A detailed Reaction to Warrior in SB

[Duelle]

Some comments and replies to the OP's points:

So let's start off with tank role abilities and moves that were removed.

I'd take that a step further and say that SE went overboard with how they implemented role actions. Looking at the level spread of actions and how they were implemented, they seem to have had two goals: keep the cross-class system and re-use the slots that used to be the numerous traits classes and jobs used to have.

They did strip a bit much from the jobs as a result, but also created another set of false choices in an attempt to create diversity by giving you a limited number of role action slots and a greater number of role skills (thus keeping the mechanics of the cross-class system).

I expected role actions to behave more like skills naturally gained as you level. An example being that at, say, lv16, GLA, MRD and DRK all gained Provoke. No need to assign it. It just appears on your action bar. The last thing I expected or wanted was the cross-class interface with a different coat of paint.

Stance Dancing's removal cripples WAR more then any other class in the entire game.

Before I say more on this, full disclosure: the cries of "stance dancing is dead" are what got me to level WAR first instead of PLD. PLD has been my main since ARR, by the way.

My issue with the way WAR players push stance dancing is that there's literally no mechanical benefit to switching stances. This was also the case in HW, where the only thing that changed was the effects of Equilibrium (and WAR had so much self healing that Equi's Defiance effect was seen as worthless). It's not like you have extra utility, mobility or mechanics tied to switching between Defiance and Deliverance; only DPS increases, which do not fit into the above categories.

So if you want stance-dancing to become a thing for WAR, the first thing SE needs to do is design WAR around stance-dancing. Right now, what WAR has is mere counterpart abilities split between the stances. If you want a damage increase in Defiance, you have Unchained. If you want a damage increase in Deliverance, you have Inner Release. If you want a resource spender that hits harder than your weaponskills, you have Inner Beast in Defiance and Fel Cleave in Deliverance. You want AoE, you have Steel Cyclone in one and Decimate in the other. The only reason this looks like a problem is because the skills are not gained in proximity to each other, but instead over huge level gaps (one of the reasons why I believe Defiance needs to enter the game around lv10-15 and Deliverance should enter the game at lv30).

There's ways to make the practice worthwhile without involving numbers too much. For example, Onslaught could have a reduced cooldown but cost gauge when in Deliverance, but have threat bonuses and cost nothing when in Defiance. Storm's Path could deal higher damage when in Deliverance (to replace Butcher's Block), and instead convert 100% of damage dealt to HP when in Defiance. Fracture could come back as a skill that decreases damage dealt to you by the mob for X seconds in Defiance, but could instead act as a stun that deals damage in Deliverance.

If WAR were to be taken in this direction (in combination with Defiance losing the extra HP/healing received and WAR gaining a skill that switched you from one stance to the other), then I wouldn't have much of a problem with stance dancing, as the core of the gameplay is less "muh deepz" and more about tactical decisions involving skill effects in their respective stances. You can even remove the cooldown between the stances at that point and possibly create a maximum cap of gauge transferred between stances.

Continuing onwards, if WAR wants that "amazing" self heal in equilibrium it needs to be in defiance or it needs to switch to defiance.

This is basically SE's way of saying "stay/spend most of your time in Defiance while tanking if you want self-healing". I am personally fine with this.

New abilities. PLD got five new skills.

The short list:
Onslaught - I've said it before, this thing needs to generate 20 gauge, have a minimum distance of 10y to use, and cost no gauge. Gap-closers shouldn't be fillers between GCDs, but skills you reserve for closing gaps.
Upheaval - Good filler. No complaints here.
Shake it off - I'll admit this would be good in situations where the mob debuffs the WAR and the healers never set Esuna. Which almost never happens. The concept fits the WAR, but a "hit me to increase my damage/mitigation for x seconds" skill would have worked better.

Zero unique team utility.

100% agree. I don't know why they didn't make the PvP action Thrill of War into a raid cooldown for WAR. I also once suggested a skill called Intimidation that reduced damage dealt by the mob for 10s. Either or would have worked, IMO.

Lastly, the class is simply just not fun to play (IMO).

While I understand that you don't like the design approach, I don't really understand the teeth-gnashing I've been seeing over not using every skill all the time. It reminds me of the people who complained that Clemency is not used all day, every day by PLD back when it was introduced. It's almost on the same level as if a MNK were to complain about how they're not filling every GCD with old One Ilm Punch or Arm of the Destroyer.

[Umbeliel]

quip quip ...It reminds me of the people who complained that Clemency is not used all day, every day by PLD back when it was introduced. It's almost on the same level as if a MNK were to complain about how they're not filling every GCD with old One Ilm Punch or Arm of the Destroyer.

Hey so I'm not going to go into specific points there since there's a lot of back and forth to wrestle with, but I'd like to look at this part specifically.

