Yoshi P talks about Warriors- from Producer Letter Live @ TGS

[HiirNoivl]

Also it takes a really short amount of time to go from 1-50 in this game playing normally and end game content is anything that requires you to get out of AF gear (though for a warrior that may be a lot of things).

The reason is when you get to endgame, the bar raises significantly and the endgame gear provided by Tokens does not actually upgrade WAR to the level of the endgame content. So people think that WAR is broken when they've geared wrong.

Not only have they geared wrong but they may have specced wrong and may be playing incorrectly.

It could be anything, but yeah I'm playing WAR as a Critical hit Buffed tank and I deal heavier damage than I take, in fact, when I'm holding Wrath V and I use Internal release the amount of critical hits likely hits the 40% range, but I need to test some more.

If you're a WAR, you need to do two things, deal a lot of damage in a short period of time and heal up a lot of HP and deal a lot of damage.

Because people's IBs are not critting, their damage is not critting, the think that WAR is weak and squishy. But I think... WAR is "very strong".

But to get "very strong'. you have to spend a lot of gil and effort and people think that WAR should be like PLD, all easy mode with 0 effort.

But it's not. IF you want to deal 1.5 more damage as WAR to get it ready for endgame to the point that it's a MT in coil you have to spend gil you have to craft and you have to do all he uncool things that have little to do with dungeons.

This is pretty much impossible simply due to WAR and PLD sharing the same gear. Tank gear in ARR is universal, so unless you split tanking gear between WAR and PLD gear (this would make the drop system even more random than it currently is) you're not going to see this massive divergence caused by gear.

The divergence between PLD and WAR is in the jobs' mechanics and how they deal with incoming damage.

You can use Darklight Armor with with WAR but I don't recommend any other Darklight. Darksteel HQ is far better.

[Hitokirinomad]

Hiir, I'll bite. *If* everything that you said is 100% accurate (and you've btw changed your stance on how to tank as a warrior 4 times in the last month: stack vit, no stack str, no stack skill speed, no stack CRIT), how is it not an amazing design flaw for Warriors to be the one class in the game that needs..to NOT use their Relic, NOT use DL, NOT use Allagan gear that is supposed to be designed FOR them? If everything you said is accurate, Warriors have the worst itemization in the game, and that needs to absolutely be fixed, because every piece of gear they are working for is detrimental to them.

[HiirNoivl]

Hiir, I'll bite. *If* everything that you said is 100% accurate (and you've btw changed your stance on how to tank as a warrior 4 times in the last month: stack vit, no stack str, no stack skill speed, no stack CRIT), how is it not an amazing design flaw for Warriors to be the one class in the game that needs..to NOT use their Relic, NOT use DL, NOT use Allagan gear that is supposed to be designed FOR them? If everything you said is accurate, Warriors have the worst itemization in the game, and that needs to absolutely be fixed, because every piece of gear they are working for is detrimental to them.

Hey I'm allowed to change position as I experiment. Stacking VIT was something I said early on... and it worked... for a while. And then it didn't. >.<

Stacking STR worked... some what... but... Not enough.

Skill Speed also worked. But. It's too DIFFICULT!

Stacking Crit though...

https://i.imgur.com/4YrKI4T.png

DPS is 4th column from total. Crit Rate is 4th column from the end. (Average Crit Rate here is 24.2875)

I think I'm on the right track. Yoshi P says to do research so Research I do! ^o^

I don't think WARs were meant to be played with traditional Tank gear. It makes 0 sense that gear for PLD is good gear for WAR when they're played and implemented so differently.

I mean if blocking and evasion and defense is a PLDs job and DPS and self cures and damage dealing is WARs job, then why in the world would you wear the same gear as a PLD. It makes no sense.

You can wear SOME of the same gear but not ALL of your pieces will be the same.

