With all the negativity around war let's talk about the best part of 4.0!

[SpookyGhost]

WAR in Defiance or Deliverance is a pretty crazy MT. It's current CD suite is: Rampart, Vengeance, Thrill + Convo, Raw Intuition, and Holmgang. The amount on it's own isn't necessarily as important, but the fact that WAR has access to 2 90s CDs that both last 20s, 2 120s CDs, and the shortest recast immunity ability at 180s. It is, without a doubt, the most long-term durable tank especially in a solo tank situation. However it's biggest falling is that once it's put in the OT position it can do nothing to help the MT in terms of mitigation. Meanwhile, if we take a look at PLD/PLD it doesn't matter which one's MT or which one's OT - they both can offer Intervention and Cover to the other. On top of that they both provide group utility in Passage of Arms and Divine Veil. PLD/DRK similarly can help eachother, DRK offering BN and PLD offering all the stuff I just mentioned.

In a solo tank situation I'd say WAR is probably the best as it has the biggest mitigation suite and has extremely strong AOE damage. In a duo tank situation that required lots of swapping PLD/PLD or PLD/DRK would be better suited. In a situation ala A1S I'd say WAR/PLD is probably strongest, though there can be an argument made for WAR/DRK.

The safest bet to hitch on, imo, is either WAR/PLD or PLD/PLD - specifically for prog, once stuff is fully figured out it'll probably just come down to which is the highest DPS full stop which will likely be WAR/PLD or PLD/PLD, ironically (unless SAM/NIN aren't meta for speedkills, though I can't see that being possible lol).

Anyway all that aside, WAR is slightly more fun as MT now since they gave us a new CD to work with. Not much has realistically changed, though, as you still want to be in Deliverance 24/7. If you're an advocate of actually being in Defiance then IBs are always fun to time and I wish they were more relevant to the meta as I vastly prefer them over FC, but ah well.

[TheFanciestBard]

Who knew that ignoring half your class and only doing the exact same things over and over would make a role easier to play? Must be real hard to do two combos and click IB. WAR in MT is the least complicated tank in the entire game, you have exactly ZERO worries about timing anything beyond when to use IB. Deliverance even in SB requires far more thought.

It's freaking hilarious that supposedly the absolute best way you can think of to play WAR is by ignoring half the class and our brand new level 70 ability. Like I honestly struggle to think of a sentence that would adequately explain just how silly that idea is. In what world is ignoring half your job an indicator of anything good? Name ONE other class in the entire game that ignores their level 70 ability.

I knew someone would come making this kind of post. I have mained war since 2.0, I've stuck with this class through thick and thin. I love stance dancing, it's the primary reason I play this class. I hate that its being punished atm, I am completely in agreement with a number of points warriors raise here and I more than understand the fact that we have stance locked abilities that we cannot access if we're forced into one stance. That's the nature of stance based classes. My point here is that in 3.0 Defiance was BAD. Warrior was the squishiest tank and had mediocre levels of mitigation compared to pld. Furthermore you couldn't use any of your wrath abilities because doing so meant you had to either pop infuriate or be entirely sure you don't need any of the wrath moves. Unchained also costing us all our wrath stacks meant that we, yet again, had to sacrifice our defensive abilities to deal damage. This is no longer the case, this is a HUGE deal. We can actually use our abilities freely in defiance. That was not the case before.

Also, PLD feels just as invulnerable so that's a really bad argument to make as well and that's not even touching on the fact that WAR was even better in HW with damage mitigation with damage debuff, bloodbath, the cross self heal, and stronger heals from IB/Path.

Warrior has more defensive CDs that are reliable as pld (Since stuff like bulwark isn't something you can count on to stop the damage of stuff like Pull of Light), and effectively have shield oath on top of their massive health pool, meaning for damage that matters their effective HP is much higher than paladin. Not counting cross class stuff paladin has Sentinel and Passage of Arms. Warrior has Vengence, Raw Intuition, and Thrill. Since IB is more or less comparable to Shelltron we'll leave those out. Now, the obvious point is that Raw Intuition doesn't work on magic so it's situational but for things that effect both they have the same number.

