Warrior in Frontlines

[Vandril]

Edit: For those actually interested in what I posted on the matter, I was incorrect on part of this. Part of my math was flawed, because I mistakenly believed that Inner Beast was off the GCD. MRD does about 10% more DPS w/o even using CDs than a Warrior using Defiance does, making MRD the all-around better class for Frontlines, except for in survivability.

On your first point: Every 60s you get to pop a free 200 potency AoE or a 300 potency attack that ignores your damage reduction. MRD without the damage penalties out does that in a single Eye/butchers combo by close to 200 potency.

No, it outdoes WAR damage by about 300 potency BEFORE you take into account the stat difference and usage of Inner Beast/Cyclone. I calculated the potencies of every attack needed to get 5 Wrath on a WAR, then compared that potency to the same rotation on a MRD, and that's what my result showed me.

Rotation: HS > Maim > SE > HS > SS > BB > HS > SS

Now, we take potency measurements. We ignore the Maim buff, since both MRD and WAR would have it, so it shouldn't effect the overall end result by comparison, thanks to the Distributive Law of Multiplication.

For MRD, we just add all the potencies together.

MRD: 1590

For WAR, Defiance and Wrath stacks complicate the math, which, assuming critical strikes are double and Wrath increases your chance to crit by a flat 2% per stack rather than just increasing your Critical Strike Rate stat, results in a formula like the below:

0.75(150(1.0) + 190(1.0) + 270(1.02) + 150(1.04) + 200(1.04) + 280(1.06) + 150(1.08) + 200(1.08))

Then we tack on an Inner Beast to the end, modified by the average crit damage gained by the Wrath stack of 5.

0.75(150(1.0) + 190(1.0) + 270(1.02) + 150(1.04) + 200(1.04) + 280(1.06) + 150(1.08) + 200(1.08)) + 300(1.1)

And that's the formula. So, let's solve it.

0.75(150(1.0) + 190(1.0) + 270(1.02) + 150(1.04) + 200(1.04) + 280(1.06) + 150(1.08) + 200(1.08)) + 300(1.1)
0.75(150 + 190 + 275.4 + 156 + 208 + 296.8 + 162 + 216) + 330
0.75(1654.2) + 330
1240.65 + 330
1570.65
Rounded...
1571 Potency

So, unless my math is wrong, WAR and MRD, in their respective rotations, only have a 19 potency difference. So that "200 Potency" that MRD rotation outdoes WAR by is more like 20. And that's BEFORE calculating the minutely higher stats that WAR has, which would lower that gap a little further. Considering MRD has Raging Strikes and Blood for Blood, as well as Internal Release and Strait Shot, in addition to all of the same burst CDs that WAR has, MRDs damage in CDs will definitely pull ahead. However, outside of those CDs, WAR's DPS is almost exactly as potent as MRD.

The only thing I willingly avoided factoring in was the potential to work Strait Shot into MRD's non-burst rotation, as I'm not 100% sure how the math would work. Yes, it would give MRD a sustainable 10% increase to Crit, just like a full stack of Wrath, however, unlike Wrath, it requires one GCD every so many seconds to keep up, and has fairly low potency, and I'm not sure how that would effect overall DPS.

If you turn defiance off you lose the use of all WAR weaponskills until it's turned back on. You can not accumulate wrath. You're reduced to using MRD skills and your meager selection of cross class skills.

A MRD can overpower for longer than WAR can. Invigorate, Enliven, up to 1250 potential TP at your fingertips to WAR's 750 (assuming you specced enliven). Internal Release, Raging strikes to boost your damage past what a WAR can do. Since you said defiance is off, you lost your crit stacks.

If you're trying to focus on AoE as a WAR, then you don't need the WAR Job abilities or Wrath, as you'll mainly be spamming Overpower, which does not give Wrath, if I recall correctly. Nor will you need Defiance, because you shouldn't be spamming AoE if you're being focused (and thus need the defenses), anyway. For AoE purposes, the only thing I would use Defiance for is the build up 5 stacks of Wrath for the initial Cyclone which would be used after all my offensive CDs (and then a second Infuriate > Cyclone). Then I would turn off Defiance and spam Overpower until I'm out of TP.

I'll concede to you in that WAR is not better AoE DPS than MRD, because I forgot to factor in Invigorate last night. But even so, WAR's potential AoE DPS should be similar to MRD's, probably only less by 150-200 potency overall.

And I think the take away here is that compared to a PLD, WAR is an inferior tank for his team

I can't argue this, though. :P

Marauder > Warrior in PvP easily. If you all dont want to believe the truth, thats fine :]

Is there some math behind this that I don't know about or is this just by personal experience? Not trying to give you crap: serious question.

[Danbo05]

Is there some math behind this that I don't know about or is this just by personal experience? Not trying to give you crap: serious question.

Over time the damage potency may be the same, but in PVP, burst damage is valued more so than damage over time, due to the fact that the people you're going up against don't have anywhere near the amount of HP of primals or bosses you face in dungeons. For Warrior, you have to build up your defiance stacks to have access to Inner Beast, Unchained, and the crit bonus; but as a MRD, you can just simply click cooldowns and deal as much damage as you can to whoever you're targetting. Having more HP and drawing hate means nothing in PVP since as a tank, you're rarely the first target on anyone's list.

[Vandril]

Over time the damage potency may be the same, but in PVP, burst damage is valued more so than damage over time, due to the fact that the people you're going up against don't have anywhere near the amount of HP of primals or bosses you face in dungeons. For Warrior, you have to build up your defiance stacks to have access to Inner Beast, Unchained, and the crit bonus; but as a MRD, you can just simply click cooldowns and deal as much damage as you can to whoever you're targetting. Having more HP and drawing hate means nothing in PVP since as a tank, you're rarely the first target on anyone's list.

Oh, well, yes. I do understand the importance of burst in PvP combat. I do think that it's worth mentioning that sustained pressure is nothing to scoff at, either, though.

Anyway, I rediscovered something that dramatically changes the outcome of my results:

Then we tack on an Inner Beast to the end, modified by the average crit damage gained by the Wrath stack of 5.

In my memory, not having played WAR for months, I was convinced that Inner Beast was off the GCD, like Unchained is. This is not the case. What this means is that not only is that one-two punch burst that WAR can pull off less potent than I imagined it, but, in order to almost match MRD damage using their rotation up to and including the point of 5-stack Wrath on WAR, WAR would need an additional GCD to use Inner Beast. This changes the results to the below, with MRD filling that last GCD that WAR uses with HS:

MRD: 1740
WAR: 1571

Which leaves an approximately 170 potency gap between the two, at WAR's detriment. In fact, this means that MRD does approximately 10% more damage, even considering the WAR's STR bonus. This does, barring further error on my part, show that MRD is superior to WAR in sustained DPS, as well as burst, utility, mobility, AoE damage, and so on, only really being worse at survivability.

Well, now I just feel silly, all of my conclusions here being flawed due to misunderstanding a single attribute of a single ability.