Consolidating Warrior 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Duelle]

I guess I'll throw my hat in the ring, too.

- Allow Heavy Swing to generate gauge. This would help with fluidity in resource generation. Currently, gauge generation feels staggered and...jerky, for a lack of better words.

- Change Onslaught to cost no gauge. Change it so that you can't use it when right next to the mob, and allow it to generate 20 gauge. This way WAR has a gap-closer that gives it a head-start on resource generation at the beginning of a fight (likewise, it gets a small boost in generating gauge on fights with multiple targets or big telegraphs that require the tank to run away from the mob). Might also help alleviate the fact that Infuriate cannot be used out of combat. You lose an oGCD skill, but that can be dealt with in other ways.

- Unify Steel Cyclone and Decimate. The lv60 WAR ability should not be a copy of Steel Cyclone with higher potency, and all of Decimate's properties can be baked into Steel Cyclone upon getting Deliverance. In addition, this opens up a slot for a new lv60 ability, or allows for Decimate to be repurposed (like, say, into an oGCD skill that consumes gauge).

- Buff Shake It Off. I'm of the opinion that this skill should be the WAR's status removal tool. I'm tempted to suggest giving SIO a bonus for using it to remove status ailments. Could be something like a short-duration damage boost, a decrease in damage taken for a short time, or generating some gauge. The downside to this, though, is that it would encourage WARs to stand in stuff they're not supposed to.

Non-sequitur:

Re: Stances

My feelings on this are well-known, but I can give suggestions on the matter.

- Remove stance bonuses: This mostly applies to Defiance, which means WARs would lose the extra HP and extra healing received. If nothing else, this is to emphasize that stances are meant to determine how your other skills work rather than being about survivability.
- More skills that work differently between stances: This shouldn't be limited just to Inner Beast/Fell Cleave/Steel Cyclone/Decimate. The Equilibrium approach should be used for a lot more MRD/WAR skills (Berserk, Vengeance, Maim, and Storm's Path come to mind).
- Facilitate stance changes: If this is really the direction we need to go, then WAR needs a skill that does something and switches the stances. Use skill while in Defiance, mob receives some effect and you're now in Deliverance (and vice versa).
- Tie mitigation to combo bonuses: If we remove the extra HP and healing from Defiance, we need to put that mitigation back in through other means. I'd suggest combo bonuses when used in Defiance grant stuff like increased HP healed, reduces damage taken by a percentage, and so on.

In short, you can have your free stance swaps, but the core of how WAR plays would need what I consider major changes. And needless to say, numbers would have to be balanced around a PLD full-timing Shield Oath.

[Dizzy_Derp]

Noooohohoho. 6 fell cleave+berserk every minute would be absurd. The amount of dps increase this would give is way too high. On top of the fact that this also buffs the cd of Infuriate leaving to even more fell cleaves through the remaining minute and further increases the dps of war. War is far from 2.0 level of terrible but this kind of dps increase would just shove warrior right back into must have OT status and that's not something anyone actually wants.

War has no raid utility. Way more dps is exactly what it HAS to have to be wanted in any group. Even se said so themselves when talking about why sam dps is higher, it's because the only thing they have is slashing same as war. War is the sam of tanks that doesn't do anymore damage than the other way easier to play ones. That is the biggest problem war has right now.

[DWolfwood]

- Keep Stance penalty for now
- Upgrade Thrill of Battle to Thrill of War
- Address Unchained somehow

WAR needs utility more than anything.

[mcspamm]

As a WAR main since patch 2.45, I hate the current stance penalty for switching on Warrior.

Outside of unlucky / poor management of Inner Release, why is it possible to end up with a gauge value that is not a multiple of 10, given that WAR can only generate and spend gauge in increments of 10 (again ignoring Inner Release)?

i.e. Build gauge to 30, switch stances, and you now have 15 gauge. You can't spend that 5 gauge on anything, so you're effectively losing 20 gauge from that swap. If you then switch once more, it drops to 8(!), which might as well be zero as far as our gauge spenders are concerned.

Regardless of what other changes they make to Warrior from 4.05 onward, this issue needs to be addressed ASAP.

It's clunky, it's not fun, and it goes against their Stormblood mantra of simplifying core job mechanics.

Unpopular Opinion Time

Having thought about it a bit, I think I would be okay with WAR's stance change being on the GCD(!) and costing a fixed amount of TP (100?) rather than the current cost of halving our gauge. This would allow us to Inner Beast from Deliverance two GCDs out without losing any gauge. This would be a predictable and fixed cost, as with PLD and DRK stance changing. You could still switch stances between pulls in dungeons without much cost, similar to PLD and DRK, while still impacting you mid-pull. This would force WARs to think about when and how to use Equilibrium (do I use it to make up for the stance swap TP loss, or take the TP hit to regain health?). Finally, it would continue to dissuade WARs from repeatedly stance dancing.

