Periodic Warrior complaint thread episode 2

[Umbeliel]

If Warrior's DPS just boiled down to pressing fell cleave six times and tossing in an upheaval, we'd be seeing absurd margins in the top percentile of parses compared to the other two, as opposed to the very minute differences we're seeing. While the rotation is certainly daunting at first, it's not really the hard part about WAR; the largest issue I've encountered is timing and opportunity. Not only do you need to time your abilities to line up with inner release, but inner release itself has to be timed with the fight and the party in order to have as great a window as possible to fit in your burst rotation and maximize its damage.

Heck, I don't even think this is a bad thing, I LIKE having a tank that is challenging to play, but overcoming that barrier should see far greater rewards than what we're seeing.

Absolutely agreed. I don't know that it's actually a problem that our gameplay is, relatively, high risk high reward compared to the other tanks. Variation in gameplay and skill floors is fine and dandy, just that the payoff for what it does isn't enough- in terms of DPS or utility or anything really.

[aleph_null]

let's just agree to disagree, because tbh with you i don't care if you think it's not hard to do or if you think it doesn't need a change because you think it's not hard to do, i still want that change because for me overall WAR in 4.0 has been pretty disappointing.
and this thread is called periodic warrior complaint after all, this is place for people that don't like the current war and want it to be changed, so by arguing with others saying they don't need any change you're basically in a wrong place the whole time dude.

I want war to be changed, but not in terms of higher dps or easier rotation. If you think finding 20s safe window for berserk is hard I don't know how you can justify pld finding over 30s safe window being easier, not to mention that almost 12s of that window is spent half casting. How is eye-path-path harder than goring-royal-royal, how is 6x cleaves harder than 5x holy spirits, how is maxing gauge before berserk harder than maxing mp before requiescat? What I think war needs is some sort of party utilities that will result in net dps gain for the group, like pld's cover, intervention and to some extent veil.

If Warrior's DPS just boiled down to pressing fell cleave six times and tossing in an upheaval, we'd be seeing absurd margins in the top percentile of parses compared to the other two, as opposed to the very minute differences we're seeing. While the rotation is certainly daunting at first, it's not really the hard part about WAR; the largest issue I've encountered is timing and opportunity. Not only do you need to time your abilities to line up with inner release, but inner release itself has to be timed with the fight and the party in order to have as great a window as possible to fit in your burst rotation and maximize its damage.

Heck, I don't even think this is a bad thing, I LIKE having a tank that is challenging to play, but overcoming that barrier should see far greater rewards than what we're seeing.

If this was directed to me, please note that I was replying to someone saying war is twice as hard as pld (it's not) and should get 10-15% dps increase (which is broken af, pld weren't even 10% behind drk/war back in 3.x). Finding opportunities for your burst window is the same thing we've been doing in 3.x, and is the same thing even pld is doing right now. I don't think that's the issue with tank balance atm.

[whiskeybravo]

What I think war needs is some sort of party utilities that will result in net dps gain for the group, like pld's cover, intervention and to some extent veil.

I find myself apologizing too often to my co-tank (pld) say if he gets in a bind and misses or cd or something. "Sorry bro, let me help"

*Ccchhhhnnggg* *Ccchhhhnnggg* *Ccchhhhnnggg* *Ccchhhhnnggg*

Half-joking of course, but also half serious. He throws intervention out on me when I get an add or if I'm tanking on a swap, but I can't do a damn thing to help him or anyone else lol

[Soraki-Muppe]

After spending some time with WAR and getting more used to it these are my opinions, as in opinions not facts.
Unchained has one big problem and that is sharing a recast timer with IR, if they did not then this problem would be fixed.
Shake it off is getting a change in 4.1, still we have no idea what that change will be and considering that this thing made it into the game in the first place I have low expectations for this. Until the change WAR is running with only 3 new skills in this expansion.
IR, this skill turns us into a 1-trick pony so to say, that trick going by the name of fell cleave. IMHO this skill is a lazy way of providing a new "attack", instead of actually adding something new they let us spam an older skill over and over again.

Our ability to tank is fine, we have good mitigation with short recast making us able to easily plan out this part of the job.
On the other hand our party utility is none existing, If that is how SE want the job to be then they have to balance us in another way.

