Warrior: End Game optimum self heal combos, and overall damage mitigation.

[Lhun]

Due to SE's insane forum policies I'll have to edit my main post to reply to all of you.

Hi everyone. A lot of people are having trouble with L50 War and self heals/taking too much damage/not being able to deal with difficult large damage moves from bosses.

I wanna help a little bit and tell you what works for ME, and what a lot of the Japanese players seem to have figured out. I'm nervous about parsing due to the TOS at this time, and until a dev says that's okay, I won't be able to get you hard numbers (you'll have to take my word for it).

First, the easy stuff.

Convalescence:
Increases HP restored by spells or actionsby 20%.

THIS: Has been proven to be a complete mistranslated on SE's Part. GOOD JOB SE!! Doesn't work with Second wind. Bah.

Second Wind's self healing is based on attack power. If you want it to work well, I always use it in the following way: first using Berserk, Inner Release, before you pop it. This guarantees around 500 health. If it were to get a critical, with weak gear (just to level 50, for example) you'll get ~750HP. Higher ilvl gear nets a lot more gains.

Alternate your two instant self heals so you have them, try not to use them at once.

Always combo bloodbath with vengeance. Consider using this combo after you've done a Zerk + Inner Release + Second wind combo to get the bang for the benefit, and ensure that you're healed during the pacification debuff.

Consider using Unchained during this second phase, followed by Infuriate, Maim Storm's Path combo afterwards. The extra damage from unchained, coupled with bloodbath (which stacks) makes the heal from path not trivial, as it is normally quite low and not worth the tp. This leaves you next to do Inner Beast again if needed, and by then, some of the cool downs are should be coming back up.

Now you can use Thrill of Battle, followed by Inner Beast (if needed)

And, finally, Foresite during the (brief) in between times (and regaining tp). We're back to the beginning now - you heal "loop" should be ready to go again.

This is a near constant stream of HP regen that you should be able to keep up indefinitely, the cool downs seem to be timed in this way. Don't be too reactionary. Do these combos regularly and you will mitigate a great deal of damage.

Secondly: Parry and STR.

Parry is incredibly important. The stat "Parry" combined with DEX determines your final rate of parry. You should choose accessories with Vit and Parry, always. (rose gold, etc), however.
There's a bit of theory going on with how much dex you need, but I decided to try something new. I put 10 of my 30 L50 bonus stats into Dex, and 20 into Vit. It's working VERY well so far - I'll have to try it into the later stat caps.

STR determines the soak amount to a maximum of 16%. It's incredibly hard to get the damage mitigation to 16 percent per parry instance (around 405str or more needed), but it seems at 283+ you get about 13-15% TOTAL MITIGATION, which is pretty good, starting out. I've seen parries proc for a lot more mitigation, and I need to look into how/when that happens. I'm missing something here, I'm sure.

Parry+ gear seems to be the way to go, along with a bit of dex to make sure it happens often enough.
If you combine this with foresite and obviously defiance, the mitigation is quite good. You will parry over 25% of the time optimally, this seems to be the common amount. Something tells me we can go much higher - Even approaching just under the block rate with shields.

Yes, every class has parry, However, only a tank is going to see this stat gets any use, and this is OBVIOUS by the stats on the endgame gear that we should be focusing on it a bit more.

Attack power isn't influenced by unchained nor internal release tho.
Testing shows foresight giving ~5% physical mitigation.

Internal release is for the chance to critical, nothing more. I'm not sure you're correct on unchained not affecting total attack power.

Foresight: That's an additional 5% to your total, including parry. I told you why I'm not parsing, because I value my account.

Dex is likely a multiplied modifier to parry rate with a cap of about 211. Using the Storm's Path combo does not prevent you from using IB... I'm saying add it to your rotation.

It builds regular wrath without needing infuriate. You get health from Bath during the regular combo actions, you get health from the total damage done during that combo. Why is everyone talking about attack potency?! Attack potency is a modifier for the total attack damage against your auto attack damage.

Potency has nothing at all to do with how much health you get back from the actions taken during bath, except as a modifier for the total attack damage as compared to your auto attack damage. On top of that, storm's path gives 50% of your damage dealt during it's attack as health.

The damage modifier on storm's path is second only to butcher's block. You're all thinking in burst healing as opposed to totals over time. You can still IB. Doing this
combo in addition does not prevent you from doing IB if you need it.

