Thoughts on tweaks for WAR.

I want to definitely say that I like WAR, and I don't think that we are useless vs PLD. I just think that we are truly less desirable, and a few small changes would effectively fix that. And these changes are NOT simply to increase our damage mitigation up front. I DO NOT want to be an axe wielding PLD. I like being different, and I think we can stay different while being equally useful.

This is obviously only for the higher end Binding Coil and further fights. Up till the Binding Coil, WAR tanks exactly was well as PLD. The problem in the coil is simply that it takes more MP from healers to heal WARs than to heal PLDs, meaning that 2 PLDs is pretty much always more desirable than PLD + WAR, Not that using a WAR is impossible.

However, with that being said, we don't think WAR is in a HORRIBLE spot. We just think it needs a couple tweaks.


Bloodbath:
Using an admittedly rough method of calculation using lv 50 training dummies while solo without unchained, Bloodbath heals WAR for about 1200-1400 HP. So with buffs and all that, call it 1500-1600 HP. This is over 30 seconds.

We think that, given its relatively low healing amount over a decently long period of time, that Bloodbath shouldn't be a cooldown ability, but rather a toggle on/off ability. This would help further separate WAR from PLD as being a different kind of tank, and do well as helping to alleviate the MP issues healers have. Obviously this would be toned down to like a 5% base healing rate, and then increased to the 25% though a trait, so that it is not an overpowered cross class ability.

Another option could be to take Bloodbath off of the cross class abilities, and make it toggle. Then, put Berserk onto the cross class list, which will help MNK and DRG out in their current high risk-no reward situation.


Steel Cyclone:
This is just a blah ability for WAR atm. It's kind of nice, but absolutely nothing special. I really only use it in random situations because it looks cool :).

We just discussed a reasonable buff to 280-300 potency from 200 potency, given how long it takes to build stacks for. Inner beast will still always be more desirable against single targets, given its healing ability, but Steel Cyclone would then stand out as obviously being the supreme AoE WS, while still not being spammable.


Wrath:
We love this mechanic. As a WAR, I am hoping that with future content patches, more side-gradeable equipment will be released that allow for more differentiation between tank gear. I think gearing for crit hit rate and parry as a WAR over determination and accuracy would be great, given crit hit's bonus emnity mechanics and the Wrath mechanic.

However, as it is right now, ignoring the cooldown abilities, it takes 2.66 rotations minimum to build up the Wrath stacks to become infuriated. Using a 2.5 sec GCD (generally what we have, or something like 2.45, negligible difference), that is 20 seconds minimum to build up to Infuriated without using Berserk or Vengeance. We just feel that this takes a little too long to make real use of something like Inner Beast the way I would like to, as an in-rotation self heal, rather than an Oh-shit moment self-heal. Additionally, full stacks of Wrath (5) gaining Infuriated grants you 10% chance to crit, and 15% bonus to healing from curing magic only (2% and 3% per stack, respectively).

What we talked about was lowering the stacks needed to gain Infuriated status by one, from five total needed to four. This would mean you need two rotations (again, without Berserk and Vengeance) in order to gain the Infuriated status, meaning it would then take 15 seconds rather than 20. Note that both of these times assumes just building stacks without stopping to use Fracture, Flash, or anything else. We felt that, although only 5 seconds shorter, this would allow WARs more flexibility in whether or not to burn stacks or just hold them for the curing buff.

Also, with this lowering to 4 stacks from 5, we thought that it would be good to change the increases to crit chance and incoming curing magic from 2% and 3%, to 3% and 5%, respectively. This would cause max stacks to go from 10% crit chance increase and 15% increased curing magic, to 12% crit increase and 20% increase to curing magic.

I felt that increasing the incoming curing magic from 15% to 20% would help offset the need of healers to use more MP to keep WARs at the same health percentage as PLDs, since WARs have roughly 25% more HP than PLDs, while taking roughly 25-30% more damage.