While this would make stance dancing on WAR a bit clunky, I personally feel that the current iteration of the stance swapping penalty is even worse.

However, given that Shield Oath and Grit each give PLD and DRK an immediate defensive benefit unlike Defiance where the extra max HP granted needs to be healed to become relevant for mitigation, I would also be happy leaving WAR stance switching off the GCD, but incurring a larger TP penalty (150 TP per swap?).

[Rhyn]

I'll repost what I posted deep into another warrior thread a while back.

Onslaught (while really fun to use!) is just stupidly designed, and that stupid design influences everyone's ideas of how it should be balanced as well. Like brutal swing('s replacement) is now, it should have no place in any rotation. It is a very thematic reactionary movement ability that should be used to let the warrior hurl himself across the battlefield at will.


I would change it in the following way:
- No cost. A BG cost on a reactionary ability screws up the rotation and it's worthless in any serious content even if you did make up the immediate potency loss.
- Same(ish) cooldown.
- Make the damage miniscule, like 40. I'd say none, but the animation indicates at least some damage. The next point deals with this.
- A minimum range (6 yalms?). This prevents that 40 dmg from having any effect on your rotation, which the devs rather stupidly tried to solve with the BG cost. No one is going to take the time to run back and zoom in again for 40 potency. The range can be adjusted to insure it would always be a loss.

There you go, now the warrior has a thematic charge ability that is only used for movement instead of a useless ability just sitting on the hotbar annoying us. That's Shake It Off's job! Bonus, it can be used to charge INTO combat! And maybe even give back some of the Warrior feel you bungled up so badly in 4.0.

[mcspamm]

Inner Release: This skill is twofold, it’s exciting to get, but it also makes me angry. This skill is responsible for the “6 Fel Cleaves” thing, which is amazing but should NOT be the cornerstone of our DPS. If I was trying to balance this, I would make this skill a little different. Like many people suggested, I think it should no longer share a cooldown with Unchained. I think the effect needs to be different too. I would make it so that either the next Gauge spending attack recovers gauge equal to what it would have spent, instead of halves it, or that the next gauge spending attack doesn’t use gauge. Then add an HP recovery on attacks (like the old bloodbath) for the duration as well. Again, the goal here would be to make warriors DPS higher, but also rely less on the 6 fel cleave dream.

I definitely agree with you about Inner Release. Six Fell Cleaves are overrated, and I am beginning to find it overused and stale.

The reason I found Fell Cleave exciting throughout 3.x was because I couldn't use it all the time, so when I did drop three of them in berserk (roughly every ninety seconds), it felt good, it felt strong, and it felt meaningful.

Inner Release has stripped those feelings about Fell Cleave away for me. Between the new beast gauge and IR, WAR can now pump out ten berserked Fell Cleaves every two minutes, which severely diluted my enjoyment in using Fell Cleave.

The following has been said before, but I'm going to reiterate it again because it's so important.

Unchained and Inner Release should not share a recast timer.

Otherwise, you might as well have Inner Release replace Unchained entirely at level 70.

---

Now that that's out of the way, I had an idea for reworking Inner Release which would still work with its awesome animation.

While thinking of ways to rework Inner Release to remove the chore that is hexacleave, I was reminded of Mighty Strikes from FFXI, Warrior's two-hour ability that gave them 100% crit rate.

Inner Release
Increases critical hit rate to 100%.
Duration: 10s.
Recast: 120s. (180s with higher duration?)

Alternatively:

Inner Release
Increases direct hit rate to 100%.
Duration: 20s.
Recast: 120s.

This would likely be a nerf to WAR's burst AOE damage, as IR theoretically allows for six Decimates if needed.

It might just be me, but I personally haven't found a good fight or place to use hexadecimate yet, so I don't know if I would miss the ability to do so.

Also, while I haven't mathed out the potencies to see what the numbers would have to be on these alternate versions to not be a DPS loss, I think the concept is an interesting possible direction to investigate.

[Rhyn]

Keep these things in mind when you make your suggestions:

The stance swap cost is there to prevent you from going from tanking in defiance, directly into 6x fell cleaves and back. They designed themselves into a corner with this one. However it needs to be solved because the stance swap penalty feels like crap.

Infuriate outside of combat means you will always start every combat with 100 beast gauge. This is a hamfisted "fix" for their implementation of the new permanent gauge. Either come up with a solution better than 'allow it's use in combat' or find a new way to pull in raids. It isn't really a problem in normal content.

The objective of your suggestions should be to unclunk the warrior again, not try to balance the job in detail (potencies etc). Make the warrior fun/more warriory again before worrying about potencies, that's for the second pass and to be done with developers with spreadsheets. What isn't fun now that was fun before. This is how this ability could be more fun. This is something the warrior lacks now.

Things like "create a new skill, Shake it off sucks" is not gonna happen. Things need to keep their animations, sounds, icons etc because those things take a lot more team coordination than a coder tweaking some values or writing a new method. Find a way to change what we got.

