Xenosys Vex's tank analysis. (Video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsQqpcrmNBI

As usual, good sh*t. Quite possibly the only analysis for tanks worth watching.

I don't frequent here, but I do recall seeing a lot of salty animosity towards this man awhile back. Leave it at the door, if you`re strong enough.

I really like xeno, but I gotta disagree on that point about onslaught. He argues it needs to be costless or give rage, but that defeats the design of having a gap closer which offers damage as a bonus without having to be a mandatory ability to keep on cooldown in order to optimize.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

I really like xeno, but I gotta disagree on that point about onslaught. He argues it needs to be costless or give rage, but that defeats the design of having a gap closer which offers damage as a bonus without having to be a mandatory ability to keep on cooldown in order to optimize.

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This isnt a problem in Shadowbringers though because the gap closer is using the new charge mechanic. You can spend one charge and keep one pocket onslaught for inner release window or whenever u need it without losing dps.

I hope SE hears this and removes the rage cost from onslaught.

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Originally Posted by NyneSwordz

This isnt a problem in Shadowbringers though because the gap closer is using the new charge mechanic. You can spend one charge and keep one pocket onslaught for inner release window or whenever u need it without losing dps.

I hope SE hears this and removes the rage cost from onslaught.

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Would halving the cost be an acceptable compromise?

I love his metal strums. :)

Huh? I want the rage cost removed. Increasing the cd to match other gap closers is fine with me.

I just want to use the gap closer for gap closing whenever I need to without thinking about whether its a dps loss to use it.

Having it at 30 sec cd with 2 charges seem perfect to me.

Seems to me that theres no point to ever use onslaught outside of IR as it is. So... low cd doesn't even matter. Make it free. 2 charges. Copy paste from the other 3 tanks.

It's good that he seems to think the overall balance for tanks this time around is not as bad as SB. They do need to buff GNB potency a little bit tho if those beta tooltips were true.

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Originally Posted by Jojokomoko

It's good that he seems to think the overall balance for tanks this time around is not as bad as SB. They do need to buff GNB potency a little bit tho if those beta tooltips were true.

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"Damage calculations are changing". Given that the tanks are throwing out more average potency per hit than DPS, if nothing changed that'd mean they'd surge to close to 75-80% of a -Black Mage-.

Thus there are three outcomes.

1. The values are not final and merely exist for hype.
2. The damage calculations render potency meaningless outside the individual kits of the job. "Power levels are bull!@#%"
3. 6 Paladin / 2 White Mage new meta.

I would be fine if they remove the gauge cost of onslaught and turning it a GCD with a slight less potency than Heavy Swing. Not only that, but make it for no other GCD to start a global cooldown on onslaught, but if you use onslaught you trigger the GCD into every other GCD or add another GCD if they are already on GCD. That way you can use it as a gap closer, and not be using it on cooldown. Maybe not only for onslaught but for every gap closer.

haven't seen the vid yet, just finished viewing the media tour videos on you tube showing 5.0 skills and changes. my 1st thought was " why didn't they change onslaught to match the other 3 tanks gap closers?", thou mathematically the potency's and dps one would get if using 3x the gap closers in a 60sec window vs 6 onslaughts is the same, i don't think I'll do that given that warriors gap closer costs gauge. so it will still be the same as now : use for actual gap closing and uptime and the only other use will be while in an inner release window as a dps gain.
i don't have much issue with onslaught staying like it is in 5.0 (10sec cd, gauge cost), but i definitely would have loved to use it as a dps increase like the other gap closers and certainly would welcome a change to the skills to match the other tanks gap closers (removing it from the gauge system and giving it 2 charges with the same cd as the others) so that warriors can also make use of the "charged" system.

munchkins are gonna be the death of this game, I sw2g

They dont have significantly better dps. And even if they did, what's wrong with asking for qol changes?

Why are you so salty that you cant even keep two separate things separate? Why conflate dps discussion with something that will just making playing a job easier and more fun?

