WAR Questions

[aisustrong]

SP is pretty important, and worth your GCDs to maintain 100% of the time. Especially in harder content like FCoB.

only time i dont mantain it is in content that people outgear significantly

[stoxastic]

The usage of Storm's Path as a skill is one of the more debated topics when it comes to WAR tanking, and it's the reason why WAR is probably one of the most complex jobs in the game. Some people swear by it and make sure to keep it up 100% of the time, others will only keep it up during progression raiding, and even then some tanks will only use it before hard hitting moves.

The reason for this is the tradeoffs that are present. You give up a good amount of potency by using Storm's Path combo (150 + 190 + 250 = 590) compared to Storm's Eye combo (610) and Butcher's Block combo (630). Ideally, you will want to keep up Storm's Eye combo full time, and in order to have full up-time on Storm's Path, you'll need to completely omit Butcher's Block. This is fine as OT, but you may experience enmity problems at MT. Even as OT, you are giving up a potential +40 potency by using Storm's Path rather than Butcher's Block. So is letting that Storm's Path debuff drop for a bit in order to get that 40 extra potency worth it? That's the question that all WARs should be asking themselves.

In the first phase in T13, I make sure to have Storm's Path up for the Megaflare and subsequent Flatten + Flare Breaths. I don't refresh it for the Earthshakers because I don't feel it's necessary and use Butcher's Block instead for the extra damage.

MTing as WAR has even more decisions. Now you are forced to use Butcher's Block at least some of the time, which means it's impossible to keep up both debuffs full time. What do you do? Do you prioritize Storm's Path or Storm's Eye? Maybe you have a NIN in your group and they can keep up Dancing Edge during these times, allowing you full ability to keep up Storm's Path full time.

In the first phase of T11, I will alternate between Storm's Path and Storm's Eye as to not rip hate from the MT so keeping up both debuffs is not a problem. However, I will need to start using Butcher's Block on the Weapons Node (Sphere) when it spawns in order to grab and keep enmity. Since the Sphere also deals a large amount of AoE damage, keeping up Storm's Path is a pretty good idea right here. So in this instance, the NIN will be sure to keep up Dancing Edge here in order to maximize the effectiveness of our DPS while also keeping up the 10% reduction of damage.

[nijian]

You make good points, Stoxatic, but I don't like to overcomplicate complicated things. I keep it as simple as possible.

OT = SP up all the time, and Eye up as much as possible. Fracture too, up as much as possible.
MT = Enmity Combo and SP combo only. Fracture is fine if TP is not an issue.

I do have a Ninja in my Static, so Eye is much less priority for me. When it comes to swap heavy fights, like T11, I opt for SP/SE combos as OT and not chancing pulling aggro back with BB combo. However, I suppose, if one is careful enough with enmity, it would be POSSIBLE to squeeze BB combos in, and get more enmity.

To me, it's a fundamental thing to keep Storms Path up 100% if possible on Progression and raid bosses. Other junk, like WoD/ST/CT or Dungeons, I don't usually bother with 100% uptime. Primals I try to keep it up as much as I can.

[Izsha]

Path always up for progression until the group knows it well and out gears the content. At that point you can use it like a defensive cooldown for the raid as needed. Also based on healers skill. My old scob group I eventually dropped path entirely in T8 (pre nin, and war solo tank) and just kept eye up. Then we lost our whm. Our sch changed to whm and we got a very green new sch. After 1 try it was obvious the healers needed help so back to path full time even though it was old hat to everyone else months in. Just gotta read the situation. It's powerful damage mitigation. Just judge when you need it just like dropping defiance, or saving CDs when you know your healers got yo back.

The flexibility to adapt is the most fun thing about war to me and the lack if that adaptability is also the reason I don't like playing pld.

[Blueskyy]

I meant in a more active way, like how pld can use cover and stone skin

Active way? It'll just make War a more complicated job than they already are. Stone skin can only cast one person at a time and have a long ass cast time and can be interrupted, cover only covers one person and only physical dmg. But SP on another hand mitigate 10% that acts like a debuff on boss which means the whole raid gets it just by comboing it on boss. Good pld will stone skin before some big attacks even if pld uses it, it's only for himself but i rarely sees any pld uses cover so PLD CD are more "selfish" def cd while Warrior have awesome raid utility making sure that you always want a WAR on team. PS. Before anyone flame me. Even tho PLD cd are "selfish" by no means it's less effective.

