Proposed Warrior Buffs

I've been a WAR main since shortly after Heavensward's launch. Or I should say was a WAR main. Heavensward WAR used to be my favorite job. I never got tired playing it. It was, in my opinion, the best job in the game. But now I'm maining DRK now because of how bad Stormblood WAR is currently. WAR is super clunky to play, offers no utility in raid, and requires way to much build up. The work required to do that DPS on WAR is underwhelming. It's not worth the amount of build up needed, it's need to be higher. I think you need to make WAR the SAM of tanks. If you don't want to give WAR raid utility, that's fine. But you need to compensate by buffing WAR's damage by a good chunk. It doesn't make sense to have WAR do the same amount of DPS as PLD or DRK when both of those tanks offer more raid utility. If Yoshida-san wants to adapt the philosophy of the less raid utility you bring, the more personal DPS you do like with SAM, then they need to do the same to WAR.

Here's what I think Yoshida-san and his team should do to WAR:

Increase Skull Sunder's combo potency to 220

Increase Maim's combo potency to 210

Increase Butcher's Block's combo potency to 300
Also increase the Beast Gauge gained to 20 instead of 10.
The reason you should increase the Beast Gauge gain from 10 to 20 on Butcher's Block is because one of WAR's highlights was the fact their highest potency combo was also their threat combo. Currently, WARs do Eye/Path/Path combos to build gauge, even when main tanking. Making Butcher's Block give 20 Beast Gauge instead of 10 would give WARs a reason to do their threat combo while main tanking and not lose out on building gauge. You gave WARs a rotation to use while off tanking, which is great. But now give them a rotation to use while main tanking.

Put Defiance on the GCD and take away halving the Beast Gauge when switching stances. Halving the beast gauge when stance switching is the reason why WAR is super clunky to play.
Make it similar to DRK's Grit.

Increase Inner Beast's potency to 450

Increase Storm's Path's combo potency to 280

Reduce Unchained's and Inner Release's recast time to 60 seconds
Give Unchained an additional effect: Increases damage dealt by 10% while in effect.
The reason you should add this effect is because you can become neutral, damage percent wise (Storm's Eye gives +20% damage dealt and Defiance decreases damage dealt by 20%) without Unchained. So the fact it only nullifies the damage penalty of Defiance is pointless, especially with Storm's Eye. Giving it the +10% damage dealt would give a reason to use it. Along with it not sharing a recast timer with Inner Release.

Unchained/Inner Release should no longer share a recast timer. Unchained became useless when we got Inner Release. A good WAR would never use Unchained due it sharing a recast time with Inner Release. You lose way to much damage by using Unchained instead of Inner Release.

Increase Steel Cyclone's potency to 250

Increase Storm's Eye's combo potency to 290

Make Infuriate increase the Beast Gauge by 100. Or make Infuriate usable outside of combat

Increase Fell Cleave's potency to 600

Increase Decimate's potency to 330

Increase Onslaught's recast timer 25 seconds but increase it's potency to 200 and take away the Beast Gauge cost. It's almost never used currently because it costs Beast Gauge

Increase Upheaval's potency to 400. Maybe reduce Upheaval's recast timer to 20 or 15 seconds as well.

Putting Defiance/Deliverance in the GCD would be a worst nerf than gauge reduction. Right now, you can easily empty the gauge before switching (Inner Beast, Upheaval, even Onslaught), so there's no real loss; and I wonder why would you go back to Defiance after the fight starts and you have a good aggro lead

@HELLruler I said Defiance. Not Defiance and Deliverance. And no it wouldn't. Losing half your gauge when you switch is beyond stupid. You have to spend at least one full combo to get back the gauge you lost. I'm trying to bring back WAR's fluid-ness. Having to deplete your entire gauge before stance switching is not fluid. If they make Defiance like Grit, it would make WAR way more fluid than currently.

Working on a spreadsheet and had this idea.. I know there is a lot of controversy over Shake It Off, and I notice that Inner Release has this weird anti-stun/sleep/bind/knockback/etc type effect - so - why not at least remove that bonus from Inner Release since it will never be used for that and give it to Shake It Off? At least then SIO would possibly be a little more useful - a cleanse and immunity of sorts.

I understand it's a nice effect to have so your super dps window doesn't get messed up at certain points, but you'd still be able to use SIO at the same time if it's a problem in particular content.

These changes would make warrior most op tank and players would run double warrior again and other tanks would be garbage tier again. If stance dance would not cost gauge and inner release would be separated cooldown with unchained warrior would be already good imo.

Besides the general tank fixes like Tenacity, no STR accessories, etc, the WAR specific stuff isn't that big of a list, and certainly not in the realm of the silly overpoweredness of the OP post.

