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

[whiskeybravo]

Well some people have lower standards.

Clearly. When you can no longer make an argument and have to resort to insults, the standards are getting quite low.

And here I was being a fan of your eloquently written feedback thread.

[Mycow8me]

I.E., aggressive tanking.

It's fairly obvious that SE intended to decrease tank damage output. From the locking of accessories to removal of abilities like Internal Release to the changing of the damage formula itself. The addition of a "cost" for swapping stances is being perceived as punishment, but in reality it's congruent with the additional changes they made.

Additionally, the fact remains that it's possible to swap stances for no cost. That hasn't stopped anyone from complaining about it. Why is that?

You can call it whatever you want, that doesn't change the fact that some people enjoyed it and now its gone or that some people are not satisfied with defiance in comparison to its deliverance counterpart. Ask me if I'd rather Main tank or Off tank and I'll tell you off tank every time cause I don't feel as though I could do nearly as well as a paladin in that slot with the current tanks. Our off tank dps output kit is leaps and bounds better than our current main tank kit. Since off tank is a glorified dps in most fights other than critical situations or mechanics, Deliverance is the way to go currently for me so I don't have to switch stances very often if at all to minimize backlash of beastgauge loss. Is that a punishment? Maybe, maybe not but it will affect how I decide to play warrior, and that's just how it is. Different perception I suppose.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Those who mostly want the fluidity back are generally advocates of aggressive tanking.

I was an advocate of aggressive tanking throughout ARR+HW. However I quit WAR partway through HW because the job had devolved to such a degree that ARR PLD felt infinitely more engaging to play, with minimal thought or consideration for planning ahead beyond 'Lets pop a defensive buff where it would be completely useless except it arbitrarily gives a free stack!' HW WAR is one I'm glad to see go.

[whiskeybravo]

You can call it whatever you want, that doesn't change the fact that some people enjoyed it and now its gone or that some people are not satisfied with defiance in comparison to its deliverance counterpart. Ask me if I'd rather Main tank or Off tank and I'll tell you off tank every time cause I don't feel as though I could do nearly as well as a paladin in that slot with the current tanks. Our off tank dps output kit is leaps and bounds better than our current main tank kit. Since off tank is a glorified dps in most fights other than critical situations or mechanics, Deliverance is the way to go currently for me so I don't have to switch stances very often if at all to minimize backlash of beastgauge loss. Is that a punishment? Maybe, maybe not but it will affect how I decide to play warrior, and that's just how it is. Different perception I suppose.

I don't disagree with you there. Every 8-man I enter I start out deliverance, and nearly half of them I've ended up MT because the pld died at some point. Dead serious lol. So you should definitely feel confident you can do as well as a paladin in that slot (at least for now)

I do have to disagree slightly on the kits though. I mean, Defiance itself is an old kit. Outside of a few adjustments here and there it's been basically the same since 2.0 launch. Deliverance is the shiny, (fairly) new hotrod. I think they made Defiance a lot better with beast gauge, as I mentioned in a prior comment you can get at least twice the IB/SC usage, the cost for unchained is restored in 1 gcd instead of 7 (or Infuriate). Is deliverance leaps and bounds better than our defiance kit? I mean, they're pretty much the exact same moves just added damage. And really, you don't get to benefit all that much from extra gauge building like you do in Defiance because it's very strict about maxing out berserk windows. Just from my experience I can't say that deliverance is better for OT than Defiance is for MT, they both feel really good individually. They just aren't working very well together at the moment.

[TheFanciestBard]

I think we really need to Shake this thread Off, since the OP feels a lot more like trolling than having an actual conversation.

What have I said that's trolling at all? I just wanted to have some positivity on this forum for a part of warrior I'm enjoying and feel was well done in the xpac.

[Tegernako]

Clearly. When you can no longer make an argument and have to resort to insults, the standards are getting quite low.

And here I was being a fan of your eloquently written feedback thread.

Well I was joking (add a smiley face to the end of my sentences and you'll see the context of the post change entirely)

If I actually didn't care for what you said, I'd have blocked you or something. There's a reason why I kept responding to you and it's because I liked arguing with you.

Apologies for the misunderstanding, I'm used to being able to tease people without using emotes to denote that I'm just joking around but those people know me well whereas I am a newcomer here.

[Duelle]

Stuff

I had a paragraph dedicated to the first part of your post. I'll sum it up by saying that we disagree on how we approach tanking. Might be that stances as I know them entirely rely on context-sensitive skills, and switching for the sake of using skills meant death (a pre-WoD druid would be insane to switch out of bear form just because they wanted to use Rake or cat form Mangle, for example; they'd also be dead within 3 seconds). Hence why I'm not bothered by Fel Cleave or Inner Release being inaccessible to me while tanking. Knowing they'll be there for me to use after the tank swap or when my target dies is enough for me.