Seriously... what the heck people. THINK... please. Why are you all so quick to dismiss what works for the other half of the people playing this game(japanese), people that you don't play with, whom are far better at this game then you (with the exception of bluegarter?)?

You mentioned pairing Second Wind with Inner Release/Berserk, which is smart, but alternating between SW and IB in that scenario is kind of conflicting. If you're going for self heals then a Berserk'd IB crit is way bigger gain than a SW crit. I don't personally like to have SW on my bar at all, but if I did I'd definitely suggest either pairing it with IB or just using it by itself. It's not worth wasting cooldowns on by itself.

You don't alternate. You use both. You use every skill you have, and you use all 5 of the skills you take from other jobs. Everyone talks as if Second Wind is something you use INSTEAD of Inner Beast. No, sorry, you use both. YOU USE BOTH. WHO DOESN'T USE BOTH?! Why would you Berserk inner beast, except to see a big shiny number (which would be better on a second wind)? If you need to use your BEST healing move, you're in a shitty situation already or dealing with a primal limit break. You absolutely would not want Pacification during this time. Using IB by itself is just fine. If it's cooldown, a inner release might be nice to combo with SP. You can also IB, Infurate, IB for a ton of health.

Key point: The bonus health from thrill of battle is a BUFFER for things like big hits from Titan. It's how War survives things that PLD mitigates instead.

150 hp healed every minute + the possibility of reaching another cap to add 1% more to your parry mitigation and at best 3% DPS increase (~5 DPS for a decent WAR)
OR
Close to 600 HP which will scale with thrill of battle and your natural health regen, plus will allow you to eat burst a little bit more easily.

I'm not saying STR or Dex is more important then VIT. I'm saying that STR is actually pretty useless unless you can hit 405, Dex and parry+ is more important then you think (why do you think they make us meld battledance during the artifact wep quest?) and you need a bunch of HP, sure, but what you're saying about thrill is a little inspired. Use thrill before big hits, and you'll have the health/mitigation for the ONE thing that everyone thinks War is lacking at.

People feel that War's only difficulty right now is in dealing with burst damage from bosses -> Okay, that's true, but it requires you to PAY ATTENTION, and carefully time your abilities. It's hard, but you get more reward, with higher DPS and faster kills.

We're not less survivable, we're just harder to play. Yoshi-P said it. "War is for showing off".

Always combo bloodbath with vengeance. Consider using this combo after you've done a Zerk + Conv + Second wind combo to get the bang for the benefit, and ensure that you're healed during the pacification debuff.

Consider using Unchained during this second phase, followed by Infuriate, Maim Storm's Path combo afterwards. The extra damage from unchained, coupled with bloodbath (which stacks) makes the heal from path not trivial, as it is normally quite low and not worth the tp. This leaves you next to do Inner Beast again if needed, and by then, some of the cool downs are should be coming back up.

I want to state this again. For people who missed it, bloodbath and Berserk share the same cooldown. It's COMPLETELY obvious that you should be using them together. Zerk, conv, wind, bloodbath, heavy, maim, s path, -> wait for mountain buster -> thrill -> buster -> IB -> infuriate -> IB ->... The healing potential is huge.

#1 Foresight does nothing for your parry. In my testing it was closer to ~7% reduction, but it's pretty easy to test in general. Pull a bunch of similarly leveled mobs, pop foresight, and look at how much dmg they do before and after it wears off. No need to parse, you've got a combat log there.

I know it doesn't DIRECTLY AFFECT PARRY, but it increases the total damage mitigation you are obtaining OVERALL, while it's up. It's 20% to your total defense. It stacks with protect.

#2, using Unchained + Storm's Path is less healing than simply using Inner Beast. That was his point. Unchained is a DPS cooldown with very situational usage. It prevents you from using inner beast and reduces incoming heals. It should only be used extremely sparingly (the very start of Titan, or while waiting to off-tank a boss).

You ignore the fact that Infuriate exists EVERY 60 SECONDS. You also forget that simply doing skills increases your Wrath counter, WITHOUT NEEDING INFURIATE. You need to use every ability you have, not focus on the ones that appear "really good" on the surface. You say this, implying that somehow by suggesting weaving this combo into your rotation once every unchained cooldown or so completely impairs your ability to use inner beast. To this assumption, I lol.