Note: If the Wrath cap was lowered to 4, I’d say the Steel Cyclone buff would only need to be to about 220-250, rather than 280-300.


Defiance:
We feel that Defiance is in a pretty good spot, but a small tweak would be nice. Right now, Defiance increases max HP by 25% while decreasing dmg output by 25% and doubling threat generation in the same way that Shield Oath does for PLD.

We just felt that changing the dmg reduction from 25% to 20% would be beneficial. This would make WAR similar to BRD in how BRD’s 20% dmg increase trait counters the 20% dmg debuff from playing songs. WAR’s Maim ability increases dmg output by 20%, and is most likely kept active most of the time, meaning it would offset the 20% dmg penalty from Defiance.


Conclustion:
Basically, where WAR and PLD stand now, there are only two things noticeably different between them, from a tanking application standpoint:

1) WAR does about 15-25 more DPS than a PLD while tanking.
2) PLD takes 25-30% less damage, while WAR has 25% more HP, meaning that WAR will take more MP to heal.


We feel that with the above changes, WAR and PLD would be father separated into two distinctly different tanks, while maintaining equal effectiveness for each, by making the differences:

1) WAR does about 15-30 more DPS than a PLD while tanking.
2) PLD takes 25-30% less damage. WAR has 25% more HP, but increases curing magic effects by 20% and does around 1.5-2.5 Cure 2's (Bloodbath, Inner Beast) worth of healing every 30 seconds. This would make it so PLD and WAR take very similar amounts of MP to heal.
3) Healers would still generate more threat while healing a WAR vs a PLD, because the raw healing amount from cures would be higher. This would be offset by WAR's increase in damage compared to PLDs.




This would mean that WAR is still slightly weaker against high spike damage abilities, but this, from a group effectiveness standpoint, would be offset by the fact that the group DPS is higher by using a PLD+WAR vs a two PLD setup. Also, note that having a WAR on the target increases PLD dps (and therefor threat) by roughly 8-10% (Storm’s Eye).

With all of that being said, we don’t feel that WAR is ‘gimped’ or ‘useless’ right now. I love playing my WAR, and in almost every situation I feel I am just as useful as a PLD. I just feel that we could use the few small buffs listed above. And in all honesty, if they gave us the rest of what I listed, I’d be find with Steel Cyclone staying where it is.

Please give me any feedback, and tell me what you think.

Your idea is great

I completely agreed with OP, WAR should take the same MP for curing as PLD does... this tweaked should be rift the unbalanced between PLD and WAR.

I like how WAR get buffs on cure potency.

First off, are you REALLY doing 190 DPS against a training dummy with Defiance up? That seems incredibly high to me.

I also disagree that WAR are even with PLD up until BC. They are behind them as soon as Ifrit, but it really doesn't show until Titan.

I think they are all pretty good ideas. I think Bloodbath needs to have more uptime, and having Berserk be cross class would be interesting (but it would mean PLD would have an even bigger DPS advantage while off tanking!) but it would definitely help out MNK and DRG.

I agree with the wrath stacks, but I think there might be a better way to do it than lowering it to 4.

IMO, some skills should give more than others. Butcher's Block, Storm's Eye should both give 2 wrath stacks, rather than 1. This would add more strategy, I think, and it would have the same effect roughly, but timing it right you would only need 4 globals sometimes, and 6 at other times. It would add depth but that may be too much. Alternatively, Butcher's Block could be the only one to add 2 stacks, which would also make it 6 globals to cap, usually.

I also think that 20% healing at 5 stacks still wouldn't be enough, because you are not averaging max stacks, you are averaging far less, and 20% is still less effective than the effective 25% boost to cure effectiveness PLD get. I don't know if you intended this or not.

Anyhow, I think your ideas are on the right track. But I feel a little gimped as it is, personally.