For example. I would Definitely prefer the Warrior's Burgeonet to the Allagan Helm because the Allagan Helm seems to be geared toward Parry and the Warrior's Burgeonet has two stats built toward DD which is Skill Speed Determination. I think Heavy Darklight Armor is OK for a WAR but ideally crafted gear is better.

I fully believe that as a WAR I benefit from multiple gear sets for multiple situations.

[Hitokirinomad]

I don't think WARs were meant to be played with traditional Tank gear. It makes 0 sense that gear for PLD is good gear for WAR when they're played and implemented so differently.

I mean if blocking and evasion and defense is a PLDs job and DPS and self cures and damage dealing is WARs job, then why in the world would you wear the same gear as a PLD. It makes no sense.

You kind of argue my point. You have to NOT use gear that is TANK specific, or WAR specific. **You put away your relic +1.** If that is OPTIMAL, then it's not research Warriors need to do. It's broken itemization that needs to get fixed. Again, this is me assuming that you are correct, which is accepting your argument over...math.

[HiirNoivl]

You kind of argue my point. You have to NOT use gear that is TANK specific, or WAR specific. **You put away your relic +1.** If that is OPTIMAL, then it's not research Warriors need to do. It's broken itemization that needs to get fixed. Again, this is me assuming that you are correct, which is accepting your argument over...math.

I have hard time explaining myself. I put away the Bravura +1 BEFORE I melded... Read the post... Like seriously read it.

Without actually spending any gil or time or effort, I raised my Crit rate considerably... Once I saw results I went and melded. I think you guys are so anti-WAR at this point that when I talk you don't actually hear what I say but latch on to the first remotely negative aspect, stop reading and then respond. Without actually really spending any gil I raised my Crit Rate to see if it might work before I went and spent more.

Common sense people.

Aren't you pretty much reinforcing the discrepancy of pal vs war? If investing more in gear is your equalizing element then that's not a solution for balance at all. It just points out how lopsided it really is.

Yoshi P said "WAR is harder to play. It's more technical"

So yeah there's a discrepency. If you have issues investing in gear to get your WAR ready for endgame then yeah you will have issues.

WAR with dungeon drops and no crafted gear is not really going to get your foot in the door with coil...

Crafted gear is way better for WAR than drops. At best you'll be half-baked WAR tank which is what people are complaining about.

You have to do a bit more to get your WAR tank ready for endgame. Yoshi P says people think that PLD is better now, but they'll see soon.

I don't think we've actually seen what WAR can do. We've been too busy muddling around looking for the answers that were actually spelled out to us in the patch notes. (Well, some of us have been muddling around. Most people playing WAR cried and switched to PLD.) But I think people will be switching back.

I'm not changing my main. I think I'm falling in love with WAR all over again.

[Wangstrong]

Common sense people.

That's hilarious coming from you, the most frequent purveyor of nonsense and stupid ideas on this forum.

[Onisake]

snip

There's something fundamentally wrong when people white knight. Most of these people have no idea what 'good design' really means. or even where to begin at testing a design.

As with most things, there is not one thing wrong with WAR. it is a plethora of things that all add p. we can bring them up one at a time and argue them to death, but being 2% lower here, 1% lower there, etc. eventually all adds up to us being 15% less effective overall.

1) Yoshi has said to 'do more research' but this is a problem in and of itself. The job is not intuitive. we've been theory crafting for nearly a month now. If we haven't found it, it's not likely we will. if the solution is really to mix-and-match tank/DD gear to tank this is a design problem. no-one in their right mind would go 'oh, I want to tank. Better put on this scale mail that has no defense and a ton of STR'

2) Scaling is also an issue. Paladin scales with incoming damage for mitigation. it has no self heals. it has no way to recover itself. its only form of mitigation is to reduce incoming damage. this means the bigger the mob, the more effective you become. Warriors mitigation scales with damage. this means the smaller the mob, the more effective you become. This makes it appear that war should be an OT and pld should be a MT

3) Warrior has a lack of abilities to make it an effective OT. the design and interpretation point that war should be OT. we don't have an 'on the fly' AoE enmity generator that PLD does. all of our AoE abilities take setup time. we need all mobs in front of us for Overpower. we need wrath for steel cyclone. this means our AoE abilities are situational. this means our ability to off tank is situational. this indicates that War should be a MT afterall, not an OT. so now we have conflicting data.

