Paladin too overpowered, nerf their damage output!

[Umbeliel]

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Because no one wants to play it of course. Warrior provides nothing unique compared to a Paladin except for the fact that it's not a Paladin. Warriors are -not- doing more dps than Paladins. It's very, very close. Basically identical.

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What a champ. This is more or less the thing.

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Mauvais said everything needed to be said for the most part, but I just want to underline that you're somehow ignoring the fact that slashing debuff exists which is the sole reason the Warrior dummy has more hp. The entire point you were trying to make is kind of invalidated by that one fact...

[ovIm]

Mauvais said everything needed to be said for the most part, but I just want to underline that you're somehow ignoring the fact that slashing debuff exists which is the sole reason the Warrior dummy has more hp. The entire point you were trying to make is kind of invalidated by that one fact...

And yet, you have to acknowledge that this is also means that the warriors dps performance, when completely isolated, is a bit better than the other tanks. Of course, this advantage disappears as soon as someone else supplies said debuff, allowing the other 2 tanks to "catch up". Square Enix also uses solo performance to "tune" a class.

In this case, in order to "tune" the tanks, Square would have to calculate with the slashing debuff always applied to the target, acknowledging that most raid groups propably will supply a different way to bring slashing resistance down into the mix.

[MauvaisOeil]

But here's the thing. It doesn't really matter whether you're talking about target dummy dps or actual raid encounters. Even if you look at the SSS dummies, the WAR one has the highest HP, and the DRK one has the least. It doesn't really matter what percentile you pick, optimised or not optimised. The overall results generally don't change, it's just the magnitude of the difference. It's not balanced.

I'm not really sure how people can make the subjective assertion that WAR has a more "difficult" rotation. Based on what? Even the best players are just starting to test out the limits of this iteration of the tank jobs. Nobody has really mastered any one job, let alone two or three. A lot of this mindset comes from people parroting Xeno's day three impressions of WAR and DRK in which he felt that WAR was unnecessarily penalized for stance dancing (all of this has since been reverted, and Unchained/IR are now free, making the resource costs even cheaper than they were in HW), and that DRK "felt" easier than it was before, and people have been memeing this back ever since. The closest thing that we have to a comparison of how forgiving these jobs are at the moment is the percentile data, which shows WAR at the top for all skill levels. There is no way that you can spin this that justifies giving WAR a further edge in dps over PLD and DRK.

The interplay between dps players isn't really relevant. We're talking about tank balance. The three tanks need to be balanced independently in dps, personal mitigation, raid mitigation, and self-sustain, and you can't really cross-compensate. DRK is running a systemic disadvantage in all of those areas for no real reward, and that's where a lot of frustration from the playerbase is coming from.

If you look at damage schools, the PLD is the least dependant of slashing debuff, because goring blade's dot and holy spirit won't be affected, which also means the slashing debuff will be less relevant on them (to what margin, I don't know).

I'm pretty sure I never said that war had a hardest DPS sequence, it's simply condensed over two 20s burst windows in a two minute fight time, and since everything is quite predictable in FF due to long GCD and lack of RNG mechanics, it feels more boring and less satisfying, and loosing a window of burst has a high consequence on overall DPS. The gauge thing could have been quite an achievement to manage but it's not, and that's why it's easily mathed as "do exactly thoses combos during zerk, and do extactly thoses outise to get the exact needed ressource for your next windowd".

Anyway there will allways be a first, and a last, and the meta really only matter for a very thin amount of the population. And whatever happens, there will be a meta and there will be brainless choice of group composition based on first kills or whatever.

[Umbeliel]

And yet, you have to acknowledge that this is also means that the warriors dps performance, when completely isolated, is a bit better than the other tanks. Of course, this advantage disappears as soon as someone else supplies said debuff, allowing the other 2 tanks to "catch up". Square Enix also uses solo performance to "tune" a class.

In this case, in order to "tune" the tanks, Square would have to calculate with the slashing debuff always applied to the target, acknowledging that most raid groups propably will supply a different way to bring slashing resistance down into the mix.

Absolutely granted. But being tuned in a vacuum doesn't really solve the issue of all contents not being in said vacuum.

[Thela]

Because no one wants to play it of course. Warrior provides nothing unique compared to a Paladin except for the fact that it's not a Paladin. Warriors are -not- doing more dps than Paladins. It's very, very close. Basically identical.

It's a fact that warriors are doing more dps than pld when you play both at the same level in identical gear. The difference may be small but it comes out in favor of war.

[Crater]

Because no one wants to play it of course. Warrior provides nothing unique compared to a Paladin except for the fact that it's not a Paladin. Warriors are -not- doing more dps than Paladins. It's very, very close. Basically identical.

At the 99th percentile, WAR is ahead of PLD by 2-4% on every current fight except v2s, where they pull even (due to the fact that that fight specifically is really good for PLD). 2-4% is not "basically identical", it's a solid advantage - it just isn't gamebreakingly overpowered the way that tank DPS was in Heavensward, where WAR was literally 15-20% or more ahead of PLD on a lot of fights. God willing, SE will never do anything quite that stupid with tank balance again, because it's an awful idea.

WAR also provides much, much, much better personal mitigation than PLD, and is generally regarded as the tank with the strongest and most versatile set of defensive abilities, which are also the easiest to use, with long durations and very little in the way of tight timing windows.

WAR is in a very good spot right now, and is absolutely well worth a party slot. In a situation where (for whatever reason, it's just a hypothetical) one tank slot is guaranteed to go to DRK, then you'd be better off with a WAR than a PLD in the other slot, except in cases where you can get exceptionally good mileage out of Divine Veil/Passage of Arms (basically, week-one v4s progression).

[SlayerOmega]

Last I heard. Xeno, one of the best tank players in the game believes that WAR actually has the best defensive CDs in the game. And I'm inclined to agree.

Lower % CDs with shorter CD are generally better then ones with higher % and longer CD which is where PLD sits.

So considering WAR has the slight CD advantage it makes sense that PLD has slighter higher dps.

I would say the only part of WAR that needs improvement is how its rotation works and its fun factor.

[Fernosaur]

So considering WAR has the slight CD advantage it makes sense that PLD has slighter higher dps.

Everything else you said is right, except for this part.

WAR still brings more personal DPS than PLD, with better, longer and more on-demand Defensive CDs. Sure, their burst windows are more punishing and harder to time, but if you're the kind of player that really worries about optimizing DPS to the point where this is important, then you also probably have the technical skill and knowledge to time these bursts properly, so this shouldn't really be an actual problem.

That's it, really.

DRK needs some attention, tho.

[Crater]

Sure, [WAR's] burst windows are more punishing and harder to time,

I don't even know if you can really say that that's true anymore. The only reason that WAR's burst was especially hard/punishing at 4.0's launch is because the 20 BG cost on Inner Release threw a wrench into the works. You needed to come into those Berserks with 20 more BG than you need to now (meaning that you can essentially account for an entire combo's worth of downtime for free), and you needed to start them at a specific point in your combo in order to generate the extra BG you needed during the IR/Berserk, which is no longer really a factor.

A lot of caterwauling about other parts of WAR DPS being punishing were basically due to the fact that people hadn't really done proper math on Onslaught. Now that we know a little better, it's actually an extremely forgiving class.

[SlayerOmega]

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I cant say that I exactly knew where things sat with tank dps. I was just more going off what other people were claiming and where dps between tanks used to sit.

Right or wrong, I was just going off worse case scenario as far as WAR was concerned. Because if I was wrong my point would still remain intact.