Warrior MT at a disadvantage in O3S?

[Ekimmak]

*Better calculations than mine*

And there's the danger of using too many assumed numbers. Really should have just used one number, and done all the numbers from there. But I didn't, causing some incorrect comparisons.

It's kind of hard for me to tell the exact numbers, because there's an unlisted Vit buff in parties, and I use food.

And it's really embarrassing to forget the actual number raised by Defiance.

[Reynhart]

And it's really embarrassing to forget the actual number raised by Defiance.

It's Defiance fault with its +25% max HP but +20% healing received

[MahoSenshi]

We (DRK MT + PLD OT) don't swap. I voke+Shirk on CD and throw Intervention on htim for each Critical Hit. No problems thus far.

[BluexBird]

I once was in a party with a Paladin that wanted to switch during each Panel Swap. When I asked why, he said "Awareness won't be up before the next Critical Hit!" Implying Awareness is the only way to mitigate Critical Hit. It's not. It's still gonna hurt, even if you only use Awareness. You really just need 1 cooldown for it, but to make it easier on the healers I always save Raw Intuition + Awareness for the first one, and Holmgang the next. It lines up pretty perfectly.

So really, I don't get where people come from whenever they feel like tank swapping during the fight. It's not a bad strategy or anything. It's just completely unnecessary, since as someone pointed out, if you're not the main tank, you're gonna have to deal with White Flame, Dragon, and Apanda - the latter requiring 2-3 cooldowns if you don't want to take chances.

As for this thread, I thought this was going to be about how Warriors have to either blow a sub-optimal Inner Release combo at the start of the fight, hold on to it until after Spellblade Holy, or just risk doing their best opener and hope they don't get stunned. This is ridiculous and pathetic. Especially since regardless of what option you go with here, the next Inner Release will be up at a very inconvenient time.

But if you're trying to say Warriors have a disadvantage tanking here, I really don't see it. They can Holmgang every other Critical Hit, which is just GODLY! And when you aren't tanking, picking up the spawns is easy. Oh and BTW, you don't need Inner Beast for White Flame. Just one cooldown (I go with Rampart) for the first hit, and then Holmgang a bit after White Wind. This will allow your healers to just focus on DPS and only have to worry about getting you back after it's dead. To be honest, you don't even NEED a cooldown here once your HP is high enough. Just make sure you're at full health.

[aleph_null]

We (DRK MT + PLD OT) don't swap. I voke+Shirk on CD and throw Intervention on htim for each Critical Hit. No problems thus far.

Instead of throwing intervention you should just do cover + awareness + sheltron, since cover is essentially a free short rampart. That'd allow the MT to use the remaining cds for mitigating auto attacks, and you lose essentially nothing since you won't need awareness for adds.

snip

Other than the first inner release zerk I don't remember having much trouble with o3s. Second zerk is after first playing field, third zerk is during white flame add, I just move the boss to the edge and move back to mid while dodging blizz, to get embolden. You get no trick atk since it's on the add but ypu should at most lose one onslaught during this inner release zerk. Fourth zerk is during dragon add, fifth one is after book phase transition, near the oink after first book drop, no uptime loss there either. Sixth zerk is shortly before the playing field, this might have to be clipped early depending on mechanic. Seventh is shortly after the first jump in the last phase, I don't remember if there's risk of interruption by spellblade holy, since I never had a clean kill past this point lol. A bit disappointing that inner release won't align with the ninja phase for aoe padding though.

[Shinkyo]

YFor offtanking against adds, it's Vengeance + Inner beast against White Flame, Rampart + Inner Beast against Dragon, Vengeance + RI against Apanda, and I've reached the ninja+iron giant adds so few times I don't know what I'd normally do.

Don't go saying you use IB on this forum! you're just asking to be beaten up with a noob stick...

[Lyth]

[...]

The reason why you might be running into issues with the second waltz in this phase is because the OT is probably the healer's focus at that point. There's a pummel from the Apanda after the first auto for 25-35k, followed shortly by the damage from Folio, followed by a second pummel shortly after the Squelch, followed by a Dimensional Wave. A lot of this happens within the span of about a 10-15 second interval. If your healers are struggling here, then you need to do what you can to support them by minimising the healing load on yourself while this is happening.