[Blueskyy]

The flexibility to adapt is the most fun thing about war to me and the lack if that adaptability is also the reason I don't like playing pld.

Looks like we have the same mind set xD. One of my raid friend mains PLD. He says quote "Whenever I play PLD I feel that it's every tanky and War looks like they take alot of dmg mainly because of HP as mitigation. But whenever i play WAR it very fun as you need to make decisions keeping your adrenaline going , i feel PLD offers close to no raid utility and is less fun than war because you don't have much choice to make other than combo 123 causing me to fall asleep while farming old contents."

[Donjo]

Well, the big problem with PLD is that many of its abilities are situational. If you have your perfect farm run, you really will just do 123 most of the time. However, things like Cover, Tempered Will, and Awareness all rapidly fluctuate from being life saving to literally useless depending on what's going on at a given moment. The real depth of PLD is using the fact that you're just doing 123 to be hyper aware of the battlefield and spot when your situational moves will actually be helpful. I think it's possible that between the tanks, a PLD was developed to be the "raid leader" more than the WAR was. That is, if you subscribe to the notion that Tanks are the natural leader(s) of a party

[AniCelestine]

Just a note I want to bring up with Dancing Edge vs Storm's Eye since some players spoke bout Ninja's using Dancing Edge earlier and throwing in BB combos themselves:

If I remember potencies right, Ninja's Dancing Edge is 260 potency whereas Aolian Edge is 320. So for ninja it's 670 potency vs 610 when for warrior it's 630 vs 610. Pretty sure warrior using only Storm's Eye + Path and Ninja not having to use Aolian Edge and ignoring Dancing Edge completely is much more dps raid wise than Ninja using Dancing Edge and Aolian Edge And warrior throwing in BB's. That's just my assumption with only looking at potencies in a scenario when warrior is OT, when warrior has to be MT of course Ninja uses Dancing Edge then. Haven't concluded any tests regarding this and currently on a break at work so couldn't make any to back my assumption up.

[SpookyGhost]

NIN shouldn't need to throw up DE with a WAR present, MT or OT. Sometimes there's situations where getting aggro on something that's freshly spawned takes priority over applying SE (in which case the NIN will want to start with DE and then the WAR applies SE from then on), but otherwise SE should be up 100% of the time.

Let's take a quick look at each combo and what it does:

HS -> SS -> BB: Aggro combo. Has extra enmity modifiers on the last two abilities used and will give you a massive amount of aggro, especially with buffs up.
HS -> Maim -> SE: Damage buff combo. Applies your 2 most important damaging buffs, Maim and SE. This allows for higher DPS, and therefore higher aggro generation.
HS -> Maim -> SP: Enemy damage debuff combo. Reduces damage output by the boss, very useful in progression content and before tank busters as a CD.

So, now that we know what each combo does let's work them into rotations.

SE -> BB: Highest damage/aggro generation possible. This is specifically used when SP isn't needed (aka farm content).
SE -> SP: Highest damage possible while keeping up SP. This is fantastic in progression content as it allows you to output high DPS and still maintain SP.
SP -> BB: Lower enmity generation than SE -> BB, lower damage than SE -> SP, but highest aggro generation while keeping up SP. Only useful in progression content where aggro is an issue.

I personally never use SP -> BB. It isn't horrible, it works as it's intended to work (aggro generation + SP), I just have never had a reason to use it. After a fully buffed SE -> BB -> SE opener I will either rotate SE -> BB or SE -> SP. If I'm ever losing aggro with the latter, I'll prioritize BB over SP for 1 rotation and then continue as normal. SP -> BB also forces the NIN to apply DE, which will lower their DPS.

[Donjo]

I personally never use SP -> BB. It isn't horrible, it works as it's intended to work (aggro generation + SP), I just have never had a reason to use it. After a fully buffed SE -> BB -> SE opener I will either rotate SE -> BB or SE -> SP. If I'm ever losing aggro with the latter, I'll prioritize BB over SP for 1 rotation and then continue as normal. SP -> BB also forces the NIN to apply DE, which will lower their DPS.

My raid group once tried keeping 100% uptime on Storm's Eye to allow the Ninja to use Aeolian Edge instead of Dancing Edge. What happened is that the Ninja ran out of TP terrifyingly quickly and ended up losing DPS overall... all because Aeolian Edge costs a mere 10 TP more than Dancing Edge.

Just something to keep in mind.