Balancing WAR: A Game of Graphs

[ASaturnus]

First a technical comment. You're graph descriptions are confusing and partly unexplained (what's WAR-low and WAR-high). You're y-axis says percentage, but it seems to be a ratio (a mitigation of 0.35% vs. 0.20% would be irrelevant). However, some of these ratios go over 1. More than 100% reduction?
The more general problem with all this numbercrunching I see on the forum is that no one explains basic game mechanics. Don't armor and resistances also provide mitigation? Is the PLDs mitigation additive or multiplicative? Is all damage mitigated?

My theoretical complaint with this kind of reasoning is that looks only a part of the role a WAR or a PLD has. Because contrary of what you claim, a tank's job is not to survive and keep others alive.
A tank is part of a group and only the group as a whole can fulfill a purpose. And a group's purpose in any MMO I know of is do damage. Damage is all what counts because only damage turns bosses into loot and progress. Other things like tanks and healers are only secundary functions in order to keep the group able to do damage.
Thus, any claim that it is not a tank's role to do damage is absurd, because it is the only role of any group. Therefore doing damage is integral part of tanking.
Of course, keeping the group alive is more important, because without that damage falls to 0. But if keeping the group alive is achieved, all what matters is damage.
And that's the problem, because contrary to what everybody says, we do not have the means to calculate or reliably measure the difference in damage between a PLD and a WAR. Thus, we can not conclusively compare both jobs.

tl;dr Numbercrunching alone proves nothing

[Gamemako]

You're graph descriptions are confusing and partly unexplained (what's WAR-low and WAR-high).

I explained in the text, but suppose I should be more explicit about it. I will try to improve that.

You're x-axis says percentage, but it seems to be a ratio (a mitigation of 0.35% vs. 0.20% would be irrelevant). However, some of these ratios go over 1.

Yes. I could multiply out by 100, but I thought that was pretty self-explanatory. Yes, some do go over 1, meaning you actively return health to the player faster than it can be delivered. PLD generally can't do this (unless you're a extremely low damage rates), but WAR sometimes can. Flat healing does that.

The more general problem with all this numbercrunching I see on the forum is that no one explains basic game mechanics. Don't armor and resistances also provide mitigation? Is the PLDs mitigation additive or multiplicative? Is all damage mitigated?

Armor values are not included because they are identical. They do reduce damage, but there is no difference between the two jobs. Same with evasion. Most bonuses are actually multiplicative -- for example, Shield Oath, Sentinel, and Rampart combine to reduce damage by 61.6%. If it were additive, the three would add up to 80% -- this does not appear to be the case. I could include that detail, but it's a horribly long post without going into extreme detail about mechanics.

My theoretical complaint with this kind of reasoning is that looks only a part of the role a WAR or a PLD has. Because contrary of what you claim, a tank's job is not to survive and keep others alive. A tank is part of a group and only the group as a whole can fulfill a purpose. And a group's purpose in any MMO I know of is do damage. Damage is all what counts because only damage turns bosses into loot and progress. Other things like tanks and healers are only secundary functions in order to keep the group able to do damage.

You are conflating the group's overall goal (defeat opponents) with an individual role. A healer heals. It may often be efficient for the group for the healer to also deal damage, but if the healer cannot fill the role of healing, then the group is doomed to failure. This is the same with tank. If the tank did no damage at all, that would still fill the tanking role. It's a bit like VIT: if you don't have enough, you lose by default; if you do have enough, then it's you're free put efforts elsewhere in hopes of winning. The problem is that WAR is either incapable of filling the role or requires far more resources to do so.

And that's the problem, because contrary to what everybody says, we do not have the means to calculate or reliably measure the difference in damage between a PLD and a WAR.

Er... parses?

//EDIT:

1. Which area's are creating the DPS you are discussing.

Not getting into that at all. You can often create situations for it by stacking mobs together if you really want. I'm just expressing the outcomes as a function of enemy damage output.

That is the Warrior though.

I'm not going to argue about your vision of how WAR should play. From a balance standpoint, WAR will always suck as long as this design is used. It may interest you, but it's not a viable path.

The thing is 50% HP to use what abilities?

