7 Ideas to Balance WAR

[Nonohana]

Looking at Inner beast in terms of healing per second or mitigation per second is faulty relative to it's purpose. It's a burst heal, good for getting some breathing room after a burst hit. For sustained damage Wrath is better. That won't change with Fist of the Earth.

4. Add 15% healing buff to Defiance and add 2% chance to parry per wrath instead

This totally changes Inner Beast. It make IB stable and we can calc IB heal as mitigation per second.

[Hachiko]

This totally changes Inner Beast. It make IB stable and we can calc IB heal as mitigation per second.

I think he was just proposing it, and if you lost 10% parry for using inner beast it would be iffy to use it every time you hit 5 wrath... but anyhow.

I think if you just look at IB + (Static 15%) Defiance + Fists of Earth vs. Shield Oath then yes, that combo will come out on top from a pure mitigation standpoint, but I think you are leaving off too much. Shield block still accounts for ~5-6% damage reduction, and in my testing it looks like it also moves some crits off of the table (relatively my WAR was crit ~20% more often than my PLD). In my testing without considering Rage of Halone, sheild oath + shield block just passively worked out to ~27% less damage taken for my PLD. So by leaving off the chance to block I think you're missing something critical.

Point two is that Rage of Halone is not something to dismiss. It is significant (though I haven't thoroughly tested it), and just because both tanks can benefit from it it is only very rarely that a PLD would be able to use it in a non-tanking situation. It would benefit on something like Cad before the split and turn 2, but it really is only benefitting the paladin on turn 4 and post split Cad.

Point three is that unless inner beast is dramatically changed you still have to worry about overheals making Inner Beast's usage less efficient. In fact, even if the stacks were static you would still only want to use it if you are down ~2x what you heal for, in case a cure 2 lands at the same time. So getting the perfect IB heal / 20 mitigation as a constant thing is not super likely.

Point four would be that PLD still would have a lot of advantages. You're comparing Inner Beast heals to their cooldowns but that's sort of a stilted comparison because their cooldowns pretty much blow WAR cooldowns out of the water. For example, PLD would still have more EHP for single hits under Sentinel and also still have the godly hallowed ground.

Ultimately it's unlikely that any change SE could make would put WAR in a place like PLD are in now unless they really just re-vamped warriors in a really dramatic way.

Just as some quick math, on a boss doing 1000 dps, assuming RoH is ~5% damage reduction:

Shield Oath cuts 20%, Block cuts ~6%, RoH cuts 5% (all multiplicative), which leaves ~714 HPS to be healed.

For a WAR with a static 15% and Fists of Earth cuts 10%. That would leave ~782 HPS to be healed Even under perfect conditions with IB you would still not catch up to PLD before they use their cooldowns.

[Ehayte]

You're comparing Inner Beast heals to their cooldowns but that's sort of a stilted comparison because their cooldowns pretty much blow WAR cooldowns out of the water

I'm just a beginner in the finer points of a WAR (lvl, like, 40 or something unimpressive), but I have a decently geared PLD. Comparing IB to PLD CDs is very fair. PLD does not have anything to compete with skills like IB and Maim (Spirits Within being the stand-out for PLD weapon skills. Circle of Scorn is OK, but OP beats the crap out of it in most useful aspects). A fair comparison is Infuriate Vs. Hallowed Ground (HG wins but A LOT, lol), ToBattle Vs. Rampart (Again, Ramp wins), Foresight vs. Bulwark, Featherfoot (MRD) vs Foresight (PLD). I'm not saying WAR wins ANY of those fights, but you can't make a blanket comparison between CDs only, because WAR has a weaker suite of CDs in exchange for a stronger set of Weaponskills.

They got totally screwed on the deal, but that's how I see it.

[Kitru]

I'm just a beginner in the finer points of a WAR (lvl, like, 40 or something unimpressive), but I have a decently geared PLD.

You may want to actually learn a lot more before you start saying anything, like perhaps reading any of the analysis that's been done concerning WARs and PLDs in comparison across every imaginable aspect of performance that can be quantified.

I'm not saying WAR wins ANY of those fights, but you can't make a blanket comparison between CDs only, because WAR has a weaker suite of CDs in exchange for a stronger set of Weaponskills.

Except that WAR doesn't actually have a stronger set of weapon skills. Maim and SE have to be used to make up for the fact that WAR suffers from a larger damage debuff in tank stance, not to mention the fact that PLD has a single high enmity combo that does everything for it. CoS is actually a lot *better* than Spirits Within because it doesn't depend upon being at max hp, not to mention that it's an AoE (also, CoS generates slightly more enmity than a single Overpower while being off the GCD and affecting a larger area and being easier to use) so I'm not even sure why you think that Spirits Within is somehow amazing.

