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

[Makeda]

Yes I don't have an issue with being in defiance for the most part, it's just that by designing that aspect you're literally ignoring half your job and your brand new level 70 ability.

It reminds me of old school WoW.
Go into Prot stance when tanking, and Zerk when soloing.

This seems to have been the goal. Bad design? No - just not what you're used to.

[Duelle]

It reminds me of old school WoW.
Go into Prot stance when tanking, and Zerk when soloing.

This seems to have been the goal. Bad design? No - just not what you're used to.

Oh I remember back when we had to rely on Berserker Rage macros to avoid fears in raids. And Overpower being locked behind Battle Stance. And Recklessness being locked behind Berserker Stance. And Shield Wall and Shield Bash being locked behind Defensive Stance.

It's taken me back, to be honest. And I'm not bothered by it like some posters, since it's something I've already seen before. ^^

[vigioX-Sun]

The bad outweigh the good ..
War is garbage compare to the competition .

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Is defiance that stance that I might as well take off my hotbars?

Defiance? What's that? Last I checked the only stance WAR had was Deliverance.

[Tegernako]

Defiance? What's that? Last I checked the only stance WAR had was Deliverance.

lol

Must be nice living in your fantasy world where the things you say actually make any sense.

What's the point of your obvious exaggerations?

It reminds me of old school WoW.
Go into Prot stance when tanking, and Zerk when soloing.

This seems to have been the goal. Bad design? No - just not what you're used to.

1. You don't know it was the goal.

2. When a fair amount of people call it clunky, stupid, the devs state that tuning will be incoming, and it's bad enough to the point where people literally aren't having fun with the class and it kills job utility, yeah people can call it bad design.

3. I can still think it's garbage. And XIV isn't WoW, it's not beholden to it. And I don't have to "get used to it" not to mention no amount of time will make me like how it is now.

4. Why couldn't you have just gotten used to HW style? bad design? No, just not what you're used to. See how dumb that logic is?

[Duelle]

1. You don't know it was the goal.

This boils down to seeing skills as situational vs the "skills have to be used all the time or they're worthless" mentality. You and others like you want to use all skills all the time. People like me, on the other hand, see that skills and abilities were split between stances that are context-sensitive (Deliverancecat form iz 4 fite, Defiancebear form iz 4 tnak). I'd actually want to ask Yoshida or the devs about this, though to your credit it's unlikely they'd "side" with the latter, as that would be a blatant admission that they gave WAR an incomplete system through all of ARR.

That being said, seeing my distaste for stance swaps through HW and then seeing SE implement the WAR changes as they have, I admit I felt a little bit vindicated.

2. When a fair amount of people call it clunky, stupid, the devs state that tuning will be incoming, and it's bad enough to the point where people literally aren't having fun with the class and it kills job utility, yeah people can call it bad design.

This could go either way. For all we know, they might make full-timing Defiance more worthwhile. They could also go the other direction by reducing the penalty for changing stances.

3. I can still think it's garbage.

And that's fine. Just like I think stance dancing as it was done in HW screamed of being unintended and done for the wrong reasons. We're all allowed our opinions, after all.

And XIV isn't WoW, it's not beholden to it.

FFXIV has taken a LOT of inspiration from WoW systems and design. Pre-HW PLD is basically a prot warrior with access to Cure and Stoneskin. BLM is basically a fire mage with three elements instead of one. SMN saw a lot of elements from Warlocks. WAR and DRK are partially the result of feral druid and blood death knights being tossed into a blender and distributed in two separate cups. There's nothing wrong in noting similarities, much like there's nothing wrong in wanting to learn from your competition.

4. Why couldn't you have just gotten used to HW style?

Speaking for myself, forsaking the core of the tank role for the sake of deepz makes absolutely no sense. Some people may have fallen in love with the big numbers or the greater number of button presses, but not all of us heed that siren's song.

[Mycow8me]

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)

Well your wrong, it saved me many times because it increased the hp recovery from innerbeast and storms path that much more. Your only looking at it from an "instant" standpoint. It was a mitigation over time aspect which would help in the event that a healer goes down or healer MP is getting low or any other critical situation where you are trying to lessen the heals burden, or my other skills were on cooldown to weave HP till they are ready again. In fights like the Royal Mangerei for example, it could have been extremely useful due to the nature of the fight with constant DPS output on tanks. Not every encounter with the skill is the same. I seem to disagree with you. Strongly feel warriors need their HP weave skill back.

[whiskeybravo]

Strongly feel warriors need their HP weave skill back.