1) Heavy Swing generates 10 Beast - leave BB alone because you make a choice with using the enmity combo to generate beast slightly slower than Storm Path. Choice is good. Get more Beast quicker, or go for more aggro. But HS generating Beast puts replacing the switch cost at 7.5 sec minimum (HS->Maim->SP->HS) versus the current 12.5 sec minimum (HS->Maim->SP->HS->Maim/SS->SE/BB)

2) Leave the stance switch cost where it is, but buff both stances. Defiance should reduce all incoming dmg by an extra 5-10% and Deliverance should do an extra 5-10% dmg. Just give the new cost a proper justification. As it stands, the only thing SE added was disadvantage with no accompanying and offsetting advantage.

3) Add a 4 sec stun/silence to Onslaught and increase range to 30 yd, to justify the low potency for the same 20 beast that Upheaval costs. Then it can function much more like the Intercept it was clearly meant to be.

4) Lower Inner Release timer to 60sec.

Nothing too overpowering, but a few minor tweaks that would help balance the scales a bit with PLD.

@Sunako No they wouldn't. They offer no raid utility. You don't see serious raid groups doing double SAM do you? No, you don't. You'd still take a PLD or DRK (probably PLD) over a 2nd WAR. Also Unchained is useless as it currently stands. Even if they separated Inner Release and Unchained, you'd still not use Unchained. You gain nothing from using it currently. They need to give it another useful effect, like the one I listed, to make it worthwhile to use. Maybe the potency increases I suggested were a bit much but Fell Cleave definitely needs a potency increase. As well as WAR's combos over all.

@Venjenz There's practically no choice as it stands, you'll always want to do Eye/Path/Path. You would only use BB if you were close to losing aggro, otherwise you would Eye/Path/Path. Also making Heavy Swing generate 10 Beast Gauge would be weird. On fights like Lakshmi, you're already overflowing with gauge. Adding 10 gauge more overall wouldn't fix anything.

Butcher's block should not give as much gauge as storm's path unless you reduce its potency to below storm's path. The other tanks' enmity combos come at certain costs (lower potency, no mp refresh), no reason why ours should be our best dps combo at the same time.

WAR just lacks utility to have that same sense of protection that PLD has. a Paladin can heal, cover, and even give a barrier to allies. They have control over their block rate to an extent, a reactive skill based on blocking and decent DoTs, one being off GCD and another being part of a combo.

There is also Spirit Within, which is where I see the issue with WAR.

Spirit Within is free, on a timer but Warrior has to pay for both Upheavel and Onslaught, to me that feels unbalanced. If Upheavel is comparable to Spirit Within then why do we have to pay 20 gauge to use it, it makes it a lot less useful to use because it feels more like a finisher when the fight is short and you don't think you'll build up 50 gauge otherwise it just feels useless. If it was a free ability that worked the same as Spirit Within it would at least be better.

Same with Onslaught, a charge, single target, Enmity booster, that cost 20 gauge, meanwhile, PLD get an AOE, DoT, that gives them enmity, there is a severe imbalance in this respect as well. If they want to fix Onslaught without making it a DoT, I'd have it be a charge that does AoE dmg to the target and those around it while granting enmity to the Tank, at least then it could be better balanced with PLD.

Not to come off to evil, but in all honesty, either add 20 cost to both Spirit Within and Circle of Scorn or remove the cost from both Upheavel and Onslaught, that would at least be a step in the right direction.

@aleph_null It was like that in Heavensward. No reason for it to not be now. The whole reason for these changes to make WAR the tank DPS powerhouse.

@Airget I like the idea of removing the Beast Gauge cost from Upheaval. You make a good comparison with WARs and PLDs off GCDs.

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Originally Posted by Nioulan

@Venjenz There's practically no choice as it stands, you'll always want to do Eye/Path/Path. You would only use BB if you were close to losing aggro, otherwise you would Eye/Path/Path. Also making Heavy Swing generate 10 Beast Gauge would be weird. On fights like Lakshmi, you're already overflowing with gauge. Adding 10 gauge more overall wouldn't fix anything.

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Adding more gauge lowers the time it takes to recover from a stance switch. Personally, I think the only needed change at all that is WAR specific is adding a stun/silence to Onslaught and lowering the Inner Release timer.

I tossed in the Heavy Swing 10 beast thing to appease people who think the stance swap should be cost free. I think the cost is a good thing and provides something to consider when tanking. And really, it only matters switching from Defiance to Deliverance, since everyone blows the entire gauge in Deliverance before switching back to Defiance.