Geezus christ...

There sure are a lot of straight up hostile posts where wars are just talking shop and some guy outta left field drops in and says some hostile crap about entitled wars and the toxic war community. Maybe it's not the wars that are the bad part of the community.

Dark knights have spent years waiting for adjustments while warriors get them in a patch or 2. It's pretty clear that we are abandoned and ignored. Anything we get just gets taken away and given to the other tanks and for any skill we gain that the other tanks had they get another to make up for it so nothing changes.
If you want to call it hostile, entitled, toxic or whatever go ahead but I don't think it's unjustified when dark knights have silently waited for changes for so long only to be given abilities the other tanks already do better. At that point pointing out problems is the natural backlash to what has happened in the years since dark knight was released.

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Originally Posted by blaen

Dark knights have spent years waiting for adjustments while warriors get them in a patch or 2. It's pretty clear that we are abandoned and ignored. Anything we get just gets taken away and given to the other tanks and for any skill we gain that the other tanks had they get another to make up for it so nothing changes.
If you want to call it hostile, entitled, toxic or whatever go ahead but I don't think it's unjustified when dark knights have silently waited for changes for so long only to be given abilities the other tanks already do better. At that point pointing out problems is the natural backlash to what has happened in the years since dark knight was released.

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Drk not getting attention doesnt make war players toxic. Every single thread that has anything remotely to do with war being peppered with "wars are entitled, war is Op" and all the other fun things doesnt make the war players toxic. It makes the (rightfully) angry people posting that junk the toxic players. I completely get that there is a large group of Drk players that feel SE has let their job down for a long time. But commandeering every thread that whispers war for the last 2 years to complain about war is the toxic part.

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Originally Posted by Izsha

Drk not getting attention doesnt make war players toxic. Every single thread that has anything remotely to do with war being peppered with "wars are entitled, war is Op" and all the other fun things doesnt make the war players toxic. It makes the (rightfully) angry people posting that junk the toxic players. I completely get that there is a large group of Drk players that feel SE has let their job down for a long time. But commandeering every thread that whispers war for the last 2 years to complain about war is the toxic part.

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Never said they were. I was merely responding to the reaction claiming that DRKs are being hostile and toxic.

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Originally Posted by blaen

Never said they were. I was merely responding to the reaction claiming that DRKs are being hostile and toxic.

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of course. I was talking more broadly about the constant interjections and derailing for the last months/years which has spiked up all over again since the SB2 info has been coming out, yet the same people hypocritically try to brand wars as the toxic ones. Not that you personally accused wars of being (insert negative thing here)

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Originally Posted by NyneSwordz

Huh? I want the rage cost removed. Increasing the cd to match other gap closers is fine with me.

I just want to use the gap closer for gap closing whenever I need to without thinking about whether its a dps loss to use it.

Having it at 30 sec cd with 2 charges seem perfect to me.

Seems to me that theres no point to ever use onslaught outside of IR as it is. So... low cd doesn't even matter. Make it free. 2 charges. Copy paste from the other 3 tanks.

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If that's literally what you want, why change it? That's LITERALLY what we currently have onslaught for.

Right now, you're encouraged to use it only as a gap closer when needed outside of your IR window. When used as a gap closer, you don't have to think about it as a DPS gain or loss because of it's potency per rage cost. That said, you should always have the means to close gaps when necessary, and if there isn't, is there a reason you don't have the rage available when you need it? There's currently no reason for you to have 0 gauge as WAR when you're quite incentivized to have some gauge for crit's sake unless you're min-maxing by dumping all your gauge during raid buffs.... but I heavily doubt that's your reason.