XIV has very very low button bloat- I'd go further and say we actually learn too FEW skills. 30, give or take a few, is basically nothing both on a larger scale comparing it to other mmos and on a smaller scale of comparing XIV to... other Final Fantasy games. What that actually means is that every single skill we get is kind of a big deal. There is absolutely substance in the argument that One Ilm or Arm of the Destroyer should be more useful- along with most other classes with "useless" skills or traits; if it's useless it means it's taking up one of our very limited slots for a skill that COULD have been useful. There's no room for excessively situational skills in our current setup.

[Makeda]

It's a contradiction that people aren't able to decide that they dislike the WAR changes but people are able to tell me "the class is fine." So you've had enough time to determine WAR is fine and I'm "over exaggerating" but we haven't had enough time to determine WAR isn't fun or useful?

This is not a contradiction. It is different people having different opinions.

Basic English. Learn it.

Not commenting about other points, yet. Just don't let your own words weaken your own argument like that...

[Vallamaria]

This is not a contradiction. It is different people having different opinions.

The contradiction they're referring to is how some people are telling them that it hasn't been long enough yet to determine if WAR isn't fun or useful. Yet despite that at the same time it's somehow been long enough for those very same people to tell them that WAR is fine. I mean if those people want to claim it's currently fine then they shouldn't be making shitty contradictory arguments about how it supposedly hasn't been long enough yet to determine that it's not fine.

Also, just to further clarify since you misunderstood their intentions. They didn't seem to be directing their statements towards people who simply just have a different opinion. It seems they were directing it at the people who like to claim it's fine but at the same time dismiss their opinions about it not being fine by saying it hasn't been long enough yet.

[Soraki-Muppe]

Well put OP well put indeed.
I still love WAR, it is still my favorite job, but oh how I hate what SE have done to the job.
And ya, I remember what people said after the media tour when we first got to read the skill text "The build was 1mnt old!", okay and then the man himself Yoshi said "We are still working on changes and will until the release", still okay but then came SB and nothing, not a damn thing had changed and people said "get to max level"... well I did not need to get to max level to understand that Shake it off was useless, neither did I need that max level to understand that Onslaught was worse then the gap closer that DRK have (not saying they should touch that one but it is the only skill from another tank that we can compare ours with, and in comparison ours is kinda shit).
This mess is one that could have been avoided but SE chose to not avoid, instead of driving around the mountain of complains they chose to crash into it full speed. My reason for saying this is all the posts prior to SB that said that the cost of changing stance would make the class clunky, that Onslaught needed its cost removed and also that Shake it off was a useless skill, and well guess what, those things are still here just like during the media tour and they are just as clunky, overpriced and useless as people said... kinda makes me think Yoshi refused to change them out of spit because I see no other good reason for at least one of our new skills to even existing.
Oh and if anyone that get a chance to ask Yoshi questions should happen to read this please ask him this "What was the reasoning behind implementing Shake it off as it was at the launch of SB?".

[Minas-tepes]

I agree with OP, got my 3 tanks to lvl 70, i just never use my warrior, i have like no reason, i always switch to Paladin or Drk

[Shurrikhan]

This is not a contradiction. It is different people having different opinions.

Basic English. Learn it.

Not commenting about other points, yet. Just don't let your own words weaken your own argument like that...

Consider the warrant for a moment. The logic was that the class had not yet been playable at deep enough a level for people to dislike the changes to Warrior with a full understanding of said changes (i.e. to have a "fair" opinion). Why then would someone be perfectly able to like said changes under the exact same circumstance? It's the same warrant, yet it is used to deny the first and confirm the second, even when it would state that each is equally impossible?

Did you just see a single neglected comma or modal inflection and thereby neglect to read the sentences for their entire meaning? It was perfectly understandable.

XIV has very very low button bloat- I'd go further and say we actually learn too FEW skills. 30, give or take a few, is basically nothing both on a larger scale comparing it to other mmos...

You may like having 60 skill, however regularly or irregularly they may be used. That chalks up squarely to personal preference. But "very, very low" button bloat? Are we playing the same game? How can you say there's very little bloat and then point out examples of (two among the more used) situational tools as a problem. (Granted, that seems more an argument of arsenal than of button count.) What then of single actions that occur in multiple steps, keys, or button presses with zero additional availability of control? What of actions that are entirely negligible? What of actions that are precisely rotational (and thereby have no more control or nuance than a per-interval passive activation or acquisition)? Bloating is inefficiency of gameplay in terms of the key slots necessary to action it. While at a point a bloated arsenal may make controlling one's character deeply and interestingly is made unnecessarily complicated, to a negative effect upon gameplay, button bloat itself would include what you've referred to already, would it not? These are actions that do not warrant their space as well as they could or should. But in regards of hotbar space, these, while significant, are lesser culprits than simply, say, linear combos (e.g. Dragoon's) and those slots that ought to be consolidated in the same way as Fell Cleave and Inner Beast. In terms of that actual space, XIV remains quite bloated. The arsenal can and will expand. How it is actioned, however, could be a whole lot more tightly done.