#3 he put healing in terms of potency because Storm's Path is 250 Potency which heals for 50% of the damage dealt. Under unchained you would do full potency. Inner Beast is a 300 potency attack that heals for 300% of the damage dealt. Also, Storm's Path is below Storm's Eye as well. It is very low damage and high TP cost. You should probably never use it in a real raiding situation, because the healing you receive from it is close to the healing you receive from the Storm's Eye debuff from inner beast. trying to maintain Storm's Eye while also having Storm's Path in your rotation is going to make holding aggro literally impossible if your DPS are competent (250-300 DPS)

Again, see above. No, actually, agro is absolutely never an issue when you have butcher's block combo, and defiance(which increases hate), and can throw in something like flash and voke from time to time. Also, self healing generates emninity as well. The storm's eye/unchained/zerk/bath combo is a healing combo designed to refresh your HP pool when you're not receiving attention from the healer. This is not something you do constantly.

This is horrible horrible advice. You're talking about popping all 6 of your cooldowns for a single mountain buster. What do you do when the next one comes 30 seconds from now?

Did I ever suggest you do this ALL AT ONCE? I'm simply showing the absurd self-healing potential that Warrior actually has, that is by and large ignored by most people. A lot of you are treating warrior's self healing ability like he should be doing everything without the assistance of party members. You use your consistent heal over time IN PLACE of damage mitigation that PLD would get.

Convalescence does not work with Thrill of Battle nor Second Wind. I imagine mantra will not work on them either. Try it out.

[8:44 p.m.]You use Berserk.
[8:44 p.m.]  You gain the effect of Berserk.
[8:44 p.m.]You use Convalescence.
[8:44 p.m.]  You gain the effect of Convalescence.
[8:44 p.m.]You use Second Wind.
[8:44 p.m.]  You recover 511 HP.

[8:46 p.m.]You use Berserk.
[8:46 p.m.]  You gain the effect of Berserk.
[8:46 p.m.]You use Second Wind.
[8:46 p.m.]  You recover 491 HP.

[9:03 p.m.]You lose the effect of Convalescence.
[9:03 p.m.]You lose the effect of Thrill of Battle.
[9:05 p.m.]You use Second Wind.
[9:05 p.m.]  You recover 351 HP.

9:15 p.m.]You use Convalescence.
[9:15 p.m.]  You gain the effect of Convalescence.
[9:15 p.m.]You use Second Wind.
[9:15 p.m.]  You recover 361 HP.

---And, just for fun.

[9:18 p.m.]You use Berserk.
[9:18 p.m.]  You gain the effect of Berserk.
[9:18 p.m.]You use Second Wind.
[9:18 p.m.]  Critical! You recover 767 HP.

What have we learned? Berserk and Second Wind rocks. Berzerk has a long enough duration to use it WITH second wind AND other things. I get higher heal numbers with Convalescence though, consistently... but it's not 20%. Perhaps the calculation is happening on the floor damage before ATKP is applied?

Edit: I've submitted a bug report. Please like it so we can start down the path of fixing tooltip oversight or buffing Warrior.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...99#post1355499

The point of this thread is to talk about it. IF THE DEVS THINK THERE'S NOTHING WRONG, nothing will be done -> either figure out what the DEVS are doing in testing, or CATEGORICALLY prove them wrong.

Vengeance is more useful as a wrath builder

I wouldn't say "more useful". I would agree that it's a wrath builder, yes. But please tell me how are you not gaining wrath, exactly, by comboing it with bloodbath, and then spamming your H,Sunder,BB combo? You keep talking as if abilities are not meant to be used TOGETHER for maximum effectiveness.

It's COMPLETELY obvious they should be used together because they have the same cooldown? Holy Arguments, batman! Seriously, this is a non-argument.

*wooshes over your taru head* Let's examine the "core mechanics" (which you say I don't understand) of Blood Bath again. 25% healing, for the total damage dealt, during it's duration. Would it not, then, make sense, that INCREASING THE DAMAGE YOU DEAL, over time, would increase, in scale, the HP YOU GET FROM THE ABILITY?!. Someone get me a drink. My head hurts from all the desk it's been getting for the last hour.