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.

Except we're not berserkers. We're explicitly told that going berserk is a bad thing. Over and over. WAR tap into the inner beast, that much is true, but you're not biting your shield and running into the fray naked to swing until your body breaks down. The questline is about redirecting aggression towards a useful purpose (defending others), and not letting your emotions/rage/temper get the better of you.

As a side note, I've argued in the past that instead of drains or self heals, WAR's mitigation style should focused on ignoring damage (stoneskin effects) to show that the beast feels no pain. That would actually fit our WAR quite well.

Tell SE to remove Holy Spirit, Bloodspiller, royal authority, dark side for combos, fell cleave, goring blade, change Requiescat entirely

As I said in another thread, the skills that you mention are fillers and things that largely round out rotations and other systems. Bloodspiller is there as the single-target counterpart to Quietus, both of which exist to consume blood gauge (because without it you'd have new Delirium with its 2-minute cooldown). They could have given DRK defensive cooldowns that consumes gauge, but the devs chose to design the entire DRK mitigation system around TBN.

Requiescat is there because they need to give the PLD incentive to value MP restoration from Riot Blade/Sheltron. Goring Blade and Royal Authority are there to complete a PLD combo and to answer the complaints that all PLD had was Halone at lv50. Funnily enough, Holy Spirit generating 20 Oath gauge is an outright bribe to get tanking PLDs to stay in Shield Oath.

The reason we didn't get more enmity skills is because we're limited to the enmity combos, pull ranged move, and enmity AoE; adding anything there would require removing something we already have, at which point we gain nothing new. Defensive cooldowns we arguably have aplenty, and you don't want to give any tank too many cooldowns because that creates other issues. So what we're left with is damage skills and abilities to justify us getting new systems (like the new gauges everyone has received with SB).

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.

Personally, they should rebuild the whole class. I've said it in your thread about WAR, but if you design WAR around actual stance dancing to reach their max potential (as long as it's mathematically the same as a full-time Shield Oath PLD when tanking), I'd have no problems with it. I'd even encourage stances having a 2.5s cooldown and capping transferred gauge between stances at 75.

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.

Except that if your way proves to be mathematically better, then that's what will be expected of everyone, which is basically what happened in HW. WAR was able to inflate expected tank DPS, and as a result DRK and PLD tried to follow suit. Both discovered they couldn't do it as well because dropping stances also stopped combos, on top of being on the GCD and costing resources. Then I started seeing people claim PLD and DRK were flawed for things that are par for the course when it comes to stances.

As they say, shit rolls downhill.

[Tegernako]

Except we're not berserkers. We're explicitly told that going berserk is a bad thing. Over and over. WAR tap into the inner beast, that much is true, but you're not biting your shield and running into the fray naked to swing until your body breaks down. The questline is about redirecting aggression towards a useful purpose (defending others), and not letting your emotions/rage/temper get the better of you.

I think you're misunderstanding.

I'm talking about the playstyle of being aggressive and self healing and all that. Like in other games were the similar class is the one that jumps into the hordes of enemies with an axe and starts swinging. That's how I felt before and it's not how I feel now, I feel very passive. It's kind of hard to explain but they way they described being this presence on the battlefield destroying all before you while walking out with barely a scratch...it's just so...passive now.

Like I have a charge but I never charge into battle with it. I don't heal up from dealing damage that much anymore. I just don't feel fluid, I feel clunky and reactive rather then fluid and proactive.

As I said in another thread, the skills that you mention are fillers and things that largely round out rotations and other systems. Bloodspiller is there as the single-target counterpart to Quietus, both of which exist to consume blood gauge (because without it you'd have new Delirium with its 2-minute cooldown). They could have given DRK defensive cooldowns that consumes gauge, but the devs chose to design the entire DRK mitigation system around TBN.

That just proves me right on how much more punishing stance switching is to WAR though since none of those similar skills are "fillers" for WAR. The fact that the most crucial skill that DRK is literally designed around right now doesn't' even use the gauge (if it breaks, it actually gives gauge) and is further proof that DRK is less affected by stance switching since it can restore MP with a single combo (and DRK loses no gauge for switching or even turning of stances). PLD is literally the class least affected by stance switching so I'm not even going to go there.

Requiescat is there because they need to give the PLD incentive to value MP restoration from Riot Blade/Sheltron. Goring Blade and Royal Authority are there to complete a PLD combo and to answer the complaints that all PLD had was Halone at lv50. Funnily enough, Holy Spirit generating 20 Oath gauge is an outright bribe to get tanking PLDs to stay in Shield Oath.

