So how was your Tanking experience so far?

[Cessna]

I'll say this about warrior.

Warrior defensively got buffed to high hell. Out of all the tanks they have the most tank buster cooldowns of all tanks (5 tank buster cooldowns, other tanks have around 4) and have the most cooldown uptime of ALL tanks. I'd wouldn't be surpised if the new meta is warrior main tank and pld off tank as crazy as that sounds, we'll have to see how the meta shakes out. Warrior is no longer the go to off tank anymore particular.

In play when in defiance it used to be that you'd do a rotation and blow wrath stacks as soon as you got them and would rarely hold onto stacks if you used defiance at all. I'm happy that tank stand is seemingly more mandatory now. In terms of gauge you now want to save up wrath guage to use for tanking as needed such as steel cyclone to set up overpower or close the gap aggro on a far enemy or if you need a oh shit all my cooldowns are down cooldown (word full I know) triple inner beast. One thing I'm not happy about warrior losing is flash which was used as a set up move for overpower most of the time. I'd like it if steel cyclone was somewhat changed to compensate for this loss but eh. Honestly blood bath wasn't all that useful to me so I'm not so much lamenting its loss as other warriors since I raided alot and warriors were mostly off tanks then. So in short defiance is now less rotation based and now more variable. At least until the meta wizards speak their peace but they aren't ready yet so... we'll make do with these silly observations of us mere tanking mortals =p.

Deliverance on the other hand is another beast.

Internal release (lvl 70 skill) is awesome and 6 fell cleaving is as natural as triple fell cleaving. The changes to berserk not needing pacification macro is just magical and the up time on it means I can be MUCH MUCH more aggressive and not be as cautious holding it. The loss of fracture means our rotations are much more simple and fludic. Storms path changes are wonderful as well as storms eye if a bit awkward at first but this will disappear with experience. Finally warriors 3 rotations all have a purpose which was desperately needed for warrior. upheaval only seems to be useful on a berserk triple fell cleave since getting upheaval on a 6 fell cleave combo is about as hard as getting a 9 hit combo on warrior in 3.0

[Marxam]

Almost to 70 but atm WAR still feels clunky only due part to the fact that my main rotation now consists of spamming SP combo after I have SE buff and done the initial BB combo for aggro. In many ways it feels like DRK's rotation in 3.0, which I personally hated. The one one thing about war that I loved in 3.0 when doing combos was that I didn't feel like one was better than the other and they each have their own place in a rotation. In 4.0 SP combo is your main combo becuase it gives 30 gauge total as opposed to the 20 when doing the BB or SE combo. If there is only one thing they need to fix its that ALL combo finishers need to give 20 gauge. That's really the only thing I feel is holding back WAR. More gauge is more Fell Cleave/Inner Beast and more Fell Cleave/Inner Beast is more Infuriate and isn't that the what Yoshi P wanted players to get from playing WAR?

[Makeda]

I'm only 61 on each at the moment - but I made a point of tanking all my roulettes and the first dungeon with PLD and WAR so far...

And I actually found I liked the changes to WAR more than I liked the changes to PLD. But both are fun. I have yet to try DRK despite it being what I focused on for 3.x. Though I was late to Heavensward (rejoined the game about 3 months ago), so my DRK experience is all recent but ends right before 4.0 hit.

WAR I had left half leveled in Heavensward, so I took it from 54 to 61 over the last 2 days with roulettes and PotD and some Frontlines PvP (but PvP has an entirely different action bar so it's not relevant to this topic).

WAR's rotation feels more smoothed out and I generally know what I want to hit without looking at the action bar to see what is ready. I'm cycling either the enmity list or the damage list and then hitting the right things to build or use beast gauge. Between this I have so many defensive cooldowns I tend to just keep one of them going at any one moment.

It is so easy to build up beast gauge, that I pretty much have either Inner Beat or Steel Cyclone ready any time I want them, and in fact I have to remember to take advantage of using them and not just letting a charge up beast gauge sit there "just in case" because they are so easy to build back up...

The job has moved from super strong self healing to minor self healing. Enough so that I think in PLD with just Clemency - I have more self healing ready on demand. Storm's Path and Inner Beast are thus far not giving me back much in HP. Equilibrium has such a long cooldown it is basically a once per fight skill, likewise Thrill of Battle.

But despite these things... the playstyles of both the new WAR and PLD feel smooth now. But the WAR is just a little bit smoother.