I've been meaning to say this for awhile, but Foresight gets better the more defense you have. With ilvl 50 armor and no protect, Foresight is ~5% damage, but at ilvl90 with protect, its a little over ~10%. Foresight and Protect are multiplicative rather than additive with each other, and defense has ever increasing returns so every point is better than the last.

I stated this earlier as well. I've never felt it was a weak ability. It's rather weak solo, though.

We also get way more benefit from Stoneskin.
The issue might be the way the healers are treating us... maybe? Perhaps focus more on maximizing stoneskin?

Oh hey, here's something, if stoneskin was cast during the duration of Thrill, wouldn't that make it EVEN better?!

[Tronic]

Second Wind's self healing is based on attack power. If you want it to work well, I always use it in the following way: first using Berserk, Maybe even unchained, Inner Release, then Convalescence (and maybe Mantra. Requires testing) before you pop it.

Attack power isn't influenced by unchained nor internal release tho.

Always combo bloodbath with vengeance. Consider using this combo after you've done a Zerk + Conv + Second wind combo to get the bang for the benefit, and ensure that you're healed during the pacification debuff.

Vengeance is more useful as a wrath builder.

Consider using Unchained during this second phase, followed by Infuriate, Maim Storm's Path combo afterwards. The extra damage from unchained, coupled with bloodbath (which stacks) makes the heal from path not trivial, as it is normally quite low and not worth the tp. This leaves you next to do Inner Beast again if needed, and by then, some of the cool downs are should be coming back up.

Let's say you use 2 and 2/3 Storm's Path combos during the unchained period of 20 seconds. That's 62.5*2*0.5 = 62.5 extra attack potency healing from the SP finisher. Add to that the additional healing unchained gives to bloodbath, which adds to 380*0.25 = 95 attack potency. The grand total you healed extra by using your wrath 5 or infuriate on unchained is 157 attack potency. That same wrath 5 or infuriate, used on IB, would have netted you 900 attack potency healing. If you're looking to heal, using unchained is a VERY BAD decision. If you're doing trash and don't care about healing, you can use it for dps. Then again, if you're doing trash you might as well turn defiance off.

There's a bit of theory going on with how much dex you need

The theory is simple: it's 0. It works tiered like STR. You might get +1% or +0% by pumping all 30 points into it, or just 1. This will obviously change every time you change your gear. It's not a worthwhile stat to invest in.

, but I decided to try something new. I put 10 of my 30 L50 bonus stats into Dex, and 20 into Vit. It's working VERY well so far.

But nor parser results :/

If you combine this with foresite and obviously defiance, the mitigation is quite good.

Testing shows foresight giving ~5% physical mitigation.

[Kaalan]

EDIT : A far better version of this post can now be found here.


Since you brought the stat points, here goes my wall of text.

As an Highlander Hyur warrior, my lvl 50 stats with no gear at all is :

STR : 215
DEX : 181
VIT : 233
ACC : 341
CRT : 341
DET : 202
PAR : 341

Now let's put a Bravura +1 and a full AF+1 armor on that poor WAR :

STR : 367
DEX : 191
VIT : 401
ACC : 419
CRT : 341
DET : 241
PAR : 475

What do we know (or highly suspect) :

The realistic STR cap for WAR is 405. DEX is 211, you need around 460/470 ACC to not miss in Coil (and should you need more, use some food)

We're missing 38 STR, 20 DEX and 41 ACC to be gained from accessories before getting more VIT and CRT.

Gryphonskin Choker (HQ DPS) : 9 STR, 9 DEX, 9 ACC, 8 DET.
Rose Gold Ear Screws (HQ DPS) : 9 STR, 9 DEX, 12 ACC, 6 DET.
Gryphonskin Wristbands (HQ DPS) : 9 STR, 9 DEX, 12 ACC, 6 DET.

For a grand total of 27 STR, 27 DEX, 33 ACC, 20 DET.
DEX cap is reached, we're missing 11 STR and 8 to 18 ACC.

DPS rings aren't interesting in this situation, they have no ACC and S.Speed instead, which isn't good on us, so let's take a look at tank rings :

Rose Gold Ring : 10 VIT, 9 PAR, 12 ACC.

So 20 VIT, 18 PAR and 24 ACC.

ACC "cap" is now reached and we only need 11 STR now.

