Xeno's Warrior Tanking Guide

[Xenosys]

Is there an eta on the MNK vid? Would love to see it

Should be up by this wednesday, and thx for the support!

[Zdenka]

There's no reason a Paly couldn't do a strength-spec like warriors do.

STR PLD can do about 380 DPS in Sword Oath and STR WAR can do about 400 (forgoing Storm's Path for Butchers Block). The huge huge huge problem a STR PLD has though is that it requires a MT STR WAR to be rotation Butcher Block -> Storms Eye / Repeat. I suppose maybe a VIT PLD can hold off a STR PLD too but then you are losing the Slashing bonus, which means heck, you may as well bring a WAR. Defiance STR WAR does more DPS than Shield Oath STR PLD by a pretty decent margin as well, which further enforces this synergy.

It is also to note that besides for initial threat being slightly wavy, a STR PLD can tank completely in Sword Oath which a WAR cannot tank without Defiance (against people doing 400-500 DPS). But 6500 HP without that 20% innate damage reduction could be scary depending what you are fighting. I've tanked the entirety of Syrcus Tower as 100% STR PLD in Sword Oath, with no one being close on threat at all (400-440 DPS MNK was there)... and that was without a WAR putting up Eye.

Fun Stuff

[Synestr]

Hey all,

K so I watched the vid on release and took a lot of good notes. I looked at how Xeno's rotation could be reworked to fit in with mine, with what abilities I currently have (46 WAR as of last night).Rearranged some things on the QSs and CC skills. It was clunky at first, but that took one run of Stone Vigil to get through. I am a happy puppy right now. Using the philosophy of RaWr STR my current accessories are currently that. I open with Tom>Brutal then go into SP to BB combos. So far I have had no issues, maintaining threat or staying alive. I used to pop da shiznit outta my CD's, I was a bebe war and didn't know any better, but now they get weaved and are used at appropriate times to mitigate and to self heal. I just got Vengeance last night and haven't had an opportunity to use it yet, but it's about to go down tonight fo sho.

At any rate, here is why I am originally posting.

Thank you. For taking the time to show me the way. I am a PLD by nature, and wanted to top off WAR just to see how the other side lives. It's like a whole different persona as WAR, and I'm addicted to the Juice! lol.

For example, last nights roulette put me in a party in progress for Darkhold. They were on second boss, Turd...I was with two new to the duty people and luckily a SMN that was on a alt class and had an idea what to do. We had 30 mins left to complete the duty. Wiped three times to him and finally got it after explaining to the MNK that he can LB with only one bar full, though he needed two... Couple newbie body pulls later and recoveries and we were at the boss with 6:36 seconds to complete it. Gave a brief explanation of what to do, Kill crystals stay TF outta aoe. We smashed it and finished with 2 seconds before duty failed. It was neat.

I don't think a lot of folks are hip to the STR stack game for war. A previous heals in SV told me to change gear cause it was "wrong". That I was a tank and should have VIT accessories...Needless to say I proved him wrong.

At any rate, to keep this from tl;dr

Thank you for showing me the way. This PLD has no problems now going apeshit with WAR on stuff and now I understand much more of the job. I look forward to smashing more stuffs with both!

Syn

[Xenosys]

STR PLD can do about 380 DPS in Sword Oath and STR WAR can do about 400 (forgoing Storm's Path for Butchers Block). The huge huge huge problem a STR PLD has though is that it requires a MT STR WAR to be rotation Butcher Block -> Storms Eye / Repeat. I suppose maybe a VIT PLD can hold off a STR PLD too but then you are losing the Slashing bonus, which means heck, you may as well bring a WAR. Defiance STR WAR does more DPS than Shield Oath STR PLD by a pretty decent margin as well, which further enforces this synergy.

It is also to note that besides for initial threat being slightly wavy, a STR PLD can tank completely in Sword Oath which a WAR cannot tank without Defiance (against people doing 400-500 DPS). But 6500 HP without that 20% innate damage reduction could be scary depending what you are fighting. I've tanked the entirety of Syrcus Tower as 100% STR PLD in Sword Oath, with no one being close on threat at all (400-440 DPS MNK was there)... and that was without a WAR putting up Eye.

Fun Stuff

I tank without Defiance all the time, but never tell my healers that haha XD. Its definitely possible to hold threat against dps not in tank stance a WAR actually has much more threat generation than a PLD. in addition to being a higher potency Butcher's Blocks also generates more aggro than Rage Of Halone. Anything PLD can do a WAR can and vice versa, both tanks are very balanced in this game. I think your numbers may be a tad off on the DPS of the tanks. PLD in sword oath actually does identical damage as WAR without defiance if played correctly. With the slashing debuff a pld is capable of slightly higher dps than war. However where the big difference lies in while tanking. A warrior will destroy a pld in terms of DPS while in tank stance. Warriors just have much more offensive abilities while tanking

[Xenosys]

Hey all,

K so I watched the vid on release and took a lot of good notes. I looked at how Xeno's rotation could be reworked to fit in with mine, with what abilities I currently have (46 WAR as of last night).Rearranged some things on the QSs and CC skills. It was clunky at first, but that took one run of Stone Vigil to get through. I am a happy puppy right now. Using the philosophy of RaWr STR my current accessories are currently that. I open with Tom>Brutal then go into SP to BB combos. So far I have had no issues, maintaining threat or staying alive. I used to pop da shiznit outta my CD's, I was a bebe war and didn't know any better, but now they get weaved and are used at appropriate times to mitigate and to self heal. I just got Vengeance last night and haven't had an opportunity to use it yet, but it's about to go down tonight fo sho.

