Beast Gauge Cost: Numbers

[SyzzleSpark]

I want to preface my comment by saying WAR needs and deserves a DPS buff and is doing entirely too little damage for how little utility it has.

Now that I've got that out of the way... holy banana donuts, when the WAR's see this thread and find out that their stance dancing penalty actually isn't the end of the world... the salt will corrode solid steel.

[eagledorf]

I agree that WAR needs some kind of a buff, I just want to point out that stance-dancing isn't necessarily one of them and especially want to get people to stop trashing Onslaught when it's not nearly as bad as it's made out to be.

I think the anger over the drop in gauge is more psychological than about balance. IR can't be used in Defiance so chances are good you'll shed gauge with IR off cooldown and popping IB right after turning Defiance requires shedding a lot of gauge so it feels bad going both ways, but that's a separate problem from balance. WAR's real problem with balance is their only utility is the slashing debuff and NIN/SAM, two of the most powerful DPS jobs in the game, both already bring that to a min-maxing group.

I'm afraid that SE has made a situation where they need to substantially rework some skill to get WAR right. Just buffing numbers is not going to cut it, it will either not be enough or WAR will be God-King of tanks again because DPS is so important in these scripted fights. It's been well over 2 years and they promised us balanced tanks in 4.0, I'd like for them to invest the resources and actually give WAR a support skill comparable to TBK or Intervention instead of a band-aid numbers tweak that is likely to just break something else. It sounds like I'm being unreasonable, but this is actually a much smaller fix than all the changes WAR got in 2.1 so they should be able to do it right.

I'd also like for them to give DRK/PLD the slashing debuff. That's their excuse for why WAR doesn't have other utility, but it's BS that WAR has this "utility" that becomes worthless as soon as you have a NIN or SAM in the party and that the other tanks can't access their full DPS potential without outside help as a result. Give WAR actual tank utility and then even the playing field on slashing debuff, stop making one an excuse not to do the other.

[Quor]

I want to preface my comment by saying WAR needs and deserves a DPS buff and is doing entirely too little damage for how little utility it has.

Now that I've got that out of the way... holy banana donuts, when the WAR's see this thread and find out that their stance dancing penalty actually isn't the end of the world... the salt will corrode solid steel.

One thing that drives me nuts is that stance swapping for PLD and DRK is not stance swapping for WAR, yet people seem to think it is. They are not an apples-to-apples comparison. DRK goes into "dps" stance by dropping Grit (no cost) and using Blood Weapon (oGCD) while PLD goes "dps" by spending a GCD on SwO. WAR goes "dps" by, ideally, dumping all gauge so they don't lose any in the swap, or else accepting that you're tossing half your gauge away and just dealing with it.

And that isn't fun. I can't think of another job where you are prevented from using job-specific abilities by virtue of trying to play your job. The only thing that comes to mind is a RDM who blows all their MP on Verraise, but that's not a job design problem for the RDM, that's a "your group sucks" problem. But back to one of my points; it isn't fun. Does it work? Yeah, sure, we can make it work. We can make it work pretty well. But it's less fun than it was in HW. On top of this whole "less fun" thing, what little group utility we had as WAR's was removed, or is so ubiquitous that there's no longer anything niche about it. PLD is swimming in group utility. DRK doesn't have as much as PLD, but TBN is a solid skill I've seen used to perform all kinds of beautiful clutch saves. So not only did WAR lose a lot of the fun factor in this xpac, instead of getting some neat utility to justify it, we just got Meme Cleave. Thanks to the nature of the penalty incurred upon us now, we are incentivized to spend as little time changing stances as possible. And thanks to the advent of Shirk, aggro management is a joke with a pair of tanks who know what they are doing (backed by some on-the-ball healers of course). This brings even more incentive to stay in Deliverance outside of some very specific situations like the initial pull or Susano sword phase.

Sadly, this is really only one half of the equation though. Sure, a PLD and a DRK have to blow a GCD to go into tank stance while a WAR doesn't, but one thing a lot of people fail to realize is that tank stances for PLD and DRK are essentially permanent defensive CD's. Here's an example:

PLD has 40k HP while in SwO. He needs to go into ShO for a buster (all his other CD's are down, it's been a rough run), so he blows a GCD, goes into ShO, and is now taking 20% less damage. He tanks the buster for 30k damage, but thanks to ShO it's reduced down to 24k.
DRK has 40k HP while out of Grit. He needs to go into Grit for a buster (again, all his other CD's are down, it's been a really rough run), so he blows a GCD, goes into Grit and is now taking 20% less damage. He tanks the buster for 30k damage, but thanks to Grit it's reduced down to 24k.
WAR has 40k HP while in Deliverance. He needs to go into Defiance for a buster (once again, rough fight, all other CD's are down), so he uses his oGCD stance swap and goes into Defiance, which raises his HP by 25%. He now has 50k hp, but unfortunately he does not "heal" for the 10k he gained, so he's sitting at 40k/50k. He tanks the buster for 30k. It's not reduced by anything, and because WAR doesn't heal when they enter Defiance, the extra HP granted by Defiance is useless. Hence, to make the most out of Defiance, you need to coordinate, either with your healers or by proper use of Equilibrium/Thirll of Battle (which aren't always up of course, especially on rough fights) in order to make Defiance "work" and be effective as a tank stance.