Grade IV STR Materia gives 7, grade IV VIT Materia gives 8.
Put two IV STR on the tanks rings, you get 14 STR, everything is now reach. Meld three IV VIT Materia on ears/neck/wrists and you get an extra 24 VIT, that's it for your stats, without allocating any point or using forbiden melding.

Now let's take a look at our current stats :

STR : 408 405 cap reached
DEX : 218 211 cap reached
VIT : 445 7061 HP in defiance NOT in a party
ACC : 476 You're good for coil, might need a food for turn 4/5 but that's why we have it
CRT : 341 From now on, every bit of forbiden melding you can afford will be used to reach the CRT cap of each of you accessories, which appears to be 12, so you'll end up at 401
DET : 261 Poor mans STR, got some ? Nice, but don't bother with it too much
PAR : 493 I don't have any official number and as far as I know I don't think there is, but the stat is underwhelming anyway, if you happen to be a little short for a cap or anything, you can always meld it

Now we still have 30 point to allocate, into STR, VIT, or DEX.
STR or DEX, to me, is not a good option here.
30 STR won't give you a huge boost of damage like some says, maybe 3%, so like.. 5 dps ? Meh. You could maybe reach the next cap to gain an extre 1% of damage mitigated on parrying but is it really that important ? I don't think so.
DEX only serves 1 purpose which is boosting your parry chance. You've reached the cap, I don't think it's worth bothering more, you already did more than 90% of the WAR population.
VIT on the other end, will allow you to reach a more confortable HP pool. While 7061 in defiance outside a party (7241 in a party) is decent, it believe that reaching between 7500 and 8000 is the best option. Allocating those 30 point, you'd be at 7604 HP outside a party, 7786 in a party which looks perfect to me. Remember, you regen a % of your health every 3 sec and Thrill of Battle scales off of your health too.

Now, trusting Valk's Physical Damage Returns if you were to put those 30 point into STR, you would only gain 23 damage, on average, on your Inner Beast, it's 69 HP healed. With every possible buff, you'd probably look at something like 150 HP.
150 hp healed every minute + the possibility of reaching another cap to add 1% more to your parry mitigation and at best 3% DPS increase (~5 DPS for a decent WAR)
OR
Close to 600 HP which will scale with thrill of battle and your natural health regen, plus will allow you to eat burst a little bit more easily.

I'm not saying stack VIT, but in this case it seems to me that it is the best option.

Final stats will then be

STR : 408 405 cap reached
DEX : 218 211 cap reached
VIT : 475 7604 HP in defiance NOT in a party
ACC : 476 You're good for coil, might need a food for turn 4/5 but that's why we have it
CRT : 341 From now on, every bit of forbiden melding you can afford will be used to reach the CRT cap of each of you accessories, which appears to be 12, so you'll end up at 401
DET : 261 Poor mans STR, got some ? Nice, but don't bother with it too much
PAR : 493 I don't have any official number and as far as I know I don't think there is, but the stat is underwhelming anyway, if you happen to be a little short for a cap or anything, you can always meld it

EDIT : I forgot to mention the belt. This is calculated with the DL tank belt which is good. Hero seems weaker (we don't want to lose too much parry), Allagan, if you can get it, is awesome. So DL/Allagan are the two best choices in this configuration.

[BadRNG]

Thrill of Battle does not appear to be affected by +healing like Convalesce or Wrath, least not when I just did it. It's a straight up 20%. Convalesce doesn't affect any of our absorb heals either. This is why I generally use it as a buffer between Infuriates if I need to IB. 35% healing is of course great if it's a time you know heals will be spammed, but being able to IB without being naked afterwards is handy.

You mentioned pairing Second Wind with Inner Release/Berserk, which is smart, but alternating between SW and IB in that scenario is kind of conflicting. If you're going for self heals then a Berserk'd IB crit is way bigger gain than a SW crit. I don't personally like to have SW on my bar at all, but if I did I'd definitely suggest either pairing it with IB or just using it by itself. It's not worth wasting cooldowns on by itself.

Tronic covered what's wrong with your Vengeance/Unchained suggestions.