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Originally Posted by Izsha

of course. I was talking more broadly about the constant interjections and derailing for the last months/years which has spiked up all over again since the SB2 info has been coming out, yet the same people hypocritically try to brand wars as the toxic ones. Not that you personally accused wars of being (insert negative thing here)

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I see if from warriors as well. Coming in to dark knight threads just to say everything is fine quit complaining. It's just we don't get many changes but warriors do. Tank stance halves gauge? fixed 4.05 Shake it Off not any good? fixed in 4.1.
The fact is that warrior is OP. They have the best burst out of any tank (possibly any job in the entire game) and get every change they want. Meanwhile what are Drks left with? When did we get our party shield? We ask for changes to living dead and warriors come in and say "it's fine the way it is" while their holmgang is so powerful it can be used to break tank busters every 180 seconds.
No, it's hypocritical to say were complaining and interjecting while you complain and interject as well all while getting every fix you demand. You can't have it both ways.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

If that's literally what you want, why change it? That's LITERALLY what we currently have onslaught for.

Right now, you're encouraged to use it only as a gap closer when needed outside of your IR window. When used as a gap closer, you don't have to think about it as a DPS gain or loss because of it's potency per rage cost. That said, you should always have the means to close gaps when necessary, and if there isn't, is there a reason you don't have the rage available when you need it? There's currently no reason for you to have 0 gauge as WAR when you're quite incentivized to have some gauge for crit's sake unless you're min-maxing by dumping all your gauge during raid buffs.... but I heavily doubt that's your reason.

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Let me rephrase. I guess I wasn't doing a good job of really explaining myself. My bad. I think what really bothers me about onslaught costing rage is that it is a bit annoying that I can't just use it when I start a fight if I have no rage. As for the rage cost itself, I guess I have no issue with onslaught costing rage, especially in ShB since we can just save 1 charge of infuriate for emergencies when we need onslaught but haven't the rage for it.

And I read the balance guide on wars, and I get that onslaught needs a rage cost because it helps with gauge management and GCD manipulation.

Lastly, I don't think Defiance is going to grant crit with more beast guage in ShB. I could be wrong. So the reason to pool beast gauge is not really there. Especially since we can always save 1 stack of infuriate? Right?

So how about wars be given the following trait:

Staying out of combat for 30 seconds gives the warrior XXXX buff which removes the beast gauge cost from the next onslaught. XXXX persists after logging out and logging back in.

This way, Wars can use onslaught immediately when starting fights if they want to, but it doesn't screw with GCD manipulation and gauge management after the fight has begun. After they're in combat even once, Wars just need to remember to save some gauge or use infuriate to end with some gauge if they wanna onslaught in between pulling packs of monsters or whatever. It's just a QOL fix which makes onslaught easier and more fun to use. This doesn't mess with balance so none of the other tanks should be jelly since onslaught retains the cost once in combat.

What do you think?

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Originally Posted by NyneSwordz

What do you think?

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I think it's a sound, logical, and reasonable request and I could totally get behind a trait like that.

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Originally Posted by Hierro

I think it's a sound, logical, and reasonable request and I could totally get behind a trait like that.

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I'm so glad you agree!

= )

It's a long shot, but I guess I'll just put it out there. I'll be over the moon if something like it gets implemented.

I don't think its a big stretch to make warrior gap closer charge moves like others clearly all 4 tanks play very differently now all having a similar gap closer not gonna make them the same

I was hoping gap closers would get some effect to them
Warriors gain 20 rage
PLD gets a damage boost when PLD has a defensive CD/Sheltron up
Drk restore a bit of MP
and GNB adds are cartridge ( or something like that)

One of the only people in this community who speaks sense.

I agree with just about everything he said... even though it took 2 hours so I had to watch it in chunks.

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Originally Posted by Duskane

I don't think its a big stretch to make warrior gap closer charge moves like others clearly all 4 tanks play very differently now all having a similar gap closer not gonna make them the same

I was hoping gap closers would get some effect to them
Warriors gain 20 rage
PLD gets a damage boost when PLD has a defensive CD/Sheltron up
Drk restore a bit of MP
and GNB adds are cartridge ( or something like that)

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That would be ideal. But if they cant make each gap closer unique, at least they should make them all the same.