4) War generates more Single target enmity. This also indicates that war should be an off tank. when killing adds, you want as much burst as possible. this means you need bigger enmity spikes to help control them. this indicates that war should be an OT again.

5) It is believed that WAR should do more damage than PLD when tanking. we make up for our lack of mitigation by killing things faster. Unfortunately, when trying, WAR doesn't do more damage than pld. We have posts here that do the math. but the reality is this: a lot of your damage comes from Auto Attacks. PLD has an ability that improves their auto attack potency by 50. this is not a small amount. WAR has an ability that further enhances this. so to maximize damage output, you need war as a MT, and pld as an OT so they can use shield oath. AGAIN indicating that war should be MT.

Some might argue that 'this just means that WAR can do both. l2p' Yeah. WAR should be able to do both. just as well as pld. the problem is it can't. we lack the tools to do either one as effectively as the other tank class.

These are only a few of the things wrong with WAR atm. we haven't even touched the risk/reward, combo priority, party synergy, or the fact it's apparently meant to be a 'show off' class. Pro-tip: no-one likes a show off.

If you still think war is "Fine as is" then you lack the insight to see the bigger picture.

[HiirNoivl]

WAR is a horrible offtank.



When I offtank WAR I'm so awkward. I want to DD... but I can't DD without taking hate. When I take hate, I can't give it back.

It pisses off the MT so much and completely screw things over.

When I'm fighting multiple adds my DPS actually goes down because I'm using AoEs and Flash (which does no damage) while trying to DPS single target and kill it before they kill me. (You can't AoE and self heal. You can't AoE and spike damage. WAR is actually pretty weak for many adds. You have to work hard.)

WAR has been a superiour MT for single target since Beta 3 when I used to run in to PLDs tanking Cancer and take hate in a single combo using Unchained. All the provokes in the world couldn't give it back. To this day, when a PLD says he wants to MT, I just groan. Please go back on stun duty so I can turn a 15 min fight into a 10 minute one.

Now I'm a MT for single target that actually does damage on par with a Dragoon with a relic spear. And I have no troubles staying up.

Before I had issues with WAR but I'm working those out. Before I couldn't heal enough on IB... then I couldn't do enough damage... but in one fell swoop I feel like I've begun to solve both those problems.

The only reason it took people a month to figure these things out is because they don't think outside the box and it takes time to see sometimes what's right in front of you. And VIT stacking worked for a while. I got past Titan on a VIT stacked WAR, but the damage kept getting greater while my DPS and Self heals kept getting smaller. I had reached a peak with Vit Stacking WEEKS ago.

I thought that if I just added more STR it would work. And it did work, but not enough. I then tried to change combos to max my DPS and tried to max Self heals. And that worked, but not enough. I was still sometimes hitting Inner Beast for not enough... But I kept seeing these golden glimpses of Inner Beasts that hit close to 3k and I kept tried to get it up there. Come on 3k!

But I never made it.

So I had to go back again... Okay, well, maybe if I try to use Skill speed and double my Inner Beast... and while that worked sometimes, under the randomized testing of Duty Finder that fizzled too. And I could only do it with Berserk up for max healing not enough.

But I didn't give up and I'm not giving up until I'm figuring out WHAT exactly are they doing. I wish they would just out and tell me but what's the fun of that? I guess in a few months someone will come up with a more "Numbers-and-math" version of my conclusions.

Now with Crit Rate I'm seeing much higher numbers in DPS, I actually do not see a drop in DPS when I hold WRATH V because now that my Crit Rate is already buffed, Wrath V helps all the more! Meaning that I'm DPS'ing more and I'm getting healed for 15% more.