I see what you are getting at and it's a good point but I don't think why they were added has much merit. It's how they actually work with the job right now that matters. And the fact is it's not stance specific therefore it's another advantage over the stance specific WAR that gives them more flexibility and freedom as opposed to the highly punishing and strict WAR.

Except that if your way proves to be mathematically better, then that's what will be expected of everyone, which is basically what happened in HW.

Everyone has a choice and lastly it was not expected of everyone. Even as an exaggeration to make a point it's just factually untrue. Someone parsed a raid I did a while back when I did it for the first time and I was very low on the totem pole of damage. Nobody cared. Nobody cared that this WAR wasn't in the top 10% of dps. We finished it and they said I did a great job despite them all being hardcore raiders that I never met again.

Sure some people act like it, but if you compare the number of people who voice that in game vs the number who never say a damn thing...it's not a good ratio.

Then I started seeing people claim PLD and DRK were flawed for things that are par for the course when it comes to stances.

Then you should know that reversing the situation wouldn't make things better. Which kind of goes in hand with you saying the class needs to be redesigned, which I disagree with. All WAR needs is some changes and removal of stance penalty.

[whiskeybravo]

I just don't feel fluid, I feel clunky and reactive rather then fluid and proactive.

I just want to point out there are slight contradictions in your claim here. Self-healing is a reactive playstyle - you don't heal first then take the damage - it's not proactive damage mitigation. It's been mentioned multiple times by players on both sides of the argument that with the penalties and Berkserk windows such as they are you really have to be planning ~5 gcds in advance - this would be considered a proactive playstyle. As for the clunkiness, I'm in general agreement that it's clunky if stuff starts going bad and you need to take over, but again this is a reactionary adaptation to the situation. However if you're able to plan advance tank/stance swap type stuff you are back to a proactive style to make that transition smooth, for example refreshing Eye, burning your cleaves or upheaval to dump gauge and prep a BB combo for a swap (HS (Defiance) > SS (voke) > BB).

It's clunky when you are forced to react to a situation, but it can be pretty smooth/fluid when you are able to properly prep

[Tegernako]

I just want to point out there are slight contradictions in your claim here. Self-healing is a reactive playstyle - you don't heal first then take the damage - it's not proactive damage mitigation.

No but it fits in the theme of a "berserker" archtype, you heal up as you deal damage you deal to others. That's part of the unstoppable juggernaut on the battlefield (aka berserker) stereotype commonly is in RPGs and such. Like Sion in League of Legends, lifesteal is a part of your sustain and what keeps you fighting.

I don't feel like that anymore. Honestly I feel like the self healing from Path may as well not even exist because BB is what made it really good.

A good example was today the healer died at 10% health on ala mhigo final boss.

If this was HW I would have gone "let's do this" and changed my rotation to be all about getting all the health I can because I KNEW I had a chance.

In SB, I went "crap" and knew that IB and SP would not be enough, I tried and spammed it as much as I could but I died anyways.

The point is, even if BB wouldn't have saved me, the reactions I had when the cards were on the table and we had one chance were completely differennt before I viewed it as a fun challenge, time to really show what this warrior is all about. Now it's just "well, do I just wipe now or try?"

It's hard to fully explain. It's a personal thing.

But that difference in how I react, it's critical to how I feel about warrior. More then damage, more then even utility. That awesome feeling I had was what I really loved about the class and it's completely gone now.

However if you're able to plan advance tank/stance swap type stuff you are back to a proactive style to make that transition smooth, for example refreshing Eye, burning your cleaves or upheaval to dump gauge and prep a BB combo for a swap (HS (Defiance) > SS (voke) > BB).

Yeah but I did the same thing in HW. If I was going to berserk or I was going to IB or I knew a move was coming or a swap of some kind. I knew what to do and reacted accordingly. It might mean saving stacks or a CD or applying a debuff/slash debuff.

I'm not any more proactive in SB, I just get punished more and so have to play a much stiffer and slower playstyle. To me using FC to "dump" gauge then swapping and doing 2-3 combos to build it back up is not smooth. Smooth is switching when I want, to adapt the situation on hand.

The former is just unnecessary work to accomplish what I did before. The latter is a fast, smooth, playstyle that rewards me for making full use of my entire suite of abilities because I'm not punished for trying to make full use of my job.

It's clunky when you are forced to react to a situation, but it can be pretty smooth/fluid when you are able to properly prep

But no other tank operates that way since they can use virtually every ability whenever they want. Yet none of them use the gauge as much as WAR. Why should we have to learn every fight better and "prep" when they can accomplish the same things as us whenever they want?