Furthermore... Stuff like Bloodbath did nothing to stop spike damage, which is the only thing you're really worried about as an MT cause if you're dying to the 8-12k autos the boss is smacking you with your healers are complete garbage. Yes it helped smooth out AoE damage, yes it helped top you off as an OT, but those are not things that are relevant to Defiance in my opinion. People complaining about Bloodbath being lost probably primarily played War in 4 mans, where the loss is actually felt.

Deliverance even in SB requires far more thought.

Also your dig at FC to use onslaught...I can't even be bothered.

Just going to touch on these two directly as my final point. Deliverance is completely mindless. You spam path and keep up eye cause war has been resigned to the Fell Meme class. Using Onslaught delays a fell cleave by 1-2 GCDs minimum which means it's a huge dps loss unless you would spend more than 2 gcds getting to the target. Build stacks, smash fell cleave. Build stacks, smash fell cleave. You hit 1 combo ad nauseum until Eye is about to fall off then live the dream and hit the button 6 times. It's so boring. The most thought that goes into deliverance at the moment is "Oh, I'm at 80 gauge, I will now use butcher block instead of path as to not overfill" like give me a break lmao.

Defiance is now as good as Deliverance. That's the point of my post.

[Tegernako]

I wasn't aware using Unchained+Overpower into Deliverance for the entire fight constituted not ignoring Defiance. To be completely frank, Defiance was the least used tank stance even while MTing. People could easily ignore it thanks to their threat combo also being the higher overall dps. WAR MT in HW was mind numbing, even more so than PLD.

Except even you admitted people barely used BB.

My point here is that in 3.0 Defiance was BAD. Warrior was the squishiest tank and had mediocre levels of mitigation compared to pld. Furthermore you couldn't use any of your wrath abilities because doing so meant you had to either pop infuriate or be entirely sure you don't need any of the wrath moves. Unchained also costing us all our wrath stacks meant that we, yet again, had to sacrifice our defensive abilities to deal damage. This is no longer the case, this is a HUGE deal. We can actually use our abilities freely in defiance. That was not the case before.

LOL people argued WAR was to GOOD at mitigation in HW which was a big reason why it could tank so much better in deliverance.

It can't be both things.

Furthermore... Stuff like Bloodbath did nothing to stop spike damage, which is the only thing you're really worried about as an MT cause if you're dying to the 8-12k autos the boss is smacking you with your healers are complete garbage.

No amount of CD's can help against bad healers for any class.

Yes it helped smooth out AoE damage, yes it helped top you off as an OT, but those are not things that are relevant to Defiance in my opinion. People complaining about Bloodbath being lost probably primarily played War in 4 mans, where the loss is actually felt.

No.

Just going to touch on these two directly as my final point. Deliverance is completely mindless.

Both defiance and deliverance are mindless. It's just slightly harder in deliverance because you have to plan with inner beast.

You spam path and keep up eye cause war has been resigned to the Fell Meme class. Using Onslaught delays a fell cleave by 1-2 GCDs minimum which means it's a huge dps loss unless you would spend more than 2 gcds getting to the target.

Uh...yea we agree on that.

Build stacks, smash fell cleave. Build stacks, smash fell cleave. You hit 1 combo ad nauseum until Eye is about to fall off then live the dream and hit the button 6 times. It's so boring. The most thought that goes into deliverance at the moment is "Oh, I'm at 80 gauge, I will now use butcher block instead of path as to not overfill" like give me a break lmao.

I didn't say it was rocket science. I talked about this being a problem multiple times. I hate how the class plays now matter the stance. I just take offense to some making crap up about defiance being magically harder and more thoughtful, it's not. You just made that up.

Defiance is now as good as Deliverance. That's the point of my post.

Where did I ever disagree? You'd think I'm on reddit.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Except even you admitted people barely used BB.

As OT, not as MT. As MT BB was king because it generated extreme aggro, was the highest dps combo, and was a DPS gain. Even as OT people would still sneak in BB's here and there provided they wouldn't take hate, but as MT, when the person with threat is yourself? SE->BB all day every day.