Moving our 20% damage increase from maim to eye changes nothing for WAR past level 50, it does however make for a huge dps nerf for lower level tanks, you know those levels when the only thing you have to keep threat is your tiny dps, no tank stance, no steel cyclone leaving you with nothing but overpower to keep aoe threat. With no way to regain tp as a WAR on these lower levels many will have tp problems, many will most likely also have threat problems and many might find this job horrible to play until lvl 30 when that tank stance come along. What I would like to see that I think would help with this is a new low level skill for WAR.
Perhaps call this skill Will of Steel and make it a skill that cost mp while giving tp, it would help lower level WAR with tp without making things unbalanced at max level, I mean is there seriously any WAR at max level that has tp problems?

[SyzzleSpark]

I find myself apologizing too often to my co-tank (pld) say if he gets in a bind and misses or cd or something. "Sorry bro, let me help"

*Ccchhhhnnggg* *Ccchhhhnnggg* *Ccchhhhnnggg* *Ccchhhhnnggg*

Half-joking of course, but also half serious. He throws intervention out on me when I get an add or if I'm tanking on a swap, but I can't do a damn thing to help him or anyone else lol

Those ccchhhnnnggg's in a way are a kind of utility. WAR can make adds melt like no other tank can, and contribute very well to raid-burst phases or quiet periods where there aren't mechanics. This was true in HW too. High personal DPS does count. Not saying WAR's couldn't be higher than it is, but don't underestimate it. It'll always be valuable, whereas those Interventions/Covers/etc. will depreciate over time with gear/experience.

[Kacho_Nacho]

*snip* Moving our 20% damage increase from maim to eye changes nothing for WAR past level 50, it does however make for a huge dps nerf for lower level tanks, you know those levels when the only thing you have to keep threat is your tiny dps, no tank stance, no steel cyclone leaving you with nothing but overpower to keep aoe threat. With no way to regain tp as a WAR on these lower levels many will have tp problems, many will most likely also have threat problems and many might find this job horrible to play until lvl 30 when that tank stance come along.

Very good post! I cannot comment on the raiding stuff like a grown-up warrior, but, I can absolutely say tanking as a low level warrior in SB is one of the most frustrating things in the game.

It's why I have one warrior among all my characters and she's only level 30. From the perspective of this bush league baby warrior, the job needs more threat. Either, buff the threat of our aggro generating combo or give us Flash back. It's no fun having mobs run willy-nilly because the dps are doing what they should be doing but you can't hold the threat.

And don't tell me to "Git Gud" either. I tank perfectly fine on my paladin. Switch to my warrior and I'm sweating bullets from the get go. That needs to change.

[Lyth]

...

In HW's combo system, I saw a lot of WAR players with 50% slashing debuff uptime, which is absolutely horrendous for both the player and their team. Personally, I would have moved it to Heavy Swing.

Between the effect swap on Maim and SE, the increase in SE's buff duration to 30 seconds instead of 20, and the shift in focus away from Butcher's Block, I'm seeing even average WAR players achieving much higher buff uptimes. Which makes sense, because there's no point even looking at improving your Berserk usage if you keep dropping your basic buffs. Overall, it was a pretty smart change.

Actually, if you look at most of the SB changes, be it to your damage buffs, to Berserk, or in unsyncing your mitigation moves (like IR and Vengeance) from your Berserk rotation, the job has become significantly more forgiving since HW. Which was kind of what the devs said they were going for with the job overhauls.

I don't really think that there is a good solution for improving the low levelling experience (nor does it seem to be a dev focus), but it's also designed in a lot of cases so that you don't actually need a competent tank. As long as it gets a beginning player thinking about how the actions connect together, it shouldn't be too much of an issue. You could add some kind of a low level "echo" bonus to boost passive MP/TP regeneration, but you don't want players to practice using an action that is unavailable at max level content.

[Felorr]

and this thread is called periodic warrior complaint after all, this is place for people that don't like the current war and want it to be changed, so by arguing with others saying they don't need any change you're basically in a wrong place the whole time dude.

So this is the WAR safe space to "theorycraft" overpowered fixes to the job? And many people disagreeing with other's ideas aren't saying warrior needs NO change, just trying to bring these suggestions back down to Earth.

[Felorr]

WAR can make adds melt like no other tank can, and contribute very well to raid-burst phases or quiet periods where there aren't mechanics.

Sure. But only every 60 seconds/120 seconds on the dot.

[Brannigan]

Moving our 20% damage increase from maim to eye changes nothing for WAR past level 50

It was probably to prevent warriors in a party with a Samurai or Ninja from just doing Storm's Path combos exclusively (except when at 90 gauge I guess). It does screw up low levels though. They should probably move SE down.