WAR in BC. Do we need it?

[Amra]

I hate to be a downer, but I'd say the larger question is, is there a benefit to being a warrior at all right now? The answer I keep coming to is no. It would be one thing if warrior was just challenging to play and thus only a liability to the group if you were a bad or even average player.

That isn't the case. Warrior is a liability, even if you're an amazing player with the best gear the game can offer. Thus after spending all my money on a relic item I won't ever use, and gearing out my warrior, I am now leaving it on the back burner to level something my FC can actually use in a group.

Without any good group utility (except to increase your paladin MT's damage by 10%), no good damage to speak of (your dps is negligibly better than a paladin's anyways), and terrible survivability as a tank, sadly there is no reason to play this class, except if you really really really want to for some reason.

[Paikis]

Actually the difference in damage can be quite large in a 1 on 1 environment. It is only when you compare damage on an 8 man party scale does the damage difference get down to negligible levels. When your tanks are doing about 200 dps, a tank doing 50 extra damage per second is a 25% increase... but when your raid is doing 2,000 dps, adding the same extra 50 DPS isn't such a big deal (2.5% extra).

The other side of the coin is that WAR damage/threat is not the smooth curve that PLD damage/threat is. It is very spikey. Using damage cooldowns together will give you very large spikes in threat, ideal for letting your DPS players go nuts on the pull, rather than having to slowly ramp up for the PLDs more steady threat generation. This will help a lot on any fight where you are racing a timer, or once you have the fights on farm and are simply trying to clear the fights as quickly as possible.

The rest of what you say is true though, sadly.

[Toranja]

I hate to be a downer, but I'd say the larger question is, is there a benefit to being a warrior at all right now? The answer I keep coming to is no.

We are much better dungeon tanks than PLDs.

[Giantbane]

We are much better dungeon tanks than PLDs.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. With PLD resiliency, the healer is likely going to be a little less stressed for heals so they can DPS.

And our DPS advantage only shines when we have maim and storm's eye up, which requires a threat ramp up time to achieve and doesn't mesh well with our threat holding abilities (overpower/brutal combo). PLD is just what they are straight out of the box, so I don't know if we have any inherent advantages when moving from group to group for quick clears. We may kill the boss a little faster on any boss where the PLD needs to stay in shield oath and can't get by with sword oath.

[Derza]

I'm not sure that's entirely true. With PLD resiliency, the healer is likely going to be a little less stressed for heals so they can DPS.

And our DPS advantage only shines when we have maim and storm's eye up, which requires a threat ramp up time to achieve and doesn't mesh well with our threat holding abilities (overpower/brutal combo). PLD is just what they are straight out of the box, so I don't know if we have any inherent advantages when moving from group to group for quick clears. We may kill the boss a little faster on any boss where the PLD needs to stay in shield oath and can't get by with sword oath.

Warriors are better 4 man dungeon tanks because they require LESS healing than paladins when the incoming DPS is lower than 300-400 dps (depending on how damage focused the warrior is gear wise - aswell as using IB often). So not only do warriors do slightly more DPS they also require less healing in most 4 man dungeon situations. Warriors start to fall way behind when it comes to most 8 man content (well really just HM titan and most of Coil - and the gap can get huge)

[Gamemako]

Warriors are better 4 man dungeon tanks because they require LESS healing than paladins when the incoming DPS is lower than 300-400 dps (depending on how damage focused the warrior is gear wise - aswell as using IB often).

In a realistic-case scenario (3 IB per minute, 20% overheal per IB), the most strength-built WAR is overtaken by PLD in total time-weighted mitigation at around 360 DPS. A VIT-focused WAR is overtaken around 300 DPS. Perfect IB spam (assume zero overheal, 4 uses per minute) to around 390 for VIT and 525 for STR. This includes nearly every ability -- a few were neglected for poor data and extremely limited effect (Featherfoot vs. Bulwark, differences in cross-class Awareness, Convalesce, Mercy Stroke, Foresight). Note, however, that there isn't really any content for this. AK and TWP are epic facerolls by the time you get to the gear used in this comparison. You will be overgeared for AK by the time you hit the lower-heal case. The difference is going to be pretty small either way in 4-man content.

[Giantbane]

Warriors are better 4 man dungeon tanks because they require LESS healing than paladins when the incoming DPS is lower than 300-400 dps (depending on how damage focused the warrior is gear wise - aswell as using IB often). So not only do warriors do slightly more DPS they also require less healing in most 4 man dungeon situations. Warriors start to fall way behind when it comes to most 8 man content (well really just HM titan and most of Coil - and the gap can get huge)

In a real world scenario, you're not going to be able to IB much save from infuriate because you'll be doing flash/overpower a lot on trash packs. Hell, you'll be lucky if you even get to use your maim combo much if you're trying to hold threat from relic/relic+1 DPS. So 4 man content doesn't seem so cut and dry to me.

However, overpower is better than flash at AoE agro, so we do have that important advantage at least.

[Edward_Newgate]

I hate to be a downer, but I'd say the larger question is, is there a benefit to being a warrior at all right now? The answer I keep coming to is no.

Yeah I gave up on my Warrior.

Started leveling up the Paladin, I have all my level 50 DL gear ready so I don't mind much. The Warrior is such a let down at end game, well after Garuda.