If your concern is a follow up crit auto when the waltz cast finishes (there shouldn't be any outgoing damage while she is cast locked) then an easy work around is to have Awareness running. Folio hits about 19 seconds before the next Critical Hit, and Awareness has a 25 second duration. I suspect that you can cover this entire section if you activate it just as you're running out from Magic Hammer, although you may need to play with the timing a bit. You could probably fit in an early Rampart and/or Raw Intuition as well while this is running, if you want to pair these with Awareness for the tankbuster that follows Dimensional Wave, although the timing is slightly tighter than it is for Awareness.

You have a bigger surplus of cooldowns on this fight than the other two tanks, so there are multiple ways that you can tackle this.

If your issue is the third waltz (holy spellblade + waltz), there's no outgoing damage outside of autos until the dimensional wave 10 seconds later, so it's really on your healers. You can heal yourself with Equilibrium and Thrill if you really want, though.

As for your more general questions about job balance, Folio bypasses all forms of mitigation, including TBN. The mitigation instead applies to any follow-up damage, as it would with Sheltron, Rampart, Raw Intuition, and so on.

You are correct in pointing out that a WAR with Defiance or Thrill of Battle active will take more damage from attacks that hit you for a fixed percentage of your HP. But it's also worth noting that these attacks ignore all forms of mitigation, and cannot kill you on their own. So just put up your mitigation after, not before.

Lastly - and in fairness, you've partially addressed this yourself earlier in the thread - why was this phrased as a job balance issue instead of "I need help with X"? One thing that I liked about HW was that everyone freely admitted that WAR was overpowered. So if you struggled with a mechanic, it was entirely on you. You certainly weren't going to have an easier time on another tank job.

In SB, it's become fashionable to describe WAR as underpowered and 'clunky'. Most of this had to do with the nerfs surrounding WAR's stance dancing and associated resource costs which were designed to bring it back into line with the other two tanks (i.e. stuff that everyone else had to deal with). These balance nerfs have all been reverted, as of 4.05, and WAR has been buffed some on top of that. Resource management is non-existent. The rotation is even more forgiving. DPS is once again at the top of the charts across all percentiles and skill levels. There is a surplus of mitigation cooldowns over every other tank. In short, you have a job that is even more versatile and even more accessible to the average player than its HW incarnation.

Not to detract from the advice and discussion of the issues that you brought up, but I think that it should have been phrased differently, to avoid contributing to the spread of misinformation surrounding the job.

[LegolasT]

A lot of people on here haven't even done the O3s yet and are talking about swaps!! There is NO SWAPS needed I the fight if you need a swap you have a poor tank sorry but that's the truth. you should be managing you cool down effectively enough to withstand the hits. On top of that the OT is to busy taking care of the adds that hit harder then the boss and will kill the OT easily if they don't have cool downs available. if you know the fight you know swapping basically shouldn't happen if your serious about progressing through the fight. shocking to see people on here talking about swaps even have a war talking about how great there class is and haven't even gotten the class to lvl 70. my advise get to the content FIRST then give advise or suggestions. To the guy that made the thread great knowledge its interesting with me playing as DRK and my static tank partner is War he usually mains the fight but we may switch it up.

[aleph_null]

Swapping/covering is not required but it allows the tanks to rotate awareness. Just because you can tank it alone doesn't mean it's optimal. Doing tank swaps/cover makes the healing easier and require less tank stance uptime, and in many cases (not just o3s) this results in higher raid dps. Optimization is not necessary to clear, but calling out those who do it makes you look dumb.

[DWolfwood]

If you're not using Holmgang as a CD while MT in O3S and O4S, you're playing the job entirely wrong.

WAR is easily the best MT for both these fights because of this. In O3S, WAR never needs to let go of the boss, but in O4S, obviously they do and should probably let a PLD tank it most the time and just eat busters when needed. Kinda hard to say that Neo Exdeath really even has a MT, but yeah. WAR should also be eating first and third dualcast lightnings for Exdeath with Holmgang, which frees up tons of CDs for passive fluff damage.