[Shinkyo]

Also SE made the class dumber to play. Any skill ceiling it used to have is now gone.

While I agree WAR needs adjustments, I really don't think the job has no skill ceiling and is dumb to play.
It's really on the contrary more complex to play with your decision making shifted to gauge management and planned stance switch.
I actually really enjoy the gauge management aspect and the fact that your make up your rotation as you go depending on your gauge build up. Thing is, that aspect only truly reveals itself if you fully make use of the Infuriate trait and don't just sit on it for berserk windows.
WAR is more complex than it used to be but we get no reward from it...

[Tegernako]

This is an important point that doesn't seem to get brought up much. That is legitimately what Warriors identity is- or at least supposed to be. The IDEA is that our defensive capability is supposed to be tied directly to ouroffensive capability- which is why we had heavy lifesteal originally, and why IB is an offensive move, and... Bloodbath and... Everything. 3.0 moved away from this a little with deliverance, but the flowing nature of dancing meant that it was effectively the same. Given that warriors kit is built around having high HP instead of direct mitigation, the heals always were effectively the warrior equivalent of dark mind and other weaker but class specific CDs. You literally can not have a warrior not be overall poorly designed while actively removing the core concepts of its design and identity in the first place- hybridization of offense and defense. The self heals and stance dancing and high risk(relatively) high reward gameplay are absolutely essential, once you remove that it's just an entirely new class that we didn't sign up for.

This is a crucial concept because literally every single move that healed WAR except for equilibrium came from doing damage.

Bloodbath, Inner Beast, Storms Path were all self heals that rely on doing damage. Literally more then half the skills in our job are damage oriented and LOCKED in the dps stance. We have 14 job skills, 10 that are dependent on being in a particular stance, AND 9 OF THEM DO DAMAGE.

Our level 70 ability literally IS our raid utility move and it's dps stance only and is a move that ONLY EXISTS TO INFLICT DAMAGE.

They took away all of that in SB. It makes absolutely no sense. Listen to the description of the class and its skills. It's all about that fantasy of being this unstoppable force of destruction in the middle of a battle TAKING ON numerous foes and walking out with nary a scratch. That berserk concept doesn't even exist anymore. Everything you do now, is so slow and clunky. Even the amazing "six fell cleaves!" that people try to hype up to justify "WAR being perfectly fine!" takes so much damn time to set up.

Okay, WAR was OP in HW. Let's just, to keep things simple go with that statement. When you nerf something, taking away every single aspect that made it good doesn't leave you with a balanced or fun class. It leaves you with a bad one. And the absolute worst part is again, they nerfed all our utility and couldn't even keep the class fun AT THE VERY LEAST.

Six fell cleaves and it's not anywhere near as exciting as being able to fit in that fracture at the end of a berserk rotation in HW.

[Tegernako]

Since it doesn't take a genius to realize that making one single Tank excel at literally everything with no downsides and making the other 2 Tanks so outright inferior is a bad idea.

Which is why I supported and still support the changes PLD got in HW. Because everyone deserves a class that people find fun and to be useful.


Though the way some of them act now, especially the ones that downplay any issues with DRK and WAR simply because they fear being nerfed, I sometimes regret supporting them.

This is not a contradiction. It is different people having different opinions.

Basic English. Learn it.

Not commenting about other points, yet. Just don't let your own words weaken your own argument like that...

The contradiction they're referring to is how some people are telling them that it hasn't been long enough yet to determine if WAR isn't fun or useful. Yet despite that at the same time it's somehow been long enough for those very same people to tell them that WAR is fine. I mean if those people want to claim it's currently fine then they shouldn't be making shitty contradictory arguments about how it supposedly hasn't been long enough yet to determine that it's not fine.

Also, just to further clarify since you misunderstood their intentions. They didn't seem to be directing their statements towards people who simply just have a different opinion. It seems they were directing it at the people who like to claim it's fine but at the same time dismiss their opinions about it not being fine by saying it hasn't been long enough yet.

Consider the warrant for a moment. The logic was that the class had not yet been playable at deep enough a level for people to dislike the changes to Warrior with a full understanding of said changes (i.e. to have a "fair" opinion). Why then would someone be perfectly able to like said changes under the exact same circumstance? It's the same warrant, yet it is used to deny the first and confirm the second, even when it would state that each is equally impossible?

Did you just see a single neglected comma or modal inflection and thereby neglect to read the sentences for their entire meaning? It was perfectly understandable.

Owned. (also lol at them not responding)