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

[AstreaTrinity]

Would be nice to add a regen effect to defiance maybe? 200 hp regen every 3 - 10 seconds?

should probably be a % of max HP though, maybe like 5 - 10%?

[Xariann]

and haymaker is a nice tool to reduce dmg (if the boss can be slowed...)

Whoah, I knew about the other skills but totally forgot about Haymaker's slow. Maybe I should look into that. Main issue is that we only have 5 slots and I am hard pressed to figure out what to drop instead.

I guess a problem with it though is the fact that slow has DRs.

[HiirNoivl]

You are not getting my point though.

First you say use crit to buff Inner Beast. Which is what I thought you wanted Crit for, and I understand that.

Then you say, "Don't ever use Inner Beast until absolutely necessary."

That means that you are stacking crit to have better Inner Beasts, but then you don't use it. So during the time where you are not using it, you are still not more effective defense wise than you were before you had crit, because whether you had crit or not, you still have that 15% healing buff.

So if you stack crit and then hold onto that skill that benefits from it (Inner Beast) then you are not better than you were before stacking crit. You only are those rare times where you use Inner Beast because you don't use it whenever you can.

What I am getting from you is:

1. If you don't have enough crit there is no point in using Inner Beast because you are actually losing out on your hp.

2. If you have enough crit, STILL don't use it until absolutely necessary, don't use it on each of Titan's big moves, but only when healers struggle with healing you after it. So when I DON'T use it after the big move, I will still have been worse than a Paladin who did mitigate that hit. Do you understand what I mean?

Plus I get it that you do more DPS with crit. I really get it. I don't care. I want to know that I have better defensive abilities. And if you read above, I don't see that extra defensive threshold if then you just don't use Inner Beast unless you are in dire need. I am not disputing that keeping the Wrath stacks is good. I am saying that stacking that crit isn't such a HUGE improvement DEFENSIVELY because you don't utilise the crit in a defensive manner often enough.

If the problem is surpassing that negative HPS threshold, then lots of crit should equal to lots of Inner Beast usage. Not to "Lots of crit, but STILL don't use Inner Beast" which is what threw me off in your replies. If the extra crit doesn't make you want to use Inner Beast more often, then no point in stacking it if you are after a better way to stay alive. You might as well stack strenght and keep your Inner Beast for emergency as you are doing already.

Also the maths on that thread don't take into consideration your normal crit, with use of Inner Release throughout the Chimera encounter, it's 15%ish for me without any crit stacking gear wise.

Someone also showed me some numbers from a reddit thread. He said,

"Taking an example of a Bard in full Darklight gear with Relic weapon, they received these results:

1 Determination/Crit rate = 0.033% damage increase
1 Dexterity = 0.2% damage increase
1 Weapon damage = 1.55% damage increase

As we can see, WD is beyond the best increase, so getting a +1 on your weapon is worth about 8 primary stats (str/dex/vit/int/mnd) and one primary stat is worth about 6 secondary stats.

A single WD is worth almost 50 secondary stats, so yes, it's really worth upgrading from Relic to Relic +1.

But also, apparently the WD scales off your primary stats, so the higher your primary stat is, the less damage increase you will get from WD. At the current level of this game, this is a non-issue, but it might pose a problem in the future when max level is perhaps 70+."

If those numbers are true and if strength contributes the same amount of damage to a melee than dex does to a ranged, then you wouldn't care about crit because:

1. You actually do less damage than with stacking strength
2. You need a lot more points in crit to get the same amount of damage increase as strength, therefore needing a lot more materia slots, and you only have a finite number of those so your damage caps a lot earlier than it does with strength
3. If by stacking Strength, your Inner Beasts are consistently better, even if they don't crit as often, the overall HPS might still increase and surpass the negative threshold because strength means more damage than crit overall

On top of that you don't know:

1. How much strength the person who posted your "eye opening thread" has
2. How he gets 2.0 skill speed
3. Can you, by stacking crit, surpass the HPS of him using 2.0 skill speed? Because of course, if you are stacking skill speed, you are out of Materia slots for crit

Thank you for your Detailed Reply.

For a better explanation let's look at what a Critical Hit actually is.



