A Warrior Tanking Compendium?

[Pixelshader]

Yeah I feel like I get misunderstood a lot.

Regarding Coil: I don't feel like anyone, WAR or PLD should be soaking up 8k raw damage on any bossfight whatsoever, there are so many cooldowns available to party members that screeching at the tank to take the raw damage in the face and then telling them their gimp if they can't, is basically abandoning party play so you can solo. I believe that Coil is a fight of max coordination and the best teams will be the ones World-Firsting Coil.

But yeah, if the party is off their game, a WAR may need to pull out all the stops to say up burning through the cooldowns until they can get it together. If I'm going to take that 8k to the face, I need to Double IB and hope that my SCH has Lustrate ready to save my rear.

I'm waiting with Baited breath to find a decent use for Steel Cyclone outside soloing. The general rule for all the classes (except SMN's Bane) is that if you want to AoE damage be prepared to take a big hit to the TP and MP and prepare for that damage to be about 1/3rd of Single Target damage or less, which just sucks for a Tank trying to hold hate.

Yeah I feel end game warriors as a community are rare and good ones are yet to be discovered, but I saw you had quite a bit of potential to help so my intention is not to misquote or slander any input you may be pouring out.

Our main tank happens to be a WAR and hes quite good, but plays by the seat of his pants. He can just feel out the battle and I am trying to isolate it down to a science so that others can replicate it. I have been a tank for 12 years and for the past 8 years I make every tank on the particular mmo I am playing at the time so I am hoping I can extract a method to his madness.

That's one thing people are not understanding when they come to this game. This is a traditional old school team play mmo. Tanks are not king like in WoW, Healers are not gods like in Swtor, and not everyone is equal like in GW2. When you pick a job that is your role. You should not be a tank trying to dps. You should be a tank trying to overachieve what he does. Raise the enmity ceiling. no longer require a healer, so on.

[Pixelshader]

I really don't think unchained should be used like that as it has a 3 min cooldown and can't really be used on every or even every other pack. Typically I only use unchained when I'm tanking a large group (more than 4~5) and am spamming Overpowered with Berserk and Bloodbath on or during a burn phase on a boss fight. (Titan's Heart, Amdapor first boss's summoner at 50% hp, etc) Also, I've yet to run into a dps that require me to spam butcher's block outside of a combo just to build initial hate. (I typically run with a Dragoon with Relic+1 and AF2 chest piece with the rest in DL) Remember you only need as much hate to be higher than everyone else, there's no need to build that much aggro. Overall, I find it more important to focus on doing max damage when fight trash mobs and focus on keeping the 15% healing stack up when fighting a particularly hard hitting boss. At least that's my experience from having tanked up to Turn 2 in Coil.

That sounds pretty reasonable. I guess we can treat that cooldown the way I treat invincible on my paladin, only when its called for. Whereas Internal Release should be used on cooldown.

[HiirNoivl]

Intellegent post

Your main tank sounds a lot like me.


I'm not sure I could tell you exactly what to do in any given fight. The most I can do is try to do Algorithms. If A skill is down and B skill is up use B+X skill. If A skill is down and B skill is down use Y + Z skill until HP is C number.

But when you get into differing primals differing parties, differing gear set ups, the number of split second decisions you have to make becomes something no computer could ever do. It's enough to make anyone nervous and requires a lot of practice.

The only problem that people don't understand with WAR is the whole DPS thing. Yoshi P said that WAR gains enmity through DPS... but that's not all. WAR self heals (mitigates damage) through DPS. All those WARs (I include myself) who made the mistake of stacking tons of VIT found their HP houses collapsing under a sustained attack.

My other thread was about spiking self heals from Titan with Berserk and other cooldowns... but now I'm working on maintaining a specific HP level through sustained heavy damage. But you need a larger base attack power and a larger base critical hit rate to do that.

Now I'm starting to understand that many of the issues WARs are having are rooted in the misunderstanding about WAR and DPS. It's not a hybrid, it's a tank that does it's job by eating its target.

[Pixelshader]

Your main tank sounds a lot like me.


I'm not sure I could tell you exactly what to do in any given fight. The most I can do is try to do Algorithms. If A skill is down and B skill is up use B+X skill. If A skill is down and B skill is down use Y + Z skill until HP is C number.

But when you get into differing primals differing parties, differing gear set ups, the number of split second decisions you have to make becomes something no computer could ever do. It's enough to make anyone nervous and requires a lot of practice.