But Onslaught should have a stun/silence, maybe an enmity modifier like Provoke. Make it a proper Intercept.

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Originally Posted by Nioulan

@aleph_null It was like that in Heavensward. No reason for it to not be now. The whole reason for these changes to make WAR the tank DPS powerhouse.

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I don't think that was a good design though, if anything this is one of the changes that I like about 4.x war. Having our enmity combo being the strongest combo made it difficult to do our optimal dps rotation as an off tank without screwing up the main tank.

@Venjenz

My two goals with these changes to WAR is to make their DPS higher due to a lack of raid utility and to make them more fluid again.

Being penalized by stance switching is the exact opposite of fluid. Yes, PLDs are penalized too but no where near to the degree WAR is. Most of WARs damage, if not all of it, is locked behind the beast gauge. PLD only has 2 abilities (which are defensive abilities mind you) to use their gauge on and it's real easy for PLD to get back the gauge they lost. With WAR, you have to spend at least one full combo to get what you lost, if not two.

Adding a stun/silence to Onslaught wouldn't change a thing. Yoshida-san wants those kinds of effects to be pure utility with no damage behind them. Otherwise they wouldn't have removed the silence from Spirits Within. Inner Release definitely needs it's recast timer lowered to 60 seconds. The other two tanks are buffed more often than WAR is.

@aleph_null Eh, I suppose. I'm trying to bring back 3.X WAR as much as possible since it was arguably the best designed job in 3.X.

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Originally Posted by Nioulan

The other two tanks are buffed more often than WAR is.

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Someone else mentioned that as well, but for all purposes a war in deliverance is going to have a near constant 25% damage buff (5% delv + 20% eye). FoF and BW have more uptime than Berserk, sure, but are you certain the other tanks are - overall - buffed more often? I don't recall where that post went

@whiskeybravo Yes, especially PLD. PLD has two buffs which are on a 60 second cooldown. DRK's can be used every 40 seconds. Where as WAR's can only be used every 60 seconds and 120 seconds. Just because WARs have an overall +25% damage increase, doesn't mean they're doing more damage. I mean, the numbers speak for themselves.

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Originally Posted by Nioulan

@whiskeybravo Yes, especially PLD. PLD has two buffs which are on a 60 second cooldown. DRK's can be used every 40 seconds. Where as WAR's can only be used every 60 seconds and 120 seconds. Just because WARs have an overall +25% damage increase, doesn't mean they're doing more damage. I mean, the numbers speak for themselves.

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Didn't say anything about damage, just regarding their uptime on buffs. The "numbers" are not really that far apart outside of a few top players, though I agree in general that war should be higher given their lack of utility.

These buffs are way too much. Currently, the players pushing WAR to its limits are doing nearly what a DPS does. This is just going to make it even worse, and it's probably going to disrupt balance in an even worse way than it is now. WAR doesn't need straight up potency buffs. It needs changes to help all players get more out of it.

@DWolfwood Show me a WAR doing 3500+ DPS that does not have 100% enhanced Balance uptime and I'll agree with you. WAR does need straight up potency buffs. No utility = more DPS. I'll admit, the potency increases I listed are probably a bit much but they still need buffs.

I just had the best idea ever! So every one is complaining about how Warriors losing half their Beast Gauge whenever they change stances is killing their playstyle. And I agree! It's horrible! Unless you empty your gauge first, you're losing so much potential! All that beast power going away, disappearing into the void...

WELL, but what if it didn't disappear? What if... it got CONVERTED into something?! So like, switching into Deliverance will give you a damage buff for a few seconds based on how much beast power you lost, and maybe going into Defiance increases your damage reduction for a bit? Or something.

So if you build up to 100 in Defiance and then switch to Deliverance, how cool would it be if you got a 25% damage bonus for... let's say 10 seconds? I'm thinking 2% per point here.

And if you have to go into Defiance, what if you GAINED THE BLOODBATH EFFECT based on how much beast power you lost? So for 50 points, your attacks would heal you for 50% of the damage for 10 seconds as well.

This way, tanks wouldn't be as punished for having to tank swap. It would also reward main tanks who tank in Defiance, to switch into Deliverance and throw out some Fell Cleaves that will hit for some spicy extra damage.

Maybe tone the numbers down a bit if you think they're too high, but the main point is the concept of trading off beast power for a couple of short-timed buffs, instead of just having the beast power go to waste.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

The "numbers" are not really that far apart outside of a few top players, though I agree in general that war should be higher given their lack of utility.

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That's what's wrong. WAR should be doing considerably more DPS (by like 300-400 more) than the other two tanks that do actually bring raid utility, not the same.