It's been gone over numerous times: WAR does not have an appreciable offensive advantage over PLD. WAR has an *ever so slight* offensive advantage over PLD that is so small that it vanishes as soon as you get into a group while having *explicitly* atrocious utility and survivability compared to a PLD. Claiming that comparing CD suites is unfair because WAR gets fancier offensive toys just demonstrates how little you know about the subject.

[Hachiko]

I'm not even sure why you think that Spirits Within is somehow amazing.

Spirits Within IS amazing. If there is one thing the PLD weaponskill kit excels at it's utility. Spirits Within being a silence on a 30 second cooldown, shield Bash being a non-GCD stun, Rage of Halone reducing STR, and even Shield Swipe being a Pacify (of dubious value, admittedly) shows that the weaponskill set for PLD is objectively better.

WAR doesn't necessarily have to be at the same state before CD's even though you included RoH. They are allowed some degree of assymetry, and in contrast to RoH, WAR is increasing his damage with eye, which I think is fair enough for a divide to be made in that particular comparison between defensive and offensive strength given that when the two come together they both reap the benefits of the others debuff.

Not sure exactly what you're trying to say here. Of course they don't have to be the same and yes in some cases both will reap the benefit of the others' debuff, but they won't always, or even often. And the major issue that it comes down to is that the value of Storm's Eye debuff is much lower than the value of Rage of Halone debuff. Storm's Eye doesn't really make a WAR tank that much better, it just makes their self healing slightly more potent when they need it, while still maintaining single target enmity. In fact, you could attribute the damage difference between the tanks entirely to Storm's Eye.

But the issue is that when it comes to what matters - not dying - RoH is king. I agree they are allowed some degree of asymmetry, but I'm extremely sick of people saying WAR doesn't need more tools to reduce damage they take, or that giving them say Fists of Earth will suddenly make them imbalanced. And it is still over a 10% difference in damage taken even if WAR was to be given Fists of Earth, which is the point I was going to make.

[Kitru]

Spirits Within IS amazing. If there is one thing the PLD weaponskill kit excels at it's utility. Spirits Within being a silence on a 30 second cooldown, shield Bash being a non-GCD stun, Rage of Halone reducing STR, and even Shield Swipe being a Pacify (of dubious value, admittedly) shows that the weaponskill set for PLD is objectively better.

What I was trying to say (which I think got lost in the post) was that Spirits Within isn't amazing when compared to CoS. CoS is the objectively *better* weaponskill. The poster I quoted was stating that Spirits Within was substantially better than CoS, which is just horribly wrong.

Personally, I think that the non-damage weaponskill suites of the two tanks are as mismatched as many people seem to think it is. The problem is less that the WAR or PLD weaponskill suite is stronger or weaker than the other but rather that the PLD weaponskill suite is much more defensively oriented and, as such, much more useful in the long run, mainly because the offensive contributions of a tank are tiny in comparison to the output of the group as a whole. Reducing the damage that a tank takes (and the damage the group takes on some raid damage) is a much larger proportionate increase to effectiveness than simply increasing the damage that the tank deals: tanks take a *monumental* majority of the damage for a group but only deal a fraction of the damage. A 5% decrease in damage taken is going to do *way* more than a 10% increase in damage dealt. Hell, a 5% decrease in damage taken is going to do more than a 20-30% increase in damage dealt thanks to the ratios of DPS to tanks and DPS damage to tank damage.

For SE to honestly be equivalent to Halone, it needs to reduce resistance to *all* damage by 10%, or, at the very least, all physical damage. Halone provides a proportionate increase to the survivability of the entire group; SE just provides a proportionate increase to the smallest damage contributors in the group.

[Ehayte]

WAR does not have an appreciable offensive advantage over PLD.

Uhg..I'm just, I'm so tired of you. I was not talking about DPS, I was talking about tanking utility.

- Maim gets WARs up to 90% DMG (75%x1.2 = 90%) 10% higher than PLDs in Shield Oath, add in SE and you are relatively higher. So you need to use Maim OR SE to make up AND OVERCOME the larger (5% lol) dmg debuff.
- OP is GCD, it may cost a lot of TP, but even with conical targeting (which is NOT that difficult to manage) it has much more enmity utility because it doesn't take 15s to build all the enmity, and its not a 30s CD (RE: CoS).
- SW has a silence....and its a 300 potency attack (maybe slightly less) at the start of a fight to add an enmity cushion. And it has a silence. And a silence....I'm not sure why you think Circle of Scorn is somehow amazing.

You are the Toby to my Michael.