[Dizzy_Derp]

Warrior feels pretty good. It feels like it has a smoother and less clunky playstyle. .

um have we been playing different classes? this post reminds me of those people who get paid to leave good reviews for buisnesses on yelp because its so vastly different from what i and the community at large are feeling. clunky IS the only word i can use to describe it now. they removed the extremely fluid playstyle and synergy of the class and turned it into this clunky as hell mess with the stupid l penalty of stance swapping and all the on the go math of min maxing your rotation as to not leave any effective potency on the table. im baffled by how anyone who played 3.0 war can possibly think this feels better.and they put the skill cap through the roof and the floor as low as possible. there will be over a 1000 dps difference between a good war and a bad war as it stands because its so easy to play sub optimally. top it off with the fact that it has the lowest party utility and nearly identical damage to drk and pld and there really is no place for warrior in a raid anymore.

[rjspencer4]

Currently have DRK at 69 and tanking was boring for a while. The blood gauge didn't serve much of a purpose until I learned Bloodspiller at 68. It definitely feels better now that the gauge isn't constantly sitting at full.

[Dizzy_Derp]

WAR 68 and I enjoy many of the new changes. The gauge feels more fluid than the stack system and it feels more priority based on your combos rather than a strict rotation.

there is an extremely static, strict and long rotation to maximize this class and you always have to be vigilant as to not for instance swap on anything other than 20, 40, 60, 80 or 100 as it halves to a value of 5 which is unusable and therefore you lose the effective potency of whatever skill you used prior. you also have to be aware that if you are in a situation that path would put you over the maximum 100 gauge that you should use eyesince itis higher potency and you gain no more effective potency by going past the 100. lots of little things that complicate the class now.

[Dauntess]

Terrible, removal of key abilities just to shove a job gauge down our throats is unnecessary. I keep hearing people talking about its all based off being lvl 70, in case you didn't notice, there's 69 other levels. SE makes a pretty big effort into making content/rewards for high level players to go back and do old content so players aren't left behind. In HW, I bet I did more pre-60 content than I did lvl 60. Helping FC members, friends, roulettes, etc. I tried going back and doing some low level content after 4.0 and it's cringeworthy running through it.

I don't know if I'll make it to 70, but even if I do, I'm probably gonna drop tanking and try DPSing. This update had the opposite affect intended on me and it sucks because another expansion is needed to fix the damage done.

[Dement]

there is an extremely static, strict and long rotation to maximize this class and you always have to be vigilant as to not for instance swap on anything other than 20, 40, 60, 80 or 100 as it halves to a value of 5 which is unusable and therefore you lose the effective potency of whatever skill you used prior. you also have to be aware that if you are in a situation that path would put you over the maximum 100 gauge that you should use eyesince itis higher potency and you gain no more effective potency by going past the 100. lots of little things that complicate the class now.

It's seemed to me to be trying to maintain eye, maximize paths and keep an eye on your aggro bars to determine if a Butcher's or a Cyclone are necessary. If I'm in path spam and I'm going to go over 100 then I'll use Upheaval or Inner Beast/Fell Cleave/Steel Cyclone so as not to waste gauge. I've been waiting until I hit 70 to spend a bunch of time working through rotations and trying to fully maximize though as I want all skills available before I spend that time. In regards to switch, unless something critical is happening (MT has gone down), I'll burn my gauge to sub 20 before changing stances. Between the 50 gauge moves and Upheaval, it's not difficult to get down to 20 or below very rapidly. Sure, I understand there's likely a very strict and long rotation to maximize the class but that rotation is going to change based on real time circumstances. I'm even now still getting used to the changes and I won't claim that it's better than 3.0 because 3.0 WAR was very well done. However, I find it different but no less enjoyable. It has been difficult getting used to changing many of the habits I'd cultivated as WAR over the years, though.

Don't get me wrong, I can certainly understand how many will find it clunky due to the stance penalty. I'd prefer if it were abolished too. However, working with what I've got, I definitely prefer the gauge system to having to very strictly build 5 stacks to utilize the gauge abilities and I simply find that level fluidity for those abilities more fun than the stack system.

[Launched]

Horrible. WAR took a huge step back in playability and lost all its utility in exchange for extremely small/irrelevant dps and mitigation increases.

[Kyrian12]

DRK was very fluid and smooth for me to play in 3.0. There were so many skill skills to use and so many things to consider. It was amazing. I absolutely loved tanking.

Come 4.0 and everything changes. DRK... it doesn't feel the same anymore. 4.0 took away some of the core skills in my rotation, stuff I liked using that gave me a welcome break from simply spamming the three (now two) combos. With the gameplay so simplified, tanking bosses just feels so boring and repetitive now in the 60s.

I'm still going to get my DRK to 70 and see how it plays. If I'm still bored I'll just tank whenever I absolutely have to and focus on BLM. It's an exaggeration to call DRK "unplayable," "useless" or "non-viable," though. I can still tank dungeons perfectly fine as DRK now that I've modified my playstyle to take the new changes into account. In my opinion, the biggest nerf was to the fun factor of playing the class. I can still tank content... it's just not as engaging and fun as it used to be.