I'm not sure how I failed to communicate this. Inner Beast is WAR's burst mitigation ability, and it is a reactive ability. In order to make use of it, you must have taken damage. PLD does not have this weakness: its burst mitigation applies up front. PLD is therefore able to take a bigger punch than WAR in every case. WAR cannot out-think this; Inner Beast cannot be applied beforehand and WAR will always just die. This is a design flaw.

You don't really have any abilities other than IB that heal anything to justify 50% increased HP just for the sake of more time to IB which is outdone overtime anyways (if we're giving more time before you need to use IB) by the 15% bonus.

I believe I addressed the end of the Wrath coupling mechanic already. If you are sitting on Wrath for a 15% healing bonus, you've already acknowledged that you are hopelessly gimped.

//EDIT 2:

You wrote way too much. Most of your graphs are incomprehensible. Sorry, but reading the first post was like reading a scientific article where the results don't come with any explanations.

I will try to improve this.

[Zegreiart]

Gamemako, nice write up. Very informative! I want to continue playing my warrior, but the more I keep seeing these threads I just feel hopeless about it. Especially when I hear how it was in XI.


Gilthas, please don't come to these threads complaining about how they are written up. If you do not understand what you are reading, then these are not for you. Especially when you're making other threads asking about unlocking the warrior class following with:

... does this mean that I'll be parking my Marauder forever and only using it for soloing from now on? Or is it better to use Marauder before endgame dungeons?

You have some stones to complain about an incredibly well written post while asking things like what I quoted above.

[ASaturnus]

I explained in the text, but suppose I should be more explicit about it. I will try to improve that.

You did indeed, totally overlooked that paragraph. Well, it was late when I wrote that.

Armor values are not included because they are identical. They do reduce damage, but there is no difference between the two jobs. Same with evasion. Most bonuses are actually multiplicative -- for example, Shield Oath, Sentinel, and Rampart combine to reduce damage by 61.6%. If it were additive, the three would add up to 80% -- this does not appear to be the case. I could include that detail, but it's a horribly long post without going into extreme detail about mechanics.

Still, other mitigating factors are not trivial for the comparison, especially when you say things like "WAR is half the tank of PLD". Because if mitigation from armor is, say, 50% and mitigation is multiplicative, then PLD has a mitigation of 67%. WAR would fair much better than half against this. Thus, a relevant question is, how do differences in armor compare against the difference between PLD and WAR.
A corollary of this is, with increasingly better equip, the difference in mitigation may become less relevant. Of course, PLD will always have better mitigation, but that may very well be the purpose.

You are conflating the group's overall goal (defeat opponents) with an individual role. A healer heals. It may often be efficient for the group for the healer to also deal damage, but if the healer cannot fill the role of healing, then the group is doomed to failure. This is the same with tank. If the tank did no damage at all, that would still fill the tanking role. It's a bit like VIT: if you don't have enough, you lose by default; if you do have enough, then it's you're free put efforts elsewhere in hopes of winning. The problem is that WAR is either incapable of filling the role or requires far more resources to do so.

The individual role cannot be seperated from group goal. If a healer heals very well but the group doesn't have enough damage, the group, and therefore also the healer, will fail. Thus, a healer who does more damage is better than a healer who does less, provided they both heal enough to keep the group alive.
Of course, currently in the hardest content, survivability of the tank is much more in question than his damage, thus it's rational to bring the tank with the highest mitigation. Again, that may be PLD's purpose alone.

Er... parses?

I said reliable measures. Current parses are proven to be unreliable. Besides, some people claim, according to parses WAR does about 50% more damage than PLD while tanking. Others say the parses show little difference. So I say it's unconclusive.

[Paikis]

Current parses are proven to be unreliable. Besides, some people claim, according to parses WAR does about 50% more damage than PLD while tanking. Others say the parses show little difference. So I say it's unconclusive.

Maths says that PLDs get about the same potency per GCD as Warriors... but only when the PLD is in Sword Oath (removes 20% penalty, adds 50 potency per) *and* is given the benefit of the Warrior's 10% slashing debuff *and* this requires the WAR to not be stance dancing. That is one VERY tilted playing field.

While tanking, and without the benefit of the Warrior's debuff, PLDs should be a good 30%+ behind WARs for both damage and threat.

[Hachiko]

While tanking, and without the benefit of the Warrior's debuff, PLDs should be a good 30%+ behind WARs for both damage and threat.

It's less than that, and it mostly depends on how often you use IB.