I mean it's great. I can use Unchained and then Infuriate and then Internal Release... omg or even Berserk... combined with Fracture.

Hmm Hm... Yes, I need to tank Titan again. Need a competant party to survive to heart Phase... Could I hit 190 DPS on the heart?

Oh rapture. ^__^

[Hitokirinomad]

Hiir, you're still missing the point. If your entire theory is 100% accurate warriors are STILL not balanced due to their itemization taking them in a direction completely at odds with the normal tiered gear progression. If the answer to warriors is 'build crit rate, get rid of wrath regularly', then endgame warrior plate that you obtain with the SAME TOKENS AS EVERYONE ELSE should prioritize Str > Crit > Vit > Skillspeed, because having a large health pool is not the mitigation, it's being able to refill that health pool, which requires 1) big crits, and 2) lots of crits. If Philosophy > Mythology > Allagan gear does not do this, then the issue is broken itemization if your conjecture is correct. Materia melds should not be required to get to these levels of crit, unless all other classes require materia melds for their SECONDARY stat to be balanced.


The increased difficulty in warrior tanking versus paladin tanking should be (in a decent design) that the warrior requires a more active use of a toolset to achieve similar results (staying alive + holding hate + maximizing personal dps). As it is, even you are not saying a warrior can achieve the same results as an equally geared and skilled paladin, you are saying a massively overgeared warrior with more skill, can *almost* equal a paladin at the high edge of content.

[HiirNoivl]

Hiir, you're still missing the point. If your entire theory is 100% accurate warriors are STILL not balanced due to their itemization taking them in a direction completely at odds with the normal tiered gear progression. If the answer to warriors is 'build crit rate, get rid of wrath regularly', then endgame warrior plate that you obtain with the SAME TOKENS AS EVERYONE ELSE should prioritize Str > Crit > Vit > Skillspeed, because having a large health pool is not the mitigation, it's being able to refill that health pool, which requires 1) big crits, and 2) lots of crits. If Philosophy > Mythology > Allagan gear does not do this, then the issue is broken itemization if your conjecture is correct. Materia melds should not be required to get to these levels of crit, unless all other classes require materia melds for their SECONDARY stat to be balanced.


The increased difficulty in warrior tanking versus paladin tanking should be (in a decent design) that the warrior requires a more active use of a toolset to achieve similar results (staying alive + holding hate + maximizing personal dps). As it is, even you are not saying a warrior can achieve the same results and an equally geared and skilled paladin, you are saying a massively overgeared warrior with more skill, can *almost* equal a paladin at the high edge of content.

Except I'm not massively Overgeared (Except my Relic) I'm still in level 70 gear.

If you think that getting Darksteel melds is too difficult then I really feel for you in later aspects of the game when crafting recipes drop from dungeons instead of actual gear. lol

I think that my experiences in 1.0 with sheer frustrating difficulty calloused my tolerance for the pain and suffering that playing WAR in 2.0 might bring. And perhaps Yoshi P is the same way.

If you're coming from another game where you just grab gear from dungeons or grab gear from tokens put it on and go, then I suppose that this is quite a shock for you. But yeah, Yoshi wants crafting to remain relevant. The best gear in the game is High Quality Crafted, even for mage jobs.

And you can get good gear for WAR using tokens. Most of the gear I wear currently is Darklight. With the exception of the bigger pieces and some melds I made.

It has taken some time for WARs to be ready and that's okay. To be honest, though, it really hasn't taken that much time. And the couple mil I spent testing and stuff is really NOTHING compared to the gil and the hours I had to spend to get my Thyrus in 1.0.

EDIT: I should say that the best gear in the game is high quality crafted with the exception of Allagan and AF2... but really I am never getting rid of my Darksteel until the next crafting recipes (Level 80 crafting???) is released.