Warrior "buff" in 2.1: not what we are expecting?

[Eylev]

I play both tank classes, I think these changes just move the problem from one class to the other. If they were going to balance the difference
in the two jobs, they need to adjust both jobs. All this is going to do is shift warrior into the top role. Warrior can now vastly out damage Pld and
Survive. the Survival part needed to be addressed. I don't know why the adjusted their Enminty so much. I have never had a problem holding hate on
a mob with warrior. I have had problems with PLD getting hate back on things like titan if like a Whm way over cures and and runs away with the mob.
Provoke needs some work. for the Cool Down it has, it should have a pretty good hate spike. Flash needs some work also.

Totally agree on this.. SE is creating more problems instead and after that, PLD will start to whine and SE have to adjust.. = NEVER ENDING..

[Amas]

I noticed a lot of Warriors / Marauders on here stating "OMG love the changes, thank you sooo much!"

This would lead me to believe said individuals don't know how to play their class that effectively, been party and witness to Warriors tanking all content very effectively, admittedly they needed a retouch on some aspects but what SE have done has definitely made the job now a job that even a mentally retracted slowpoke can play. The attraction the job had was that it required a lot of knowledge and know how, to be able to warrant calling yourself a good player, it'll now just be an easy mode class to play for those whom are less fortunate in the IQ area.

Some of the changes definitely seem excessive but ack well, SE going balls out again to completely derail this game.

lolwut?

WAR...
-Takes more damage
-Requires more healing
-Does comparable damage & threat on a single target (generally within 10%)
-Has a much harder time of sustained AoE threat generation
-Has far worse CDs (and still will)
-Has less utility (and still will)

WAR still will...
-Have a more complex core rotation to maximize threat, DPS, and buff/debuff uptime. It will be less forgiving of errors for optimal play, and even with optimal play will yield basically equal results to PLD as it is now.
-Have inferior baseline mitigation, which should be balanced by a more usable Inner Beast.
-Require more external healing, before accounting for Inner Beast.
-Suffer from inferior burst mitigation.
-Have a less user-friendly AoE threat generation tool.
-Have inferior CDs.
-Lack a Silence ability.
-Remain on par with PLD, by and large, for DPS whether main tanking or not.

Quite honestly I'm excited, as I'll actually have a reason to play WAR instead of PLD 24/7. Both classes will be useful and have their own advantages and disadvantages. The balance will be much closer than it is currently.

My biggest concern is the relative uptime of -20% DR buff from Inner Beast vs. Rampart. With optimal play WAR will have a considerable advantage, although the nature of the mechanisms does help counterbalance that. WAR will not be able to gain its DR buff prior to an alpha strike, and requires much more precise timing to use IB for burst mitigation compared to PLD with Rampart.

The devil will naturally be in the details, but at the end of the day PLD will still be far easier to play optimally, have better utility (on-demand Stun + a Silence), have much better burst mitigation, have more usable AoE threat generation, and instead of just outclassing WAR at all times in all situations, you'll have a compelling reason to consider using both tank classes depending on the situation.

[Ruminate]

Currently I think PLD and WAR are pretty close to each other when it comes to threat. PLD may have some troubles with AoE, but after this update WAR is going to pass PLD at threat and I think that for most occasions it's a good thing. PLD still has more cooldowns, passive dmg reduce and shield which makes them easier to heal because taking less dmg.

I'm almost certain the enmity changes will apply to Shield Oath and Flash as well. I'm sure Yoshi-P understands how difficult it is for a fresh level 50 to hold threat against a decked out ilvl 90, which is what the increased enmity is supposed to address.

[Dedayius]

I see we have many people new to a SE MMO. FFXI was notorious for having overpowered classes for a long time and then swinging wildly in the opposite direction, I don't know why SE would stop that now. You'll have 3 months of warrior being the go-to tank and then in 2.2 they'll overbuff paladins going in the opposite direction. This is the real reason you can level all classes/jobs on the same character :P

[Gamemako]

I'd pray to the gods of RnG, Lags, and Pure Skill if I manage to land one Mercy Stroke on a Clockwerk Bug/Soldier/Knight/Dreadnaught or Spinner. An execute skill needs to feel like an execute, 200 potency is too low, even if you put it at 1000 potency landing that shit for the 20% Max HP heal is just way too hard...

The more you have on one target, the harder it is to land. When you contend with four DPS nuking the hell out of your opponent and your own hit is reduced to 150 effective potency (against others who are dealing 20-30% more damage per potency), the timing falls to pure luck. I don't think it's really the potency which needs help, it just needs a window. Tag for death within ~3 seconds for the recovery bonus, not "last hit". Instead of reducing cooldown on trait, increase recovery. 60s native cooldown, 10% native recovery, boost to 25% on MRD trait, increase window. Not overpowered cross-class (which is a problem if you buff potency), not gimpy for tanks anymore. Heck, seemed that in beta, it recovered HP as long as it went off and the opponent was dead at the end. As long as you waited until the very last second, you'd get the HP back. which made it much easier to land.

Having tanked on both WAR and PLD I know what I'm talking about...

Do you have any math to back up your evaluation?

[Garnatian]

lolwut?

WAR...
-Takes more damage
-Requires more healing
-Does comparable damage & threat on a single target (generally within 10%)
-Has a much harder time of sustained AoE threat generation
-Has far worse CDs (and still will)
-Has less utility (and still will)

WAR still will...
-Have a more complex core rotation to maximize threat, DPS, and buff/debuff uptime. It will be less forgiving of errors for optimal play, and even with optimal play will yield basically equal results to PLD as it is now.
-Have inferior baseline mitigation, which should be balanced by a more usable Inner Beast.
-Require more external healing, before accounting for Inner Beast.
-Suffer from inferior burst mitigation.
-Have a less user-friendly AoE threat generation tool.
-Have inferior CDs.
-Lack a Silence ability.
-Remain on par with PLD, by and large, for DPS whether main tanking or not.