Moreover, i get that wars need a low rage cost move to manage guage and time their gcd or whatnot. But its kinda tedious to be doing that stuff no?

And im not sure if thats evengonna be a thing in ShB with the way infuriate is gonna work with inner chaos. And chaotic cyclone.

They should just make the gap closer a role action and give it to all. Tanks at level 30 or something.

there are 3 things that caused the pld/war meta in sb and drk/war meta in hw:
as for hw its mostly what ppl told me, so its not 100% my experience ( i started at mid hw exp with the game and reached max lvl at the end of it). paladins dmg combo was also his aggro combo, so when tanks go into off stance paladin rips aggro from them if he wants to do optimal dps, which is annoying and ppl didn't like it, also paladins dps was a tad bit behind the other 2 tanks. still paladin had great defensive capability's,but this didn't help him get a main tank spot because the other 2 tanks capability's were still enough. warrior had (and still has) a greater enmity generation on pull thanks to unchained (negating the negatives from def stance) and equilibrium, which allows the other tanks to gain dps since they don't have to use enmity combos if they were to pull.not to forget that holmgang allowed for some tankbuster cheeses thanks to its low cd.

sb released with a lot of pld changes which were great and deserved, but it looked like the dev team put almost all effort into pld and left out the other 2 tanks a bit.
after some balance changes and skill changes and ofc the 1st clears of the 1st raid tier with all classes and very small differences in tank dps between all 3 tanks, the pld/war meta was born due to 3 reasons, warrior still had his greater enmity generation, now with onslaught added to the mix, a raid support skill thanks to shake it off change and ofc he kept good dps and his low cd holmgang. pld had rly good dps and to top it off all the utility in the world. dark knight didnt get anything new to support the raid, maybe the devs through the blackest night is enough..., and only had similar dps to the warrior/pld to offer,so he was left out.

also all tanks( not only , all classes) can clear the content, but since a lot of players are "sheep" and jump on the "meta" bandwagon u see such things as party finder groups not wanting certain classes or some "about to be formed" statics excluding some classes, because its easier this way. now if everyone is a hardcore min-maxing raider, then i can understand switching constantly to the "favor of the expansion/patch" job.

for none of those reasons can you blame warrior players. did we want changes to the gauge system and shake it off in 4.0 and 4.05? sure we did, but it wasn't our idea to make shake it off into a raid wide bubble, it was the devs idea, also not our fault that the devs didn't want to change drk or didn't know how to change him during sb.

so all this "job" animosity or hostility is pointless. if you mean it as a joke or want to tease, at least let us know (i know there are ppl who like to tease this way or joke around this way, but usually they also say so).

why do i want the changed onslaught? dont like the gauge cost on it (thou in certain scenarios it has its use as a gauge dump to not over-cap) and i like the idea of adding 600potency every minute, if i don't need the gap closer for another 60sec-90sec.but as mentioned before i don't have a huge issue with it staying as it is and wont make a fuss if it stays that way.

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Originally Posted by Maneesha

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Yeah no idea why people so hostile. *Shrugs* Hopefully Onslaught get's a look at. And hopefully something about it gets mentioned in the Live Letter in June.

tl;dr: Onslaught is fine. Just make Intervene defensively purposed and similarly as near-optional for mitigation/uptime as Onslaught is for net damage. Let Plunge be the only full obligatory free-potency charge skill because they need whatever APM they can hold onto at this point.

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Originally Posted by Jollyy5

Would halving the cost be an acceptable compromise?

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Not really. There are two issues at play here:

1. Relative potency per Beast Gauge.

If there's even a slight ppGCD advantage to Onslaught, it should be used very nearly on refresh. Doing so defeats the point of having it as a competitive-but-only-situationally-ideal option, rather than as a spam-component. (Note: by being oGCD while Fell Cleave is a GCD it's already always a net gain if the added potency means trimming even a single Butcher's Block via its 10x enmity.)