When you hit a Critical you'll see it say Critical! You hit Xmob for XXX damage (50%).

A critical hit is 50% more than a normal hit. Now, As a WAR, your mitigation depends highly on how much damage you deal. So you say you don't care, you'd better care. Inner Beast, Bloodbath, and even the cross class Second Wind are actually offensive skills because they scale with attack power and your ability to do damage.

The more damage you do, the more damage you can take. It's that simple.

When I first started stacking Critical Rate Materia, the goal was to increase the amount of times I used Critical Inner Beast to a level where I was comfortable using it. The result was a host more benefits that actually allowed me to use Inner Beast less.

For example. Before I started stacking Crit, when I was pulling multiple monsters, I would single target DPS one monster because I wanted to kill it faster as well as use Inner Beast to mitigate all the damage I was taking. There so no way I could use Bloodbath effectively because Bloodbath was ineffective in handling all the damage I was taking to any meaningfull extent. Why? Because my damage was so low.

After I raised my Crit Rate Considerably, I suddenly realized that using Vengeance and Bloodbath allong with Steel Cyclone healed me more than an Inner beast could while at the same time, dealing AoE damage and killing the enemies faster. It was a win win.

But I wasn't using Inner Beast. In this case, Steel Cyclone had more benefits.

So there are cases where Inner Beast will not be your heal of choice.

In the case of Titan, you still want to stack Crit so that when you use your Vengeance and Bloodbath Combo, you can gain more HP after Rock Busters and Stomps. And when you use Inner Beast you have a greater chance of Crit. But when you get Mountain Bustered in the face, and your Healer is distracted/out of commission you need more than a "chance" of crit. You need a Guaranteed Crit.

That's what takes me to Berserk, Berserk is raising your attack power 50%, Berserk is a guaranteed Critical hit. You want to use Berserk when you use Inner Beast in this case because if you do, you get enough Healing to over come the threshold of negative HP healed Guaranteed.. And if you crit that you get 50 percent more than that.

But again, this is when you're in a pinch or a bind. You dont' do this for every Mountain Buster. If you're not in a serious need of healing (such as the death/gaoling of your mages) your 15% heal buff will always be better ALWAYS. It took me a while to get this too. But you'll get it really quickly when you see how much Wrath V actually increase your HP regen and decreases the strain on your healers. You'll really get it more when you see how much Wrath V actually increases your damage dealt, which increases your HP regained from Bloodbath.

Do you understand why Wrath V is such a powerful mitigation and DPS tool?

What stacking Critical hit does, besides raising your DPS to crazy levels, you start unlocking the strength of the cooldowns you rarely, barely, and never-ly used before this allowing to regen more HP and closes that gap between PLD and WAR when it comes to EHP.

Regarding STR: You cannot "stack STR" in this game. STR is capped according to item level. I quite literally can add no more strength to my gear.

I've noticed that even the expert Websites are underestimating the gains to Crit Rate granted by abilities like Internal Release when they are used in connection with Wrath V. On the Psychflayer yesterday, I managed to achieve a sustained 33.3 Crit Rate, that fight is not a short one.

According to people's calculations I should have only been able to achieve 22.something percent before dropping off again to a 12.something percent.

There has got to be something else happening. I'm not sure what it is. But my DPS has gone up by 40 since I stacked Crit. And a good portion of that gets translated into mitigation.

One more EDIT: When you use Crit Rate you really increase your damage dealt far more than with STR on WAR. (It doesn't work that way on other classes.)

[Kaalan]

In response of "you can't have a decent DPS without str and crit stacking" :










(DPS is the 5th one)

This is done with a Bravura (not +1), head/chest and legs/feet DL, AF2 gloves and white HQ TANK acc (the amber ones, one of them is a tank DL tho) so, no DPS gear at all. And I don't have Internal Release yet (the laziness is strong in this one)

I wanted to get bravura +1, AF2 gear and HQ ilvl 70 DPS acc which would probably be a really good balance but come one. On my server, with a friendly price, just to get those acc would cost me 350k gils and 11250 tomestone. I don't think the difference is in my favor unless I meld at least 2x crit and 1x vit on them.
This is an INSANE amount of gils.
Tomestone's crafting item cost between 25 and 30k on my serv atm. Assuming I'm extremely lucky with the forbidden melding, that would cost me over 3M just to get those acc and to meld them. Since I'm not lucky at all, probably closer to 4M.