I don't disagree with that, I miss bloodbath as much as anyone, I just don't let the loss of a relatively minor ability ruin my perception of Defiance. The addition of Rampart and that other new +parry cd (can't remember the name) more than make up for the difference in mitigation. So, the place where missing bloodbath hurts the most is giant dungeon pulls. As a side note, I don't know why the devs got rid of it for tanks, but I'd be interested to see what the actual returns would be at level 70 with "proper" lv70 gear. It could've been that the returns were deemed insignificant. I mean when you are getting crit auto attacks from bosses in the 20k+ range, it just doesn't seem to me that bloodbath would really do all that much to help compared to straight damage reduction, particularly when our attack power is handcuffed such as it is (intended to be).

[Tegernako]

This boils down to seeing skills as situational vs the "skills have to be used all the time or they're worthless" mentality. You and others like you want to use all skills all the time. People like me, on the other hand, see that skills and abilities were split between stances that are context-sensitive (Deliverancecat form iz 4 fite, Defiancebear form iz 4 tnak). I'd actually want to ask Yoshida or the devs about this, though to your credit it's unlikely they'd "side" with the latter, as that would be a blatant admission that they gave WAR an incomplete system through all of ARR.

You're right, I do want to use all the skills the class has. I want to use Defiance and Deliverance and I want to be able to switch when it makes sense.

That being said, seeing my distaste for stance swaps through HW and then seeing SE implement the WAR changes as they have, I admit I felt a little bit vindicated. This could go either way. For all we know, they might make full-timing Defiance more worthwhile. They could also go the other direction by reducing the penalty for changing stances.

This would make sense if literally our entire job wasn't stance based unlike every other job in the entire game. I would argue they did not vindicate you because they doubled down on stance specific abilities and only messed up in the delivery.

There is literally no other explanation for having 10 abilities that are stance specific other then they wanted us to use both of them frequently. (Reinforced by our 70 ability being a stance specific non utility move) No other class in the game works the way we do.

And that's fine. Just like I think stance dancing as it was done in HW screamed of being unintended and done for the wrong reasons. We're all allowed our opinions, after all.

If that was the case, as I said earlier they would have removed abillites being stance specific. They didn't, they continued with stance specific moves. Upheaval even does more damage in defiance.

There's nothing wrong in noting similarities, much like there's nothing wrong in wanting to learn from your competition.

To be fair, I didn't say it was wrong nor did I ever say that XIV was unique. I said it wasn't beholden to WoW. A system might be similar or be inspired by WoW but that doesn't mean the final result has to follow the exact same path.

Speaking for myself, forsaking the core of the tank role for the sake of deepz makes absolutely no sense. Some people may have fallen in love with the big numbers or the greater number of button presses, but not all of us heed that siren's song.

I never once forsaked the core ideal of a tank no matter what stance I was in and I'm honestly offended that you would ever think that just because some people care about dps that you would assume we don't care about tanking. You can tank in defiance and get the job done, great. I can tank no matter the stance and get the job done. Literally no difference except one has more dps and takes more skill.

More then anything I idolized the literal definition of Maurader and Warrior SE gave us in lore.

You don't like this dps talk? Then tell SE to change the lore so that we are not beserkers wading in the middle of every fight destroying everything in our path while coming out with barely a scratch. Tell SE to remove Holy Spirit, Bloodspiller, royal authority, dark side for combos, fell cleave, goring blade, change Requiescat entirely, tell them to STOP giving WAR dps stance only abilities, and rework the entire class so half it's job abillites are not the dps stance, and to completely remove inner beast our level 70 showcase abillity from the game because that is dps only.

Because THEY decided to do that. You want to do nothing but spam inner beast? That's great. Other people don't and thankfully others agree with me.

The great thing about my way is that if you just want to only tank and don't care about DPS, that's something you can do. And others who want to do more have the choice to do more.

The problem with your way is that it only benefits you.

[whiskeybravo]

and honestly with tanks how they have been for the past 2 years it does make me wonder why we're only getting this much discussion now regardless of the fact that WAR was massively overtuned in 3.x but the community mostly just went "this is fine" instead of speaking up.

Nooo. This is an old discussion. I think eventually it was just accepted by virtue of no other options lol.

What I'd be interested to see - if PLD dps was a bit lower, would they be on here ranting and raving about how they need their dps buffed? Or would the community just have accepted it as such. What if War still had the highest DPS, even with all the clunkiness, I bet half the people on here giving their feedback wouldn't be saying a word.