At any rate, here is why I am originally posting.

Thank you. For taking the time to show me the way. I am a PLD by nature, and wanted to top off WAR just to see how the other side lives. It's like a whole different persona as WAR, and I'm addicted to the Juice! lol.

For example, last nights roulette put me in a party in progress for Darkhold. They were on second boss, Turd...I was with two new to the duty people and luckily a SMN that was on a alt class and had an idea what to do. We had 30 mins left to complete the duty. Wiped three times to him and finally got it after explaining to the MNK that he can LB with only one bar full, though he needed two... Couple newbie body pulls later and recoveries and we were at the boss with 6:36 seconds to complete it. Gave a brief explanation of what to do, Kill crystals stay TF outta aoe. We smashed it and finished with 2 seconds before duty failed. It was neat.

I don't think a lot of folks are hip to the STR stack game for war. A previous heals in SV told me to change gear cause it was "wrong". That I was a tank and should have VIT accessories...Needless to say I proved him wrong.

At any rate, to keep this from tl;dr

Thank you for showing me the way. This PLD has no problems now going apeshit with WAR on stuff and now I understand much more of the job. I look forward to smashing more stuffs with both!

Syn

Well that was quite a comical DD exp haha. Thx for checking out the guide. Warriors definitely tank differently than Paladins and unfortunately its a big misconception that both tanks tank in the same manor. I would never say prioritize Str over Vit because Vit is our main stat, however once the Vit threshold is reached... Its all about Str! haha

[Rona]

Hey Xeno,

How much more gear do you think I need before I'm reading to go full STR? http://xivdb.com/?wardrobe/12830/Current-Warrior

[Rbstr]

Hey Xeno,

How much more gear do you think I need before I'm reading to go full STR? http://xivdb.com/?wardrobe/12830/Current-Warrior

I think you could do it now. I mean if you're running into later coil turns maybe you have reservations. But, I don't think I started turn 6 with more than 8k hp at the time - Currently you have more HP than what I usually bring to t6 and t7. You'd be OK in everything else.

[Rona]

I think you could do it now. I mean if you're running into later coil turns maybe you have reservations. But, I don't think I started turn 6 with more than 8k hp at the time - Currently you have more HP than what I usually bring to t6 and t7. You'd be OK in everything else.

Awesome, thanks! Guess I get a book today and start working on my gear.

[Donjo]

I tank without Defiance all the time, but never tell my healers that haha XD. Its definitely possible to hold threat against dps not in tank stance a WAR actually has much more threat generation than a PLD. in addition to being a higher potency Butcher's Blocks also generates more aggro than Rage Of Halone. Anything PLD can do a WAR can and vice versa, both tanks are very balanced in this game. I think your numbers may be a tad off on the DPS of the tanks. PLD in sword oath actually does identical damage as WAR without defiance if played correctly. With the slashing debuff a pld is capable of slightly higher dps than war. However where the big difference lies in while tanking. A warrior will destroy a pld in terms of DPS while in tank stance. Warriors just have much more offensive abilities while tanking

Most of this is what I've gathered regarding the damage of the tanks as well. In Tank Stance, WAR wins hands down. In non-Tank stance, PLD wins if and only if a WAR is providing Storm's Eye. Whee.

But, enmity. I was under the impression that WAR and PLD were pretty equal here as well. If, say, both tanks were going ham on one enemy, the WAR would certainly come out ahead at first because of their superior burst while the PLD just goes 1-2-3 easy mode all day. Once the WAR loses that burst, they're alternating between Butcher's Block and one Storm constantly like a good little tank while the PLD just keeps pressing 1-2-3. Thus, unless Butcher's Block provides at least a clean 2 times more enmity potency than Halone, the PLD is currently generating threat more quickly. This would mean that in a theoretical equal gear situation, the PLD would hopefully have caught up to the WAR's threat... just before the WAR's next burst time. In fact, the PLD might actually steal the monster for a short time before that happens.

So, my conclusion there is that WAR threat is an ebb and flow with high burst and lower consistent threat outside of that burst(unless they only use the BB combo, which is probably a poor decision) while PLD threat has a higher consistent rate but weak burst.

[Rbstr]

The BB combo has more potency than the Halone combo. So, tank modes, a War will out DPS/Hate an indentical-gear Paly simply by BB combo-spaming without using any of the other tools.