Warrior and paying for skills the other two use for free, among other thoughts

[aleph_null]

It just so happens that he is one of the top warriors in the entire game. He knows about tanking what a Ph.D. in physics would know about quantum mechanics.

Do you argue with a Ph.D. in physics about quantum mechanics with your B.A. in creative writing?

Except he can actually play the class to it's potential compared to 95%+ of all the warriors.

While Tovaras isn't as famous as Xeno he's definitely a really good war and he knows what he's talking about.

[FeliAiko]

No offence to Xeno, since he does make decent (albeit very long sometimes) guides and raid vids but he's like not World #1 WAR or anything to the point where his views are Word of God.

The issues people are finding with WAR are coming from those who also know how to play the job at a high level so to dismiss their collective views because you haven't seen Xeno making a video about it only makes you lot appear as stupid sheep.

[aqskerorokero]

Ah...you guys talking about that xeno guy? well, I firmly believe that Pld went in deep hell during HW is due HIS goddamn aggressive tanking video guide! If he express concern? deal with it!

[Liyonn]

But can we please get back on task again and have a MEANINGFUL discussion on Warrior's current problems? It's concept is an offensive oriented tank. But in it's 4.0 execution it absolutely flops at that. Please contribute instead of going off on tangents about how a specific player isn't opening his mouth.

[Fernosaur]

While I think the doomsaying is getting to a little extreme point from all parts of the forums, including tank, DPS and healers, (really, the only ones that I think have all the reason to cry and call themselves dead are WHMs), all the concerned WARs do have a point when they worry about WAR's lack of utility. They're going from the tank with the most -actually useful- utility from being the one that has the least utility, and that can be troublesome.

In a way, I understand the removal of Delirium, Halone and Storm's Path debuffs, since those (particularly Delirium and Path) amounted to what basically was a permanent Virus+Disable combo. Adding the old Reprisal to the mix was a combination that PLD simply had absolutely no answer to since Divine Veil had to be planned much like a healer barrier, and the long CD made it simply much less convenient than the permanent application of the other two. I guess they're trying to cement PLD's identity as the wall tank by only giving them the mitigation CDs, so I think it was a step in the right direction to take that particular approach.

However... leaving WAR with absolutely nothing to compete with Divine Veil, Passage and Blackest Night does seem like an imbalance :/. It didn't even have to be as powerful as the old Path, really, and a different kind of defensive utility, whether as part of a combo or in an oGCD, could have been a good answer. Ideas that I can think of are possibly sharing a portion of the Thrill of Battle flavor with the party (increasing and healing maximum HP), increasing Defense and Magic Defense (akin to Protect), or simply inflicting the boss with a minor damage down for 5 or 6 seconds, allowing WAR to chose not to take Reprisal, or take it to have two different raid-wide mitigation tools.

That said, I'm afraid if this was the case, DRK would need a similar tool or they would be the ones shunned from progression raiding, and the problem would boil back down to what the problem was in HW: the two tanks that deal the most DPS would be the ones taken for everything, since they'd all have more or less the same mitigation tools.

I personally think we have to see the mitigation requirements from the new raid tiers first. If PLD's raidwide mitigation is absolutely necessary, I think we'll have a very obvious balancing problem. If not, it will all boil down to personal DPS in the end anyways, since their single target mitigation skills (Intervention, Cover and Blackest Night) might come as unnecessary seeing the amount of mitigation AST and SCH can give, plus the choice of taking Apocatastasis and Palisade for DPS roles.

I say it's still a little bit too early to say if PLD will outDPS both DRK and WAR, at least I personally think PLD shouldn't, but I haven't done extensive maths to say so for sure. If that does happen to be the case, however, the situation is indeed worrying. Perhaps not as worrying as the AST vs WHM case, but worrying nonetheless.

[eagledorf]

I think the cost itself is reasonable given PLD gives up 300-516 potency to self-heal and WAR gives up nothing to do so. Every stance swap is also about a self-heal lost in addition to half their gauge.

The real concern with tank balance imo is DRK. The vulnerability up and lack of that kind of mechanic plus a general shortage of defensive buffs means either they're going to be way undertuned or overtuned depending on the contents and how much tank damage gets nerfed as a fraction of party damage.

[bounddreamer]

But can we please get back on task again and have a MEANINGFUL discussion on Warrior's current problems? It's concept is an offensive oriented tank. But in it's 4.0 execution it absolutely flops at that. Please contribute instead of going off on tangents about how a specific player isn't opening his mouth.

We don't have a basis for a meaningful discussion; you're making assumptions and declaring a job is dead on arrival before new content is even available for early access.

[FeliAiko]

He never said that WAR is DOA though. Maybe you should actually read the topic and see the points that's being raised. Or should we wait until Xeno makes a video about it first?

[YanDere]

I'll go over what you said in the original post and give you my thoughts on it.
I don't mean any offense, I'm just honouring this post as a prompt for an exchange of views.

Onslaught
You're right, right now there is no point in using Onslaught ever since the damage isn't worth the cost and we are very likely to have even less enmity issues than Heavensward to begin with.

