Warriors - How to fix our damage mitigation

[Xeromaus]

Marginally useful in fights where your target is not Bind-immune (example: Wanderer's Palace slime boss, you can use Holmgang when he fixates on another group member to stop him from moving).

Unfortunately, most of the stuff you will be tanking in FFXIV is Bind-immune, which, coupled with an absurdly long CD and the fact that it roots you in place as well makes this skill pretty much useless.

For the main event(s) it's nearly useless, yes, for the entire run, no.

[Kitru]

The fact is that FCs do have MT WARs in Coil.

As I have said numerous times, there's a difference between "viable" and "balanced". Don't confuse the two. As it stands, WARs are viable, but WARs and PALs are not balanced: PALs are explicitly better.

[treuhavik]

Holmgang:

1) Stun target (6sec)
2) Run behind target and turn to face his back
3) Use Holmgang (6sec) just before stun wears
4) Continue beating said target while enjoying the 12sec in which you took no damage

[Kaalan]

Parse Results
FULL VIT STACK WITH VIT GEAR


So, I started out with 30 VIT stat Allocation and used your typical VIT and Parry tanking gear. I didn't want to prejudice the Parse at all by playing in a different play style than my STR set up so I tried to maximize my Self heals and Damage the best I could. I had an HP pool of 6861 with Defiance.

This is what I came up with for a 31 minute predictably-smelly DF run. No we didn't win.

I did my best with it. My self heals were pretty low: 876 for a low inner beast heal and 1878 for a high. My DPS? 71.88 with one parser and 76.29 with another... and that was with me actually trying to you know... DPS. That's really low. And it shows. I mean 876 for an Inner Beast is basically 0.1 of my total HP pool. Most of the time it was healing around 1100 or 1200 though but it did well with Crits that run. Inner Beast hit for an AVG of 415.30 or 1245.9 healed.

Another issue was hate. The Offtank PLD made a FLASH at the add to catch Chirada. Unfortunately, Garuda caught that too and off she went to wipe the party. She was literally gone in a flash. So my hate was pretty tenuous too. But I guess that's to be expected when my Enmity is through damage and I'm doing so little damage.

The healer was handling pretty much 100% of the weight. I healed about 4 percent of me and the healer did about 96 percent of everything... so let's try to change that.

STR 20 VIT 10

I switch back to STR 20 / VIT 10. Now I'm working with an HP pool of 6498 with Defiance... not that big of a difference. Let's make it bigger with a Peltast Ring instead of an HQ Amber ring and my HQ Darksteel melded Heavy Flanchard instead of a Darklight Heavy Flanchard. HP is now 6360. Now let's reset my Parsers and Try again. It was another DF 30 minute Lose Fest with some good results on the parser.

98.44 DPS for one and 96.31 with another this time. My highest Inner Beast healed for 2910 and my lowest Beast for 1035 On average it healed 1385.34. My healing climbed to 9.84 of healing done to myself, though the main healer was a bit spammy.

25 to 27 more DPS is nothing to Sniff at. 5 percent more healing isn't either.

So, where's your 160 DPS ?
I dealt ~80 DPS on most boss when i had half AF1 half DL and an ifrit axe (and 30 vit), so now that i'm full DL/AF+1 with a bravura, still 30 vit, i'm pretty sure i'm over this super shiny 96 dps, while having 800 more HP.
And implying 20 STR gives you ~1140 more HP on IB is beyond ridiculous. That's ~330 more damage. Are you even serious ?
Now, going from bravura + DL to bravura +1 + AF+1, you gain 40 str, taking into account that with that gear, you can get a lot of STR from acc since you'll already have a lot of HP and parry rating seems pretty weak, that would be like, at least a +60 str total.
So, listening to you, will i get +3420 healing on IB ? (~1000 damage, yup yup yup) There's no cap right now with the gear we have, so that should be right, uh ? Damn, in 2 month I won't even need an healer, that's fcking great !
You should seriously stop lying, this is ridiculous.

Until the later turn in coil I don't think a well played WAR is that much (effectively) behind a PLD and most arm done come from WAR themselves crying to everyone they're shit. So, I'm with people claiming that's it's not that bad, but you're just saying nonsens right now.

PS : With my +30 vit I have NEVER had anyone taking aggro from me unless they went all retard and threw everything at the boss while I was positioning him. The only time I had a hard time (but did not lose it) was with a WHM constantly (really, not just during stomps) spaming medica II on Titan HM.
PPS : 6360 HP on a war is ridiculous for end game content

EDIT : Damn I'm late, had this tab open for hours eheh.

[Wahzam]

Hi

I am one of those rare warriors that have been through Binding Coil Turns 1 - 5.

http://www.synapse-guild.com/ <---evidence.

I like and enjoy playing a Warrior. However Warriors are just terrible tanks in comparison to Paladins.

Paladins simply mitigate much much MORE damage than warriors could ever dream of, they even have a 10 second divine shield.

A warrior can main tank BC for turns 1 - 3 if he wants but when they get to the elevator gauntlet in turn 4 they are forced into the offtank role. They cannot tank 2 Dreadnoughts or 4 adds of Soldiers/Knights, which is usually required in most strats.

Our other team's Warrior leveled a pally and everyone agrees that the elevator gauntlet is much easier with 2 pally tanks.

If your a Warrior interested in Binding Coil my advice is to level a pally to 50 and wait for them to fix Warriors.

[Savish]

First off, WAR and PAL weapons both do the same amount of damage so there is no equipment disparity; it's all based off of abilities.

This is 100% false
make two identical characters one warrior and one gladiator at lvl 1
Weathered Axe with 150 potency attack does 9-10 Damage
Weathered Sword with 150 potency attack does 6-7 Damage
tested on lvl 1 lady bug

Both have a physical damage of 5, so clearly the damage on weapons is not IDENTICAL or there would not be a 30% discrepancy, it seems damage is calculated based off the auto-attack damage when using abilities not the physical damage listed.

