0) + 190(1.0) + 270(1.02) + 150(1.04) + 200(1.04) + 280(1.06) + 150(1.08) + 200(1.08)) + 300(1.1)

And that's the formula. So, let's solve it.

0.75(150(1.0) + 190(1.0) + 270(1.02) + 150(1.04) + 200(1.04) + 280(1.06) + 150(1.08) + 200(1.08)) + 300(1.1)
0.75(150 + 190 + 275.4 + 156 + 208 + 296.8 + 162 + 216) + 330
0.75(1654.2) + 330
1240.65 + 330
1570.65
Rounded...
1571 Potency

So, unless my math is wrong, WAR and MRD, in their respective rotations, only have a 19 potency difference. So that "200 Potency" that MRD rotation outdoes WAR by is more like 20. And that's BEFORE calculating the minutely higher stats that WAR has, which would lower that gap a little further. Considering MRD has Raging Strikes and Blood for Blood, as well as Internal Release and Strait Shot, in addition to all of the same burst CDs that WAR has, MRDs damage in CDs will definitely pull ahead. However, outside of those CDs, WAR's DPS is almost exactly as potent as MRD.

The only thing I willingly avoided factoring in was the potential to work Strait Shot into MRD's non-burst rotation, as I'm not 100% sure how the math would work. Yes, it would give MRD a sustainable 10% increase to Crit, just like a full stack of Wrath, however, unlike Wrath, it requires one GCD every so many seconds to keep up, and has fairly low potency, and I'm not sure how that would effect overall DPS.

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Originally Posted by Phenidate

If you turn defiance off you lose the use of all WAR weaponskills until it's turned back on. You can not accumulate wrath. You're reduced to using MRD skills and your meager selection of cross class skills.

A MRD can overpower for longer than WAR can. Invigorate, Enliven, up to 1250 potential TP at your fingertips to WAR's 750 (assuming you specced enliven). Internal Release, Raging strikes to boost your damage past what a WAR can do. Since you said defiance is off, you lost your crit stacks.

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If you're trying to focus on AoE as a WAR, then you don't need the WAR Job abilities or Wrath, as you'll mainly be spamming Overpower, which does not give Wrath, if I recall correctly. Nor will you need Defiance, because you shouldn't be spamming AoE if you're being focused (and thus need the defenses), anyway. For AoE purposes, the only thing I would use Defiance for is the build up 5 stacks of Wrath for the initial Cyclone which would be used after all my offensive CDs (and then a second Infuriate > Cyclone). Then I would turn off Defiance and spam Overpower until I'm out of TP.

I'll concede to you in that WAR is not better AoE DPS than MRD, because I forgot to factor in Invigorate last night. But even so, WAR's potential AoE DPS should be similar to MRD's, probably only less by 150-200 potency overall.

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Originally Posted by Phenidate

And I think the take away here is that compared to a PLD, WAR is an inferior tank for his team

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I can't argue this, though. :P

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Originally Posted by Sen_Terrechant

Marauder > Warrior in PvP easily. If you all dont want to believe the truth, thats fine :]

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Is there some math behind this that I don't know about or is this just by personal experience? Not trying to give you crap: serious question.

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Originally Posted by Vandril

Is there some math behind this that I don't know about or is this just by personal experience? Not trying to give you crap: serious question.

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Over time the damage potency may be the same, but in PVP, burst damage is valued more so than damage over time, due to the fact that the people you're going up against don't have anywhere near the amount of HP of primals or bosses you face in dungeons. For Warrior, you have to build up your defiance stacks to have access to Inner Beast, Unchained, and the crit bonus; but as a MRD, you can just simply click cooldowns and deal as much damage as you can to whoever you're targetting. Having more HP and drawing hate means nothing in PVP since as a tank, you're rarely the first target on anyone's list.

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Originally Posted by Danbo05

Over time the damage potency may be the same, but in PVP, burst damage is valued more so than damage over time, due to the fact that the people you're going up against don't have anywhere near the amount of HP of primals or bosses you face in dungeons. For Warrior, you have to build up your defiance stacks to have access to Inner Beast, Unchained, and the crit bonus; but as a MRD, you can just simply click cooldowns and deal as much damage as you can to whoever you're targetting. Having more HP and drawing hate means nothing in PVP since as a tank, you're rarely the first target on anyone's list.

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Oh, well, yes. I do understand the importance of burst in PvP combat. I do think that it's worth mentioning that sustained pressure is nothing to scoff at, either, though.

Anyway, I rediscovered something that dramatically changes the outcome of my results:

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Originally Posted by Vandril

Then we tack on an Inner Beast to the end, modified by the average crit damage gained by the Wrath stack of 5.

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In my memory, not having played WAR for months, I was convinced that Inner Beast was off the GCD, like Unchained is. This is not the case. What this means is that not only is that one-two punch burst that WAR can pull off less potent than I imagined it, but, in order to almost match MRD damage using their rotation up to and including the point of 5-stack Wrath on WAR, WAR would need an additional GCD to use Inner Beast. This changes the results to the below, with MRD filling that last GCD that WAR uses with HS:

MRD: 1740
WAR: 1571

Which leaves an approximately 170 potency gap between the two, at WAR's detriment. In fact, this means that MRD does approximately 10% more damage, even considering the WAR's STR bonus. This does, barring further error on my part, show that MRD is superior to WAR in sustained DPS, as well as burst, utility, mobility, AoE damage, and so on, only really being worse at survivability.

Well, now I just feel silly, all of my conclusions here being flawed due to misunderstanding a single attribute of a single ability.