PS I'd like to state, as always, that I am a strong advocate of a WAR buff - I was just trying to say that I think things like IB that a WAR have are better from a mitigation/utility standpoint than what I feel like PLD has. PLD obviously has a better overall deal right now, but comparing WAR CDs to PLD CDs isn't 100% fair.

[Hundred]

This totally changes Inner Beast. It make IB stable and we can calc IB heal as mitigation per second.

True if you make that change it would be, albeit parry isn't worth enough to be worth the choice imo, would just throw out IB then and that be slightly monotonous.

of 7 suggestions i see 2 based purely on WAR skills, the rest are cross-class skills.

WAR was designed to mitigate via self-healing as opposed to PLD's mitigation. what needs buffing is WAR self healing, not taking stuff to "be more pld"

a Trait at level 50 to reduce bloodbath cooldown to half and increase its healing to 100% returned, along with storms path returning 150% and turning mercy stroke into a "heal when used in last 20%" rather than "heal on kill only" skill should give WAR all the self-healing assitance it needs at endgame, will still be more MP intensive for a WHM but we work better with SCH it seems anyway.

100% absorb for 30 seconds on a 45 second cooldown would be absurd.
Mercy stroke is meant for multi-enemy situations as I see it which is why it works the way it does, a buffer like
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Assassin's_Promise would be some nice QoL for it.
I thought about Storm path at 150% before, its something like ~1/3rd of an IB right, would be good when you're up on Enmity for some sustain given you have the TP before it. I think it can work, but I've seen another suggestion to make storm path give a buff that makes your attacks absorb (like bloodbath) which I thought was cool. Either way the skill currently is pretty useless from day 1, so a buff can't hurt it.

For a WAR with a static 15% and Fists of Earth cuts 10%. That would leave ~782 HPS to be healed Even under perfect conditions with IB you would still not catch up to PLD before they use their cooldowns.

WAR doesn't necessarily have to be at the same state before CD's even though you included RoH. They are allowed some degree of assymetry, and in contrast to RoH, WAR is increasing his damage with eye, which I think is fair enough for a divide to be made in that particular comparison between defensive and offensive strength given that when the two come together they both reap the benefits of the others debuff.
I believe you said before it doesn't matter for balance, but the lack of relevance in Storm path and even Bloodbath is kind of off-putting. Defiance nerfs the healing of Bloodbath and Storm path 25%, kind of wonky given that mitigation vs health pool has an old problem of effective healing being increased in one, with the health pool taking longer to replenish itself making it fall behind. When you're nerfing the healing of bloodbath and Storm path 25% while increasing your health pool 25% it's really backwards in that respect, especially given that Storm path never healed for anything to begin with and Bloodbath was "eh" from the first run in Satasha.

[Shingi]

100% absorb for 30 seconds on a 45 second cooldown would be absurd.
Mercy stroke is meant for multi-enemy situations as I see it which is why it works the way it does, a buffer like
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Assassin's_Promise would be some nice QoL for it.
I thought about Storm path at 150% before, its something like ~1/3rd of an IB right, would be good when you're up on Enmity for some sustain given you have the TP before it. I think it can work, but I've seen another suggestion to make storm path give a buff that makes your attacks absorb (like bloodbath) which I thought was cool. Either way the skill currently is pretty useless from day 1, so a buff can't hurt it.

100% return for 30 of every 45 would be effectively a refresh-style buff. average damage output in defiance is approx 100-130 per hit, giving you an effective return of approx 3000hp per activation (more or less) and its pretty easy to lose more than than in 45 seconds. i'm ball-parking my figures here, so they could use some tweaking.

150% return on storm's path makes it a viable option in combo rotation and tops off your HP, again, average hit on that being approx 150, that would give you 225hp, enough to assist in not being such a drain to MP on your healers if you can throw it in every 25-30 seconds.

Mercy stroke, yeah, its meant for groups as a sustaining heal, but in a group of 8, how often can you get the timing EXACTLY right to be the final attack? i know for me its far more random chance than actual skill because i never know how much damage my DD are going to throw out. its also effectively useless in boss fights, when WAR takes far more damage than from a group (and overpower+bloodbath is more effective, taking healing from multiple hits). letting it heal (on WAR ONLY) when used in the last 20% would make it far more effective at performing its role in groups AND give it a purpose in boss fights.

all in all, giving WAR's more or more effective ways to self heal in post-50 instances shortens the gap between PLD mitigation and EHP and sticks more with the theme of the job, rather than making it a "semi PLD with an axe" simply by trying to increase mitigation. I've said my numbers here are ball park, approximates and could likely use some more looking in to and fine-tuning, but for me they are far more in-theme and effective than most other suggestions i've seen thus far.