Quite honestly I'm excited, as I'll actually have a reason to play WAR instead of PLD 24/7. Both classes will be useful and have their own advantages and disadvantages. The balance will be much closer than it is currently.

My biggest concern is the relative uptime of -20% DR buff from Inner Beast vs. Rampart. With optimal play WAR will have a considerable advantage, although the nature of the mechanisms does help counterbalance that. WAR will not be able to gain its DR buff prior to an alpha strike, and requires much more precise timing to use IB for burst mitigation compared to PLD with Rampart.

The devil will naturally be in the details, but at the end of the day PLD will still be far easier to play optimally, have better utility (on-demand Stun + a Silence), have much better burst mitigation, have more usable AoE threat generation, and instead of just outclassing WAR at all times in all situations, you'll have a compelling reason to consider using both tank classes depending on the situation.

You're correct that WAR takes more damage per GCD, however it does not require more Healing per GCD.

The passive mitigation will be approx. a flat 7~10% thanks to Storm's Path and Inner Beast.

Complex? No. Use Butcher combo until "safety-net" threat achieved, then use Storm's Path combo. Inner Beast at 5 stacks. That's it, that is not complex.

Inferior CDs? Yes, but superior active mitigation in the form of Inner Beast and Storm's Path.

Suffer from burst? No. Holmgang. Smaller CD, cannot die.

Silence? Irrelevant from a Tanking perspective.

[MBTL90]

With these changes, Wars become unquestionably better tanks than paladins. Damage in this game is all about mitigating short periods of burst damage. With the healing bonus decoupled from wrath, Defiance and Shield oath now provide pretty much the same eHP. Now though, wars have an on-demand 20% dr. It will be up for pretty much every meaningful attack in the game, like Twintania's death sentence or Titan's mountain buster. To match this sort of burst mitigation, paladins have to burn a 1.5 min or 3 min cd. Meanwhile, wars are also getting a CD that is arguably better than any that paladins have, in vengeance (higher uptime than sentinel/lower cd, higher DR than rampart). So to recap, Wars now have approximately the same CDs and base mitigation as paladin, but can also have an extra 6 seconds of even more DR.

For your average players, the classes might be approximately equal now. For anyone doing any remotely challenging content, Wars are better.

[Sephirah]

I'm really disappointed they decided to go the homogenization route. Holmgang is now Hallowed Ground, they will do more dmg, generate WAY more enmity, have a ridiculously high HP pool, and have on-par defense with paladin.

So Yoshi, why do you think anyone would want to pick a tank with 25% less hp, does less dmg, and has a harder time holding threat? Because that's the boat you're putting PLD in with these changes.

And just so everyone knows, the other tank I run coils with has WAR and has used it in there, could they have used a buff, sure, but these changes are just ridiculously OP.

[Ehayte]

Paladin still can cast Stoneskin which would make them a more ideal ST. Whilst the warrior with these changes seems to fit the role of a MT more

I've always felt this way (both tanks Relic'd, PLD has AF2 stuff).


PLD FEELS like the off-tank, in that I can cast stoneskin on bards and healers and the MT and myself, RB back up my mana, and do it again to provide a useful secondary function when I am not MT. In addition to Stunning, silencing, blinding, using COVER, etc. I feel that PLD is structured as an off-tank, it just stumbled into the MT role because it was vastly more powerful.

WAR FEELS like the main-tank, in that my abilities ALL focus on what I'M doing (for the most part). I micro-manage my HP (and now I am micro-managing my IB shield and need to pay closer attention to Veng in fights) in order to use my skill level to increase my survivability. I also have a niche as an off-tank in a situation where I need to grab a lot of enmity, and the most damage possible needs to be done to adds. I have gone up to T1 in Coil, and so far:

Ifrit: WAR MT | PLD OT - (Stuns)
Garuda: PLD MT | WAR OT - (Damage to Plumes, Snap aggro on Adds)
Titan: Only need one tank, and WAR has IB shield for MBs now, so I'd call it even
ADS: PLD MT | WAR OT - (PLD to silence HV, WAR to snap aggro clones)
Caduceus: WAR MT | PLD OT - (PLD to spawn and stun slimes and to cast stoneskin on slime kiters, healer, MT, etc)

So up to 5 "end game" (I know Ifrit and Garuda aren't hard, but think back to when you didn't even have ilevel 70 stuff) bosses, PLD is best suited to MT 2 times, and WAR is best suited 2 times, due to either being stronger as EITHER MT or OT. I think these changes really work, and I can't wait for them to take effect so that our WAR and I can work together better in Coil : D

[TaneshimaPopura]

@Gamemako

I do agree that upon casting Mercy Stroke it will put a debuff on the target/ or buff on caster that upon death/kill will cause the 20% heal. Or just make it heal 20% Max HP on successful usage. And really, there is no need to worry about what most people say in here, most of them are chicken littles crying the falling of the sky whilst hardly doing any content.

There are people who have done Endgame tanking not only in FF14 but in other MMOs to know how written changes affect the game without even playing it. It comes as second nature when you have tanked THAT long in MMO games. We've seen so many shifts of FoTM classes to be able to identify it's pattern, and yes this changes will make Warrior the FoTM tank but due to unique debuff and niches Paladin still has a place in a group. All people need to keep in check is their ego of not being the superior tank and put one thing in their mind.... Clearing Content and fulfilling your role for the benefit of the party.