WAR Adjustments

[Fue]

Wasted a skill on sword oath, what?
Its the best stance for increasing dmg in the game. And its highly useful everytime you do a tank swap.

[Brannigan]

Sword Oath is good, it just shouldn't really take an ability slot. Or, rather, Shield Oath shouldn't exist and the paladin soul crystal should give -20% damage taken, -20% damage dealt, and 2x enmity, with Sword Oath removing those effects. Basically it just kind of sucks to give a class 2 semi-passive stances out of its 5 total job abilities, especially considering how limited in usefulness some other gladiator/paladin abilities are.

They could scrap shield oath (or make sword/shield toggle each other with multiple presses) and give paladins a third hit to the riot blade combo in its place.

Back on topic, though, I think Warrior's in a pretty good place right now. Its worst (native) skills are probably Foresight and Bloodbath, and Foresight honestly isn't as terrible as people seem to think. Holmgang, I think, is useful enough to justify its existence. At least if Cover and Tempered Will are useful enough to justify their existence, then Holmgang certainly is. It's definitely no Apocatastasis.

[Sibyll]

Wasted a skill on sword oath, what?
Its the best stance for increasing dmg in the game. And its highly useful everytime you do a tank swap.

I never said the skill was bad, I'm sure the numbers are available to prove the % DPS boost between Sword Oath Stance and No Stance. My point is that it feels like a filler skill that serves only to put non-tank stance Paladins on par with non-tank stance Warriors in terms of DPS output.

Also, what percentage increase does Sword Oath provide over having no stance up at all. I can only seem to find comparisons between Sword Oath and Shield Oath when I'm actually curious between Sword Oath and No stance.

Back on topic, though, I think Warrior's in a pretty good place right now. Its worst (native) skills are probably Foresight and Bloodbath, and Foresight honestly isn't as terrible as people seem to think. Holmgang, I think, is useful enough to justify its existence. At least if Cover and Tempered Will are useful enough to justify their existence, then Holmgang certainly is. It's definitely no Apocatastasis.

I agree it's overall a fine class. I think people view Foresight as being worse than it is because they try to use it like a Paladin tanking CD and it's not meant to be used that way. People have said this before, Warrior/Marauder CDs have low effects because they are meant to be used more frequently thanks to their lower CDs.

Apocatastasis exists for the same reason Elemental Resist Materia exist. They forgot to take them out.

[MythToken]

So can we agree that there isn't much to adjust?

[Umbeliel]

I never said the skill was bad, I'm sure the numbers are available to prove the % DPS boost between Sword Oath Stance and No Stance. My point is that it feels like a filler skill that serves only to put non-tank stance Paladins on par with non-tank stance Warriors in terms of DPS output.

I don't have the numbers for this on hand, but I might go out of my way to make some more up to date ones later anyway. A sword oath Paladin actually will have higher dps than a off stance Warrior in equivalent gear, though. Don't be fooled by the big axe.

So can we agree that there isn't much to adjust?

No.

[BazFamrit]

Honestly the ppl asking for changes are those that just want to face roll a keyboard and play well. If you don't have the skill to play as is don't expect to play better even with any changes.

[Fue]

Sword oath is around 15% increase in dmg from not using any stance.

[Sibyll]

Sword oath is around 15% increase in dmg from not using any stance.

Thank you. I didn't think it'd be that large of a difference, but I guess it's not coincidence that it's pretty close to the damage buff from Maim on Warrior's. However, considering that you only get 5 job skills it really seems like a waste to have one be just a flat damage boost (regardless of how good the boost is), but I'll drop it lest I get more off topic.

[bokchoykn]

So can we agree that there isn't much to adjust?

I do.

We have no reason to complain. Warrior is a well-made class in a game where not every class is well-made. That's saying a lot. People just want to see their own class get stronger and stronger, with no regard to the real class design issues that would actually make the game better. They want their class to get all the love and will never be satisfied. This is the case in every MMO ever. Whiners will whine.

Warrior. Is. Fine.

I don't have the numbers for this on hand, but I might go out of my way to make some more up to date ones later anyway. A sword oath Paladin actually will have higher dps than a off stance Warrior in equivalent gear, though. Don't be fooled by the big axe.

A Non-Defiance Warrior's DPS is actually very slightly higher than a Sword Oath Paladin's, but where Warrior's DPS really shines is their DPS while they're tanking and ESPECIALLY in situations where they are required to change in and out of tanking stance.

Warriors have Unchained, which removes the tanking stance damage penalty. Paladins don't have an equivalent to this. The maximum uptime on this ability is 20s duration / 120s cooldown, or 16.6%. However, in situations where Warriors constantly bounce in and out of Defiance (Turns 6, 7, 9), the adjusted uptime on this ability is much higher because Warrior is only tanking for some of the time. Warriors also have Inner Beast, which not only does a ton of damage but also conserves TP since it has no TP cost.

On top of that, Warriors swap between tanking and non-tanking stances much easier than Paladins do. With Paladins, they lose two GCD's: one for going to Sword Oath and another for going back to Shield Oath. Warriors don't because stance changes are off GCD for Warriors. It's like Warriors get an extra GCD for every tank swap. Moreover, their combos don't get interrupted when they swap stances.

In tank swap situations, Paladins have to be careful how they use Rage of Halone, lest they rip aggro back as soon as their tanking partner vokes. Warriors can continue by using Storm's Path/Eye combos plus an actually good Fracture in these situations, so they can continue to DPS hard without fear of ripping aggro.

So, while a Sword Oath Paladin can hang with a non-Defiance Warrior, actual raid situations call for both classes to tank at some point. Warriors should blow Paladin DPS out of the water.

[Kitru]

Warrior. Is. Fine.

You realize that, even though I'm arguing that Holmgang needs to be fixed and that Foresight could stand to get looked at so that it's not the joke that it currently is, I actually agree with you on this, right (I disagree with a vast majority of what the OP has said though, as you could probably tell)? Saying "WAR is fine" is not the same as saying "there are absolutely no problems with WAR whatsoever" nor does saying that WAR could use some fixes mean that other classes will not receive tweaks. Balance/QoL changes are not zero-sum. You can say that WAR is a very well designed tank while simultaneously having some problems with a few of the abilities.

The problem with Holmgang isn't that it's weak. It's that it has too many disparate functions in a single ability such that they end up interfering with one another. If each of those functions were placed on different abilities, WAR wouldn't be appreciably stronger, but you can be damned sure that you'd actually be getting the intended functionality out of them.

Also, as to the whole "Holmgang can interrupt stuff that nothing else can": WHM and SMN are both much better suited to KB interrupting than WAR is. Fluid Aura is on a 30 sec CD and Shockwave is 90 sec, and they're both abilities that exist to serve that single purpose so using them as such isn't going to waste them. If you use Holmgang for a KB-interrupt, you're screwing yourself out of your uber-CD as well as your physics immunity for the next 3 minutes. Acting as if WAR KB silencing was actually a major piece of utility is akin to saying that Selene's silence makes her an absolutely amazing pet (not entirely the same thing though because Selene can still silence while doing everything else she brings).