With that said, I think they need to do something about the following skills:

• Mercy Stroke - Such a minimal skill. The fact that this contributes so little to DPS for WAR or cross class is one of the reasons that MNK and DRG are in the place they are. Should be changed into a real execute. Usable any time for maybe 150 potency off the global, but have that triple to 450 if the target is below 20%, something like that.
• Foresight - This is such a minimal buff. This should be our most effective defensive cooldown as it's our class one that is buffed by our class trait, yet some how it manages to be our worst, and is honestly the worst defensive cooldown in the game.
• Storm's Path - This is effectively a wasted skill. It's theoretically neat to have an alternative to Storm's Eye, but what is given up (11% damage increase, 20TP) is not even remotely worth what is gained (50% of 1 hit converted to health). It would be interesting to see this rolled into Butcher's Block, i.e. turning it into a trait: Enhanced Butcher's Block - Butcher's Block absorbs 50% of the damage dealt as HP.
• Steel Cyclone - This should be more along the lines of Inner Beast - it should heal you for some portion of the damage dealt, probably 100%, this would mean for it to be more efficient heal than Inner Beast you would need more than 4 enemies. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me, and it still has an effective 20 second cooldown (less if Wath Stacks are modified though).
• Inner Beast - This skill doesn't really need buffing, but, IMO taking it off the global, and/or turning it into a shield instead of healing would be reasonable modifications.

Anyhow, there are a ton of things SE could do that would be really interesting. For example, they could make Defiance an anti-burst mechanic, something like "attacks which deal more than 50% of your total HP deal 50% of their damage over 6 seconds." Thus, it would make WAR less prone to simply being burst down, but you will still take the same amount of healing to stay alive.

I don't know, there are a lot of things SE could do to help WARs out. I just hope they realize they should do something.

Bloodbath - 25% of the damage you RECEIVE is converted to Health. Duration 30s Cooldown - 120s MRD WAR

Enhanced Bloodbath - Bloodbath now increases your parry by 3% every time you take damage. Can not occur more than once every 1.5 seconds. Maximum parry gained is 60%

Foresight in its current state is so underwhelming it's laughable. I don't know what to do with it to make it useful that wouldn't just be a Rampart / Sentinel clone, to be honest.

Defiance - No longer decreases damage by 25%

Maim - No longer increases damage by 20%. Increases parry rate by 20% (or critical hit rate by 15%?) Duration - 25s.

Enhanced Maim - Decreases enemy damage by 8%

Storm's Eye - Decreases target slashing resistance by 10%. Duration - 25s.

...Maybe?

Mercy Stroke's heal effect isn't terribly useful in its current state, either. How often do we land the killing blow, or how often will a 20% heal save us if the mob is dying anyway?

make rampart cross classable

add a damage reduction buff to inner beast

done

then, you know, once you've gone and made WAR a main tank on equal footing as a paladin, go and try to find a reason to play paladin

Lots of things in here an some other threads that I like, and several I never thought of. Few points tho.

I really want to stand by my idea of having Bloodbath stay the same amount it is for WARs now, but be toggleable. This is mainly because I DO NOT WANT any more straight things that just increase all around mitigation. I DO NOT want to be an axe wielding PLD. I think keeping Bloodbath up is a great step in that direction.

Turning Inner Beast heal into a shield is something I didn't think of, and I love it. Its unique, and would be even more useful, since you can basically overheal yourself with the shield.

Basically, I think we need to AVOID straight increasing dmg mitigation and step towards being a high dmg, high healing class. This can be done basically three ways:

Toggle Bloodbath.
Increase our dmg output (lower or remove dmg penalty on Defiance).
Raise the amount curing magic is enhanced by Infrutiated status.

If our dmg is increased by 5-25%, and Bloodbath is toggled, combined with making Infuriated increase healing by 20-25%, we will not take any more MP to heal than PLD, and we will maintain a definite difference in tanking style than PLD.

