WAR Raid Advice

I'm very geared and do really good damage. The thing im having trouble with is sustaining high dps while in raid according to leader. I do great openers, but I think my problem lies in being scared to use BERSERK. How often should i use BERSERK i try not to use it to much bc of pacification, and i think i should only use it when I have fell cleave up as well. Any tips on how you great Warriors keep that high damage up? I would really appreciate the input

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Originally Posted by Ovara

I'm very geared and do really good damage. The thing im having trouble with is sustaining high dps while in raid according to leader. I do great openers, but I think my problem lies in being scared to use BERSERK. How often should i use BERSERK i try not to use it to much bc of pacification, and i think i should only use it when I have fell cleave up as well. Any tips on how you great Warriors keep that high damage up? I would really appreciate the input

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Always use berserk, why would you gimp yourself by 50% less damage for 20s because you're afraid of a 5s pacification that can be cleansed easily? Even if you're in defiance, berserk + unchained will give you HUGE numbers. So you lose 1500 potency triple cleave, so what? Want that cleave? You're holding the boss? Stance dance into deliverance and cleave away, wars don't have active mitigation in tank stance so healers shouldn't have a harder time keeping you up as long as you add convalescence or another suitable CD (don't use vengeance on anything other than a tank buster)

Berserk puts me ahead of all the DPS in my group during A9S's opening. It's amazing to see.
You shouldn't be afraid of a 5 second pacification. Obviously you'll want to time it where you'll both get your 20 seconds of attacks in (three fell cleaves), but also not when you'll need to tank swap.

And if you're main tanking you have a lot more option to do it since you can use Deliverance to tank just fine.

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Originally Posted by Ovara

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Generally you should use berserk everytime it's up, unless the boss is going to be untargetable or invulnerable, or you have to deal with certain mechanics. The rule of thumb is, until you've actually used berserk in that particular time and actually failed a mechanic (picking adds for example) due to pacification, you should use it. If you're afraid of messing up something but you never try, you never know if that "something" actually exists. If you fail a mechanic due to pacification, you can either move the berserk timing (shifting the pacification window), or coordinate with your healers (or better if you have a bard, try to get warden's paean) to cleanse the pacification.

And no, you can't do "really good damage" if you don't use berserk as often as you can. :p

You just have to plan when to use Berserk. A good thing to do is to record some of your raid's runs and figure out when it's safe to pop Berserk. Never use internal release + infuriate outside of your Berserk (I asked Xeno personally about that. He says to just hold them until your zerk is up. I never did the math on it though). High DPS on a WAR depends heavily on planning out your Berserk windows which is a pain in the ass lol. That's why I prefer to play Dark Knight; their high DPS is less reliant on planning high-DPS windows and more reliant on dropping Grit as much as possible.

There is technically a more efficient way to use Infuriate and IR than to hold it for Berserk but it's so late in the expansion that I don't care enough to actually min max to this degree.

Because of the way you can front-load or back-load 2 of the FCs in your triple FC Berserk window, you can alternate between front-loading and back-loading to extend the gap between Berserks enough to justify using Infuriate off CD once every other Berserk window.

So if you front load the 2 FCs in your Berserk, that means that Infuriate will be off CD with ~27s left until Berserk is off CD. If you use Infuriate off CD, that means that when your Berserk is off CD, you'll still have ~33s left until Infuriate is read for triple FC. But, due to the 20s duration of Berserk, if you backload the 2 FCs in the next Berserk window, you technically only have ~14s until Infuriate is ready. Unless those 14s cost you a Berserk activation during the fight, it's more efficient just to Infuriate off CD between front-loaded and back-loaded triple FC Berserk windows.

But this really depends on whether or not the fight actually has a ~104s window where you can plan out each GCD so precisely and execute.

Anyways, I had originally typed up more nuanced tips but after actually checking TC's fflogs, I realized the problems might be more fundamental. Granted the parses are pretty dated but you see really fundamental issues like bad Maim and Eye up-time and a very low FC count despite high Deliverance up-time. Berserk might be important but fundamentals like getting as close to 100% Maim and Eye up-time and spending stacks with near 100% efficiency on FCs are more important.

I find A11s to be the worst case of berserk pacify timing, since if I try to use it optimally, the pacify kicks in just as a good raid group will force the add to spawn.

