[Warrior Rotation] Single-target, basic

WIP: The following information might change depending on future discoveries in theorycrafting, I'm still not sure about how str,dex and vit plays into this in the later end-game (this will become more obvious when we get more Materia in our gear).

This rotation is made with normal single-target DMG/Tanking in mind. The majority of our defensive abilities can be used during the global cooldown so using these are mostly situational.

I have not added Inner Beast to the rotation because until I can find a proper way to work it into the rotation and also point out examples of which kind of encounters you want to use it in, I don't see it being anymore more than a situational heal/nuke.

I'm guessing alot of people have had doubts about using Fracture in their rotation or not and I get that. However, the testing I did with the FFXIV-APP (parser) showed that Fracture is indeed a usefull skill.

Fracture does almost exactly the same amount of damage as one Butcher's Block. That means it's the same amount of damage as our highest damage ability (excluding Inner Beast). If you look at the rotation below you can see how I play over a time period of 30 seconds (not including buffs and situational usage of other Global Cooldown skills).
You won't put up Fracture right away and the reason I start with Butcher's Block combo is because you always want to get enmity up quickly. This works out as long as you don't have any other tank-class NUKING the boss/mob (which they shouldn't if you're the main-tank).

The rotation is just rince and repeat, after putting fracture up it will cover the whole 30 second period (even the first 15).

http://i.imgur.com/QkaDZb1.png

Thanks for the fracture info!

couple more questions warrior wise, is there a damage difference using fracture before as oppose to after you have the maim damage bonus?

also skills like butchers block or skull sunder where there is an additional effect of the enmity, in order to have the additional effect do i need to execute the combo? Because they gave us savage blade from gladiators which has the enmity bonus however they didnt give us its pre-combo move fast blade

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Originally Posted by Heroe

Thanks for the fracture info!

couple more questions warrior wise, is there a damage difference using fracture before as oppose to after you have the maim damage bonus?

also skills like butchers block or skull sunder where there is an additional effect of the enmity, in order to have the additional effect do i need to execute the combo? Because they gave us savage blade from gladiators which has the enmity bonus however they didnt give us its pre-combo move fast blade

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Yes, there is a damage difference when using fracture after Maim (20% damage increase ;p ), I actually haven't tried if the Fracture damage is increased by the Storm's Eye 10% Slashing Resistance reduction on the enemy.

Yes, you need to do the combo to get the enmity effect, which makes me unsure why they made it so us warriors could use Savage Blade.

Thanks for this. I will be putting this rotation on rotation.

I know for sure that Savage Blade still gets the enmity bonus if not used in a combo. I have tested it with Fast Blade and Savage blade, and Savage blade was giving about twice as much enmity by itself than Fast Blade was.

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Originally Posted by Cocien

I know for sure that Savage Blade still gets the enmity bonus if not used in a combo. I have tested it with Fast Blade and Savage blade, and Savage blade was giving about twice as much enmity by itself than Fast Blade was.

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That's odd, it SHOULDN'T work. But I might be wrong, I'll test it out as well.

Although since it's not really used for any kind of combo I doubt that you'd actually wanna pick that skill rather than any of the CDs or such from the other classes.

I find Inner Beast is best used as a counter to a heavy damage spike. For example, after Titan lands for Geocrush. You can Inner Beast and heal yourself for most of the damage, leaving the healer more time to top off other people.

Ideally, you would want to "prep" your skills in such a way that you can gain back your Wrath stacks asap. Assuming you are able to prepare of course (not always possible) you would make sure SS is primed and ready to go by using Heavy Swing first, then blow IB when you need to heal the damage followed immediately by an SS/BB combo for two stacks of Wrath.

Is it possible to have a macro that rotates through these skills? I wouldn't mind having a Storm's Eye macro and another that goes through the Butcher's Block set. Saves me much needed ps3 hotbar space so I don't have to set up a second hotbar.

Rotations are silly with this GCD. YOu need to manage threat properly, and sometimes working in maim is a waste of time.