Would it be better ? Absolutely. Would it make me a viable option for the later Coil turn compared to a PLD that just grabed DL acc ? I really don't think so.
And even if it would, when every class can just farm an entire DL gear in a week and be totaly viable and efficient, how can anyone say that there is no problem with WAR if we need to throw 4M gils and over 3 month of farming for our AF2 and bravura +1 when a PLD can be coil ready under week after its creation ?

[HiirNoivl]

My counter
This is with my usual Crit Set up which includes a mix of blue and White and Green. (The crafted items) and one of my rings (Ring of Lasting Shelter) gives no STR at all.

I also only have 20 STR allocated, not 30.

So no, I do not stack STR. You have to be balanced.

(On my server, Tomestone Crafted items cost about 97k currently. But hey, if you want Better gear, you'll spend the gil for it, but good job on making due with what you have.)

[Kaalan]

Well, our numbers are pretty close with me not having any DPS acc or anything and no internal release.
So, yes, OFC, having HQ DPS acc would boost my damage and, by extention, my self heal. But The gap isn't that huge, it makes me less durable outside of IB which can't be use whenever I want and most all of, it doesnt cost me a kidney.
I'll definitly grab some dps DL acc once I'm done with AF2, but I refuse to have to spend millions and millions and millions to be, maybe (probably not), on par with the other tank job, that can just grab free gear farmed under a week.
We need some buff. Yes, I do believe we aren't as trash as some people say, but no, WAR is not fine.

And if by showing off, YoshiP mean "show you ability to mindlessly farm for ages and forget you have a life to be able to buy those items that will make you as good as a PLD" then I really don't get it.

[Lhun]

Kaalan and Hiirnoivl, thank you for the raw data.

The point is all you need to do is look at the AF stats to see where everyone is going wrong.

PARRY is your damage mitigation. it can be over 20% mitigation sometimes. DEX and PAR affect the RATE at which you parry - you will see this happening in the damage popup.

Str influences the PERCENT you mitigate WHEN you parry. it follows a 40/41/40 trend. The STR tier thresholds for parrying are 243, 283, 324, 364 and 405. The next ones after gear would be 445 and 486. There's a potential 16% damage threshold, and you need DEX and parry rate to parry often. This makes us even with or better then PLD , when you add foresight (which is why it's so low as a total mitigation). Because everyone is focused on damage mitigation from WAR, you're literally gimping yourself - when adding more STR both increases your DPS and increases your parry mitigation ammount.

for War, 405 is the sweet spot for STR you should be going for to balance your total HP and mitigation (15%). You parry roughly 20% of the time. This may be improved later on - I have to do more theory crafting. There's NO DIFFERENCE between the parry mitigation from 364 to 405. If you can't get your STR to 405, DON'T go above 364, and put the rest in VIT>DEX

Again, rate of parry is influenced by Dexterity and Parry Rate (direct stat). This needs to be explored. If you look at the AF, you will notice a lot of parry. The good axes have lots of parry. Parry is VERY important for war, as is str. Adding Parry to a PLD may actually hurt their endgame damage mitigation because it's less then shield block, which happens more frequently, and you don't want to offset that.

I conclude that if you make sure your parry rate is consistent, your HP with defiance is well over 5000 and you balance your self healing abilities, war has the potential to be better then PLD for everything BUT DIRECT DAMAGE FROM SPELLS.

Ever notice how Brutal swing can stun physical boss abilities but shield bash can't? Shield bash is great for blocking SPELLS... hummm.... Think about it.

TL;DR: Warrior is a tank for physical attacking enemies. Paladin is a tank for magical attacking enemies. They both can do both - but it's harder to tank the "non ideal" mob type.