[Rhyn]

Random thoughts about the new WAR.

- Stance swap penalty feels awful, like really bad, for anyone that was used to the fluid warrior of old. A flat cost is bad because to removes any skill from the equation and punishes the wrong end of the problem imo. You wanted to avoid the situation where you can switch from defiance to deliverance and unload the whole gauge, you applied this cost as a fix. Now you're punishing things like switching from deliverance to defiance and using IB because you need mitigation suddenly when the MT died. Keep the halving of the gauge, but never reduce to below 50. This prevents the tanking into hexacleave, but gives a lot of room for switching easily. OR just accept that 20 sec hexacleave while tanking is just fine and remove the penalty altogether (would feel the best). Potencies and BG costs can always be adjusted after you make WAR fun again.

- Staying in deliverance all the time is better now and it seems like that's what you want. But no one else wants that. Tanking is too easy because you have to make it easy enough to faceroll your way through content or bad tanks won't be able to progress. The only way we have to improve is to stance dance to optimize our dps. Now it's still possible, you have to take the swap cost into account, which is harder (good?) but it feels bad (real bad, for everyone not just the optimizers). So that option is only for the spreadsheet-crunching emotionless robots at the 99th percentile imo.

- Warrior should have a unique role. Let us be the dps tank at cost of utility (we have none now that NIN and SAM apply their own slashing debuff and DRG sucks causing the end to the piercing meta). This is our identity, don't homogenize the tanks so we're all the same with different skins because it's easier to balance for you. You are hurting your own game by taking the easy route. Balance it by giving more utility to the other tanks so they are better in other situations.

- Inner release and Unchained have VASTLY different power levels. When you make them share their cooldown, one of them might as well be removed from the game (or you hamfistedly prevent people from changing stance like you did). Unlink their cooldowns or make Unchained competitive. It isn't bad, it's just a bit dull and outshined by the giant hexacleave.

- Stuns etc that used to have potencies should remain potency-less. It was a good change. They should be used to stun, not be an oGCD in your rotation. However it's removal from the rotation should be compensated. There is a lot of feeling that WAR took a step back instead of forwards because we lost so much and our new stuff is lackluster.

- Hexacleave, which promising on paper, turns out to be a bad direction to take WAR. It changes our fluid think-on-your-feet stance dancing job into a plan-ahead job. The two minutes between the big payout is rigid and kinda 'meh' now. It also requires a 20 sec uninterrupted window to apply it as well and the punishment for having to do mechanics in that window is severe. At least we don't lose our buildup by phase transitions like the new DRG.

- Keep the 3 combos, they seem fine and each have their unique roles. Tank, buff, dps.

- Shake it off does nothing because it barely works on anything and esuna already exists and healers need to watch for debuffs for everyone else anyway. Make it do something worth pushing the button.

- Make Onslaught usable like I mentioned in a previous post. I'll quote it again for completeness.

Onslaught (while really fun to use!) is just stupidly designed, and that stupid design influences everyone's ideas of how it should be balanced as well. Like brutal swing('s replacement) is now, it should have no place in any rotation. It is a very thematic reactionary movement ability that should be used to let the warrior hurl himself across the battlefield at will.

I would change it in the following way:
- No cost. A BG cost on a reactionary ability screws up the rotation and it's worthless in any serious content even if you did make up the immediate potency loss.
- Same(ish) cooldown.
- Make the damage miniscule, like 40. I'd say none, but the animation indicates at least some damage. The next point deals with this.
- A minimum range (6 yalms?). This prevents that 40 dmg from having any effect on your rotation, which the devs rather stupidly tried to solve with the BG cost. No one is going to take the time to run back and zoom in again for 40 potency. The range can be adjusted to insure it would always be a loss.

There you go, now the warrior has a thematic charge ability that is only used for movement instead of a useless ability just sitting on the hotbar annoying us. That's Shake It Off's job! Bonus, it can be used to charge INTO combat! And maybe even give back some of the Warrior feel you bungled up so badly in 4.0.

[Soraki-Muppe]

About Onslaught.

Why should our gapcloser have a potency of 40 if it had no cost?
The reason why I ask is because DRK have one with a 30sec recast that has 200 in potency, so why should our that we gain at a higher level be worse?

[Rhyn]

Why should our gapcloser have a potency of 40 if it had no cost?
The reason why I ask is because DRK have one with a 30sec recast that has 200 in potency, so why should our that we gain at a higher level be worse?

Because making these abilities high enough potency to be part of a rotation (oGCD spam) is not good design. Then you will not have them when you need to use them as they're intended. It is the DRK ability that is poorly designed, not mine (assuming it's oGCD, I'm not familiar). *edit* Some quick googling reveals that Plunge is indeed used as oGCD spam so it also needs the minimum range treatment.

But you're right I guess, it is probably possible to make their potency decent when you have the minimum range to prevent making them a oGCD spam ability. If you make it too high you'll have people running out to charge back in again as part of their rotation though.