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Originally Posted by MrFoxx

Rotations are silly with this GCD. YOu need to manage threat properly, and sometimes working in maim is a waste of time.

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Mostly this. If you can keep Maim up, then yeah, you get a lot of extra hate. But if you need hate NOW, then SS/BB is better.

Hell, sometimes I don't even bother with Storm's Path. I just Maim for the buff then go back to SS/BB, even if it's not that efficient as far as stacking Wrath goes.

making sure you're properly generating threat on Hard mode content will not allow you to use this rotation whatsoever or the heals will pull aggro almost immediately.
tanking HM Ifrit and garuda, i use BB combo x5, then start mixing in main>se combos every once in a while when im Main tanking. Also, contrary to what most would say, do not blow inner beast every chance it is up. monitor what abilities the boss is using at certain cooldowns (such as incinerate) and use it after that, allowing the healers a bit more time to react to the massive damage that was dealt to you.

If you're offtanking in said fights (primarily garuda) use maim>SE combo for a while just to increase dps, and blow down dps cooldowns (keep defiance off for this stage)

when you know the adds are coming, switch defiance on, and then us BB combo to hold aggro. multiple targets should hold aggro with one or two OP then a steel cyclone. I've had no issues with this thus far in Full party hardmode settings.

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Originally Posted by Coros

Is it possible to have a macro that rotates through these skills? I wouldn't mind having a Storm's Eye macro and another that goes through the Butcher's Block set. Saves me much needed ps3 hotbar space so I don't have to set up a second hotbar.

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I'm not sure, I've yet to take the time to actually sit down and work a bit more with macros. I'm guessing you could use the wait command for it but I wouldn't recommend doing it. The whole idea is that at any time you're supposed to be able to stop your rotation and pop some cooldown to help you. I don't think even the skills that are not on GCD would work through the macro, or at least I could screw it up for you.

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Originally Posted by MrFoxx

Rotations are silly with this GCD. YOu need to manage threat properly, and sometimes working in maim is a waste of time.

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Please explain further how rotations are silly with this GCD, even if it's 2.5 and even if it can be lowered. Putting certain skills into a certain rotation does maximize your damage output and makes it alot easier to always perform top-notch. It's your job as a player to adapt the rotation to the current fight and when we get more skill-speed we'll probably have to rethink what we're doing, as with every other stat in the game.

Keeping the 20% buff up is a waste of time? Making sure the 10% slashing dmg debuff is on the enemy target is a waste of time?

You're just stating random things without giving proper explanation, if you want to be taken seriously I'd suggest you come write down some reasons and post again.

First of there's one thing we have to make clear, this rotation is NOT about building threat (enmity) if you're having trouble building threat you do as many BB Combos as you need until you have secured your top position as tank.

This rotation is about maximizing YOUR DPS and your raids DPS (10% Slashing) while still maintaining enough threat, it's mostly aimed at 8-24 man boss-fights.

Personally I mostly only have to open with 1-2 BB Combos. After the opening of the fight you always have to make sure that you're ahead when it comes to threat, there are fights when you're not gonna be hitting the boss for a moment but the healers are still gonna be healing (causing threat). It's YOUR job to know when this is and how you handle it (mostly BB spamming gets you back on top). BB Spamming is NOT however the most efficient way to tank the whole fight, unless you think tanking is only composed of taking damage and not actually contributing to the fight in any other way.

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Originally Posted by Ascensi

making sure you're properly generating threat on Hard mode content will not allow you to use this rotation whatsoever or the heals will pull aggro almost immediately.
tanking HM Ifrit and garuda, i use BB combo x5,

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That's silly. Can't talk about Garuda since I want my Ifrit axe before going to this place, but with a crappy 44 weapon I have absolutely no problem with hate while opening with BB combo x2 then maim>storm's>fracture then BB again,...
Only problem I have is when people aren't waiting for Ifrit to be positioned and aren't even giving me 1 rotation before unloading everything under buffs.

Maim + Storm's = Lots of damage, so lots of hate and party/raid utility.