The only problem that people don't understand with WAR is the whole DPS thing. Yoshi P said that WAR gains enmity through DPS... but that's not all. WAR self heals (mitigates damage) through DPS. All those WARs (I include myself) who made the mistake of stacking tons of VIT found their HP houses collapsing under a sustained attack.

My other thread was about spiking self heals from Titan with Berserk and other cooldowns... but now I'm working on maintaining a specific HP level through sustained heavy damage. But you need a larger base attack power and a larger base critical hit rate to do that.

Now I'm starting to understand that many of the issues WARs are having are rooted in the misunderstanding about WAR and DPS. It's not a hybrid, it's a tank that does it's job by eating its target.

Yeah my goal is not to include the dynamics of being a reactive tank. I want to build a foundation for players to work off of, then allow their self experience to expand on that. I want to give them the chance to learn when to hit a cool down or how to react to a situation. So first and foremost I want to solidifying the best practice for single target and multi target tanking.

Right, I walked into it as though warrior was a death knight from wow or a sith assassin from swtor. It has self heals count as mitigation and it uses a 2 hander to shorten the fight reducing incoming damage overall because its simply a shorter fight. You appear to being stating that you want to do more damage to unlock the potential of Inner Beast, Storm's Path, and Bloodbath? I would love for the game to go down that route rather than get all the HP possible so that visually appear to be taking less damage because a 8k hit on a 12k tank looks less when indeed you took a giant hit but your healers are not panicking due to the illusion of the percentage on your health bar. I've never heard of warriors being a dps tank, but I can understand why they would be called mana sponges.

[RhazeCain]

My other thread was about spiking self heals from Titan with Berserk and other cooldowns... but now I'm working on maintaining a specific HP level through sustained heavy damage. But you need a larger base attack power and a larger base critical hit rate to do that.

Interested in that 2nd part.. What is the best we can do currently in terms of self healing?

I have to confess I'm that guy with full Vit stacked right now. Darklight vit jewelry, 30 bonus Vit, and weapon is my worst piece of gear. Working on melding Str to the jewelry and upgrading weapon, but for now self healing just looks insignificant. Even if I stat to increase it say 20%, it's just not much.

Bloodbath costs nearly nothing to cast, so always good to use that. It's just that the amount healing you barely can see.

Storm's Path is 1 hit every 7.5 secs at best. But considering you need enmity, it's more like every 15+ secs. And again the amount is tiny .. plus TP overcost .. thus I never use it.

Infuriate + Inner Beast is good cause you get to keep Wrath5 stacked continuously. And that's a significant heal. But it's only once per minute.

Inner Beast with rebuilding Wrath stacks the hard way doesn't really seem worth it because you lose crit rate and bonus on healer's heals.

So again: What is the best we can do currently in terms of self healing? Anything I'm overlooking above?

[HiirNoivl]

^__^;;; I'm still working on that goal of sustained self heal. But it's worth it for adding STR, Crit and even Skill speed.


Let's take a look at Inner Beast for a moment. Now if you're looking for a sheer spike heal perspective, Inner Beast is it. I'm up to 3012 on a crit heal and I'm regularly healing between 1900-2200 with Berserk and more along the lines of 1400-1700 with Maim and Storm's Eye buffs only and 1100-1200 unbuffed completely.

That's looking at the self heal side of things. But when you look at the damage side of things: Inner Beast ignores the damage nerf imposed by Defiance, so for Inner Beast you're always "Unchained". It's a 300 potency attack that always has a Crit Buff of Wrath V.

Do you understand that DPS monster that Inner Beast is? Even if it's not buffed, Holy Guacamole!

So just looking at that one skill, DPS = Mitigation... Mitigation = DPS.

Now let's look at "Unchained". Unchained releases you completely from all damage nerfs. So if you use Berserk with Unchained, you get an instant increase to all your attacks on top of that nerf release. Add to that Bloodbath and you're healing quite a bit, not only on the WS but on your auto attack too. Even Second Wind, with it's attack modifier, heals for more.

Even if you add just a little STR here, a little Critical Rate there, and some Determination on the side, then you turn around and start using Inner Beast like you would use say, "Butcher's Block" then you would have a higher DPS, a higher Self heal number, and you would have way more enmity. If you DPS'ed with Unchained and Bloodbath, you would have the same results.

The only skill that works wtih VIT on WAR is Thrill of Battle and Mercy Stroke. Everything else is based on Attack power.

[Kitru]

Upkeep: The following is a priority system not a step by step rotation. If you see something earlier in the list not on cool down, use it.