Upheaval
Upheaval is, in my opinion, what makes the job not braindead easy compared to Heavensward. Upheaval is a better use for your gauge than Fell Cleave outside berserk, which makes you want to strategize around using it as close to on cooldown as possible while still entering zerk with 100 gauge.
If we were not punished for using it, we'd just drop Fell Cleave and use Upheaval 24/7. The only other possible case where I'd see it working well would be it having the exact same value per gauge point as Fell Cleave, but that'd be a bit simplistic and wouldn't make the job more interesting at all, it would just add one more button to press.

Shake it off
For what the game is now, it is almost useless outside of PvP, but who knows? Pretty much agree with you on this one, but can't say anything before savage Omega actually comes out.

Inner Release
Just a great ability that makes the job interesting, designed mainly to lengthen the rotation from 90s to 120s just like most job and raid buff rotations.

Warrior's party utility
There's two "stages" of raiding, if that makes sense: progress and farming.
During progress, Path was kinda cool I guess but not a needed thing, and not having it encourages the team to work better with their cooldowns instead of relying on an ace up their sleeve that's always available basically for free. Once farming starts, Path becomes pretty much useless since it starts giving diminishing returns when the whole fight is planned and known inside out.
Storm's Eye is still coming from warrior and it's even more reliable than ever, but now we're given the chance to experiment DRK PLD comps in a non-optimized environment where meta has no relevance at all.
While it is true that the job doesn't get anything in return for that "utility loss", as small a loss as it may be in truth, you must remember that in terms of aggro generation in the opener and cooldown availability warrior is still hands down the best by a mile: for that reason, warrior still does have a solid spot in any comp for increased raid damage due to better aggro and mitigation.
Why is WAR the best for opener aggro? Because butcher's block has slightly higher potency than eye and path, and is used in berserk in the opener, alongside Equilibrium, Thrill if not needed soon and several fell cleaves in zerk which just generate decent aggro from raw damage. Also, warrior doesn't need tank stance for any more than a single tomahawk to generate enough enmity for any raid comp, even in speedkills.
Why is WAR the best for cooldown availability? Holmgang is a 3min cooldown compared to 5min LD and 7min HG, and Thrill, Vengeance and Raw Intuition all have incredibly fast recast times. Also, Vengeance is Vengeance.
Thing is, mistakes shouldn't be taken into account because they're mistakes, and they're what you are learning to overcome in a fight, you don't want to put a band-aid on them to just recover while repeating them. Party utility is not what helps a team survive mistakes, it's what helps them synergise together to all deal the most damage while surviving.

Overall damage
Here, I just think you have really bad reasoning.
Warrior is still the offensive machine, and Berserk got a nice buff since you're effectively gaining one berserk cast every 2, that's +50% recast speed for -40% effectiveness. And Warrior is based on immediate bursts of damage so concentrating those bursts one more time every 3 minutes is even more value than just what the numbers show.
Also, you are comparing jobs through max potencies, which is just plain wrong: WAR has a 500 potency skill which is cast once every 12 seconds on average (10 times in 2 minutes), and that's just because out of berserk you'll be using Upheaval instead, so that's another ～3 Upheavals (300 potency) every 2 minutes.
Now, a special note about PLD: as the game is currently, PLD is indeed the highest potency per rotation so if the game were to be released as we've seen it PLD would indeed be the highest dps among tanks. It is unlikely that it will be like that or that it will stay like that for long, but that's what we have now. And yet, what I think is off here is not Warrior being weak, rather than PLD being a bit too high up on potencies.
Anyway, I don't see warrior being discarded for its "low damage" unless we're talking speedkills and PLD stays as it is now, in which case the meta will definitely be double PLD: my point is, it's not about warrior lacking something from the others, it's about PLD being in a weird spot atm. DRK is still at about the same damage as WAR like in Heavensward, not much to say about that.

Stance dancing
Agreed, being punished for stance dancing is stupid.
But I don't see it being as bad as you say, and here's why: if you have to change stance in a fight, it's a major fuckup from someone and your dps is not going to be good anyway, so there's no point in fretting over losing some dps. You can just spend your points with cleave and provoke>onslaught and swap to keep the boss while the other tank recovers. If you know that fight, you won't even need defiance at all for emergency.
Again, I do think halving your gauge to swap sucks, I'm just saying I don't think it will matter as much if you play well.

Conclusion
Your whole conclusion is based on a very sloppy idea of playing warrior, where you don't know when or if you will be changing stance and you still want to strategise over it.
Warrior hasn't been made more convoluted in my opinion, it was aboslutely braindead in Heavensward (fit 3 cleaves and fracture in zerk, use fracture and heavy swing at 5 stacks if you can, use as many zerks per fight as possible) and now it requires some planning to make the most out of Fell Cleave, Upheaval and 原初の解放 (Inner Release or whatever it's called in english).
From what we know now, I'm looking at a more entertaining job than ever, that will likely still be really good in raids even though there are some minor problems that could leave it somewhat hindered during very early progress, which is a really short phase anyway.
Let's all wait for release and see for ourselves, then we'll be able to get upset or happy about things.
お楽しみに～

[Steelbreeze]

No offence to Xeno, since he does make decent (albeit very long sometimes) guides and raid vids but he's like not World #1 WAR or anything to the point where his views are Word of God.

The issues people are finding with WAR are coming from those who also know how to play the job at a high level so to dismiss their collective views because you haven't seen Xeno making a video about it only makes you lot appear as stupid sheep.

It's pretty much the exact opposite of being a sheep. Reserving judgement for personal experience or experience of a known credible source is not being a sheep.