[Duelle]

Parry won't do anything for Mitigation in the real stuff.

Depends. Parries currently can only be done from the front. You could make parries omnidirectional for WAR through a trait or a unique mechanic introduced through the WAR soul crystal (derplander the WAR parried an attack coming from behind in the intro movie, by the way). There's also the matter of parry threshold (AKA the amount of damage parries mitigate) relative to parry proc rate. You could increase overall mitigation by increasing chances of parry procs while tuning the parry threshold to be in balance with PLD (factoring other stuff like WAR's higher HP and self heals).

If you want to help WARs get to coil then they need to have Sentinel or something so that they can go easy mode like PLD and not have to rely so much on doing damage and self heals.

Using the asinine "skill" argument is the wrong way to go about it. WAR can and should have exclusive mechanics that set it apart from the other members of the tank pool, but the key thing to remember is that it's a tank and there should be a boilerplate for tank design. I mentioned earlier in this thread that a baseline tank (regardless of name and weapon choice) should have a certain amount of mitigation baseline, with unique class mechanics working in tandem with that baseline mitigation to make the tank fuctional and viable in content.

I have full faith that WAR can tank and efficiently kill just about anything in the hands of a player who understands it's strengths and weaknesses and in a party that understands how their own classes can mitigate damage for the tank and how to maximize their own DPS.

As FFXI should have taught you, overt reliance on things outside of your own performance doesn't do much in the long run, and people will always flock for what is consistent and "easier". XI's skillchain system was intended to be complex in build-up with a large number of possibilities, yet the playerbase simplified it to "Distortion/Lv3 are the only skillchains in the game. If you open and close Distortion/Lv3 Light you're worthwhile, if you can't GTFO". Would you submit WAR to a similar fate for the sake of being 100% "unique"?

There will be changes to WAR and maybe we'll get Rampart or Sentinel or something. But in the end that one fix isn't suddenly going to make WAR easy mode. You will have to learn to max damage and you will have to learn to max Self heal.

My own take is sprinkle damage mitigation:

- On-demand damage shield (something similar to the blood shield mechanic but based on damage dealt by Inner Beast rather than damage self-healed)
- Add to Improved Foresight so that it is a straight out damage reduction cooldown for MRD/WAR only (have Improved Foresight turn Foresight into a -15% damage taken)
- Perhaps add a bit more mitigation from parries through a bigger parry threshold or increased parry procs
- Move the +healing to Defiance

There. MRD/WAR improvements that don't make it mechanically similar to PLD.

[Inosaska]

The fixing of the class is what we should all focus on and giving it more damage is not the reason. The gap between paladins survival and warriors survival needs to be closed. Yes this makes the classes virtually the same but then any of the two classes can participate in the run of Coil. The difference would be there play style and that's about it.

[Bladeryk]

Here's a thought, something that has been bothering me for awhile now.

This thing...



Why not make it an off hand item, that not only increases parry chance, but amount and since it's basically a spiked buckler add a little reflective damage from incoming melee attacks?

yes? no? drink more coffee before i post?

[HiirNoivl]

So, where's your 160 DPS ?

It's 140... and it's in Amdapor Keep.

I dealt ~80 DPS on most boss when i had half AF1 half DL and an ifrit axe (and 30 vit), so now that i'm full DL/AF+1 with a bravura, still 30 vit, i'm pretty sure i'm over this super shiny 96 dps, while having 800 more HP.
And implying 20 STR gives you ~1140 more HP on IB is beyond ridiculous. That's ~330 more damage. Are you even serious ?

Parse or it didn't happen. DPS on full VIT stack is terrible. I've tried it more than once. Never going back.

So, listening to you, will i get +3420 healing on IB ? (~1000 damage, yup yup yup) There's no cap right now with the gear we have, so that should be right, uh ? Damn, in 2 month I won't even need an healer, that's fcking great !
You should seriously stop lying, this is ridiculous.

Probably actually. Inner Beast heals for 3x your damage. If you crit 1140 yeah you'll heal for that much. And yes, I can stay up on Garuda for about 30 seconds at my current level of gear with no healer. I can stay up for a full minute on Demon Wall after everyone dies. (by then they're screaming "Come on DIE already so we can start over) So yeah in 2 months maybe you will be soloing Demon Wall lol

But yeah if you're not Criting for higher than me for Inner Beast you're definitely doing something wrong. My second highest inner beast during my STR set up run was 2882.

With my +30 vit I have NEVER had anyone taking aggro from me unless they went all retard and threw everything at the boss while I was positioning him. The only time I had a hard time (but did not lose it) was with a WHM constantly (really, not just during stomps) spaming medica II on Titan HM.
PPS : 6360 HP on a war is ridiculous for end game content

Yeah well, I guess I'm just a ridiculous WAR. And I've never cheated on my taxes. But a PLD could definitely take hate from me with an all VIT set up.

As I have said numerous times, there's a difference between "viable" and "balanced". Don't confuse the two. As it stands, WARs are viable, but WARs and PALs are not balanced: PALs are explicitly better.

They're not better, they're different. And that's why they're balanced. If you gave them damage mitigation like PLD they would then be unbalanced and people would swing to wanting to take WAR over PLD and the PLDs would cry foul.

XI

I never played XI

Here's a thought, something that has been bothering me for awhile now.

This thing...



Why not make it an off hand item, that not only increases parry chance, but amount and since it's basically a spiked buckler add a little reflective damage from incoming melee attacks?

yes? no? drink more coffee before i post?

It's awesomeness plus one....

But the issue with that is if it did have a unique characteristic people would be forced to wear it over Coil drops.