1. Unchained -> Infuriate (Use to stabilize initial enmity, then only use during burn phases)
2. Storm's Eye Combo Use as needed to keep Maim on yourself and Storm's Eye on your target. This raises your overall enmity throughout the fight.
3. Mercy Stroke (On cooldown, this does not break your Butcher's Block Combo so use it ASAP)
4. Butcher's Block Combo

You forgot about Fracture, which is the most damaging single GCD that WARs get access to: it does 100 potency right off the bat and then 20 potency every 2 seconds for the next 30 seconds. That's 400 potency (100 + 20*15). The closest that any other attack we have gets is Butcher's Block combo, which is only 280. You will want to maintain Fracture *constantly*, even above Butcher's Block, since, as soon as you've set up a decent enmity cushion, you don't really need *more* threat. At that point, it's all about damage.

My default rotation is BB Combo>SE Combo>Fracture>BB Combo>SE Combo: you'll maintain 100% uptime on Fracture while generating all of the enmity you'll ever need (unless you're running with a PAL in Shield Oath spamming Halone, at which point your only hope of keeping threat off of him is just spamming the BB combo without rest).

As for opening, I start with Tomahawk and move into the previously indicated rotation. Tomahawk's 2x threat mod coupled with the Defiance multiplier gives you all the time you need to get into the end of your first BB combo, which will give you *more* than enough threat. More than one BB combo back to back is overkill unless you're undergeared and dealing with a BRD that is amazing at DPS but doesn't know how to use his enmity management skills.

[Pixelshader]

You forgot about Fracture, which is the most damaging single GCD that WARs get access to: it does 100 potency right off the bat and then 20 potency every 2 seconds for the next 30 seconds. That's 400 potency (100 + 20*15). The closest that any other attack we have gets is Butcher's Block combo, which is only 280. You will want to maintain Fracture *constantly*, even above Butcher's Block, since, as soon as you've set up a decent enmity cushion, you don't really need *more* threat. At that point, it's all about damage.

My default rotation is BB Combo>SE Combo>Fracture>BB Combo>SE Combo: you'll maintain 100% uptime on Fracture while generating all of the enmity you'll ever need (unless you're running with a PAL in Shield Oath spamming Halone, at which point your only hope of keeping threat off of him is just spamming the BB combo without rest).

As for opening, I start with Tomahawk and move into the previously indicated rotation. Tomahawk's 2x threat mod coupled with the Defiance multiplier gives you all the time you need to get into the end of your first BB combo, which will give you *more* than enough threat. More than one BB combo back to back is overkill unless you're undergeared and dealing with a BRD that is amazing at DPS but doesn't know how to use his enmity management skills.

I didn't forget fracture. I have not gotten a consensus that fracture is worth putting up. It has no enmity multiplier and yes it raises DPS, but I'm not sure its long enough to be worth the GCD in regards to enmity. I know for a fact on Paladin its absolute garbage with a 18 sec up time per gcd. And yes you always want more threat. Our guild can currently skip an entire phase in Titan and almost 2 phases on garuda. There can't be an enmity ceiling.

Our main tank has a +1 relic and said he can't storm's eye combo until after 2 block combos. That's where that information was harvested from.

[HiirNoivl]

I didn't forget fracture. I have not gotten a consensus that fracture is worth putting up.

Fracture is worth putting up SOMETIMES.

DoT Damage is based on your current damage dealing capacity at the time of DoT-put. So if you don't have Maim or Berserk or anything up, your DoT for Fracture will just be your Base damage, which of course is subtracted by Defiance. Not very good.

But let's say you're in the middle of your rotation and you see that you have Maim and your Berserk and Unchained up (Such as on the Heart Phase of Titan! ). That is a perfect time to use those damage buffs and THEN put on Fracture.

The DPS from this is just squee-worthy! ^____^

[Hachiko]

Seems clear to me writing a Warrior compendium is going to be difficult because there is no real consensus on how things work out for Warriors in general.

3 things come to mind:

• Stat points - STR v. VIT being a serious debate, both having their upsides.
• Wrath Holding v. Inner Beast usage (only after huge hits - Mountain Buster - or Big hits - Rock buster - or maybe only when you have infuriate on CD, etc.)
• Fracture usage (Enmity vs. DPS) and wrath stacks.

It's also noting that using Fracture also delays stacking Wrath to 5. The only time you should really be using fracture is when a) you have a appreciable threat lead, b) you have both Maim and Storm's Eye up, c) you just finished a combo (not interrupting one) and d) you have 5 stacks of wrath. This makes the ability very costly to monitor, in terms of attention.