2. Quality of Life and "Feel", especially on pull.

If every other tank gets to ranged once and then dive in headlong but yours requires that hold back some gauge or Infuriate over the end of the previous pull and sacrifice optimal damage... well, you don't feel much like using your flashy, cool charge move. And when everyone else is doing their flashy, cool charge moves and you, for all intents and purposes, only kind of sort of even have one, it... feels bad, man.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Warrior needs to be able to keep up with the other tanks perfectly in this regard (e.g. as sizeable, rather than very subtle or situational, free potency), but it feels awkward to have the only, the new carbon copy, and then... the passed-over inferior mid-generation version, especially now that charges so greatly mitigate the advantage of Onslaught's lower cooldown.

I'd argue, though, that the solution doesn't lie with Onslaught changes. It's the power creep elsewhere (PLD, especially), that needs to be addressed.

Personally, I'd prefer that Intervene also come at cost to gauge and function more alike to Onslaught -- albeit with a wholly mitigation-oriented effect (absorbing 200 of your potency's worth of enemy damage from their next single-target attacks) to be weighed against Intervention -- while only DRK gets the true free extra oGCD damage in the form of its OG tank charge. Thus:

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PLD - Mobility and minor flat damage reduction vs. potentially huge damage reduction.
DRK - Do I gets shield or does s/he gets shield? (Also, I like APM, so my charge is free.)
WAR - Do I do more damage if I walk back or charge back?

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Still not going to play War until I have nothing to do. Fight me.

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Originally Posted by aqskerorokero

Still not going to play War until I have nothing to do. Fight me.

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For me, it's a wash between the still-dull Warrior and increasedly dull Dark Knight for which tank I'll level last...

Had such high hopes for DRK this expansion, too...

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

For me, it's a wash between the still-dull Warrior and increasedly dull Dark Knight for which tank I'll level last...

Had such high hopes for DRK this expansion, too...

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Question have you even played the new DRK and WAR ??? How do you know they are dull? Maybe I should ask you how shadorbringers ends?

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Originally Posted by LegolasT

Question have you even played the new DRK and WAR ??? How do you know they are dull? Maybe I should ask you how shadorbringers ends?

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Man that's what I been wondering. Everyone played the entire expansion already. I'm sitting here questioning why I didn't get an invite? :^(

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Originally Posted by jetfire117

Man that's what I been wondering. Everyone played the entire expansion already. I'm sitting here questioning why I didn't get an invite? :^(

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You don't need to play it to read all of the tooltips and make a rotation out of it. It's called theorycrafting. DRK might perform well, and if that's enough for you to be satisfied then good for you. I personally want the job to feel great, fast-paced and engaging like it used to be in HW, and I know for a fact that I'm not alone on this one. That's what made us main DRK back in HW in the first place. And we don't need more than reading tooltips and watching videos to know that the job will still have one single combo, and will have a slower-more-potent Dark Arts replacement that doesn't involve any more brain cells than its current iteration. It literally has nothing more to offer except an Inner Release copy pasta and a cool looking clone that just acts as a DoT with massive startup time. It's like a very beautiful box, but completely empty.

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Originally Posted by LegolasT

Question have you even played the new DRK and WAR ??? How do you know they are dull? Maybe I should ask you how shadorbringers ends?

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I mean Warrior hasn't really changed. In fact the one part that could have given it an interesting thing to work around (Nascent Chaos) is completely invalidated because Infuriate was given a charge system.

Any potential priority conflict that Warrior could have had was already curtailed, thus ensuring the only difference between Shadowbringer Warrior and Stormblood Warrior is don't use Infuriate during Inner Release.

If you think Warrior is dull now, the odds of that changing in the expansion are not high.

As far as Dark Knight goes, I'm less certain about.

I don't think the resource management is going to be compelling because Darkside will basically only ever drop if you mess up The Blackest Night. The resource ping pong is currently the only compelling part of current Dark Knight, and that's gone. Everything is much more measured in what we're shown, and while the change of pace isn't bad, the lack of weight with what we're shown is cause for concern.