As for the last part of your post, yes, STR/Parry. Who is suggesting otherwise? Besides people testing crazy theories to try and "unlock" Yoshi-P's L2P statement, like DEX builds, most players seem to be getting a good amount of both stats. They are kind of our main ones on all the gear, along with VIT (which you need to stack up at least until no-1shot thresholds for endgame)

I appreciate what you're trying to do, but it seems like a lot of what you're suggesting either isn't accurate/optimal or what the people who are struggling are already doing.

[wormed]

Agree with Tronic on every point.

[Giantbane]

Convalescence:
Increases HP restored by spells or actionsby 20%.
Always combo this with Thrill of Battle, and Second wind.

Second Wind's self healing is based on attack power. If you want it to work well, I always use it in the following way: first using Berserk, Maybe even unchained, Inner Release, then Convalescence (and maybe Mantra. Requires testing) before you pop it. This guarantees around 500 health. If it were to get a critical, with weak gear (just to level 50, for example) you'll get ~750HP. Higher ilvl gear nets a lot more gains.

Convalescence does not work with Thrill of Battle nor Second Wind. I imagine mantra will not work on them either. Try it out.

[Hachiko]

Bunch of stuff to say:

#1 Foresight does nothing for your parry. In my testing it was closer to ~7% reduction, but it's pretty easy to test in general. Pull a bunch of similarly leveled mobs, pop foresight, and look at how much dmg they do before and after it wears off. No need to parse, you've got a combat log there.

#2, using Unchained + Storm's Path is less healing than simply using Inner Beast. That was his point. Unchained is a DPS cooldown with very situational usage. It prevents you from using inner beast and reduces incoming heals. It should only be used extremely sparingly (the very start of Titan, or while waiting to off-tank a boss).


#3 he put healing in terms of potency because Storm's Path is 250 Potency which heals for 50% of the damage dealt. Under unchained you would do full potency. Inner Beast is a 300 potency attack that heals for 300% of the damage dealt. Also, Storm's Path is below Storm's Eye as well. It is very low damage and high TP cost. You should probably never use it in a real raiding situation, because the healing you receive from it is close to the healing you receive from the Storm's Eye debuff from inner beast. trying to maintain Storm's Eye while also having Storm's Path in your rotation is going to make holding aggro literally impossible if your DPS are competent (250-300 DPS).

#5 Warriors are less survivable. YoshiP said that we are very powerful, but he is absolutely wrong. There is no way for you to slice it in which a WAR would come out on top in terms of survivability.

#6 "I want to state this again. For people who missed it, bloodbath and Berserk share the same cooldown. It's COMPLETELY obvious that you should be using them together. Zerk, conv, wind, bloodbath, heavy, maim, s path, -> wait for mountain buster -> thrill -> buster -> IB -> infuriate -> IB ->... The healing potential is huge."

This is horrible horrible advice. You're talking about popping all 6 of your cooldowns for a single mountain buster. What do you do when the next one comes 30 seconds from now?

Warriors are reasonably close to being able to mitigate a single hit after the fact with Inner Beast. But monsters do more than one hit. Hell they do more than one hit every 20 seconds.

It's great that you're trying to figure out a way to be more viable, but you're off base on a lot of the mechanics.

[Ruminate]

Bunch of stuff to say:

#1 Foresight does nothing for your parry. In my testing it was closer to ~7% reduction, but it's pretty easy to test in general. Pull a bunch of similarly leveled mobs, pop foresight, and look at how much dmg they do before and after it wears off. No need to parse, you've got a combat log there.

I've been meaning to say this for awhile, but Foresight gets better the more defense you have. With ilvl 50 armor and no protect, Foresight is ~5% damage, but at ilvl90 with protect, its a little over ~10%. Foresight and Protect are multiplicative rather than additive with each other, and defense has ever increasing returns so every point is better than the last.

[Tronic]

Seriously... what the heck people. THINK... please. Why are you all so quick to dismiss what works for the other half of the people playing this game, people that you don't play with, whom are far better at this game then you (with the exception of bluegarter?)?

Honestly what I think is that you don't understand several core mechanics of the game and are confused. We've tried explaining but you don't seem to grasp them.

Thanks Hachiko for explaining.

For people who missed it, bloodbath and Berserk share the same cooldown. It's COMPLETELY obvious that you should be using them together.

It's COMPLETELY obvious they should be used together because they have the same cooldown? Holy Arguments, batman! Seriously, this is a non-argument.

[antiviolence]

Oh god this guy again.