As far as Storm's Path and Forsight, I think Forsight could be an increase in parry strength (say for 30s parry amount is doubled), and Storm's Path IMO should add a HoT effect. That way, you would never spam Storm's Path combos. Say Storm's Path could heal 200% of the damage done over 10s. Just random numbers and percentages, but it works with the idea of WAR being a defacto blood tank.

Or Forsight could be like what someone else mentioned. Use Forsight, and for 10-15s, any hit that would do more than like 40% of your max HP is reduced by half, or grants you an HoT effect, or a shield for half that amount etc.

I see two main issues with the separate tanks.

First is that with a shield PLD has a consistent damage mitigating ability that WAR does not. WAR have 25% more hp but only get a 15% boost to heals while Infuriated. Thus the issue you mentioned with healer MP in longer fights, or even just damage heavy fights.

Solution: Make Inner Beast apply a Damage reduction buff of say 10%, you lose the +healing but gain a little mitigation.

Second is that PLD have a large number of "Oh S**t!" buttons while WAR have ones of limited use.

Solution: Either increase Bloodbath healing received via the methods mentioned above or make Rampart cross-class. Get rid of awareness for rampart, not useful enough as our higher health pools make crits less dangerous.

Another solution is to roll the current Foresight into Defiance and change Foresight to something useful.

Not end game, but here's what I've noticed so far:

Foresight is garbage (as everybody knows).
Suggestion 1: Enhanced Foresight reduces cooldown to 90sec and increases Parry rate by 20%
Suggestion 2: Enhanced Foresight reduces cooldown to 90sec and increases healing received by 10-15% (WAR needs more heals than PLD).

Mercy stroke is too weak and the timing is too difficult to be of much use.
Suggestion 1: Boost dmg so you're more likely to kill something (300-400)
Suggestion 2: Change ability so that it heals if you kill the target OR if the target dies in the next 3 sec. Makes it possible to actually use this on adds to heal yourself.

Storm's path is TERRIBLE. TP cost too high, heals for nothing, requires you to not use your +threat combo and not get the dmg boost from storm's eye.
Suggestion: Get rid of it, add the 50% heal effect to Storm's Eye. Move storm's eye to level 38. Replace lvl 50 ability with steel cyclone (see below).

Steel cyclone is unusable in its current state.
Suggestion: Change steel cyclone to a lvl 50 MRD ability. 100 potency, combo effect:200-250 potency and generates wrath when used after maim. Now we can use it reliably in an aoe tanking situation to both build and maintain wrath. The trade off being that it generates less threat than overpower.

PLD has a TON of very strong defensive abilities that push it way past WAR in its primary role of not dying. WAR could use another big defensive cooldown ability.
Suggestion: Add nerves of steel, reduce dmg by 30-50% for the next X sec, 90-180sec cooldown. Only usable while infuriated, consumes all wrath. Lvl 45 ability (to replace steel cyclone).


Probably won't make the classes equal, but it would help narrow the gap a bit.

High Five! I love the "Nerves of Steel" idea.

I can't speak about Steel Cyclone as I can see it being useful if the design fights around it(which shouldn't happen but oh well.)

Mercy Stroke does need a huge damage boost to be useful, but I was thinking 500-600 cause full thrust on dragoons has 300 potency and I want to KNOW I'm getting that heal.

I would say remove Storm'e Eye and replace it with Nerves of Steel, move the slashing debuff to butcher's block, the healing debuff to skull sunder, and increase the healing of Storm's Path to 100-150% of damage done.

For obvious reason

WE NEED TO CHANGE FORESIGHT

seriously, this is only one of broken (or laughable) WAR skills

You guys keep talking about lowering the wrath cap or making some attacks give more wrath stacks on single hit, but you forget that it is not required for a skill to blow the whole wrath stack in one go. Steel Cyclone would be pretty viable if it only used one Wrath. IB would be much much stronger if it consumed one or two stacks. There still needs to be something else to handle spike damage though, mut I personally believe the easiest way to balance current WAR wrath skills would be to lower their amount of stacks consumed.