Living Shadow -needs- interaction. It badly needs it. It's a cool flashy ability but the fact that you and it have no incentive to work together is the biggest missed opportunity of this expansion.

Delirium being a lesser IR is also just the most disheartening thing about it.

One of the bigger things rubbing me the wrong way is Delirium becoming a faux-Inner Release. As usual, I'm going to hold my judgement on DRK until I play it,thoroughly. I'm actually looking forwards to going back to older, lower level dungeons and getting to use a 150 potency Unleashed and mess around with Flood of Shadow as well as seeing how much damage I can pump out during 8-mans at 80 during burst windows (still not sure on when TA is going to come because Ninja is looking crazy, atm).

Resource management is almost non-existent in Stormblood as is, and I didn't expect it to change. Seeing that you`re way more likely to over-cap a little than bottom-out makes it to where you`re never hurting for MP and Blood. As for Living Shadow, I expected THAT to simply be a really cool looking DOT. Dark Missionary was...a bit disappointing. Due to it being magic-only, you won't be able to pair it with TBN for a greedy physical tank buster cooldown. Living Dead still existing in it's current form sucks even more due to the loss of Convalescence and Soul Survivor.

Weather it ends up being a good or bad rework; new toys are new. The question is, how long will they entertain me before they start to become grating as the expansion goes on?

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

I mean Warrior hasn't really changed. In fact the one part that could have given it an interesting thing to work around (Nascent Chaos) is completely invalidated because Infuriate was given a charge system.
Any potential priority conflict that Warrior could have had was already curtailed, thus ensuring the only difference between Shadowbringer Warrior and Stormblood Warrior is don't use Infuriate during Inner Release.

If you think Warrior is dull now, the odds of that changing in the expansion are not high.

As far as Dark Knight goes, I'm less certain about.

I don't think the resource management is going to be compelling because Darkside will basically only ever drop if you mess up The Blackest Night. The resource ping pong is currently the only compelling part of current Dark Knight, and that's gone. Everything is much more measured in what we're shown, and while the change of pace isn't bad, the lack of weight with what we're shown is cause for concern.

Living Shadow -needs- interaction. It badly needs it. It's a cool flashy ability but the fact that you and it have no incentive to work together is the biggest missed opportunity of this expansion.

Delirium being a lesser IR is also just the most disheartening thing about it.

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I've been thinking of how Infuriate being on a charge system curtails priority conflicts. I think this was intentional especially with regards to Onslaught. I don't think we're gonna have to worry much about using Onslaught as a gauge dump to prevent overcapping - I could be wrong - but I figure with the removal of bonus crit from pooling gauge, Infuriate having 2 charges, Infuriate triggering Nascent Chaos, Wars are gonna be dumping rage into FC and probably on average won't get anywhere close to overcapping rage.

They also reduced Onslaught cooldown to 10 secs, no doubt to make it so that Onslaught is always available for use within Inner Release - even if you messed up and used it like 2 seconds before Inner Release it'll be available again within the Inner Release window no matter what. Again, less conflict/decision making.

If this is the case, why can't they just put Onslaught on a charge system same as other tanks? There appears to be no need for it as a rage dump, therefore, no need for it to cost rage. And even with a 10 sec cooldown, it's never going to be used anywhere close to that cooldown - I estimate it's usage frequency is gonna EVEN LESS than other tanks gap closers. That is, other tanks, because their gap closer is on a charge system, they're gonna be dumping it every 30 secs for dps, and saving 1 charge for when it's actually needed as a gap closer.

Warriors? Probably once every 90 seconds during Inner Release, and here and there when it's actually needed as a gap closer - which I don't think is gonna be every 10 seconds, I would be surprised if it's anything more than a 2 or 3 times an entire fight if even that given that Arms Length exists.

I hope they take another look at Onslaught..

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