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Originally Posted by Ekimmak

I find A11s to be the worst case of berserk pacify timing, since if I try to use it optimally, the pacify kicks in just as a good raid group will force the add to spawn.

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Are you talking about the first add? If your group forces the add to spawn (by skipping the first optical sight) berserk should still be up for you to do a butcher's block combo. Better yet, you should pull the boss and let the pld/drk pick the first add.

For the second add, yeah it can be quite tricky if you use berserk after the first limit cut. I think you can delay it by a full combo so you can do a butcher's block combo on the add before pacification. As for third add, I usually tank the boss at that part, so I can holmgang the laser x sword alone.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

There is technically a more efficient way to use Infuriate and IR than to hold it for Berserk but it's so late in the expansion that I don't care enough to actually min max to this degree.

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The idea's solid but sounds like it revolves around a lot of hoping and wishing the stars allign for you to have enough stacks when infuriate comes off CD for a double fell cleave. It's much more practical to just hold infuriate with berserk.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

The idea's solid but sounds like it revolves around a lot of hoping and wishing the stars allign for you to have enough stacks when infuriate comes off CD for a double fell cleave. It's much more practical to just hold infuriate with berserk.

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Like I said, "this really depends on whether or not the fight actually has a ~104s window where you can plan out each GCD so precisely and execute."

As for GCD alignment, you have some room for adjustment by adding and removing fractures from your rotation or using Vengeance to push a stack if you don't need it for mitigation. I'm fairly sure you can engineer an optimal rotation around the idea of using Infuriate off CD. It's just a lot of work for a small gain.

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Originally Posted by Brian_

Like I said, "this really depends on whether or not the fight actually has a ~104s window where you can plan out each GCD so precisely and execute."

As for GCD alignment, you have some room for adjustment by adding and removing fractures from your rotation or using Vengeance to push a stack if you don't need it for mitigation. I'm fairly sure you can engineer an optimal rotation around the idea of using Infuriate off CD. It's just a lot of work for a small gain.

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The only time you use infuriate outside of berserk is when you want to aoe down adds like in a9s or a12s, in other cases its just a straight up dps loss. As for OP, save 4-5 stacks when your berserk is coming off cooldown, then use it after Heavy Swing and make your triple fell cleave dream come true, pacification should not concern you at all. Obviously sometimes you want to delay your berserk if the boss will dissapear soon, but i guess you can figure it out yourself.

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Originally Posted by Demkristo

The only time you use infuriate outside of berserk is when you want to aoe down adds like in a9s or a12s, in other cases its just a straight up dps loss. As for OP, save 4-5 stacks when your berserk is coming off cooldown, then use it after Heavy Swing and make your triple fell cleave dream come true, pacification should not concern you at all. Obviously sometimes you want to delay your berserk if the boss will dissapear soon, but i guess you can figure it out yourself.

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This is just wrong. You use Infuriate outside of Berserk whenever it's more efficient. Like I already detailed, you only need to delay your Berserk slightly for it to be better. In some fights, a slight delay of Berserk will not matter or is even forced / more efficient because of phasing. But, like I also already explained, if you're going to do it, you really need to know what you are doing or else it might not work out.

There aren't many cases where holding berserk for ~10s would make you lose a berserk usage in the fight, or push it to uncomfortable timings. Maybe in a9s it can be problematic if your kill time is around 3:30-ish, since you may lose one usage. Another one I could think of was a12s, where you use berserk right after first inception, and then you can use it right after gravitational anomaly after second inception, if you hold berserk for ~10s you'd have to lose uptime to pick void (I have to pop vengeance to push for one extra stack for this to work, so if you still see the second chastening heat you should check the timings or you may die), or hold it even longer until after you pick void. Then again, these are very dependent on your current raid dps and kill time, so it might be irrelevant for your group.

For a10s and a11s it's a bit trickier for me because my group is currently going through changes where we start pushing parts we weren't before, so I can't say much. If you skip a10s first phase clone you can do triple cleave on the steamroller, just bring at least 2 stacks from the previous phase, and pop thrill/venge so you can eat the first knockback (otherwise you'll lose probably 2 gcds from disengaging), so in this case if you reach the steamroller phase in less than 2 mins, better hold your infuriate since most dps will hold bfb for that too. In a11s generally you can use infuriate twice before the first limit cut, and still have it up for a triple cleave rotation after limit cut, unless your group dps is very high and you push the boss to 72% really fast.