This drawback to Defiance is something WAR's have worked around since 2.0; we're used to it, we've learned how to deal with it, and the addition of Equilibrium in 3.0 was great as it gave a smart WAR the tools necessary to actually make an on-the-fly swap to Defiance work properly. But, again, the nature of 4.0 punishes stance swapping, and even if WAR doesn't "lose" as much potency as PLD or DRK, they also don't gain any of the benefits PLD and DRK gain. Once PLD is in SwO, or once a DRK hit's BW, they instantly gain bonuses. The passives on Deliverance and Defiance grow weaker the lower your gauge is, and if you're swapping at zero gauge (like you are incentivized to do) then a WAR gains nothing from the passive bonuses of either stance (save the pittling 5% dmg boost from Deliverance). Going from 100 gauge in Defiance to 50 in Deliverance cuts the crit boost you would be getting in half. Sure, a PLD loses a GCD going to SwO, but they only gain benefits from it, and don't have to "build up" anything to get the most out of their DPS stance.

[Poison_Rose]

and don't have to "build up" anything to get the most out of their DPS stance.

I think that's the crux of the issue for me. Having to rebuild my beast gauge after swapping to prepare for a damage phase isn't fun. Meanwhile on PLD I can simply swap stances, hit the cooldown when it's up and keep going as if nothing happened.

Maybe this is an issue with me not having an in-depth knowledge of the fight, but SE did say that they wanted to raise the skill floor.

[Felorr]

Hence, to make the most out of Defiance, you need to coordinate, either with your healers or by proper use of Equilibrium/Thirll of Battle (which aren't always up of course, especially on rough fights)

This makes a lot of sense and I hadn't thought of that situation (stance swapping and not immediately gaining part of the defensive capability [HP increase]).I know that in this thought experiment you're saying defensive CD's have already been used. However. A warrior in Deliverance is likely going to have Equilibrium ready at any time. They can use this after stance swapping.

And I'm referring to 8man static content. Not irrelevant 4-man content. It's possible in dungeons you would have used Equi to restore TP on trash pulls so your point stands there. But there's literally no point in discussing viability in 4man content.

[Quor]

This makes a lot of sense and I hadn't thought of that situation (stance swapping and not immediately gaining part of the defensive capability [HP increase]).I know that in this thought experiment you're saying defensive CD's have already been used. However. A warrior in Deliverance is likely going to have Equilibrium ready at any time. They can use this after stance swapping.

And I'm referring to 8man static content. Not irrelevant 4-man content. It's possible in dungeons you would have used Equi to restore TP on trash pulls so your point stands there. But there's literally no point in discussing viability in 4man content.

True, you probably will have Equilibrium ready, but that doesn't change the fact that WAR defensive stance only works with A.) a separate cooldown, and B.) using that cooldown means you can't use it later should the need arise (until it's ready of course).

And that's ok, cause it's a balance you have to walk, and it adds a level of choice and skill to the class. Can I trust my healers to get me to full in time so my defensive stance is actually defensive? If yes, then you can save your self-heal for a bad situation later on down the line. But maybe you can't trust them, or maybe you can but they're just busy dealing with other triage situations right now. So you blow your self-heal and go from there.

The point still remains however; WAR's have always had this "cost" when going defensive. The addition of Deliverance sorta closed the gap though, since damage for a DRK was drop Grit, push BW, then receive damage, while damage for a PLD took a GCD to get into SwO and then involved hitting FoF. With Deliverance, a WAR could swap to dps and be at full steam from the get go with what amounts to the press of a button. Now we're punished for doing this with a halving of our gauge (and subsequent reduction in power from our passive stance bonuses) with the additional hurdle of pushing back usage of job-defining abilities by anywhere from 1 to 5 GCD's. As I said before, this is patently unfun.

In fact, I think anything along the same lines is unfun. I don't like that, as my DRK, I can't cleverly use Blood Price to get extra MP to fool around with while DPSing. As a PLD I don't like losing half my gauge either, even if building it back up is comparatively easier than it is for WAR (barring the use of Infuriate anyway). As far as I'm concerned, the established penalties that have been in play since the advent of these classes were enough. DRK's had to be wise about managing mana in case they needed to Grit on the fly, not to mention blow a GCD, PLD had a similar situation but it affected both tank and dps stances, and WAR had a pain-free transition to DPS at the cost of needing a cooldown or team coordination to make their defensive stance work properly. I find all this stance change punishment to be unfun and counterintuitive.