[HiirNoivl]

Yoshi's words did not help anything that's for sure. He said the WAR is strong but gave people 0 reason to prefer it over PLD. And what's worse, people are so prejudiced against the class that they don't even bother researching any more. They just "lolWAR, PLD plz" and leave it at that. So maybe WAR is strong, but no one is interested in "research" people aren't interested in "attempts" or "experimenting with builds" when it seems that there is no point to it.

"Why don't you just play PLD?" is a question I'm getting a lot. They can see that I'm a good player so, "Why not stop lugging that axe around and strap on a sword so I can invite you?"

The truth is I feel very vulnerable as a PLD. My HP only goes in one direction. I can only hope to avoid damage before it happens and if I get hit, even if it's for less damage than a WAR, I can do nothing about it. If a DPS dies it's a wipe, if a healer is occupied I have to use all my cool downs or Hallow Ground to avoid damage.

I find PLD unforgiving, the fights take forever, unless the DPS are good and skilled. Yeah it gives people room to be terrible at their jobs. I can see why no one wants to play with a WAR that sucks. I don't see why anyone would pick a PLD over a WAR that can actually contribute to the fight. That's what I don't get. I can WAR tank perfectly fine but people think that I'll be suddenly UBER if I had a shield.

[Conna]

even WHM is much better than Scholar

Thats definitely not true. The whm is better for aoe the sch is better for tank healing as well as dmg reductions.

[Onisake]

...

Someone doesn't know how statistics work.

How many attacks do you think you get off in an average boss fight? in a 10min fight with 2.5s GCD you can get a maximum of 240 attacks. margin of error:20% means 200 attacks. Considering he said average crit rate i'm assuming he's collected a couple thousand data points. meaning i wouldn't expect him to be more than .5% off. meaning his crit rate is roughly 25%. Looking at the data he provides later, he has an 'average low' of about 17% and an 'average high' of about 32%. averaging those two gives 24.5%. nice to see someone who doesn't pull data out of their ass for once. Margin of error, his crit rate is 24-25%. Given real data is more likely to be on the lower side than the higher side due to human error and other facts (such as missing attacks), i'm going with 25%.

...

I wouldn't agree that crit rate > STR/det for overall damage. there is absolutely no question whatsoever, that your main stat for damage will increase your average damage way more than crit rate will.

However War's mitigation doesn't come from sustained damage. it comes from burst. given we can control these bursts somewhat, (Berserk, internal release, bloodbath, infuriate) I can buy that crit may be better for mitigation than raw str. However it's just plain false that crit > str for damage. The other war supplying data out damages you on average. but this is could be his DDs are not as good as yours. the mobs only have so much HP.

For short bursts, crit is theoretically better. War mitigates by healing in bursts. So I'll buy that crit may be better for mitigation than STR, provided you can figure out a way to consistently crit when you need to (Bloodbath is up, when you IB)

Also, Steel cyclone has ALWAYS been good. it's just not OP as F--- like it was in 1.0. 2xSC=>2x overpower is my standard opener for trash/herds of mobs. I don't worry about mitigation here as much as holding threat. The only ability in WAR's kit that is 100% utter trash is holmgang. Even unchained can be situationally used to good effect. BB, zerk, veng, unchained, infuriate, overpower spam is great for pulls of 6+ mobs. holmgang, I just...I have no idea when that ability is useful.

Right now, I'm stacking in all Vit (with the assumption that EhP>self healing), is it more viable to have maybe 50/50 in str/vit due to our skills relying on our dmg as well? Or favor Str even more than vit like you have?

So far, in my runs, I haven't had any issues (nor my healers) with keeping me up or with aggro (I'm only up to Garuda HM though, first kill last night and I screwed myself out of the axe, but that's a different story).

Hiir found something that works for him. you need to find what works for you. It's not just about individual performance, its what the people you are with are comfortable with.

I help run an end-game FC. that being said, we have a lot of new players who don't know their stuff yet. so we need to train them. if I carry too hard as tank, they dont' learn. so I go for VIT over STR on paper STR looks so much better than VIT. but in reality, that extra ~450HP is the 1 or 2 seconds you need to get healed. Can't count the number of times i barely survive a buffed Triumverate on hydra. That alone is enough for me to say VIT>STR. but later on when everyone is on the ball, STR may be better than VIT.