[Mycow8me]

Be honest. How many times were you actually in Defiance with Bloodbath+Vengeance+OP Spam? It was better support for tanking in Deliverance. I mean, I miss seeing all those return heals as much as the next warrior, but lets be real, most warriors want to tank in Deliverance full time - regardless of any benefit from Defiance. Remember, Lord Warrior Xenosys himself said, "if you're tanking in Defiance you're doing it wrong"

You are only speaking in terms of garbage pulls. I'm talking in terms of main tanking a boss which is what defiance is about... Bloodbath was our HP weave between thrill and equilibrium cooldown. We lost it and our survivability is that much lower now. I dont care about the bloodbath+vengeance+OP spam, that was SE's shortsightedness on tanks with AOEs. Unchained could be changed to bloodrage and attach a regen affect to the next inner beast HP recovery for 20 seconds instead of what it currently is. There's lots of things SE could do but currently defiance is lacking.

Edit: And if you want me to "be honest" Main tanking on warrior isn't nearly as fun as off tanking because our toolkit for offtanking is that much stronger than our toolkit for maintanking due to its dps output... It's not even about bloodbath+vengeance+OP spam, its about making both our toolkits fun, intuitive, and serve their purpose and defiance as it stands is not all that intuitive or fun other than inner beast timing.

[TheFanciestBard]

I didn't say it was rocket science. I talked about this being a problem multiple times. I hate how the class plays now matter the stance. I just take offense to some making crap up about defiance being magically harder and more thoughtful, it's not. You just made that up.

I never said it was harder I said it was more dynamic, more engaging. Being able to freely use your defiance abilities does wonders to make it not feel like a stance where I'm relegated to just pressing weapon skills until a tank buster is coming. This makes it play in a way that's different from previous incarnations. Makes it more in-line with how Deliverance runs.

[whiskeybravo]

You are only speaking in terms of garbage pulls. I'm talking in terms of main tanking a boss which is what defiance is about... Bloodbath was our HP weave between thrill and equilibrium cooldown. We lost it and our survivability is that much lower now.

I'm sorry, but bloodbath could never save your ass main tanking a savage raid. It synergized naturally with vengeance and OP spam to provide some additional sustain for dungeons, and that's about it. You'd occasionally see some nice returns on crit Fell Cleaves, but that's not Defiance tanking. If you weren't specifically saving it for a huge pull then it was just used on cd or paired with berserk+internal release. Never as an actual damage reduction cooldown (cuz it wasn't)

Thank you for the honesty, though. High dps is fun, I always enjoyed pushing for the highest dps on my dragoon. For tanking, I find it most fun pulling a whole section in a dungeon and reducing the damage as much as possible, or seeing how much I can reduce a tankbuster down to. Shit, I got Titan HM in trial roulette the other day and still had fun IB'ing that tankbuster. So we all have our own opinions and that's fine

[testname]

I am very sorry I don't see any positive ... maybe that I can rush to target, thats all .... I .. I just can't enjoy it at all ...

[BluexBird]

I made a suggestion in another thread, to make it so that swapping between stances gave you buffs based on how much beast gauge you lost during the swap. So going from Defiance into Deliverance gave you a damage increase of 0.5% per beast gauge lost. So switching into Deliverance when you have 100 beast gauge would give you a 25% damage increase for X seconds. I say X because I dunno how much time would make this balanced.

On the other side of the scale, going into Deliverance from Defiance would give you a Bloodbath effect, making your next few attacks heal you for 1% per beast gauge point you lost. So at full Deliverance, swapping to Defiance would make your attacks heal for 50% of the damage. Again, for how long, I don't really know. It's just a concept.

I think this would make stance swapping more fun and bring about fun new ways to play Warrior. It would reward people for being in Defiance a bit more because they know that when they switch to Deliverance, they'll have a damage increase, and switching into Defiance with a high beast gauge will have more sustain.

[Tegernako]

As OT, not as MT. As MT BB was king because it generated extreme aggro, was the highest dps combo, and was a DPS gain. Even as OT people would still sneak in BB's here and there provided they wouldn't take hate, but as MT, when the person with threat is yourself? SE->BB all day every day.

yeah...so exactly what I said lol

I never said it was harder I said it was more dynamic, more engaging. Being able to freely use your defiance abilities does wonders to make it not feel like a stance where I'm relegated to just pressing weapon skills until a tank buster is coming. This makes it play in a way that's different from previous incarnations. Makes it more in-line with how Deliverance runs.

I'm not seeing it at all but this specific topic is really a personal opinion so it's hard to say that you are wrong I guess.