These warrior changes are great

[Aana]

Nostalgia Lulz

Extra note for more nostalgia lulz:

If a pld with no CD was 'likely' to die right after a TB with tank stance on and no CD, then war was essentially that every time but worse lacking 20% mitigation and shield. War then needed more HP refilled than pld due to higher HP and no tank stance mitigation mitigation, but.....kicker! Death sentence reduced heals on the target dramatically for a duration afterwards. Guess what a tank that had zero mitigation and only heals does after being smashed in the face with a healing reducing tank buster?

2.0 war was the worst job at its role to ever exist. 2.1 couldn't come fast enough lol.

[OmegaSinX]

Yeah uh... Steel Cyclone spam in dungeons seems like it's gonna get nerfed pretty soon because that is WAYYY too much fun for a tank to be having.

SE: What? A class is fun and feels powerful!? Quick call the developers, We need to hotfix this ASAP!

[Nivarea]

Okay, that's straight up absurd. XD

I was on O6 normal mode, with a bunch of people for which it was their first time. Of course, it had gone south. At one point, my co-tank was dead, both healers two, and all the hope for a recovery was on me to stay alive without healers, and gain time for the Red Mage, which was also alive, to raise one of the healers. The problem, of course, was that they pretty much died without succeeding at healing every time they were raised. I've IR Innerbeast, use Equilibrium, all my CDs and everything I could to stay alive, with some heals from the Red Mage I believe, but he was low mana coz of the raises he tried to do. I've succed to survive something like one or so minute without healers. That's... absurd. The self-heal potential is insane. I've verified, as I had my ACT open, I've healed myself for 500 000K HP during the fight.
My efforts weren't in vain, the boss died... But with 13:40mn of fight. =B

[OmegaSinX]

PLD was the best tank for a couple of months at most. WAR has been the best tank for the majority of the game's life since the 2.0 relaunch.
So while not "always", it's pretty damn well close to it.

I too like WAR and want it to be good and fun but we need to be honest with ourselves here and not let cognitive bias and our own selfish desires to have our preferred job be the best blind us.

I disagree. "Best" is subjective. In my opinion, PLD, by definition of a tank, is the best tank because PLD is the most complete tank.

WAR: More Mitigation, More DPS, More HP, Most Self Helf Options (General Selfish but more fun to play)
PLD: Stronger Mitigation, Stun on Demand, Party Support, Party Heal, DOT, PARTY COVER, Invincibility Button (Party Protection Focus).

Now if only they can tweak DRK, then I would say all tanks would be in a good place.

[TouchandFeel]

snip

When we assign such open-ended subjectivity as individual opinion in which we get to define for ourselves, however we want, what is bad, good, better or best in generality, any attempt to have any form of sensible measurement of relative value goes out the window faster than a cheating spouse's lover when they hear a car pull into the driveway.

Under such unbound logic I could declare that WHM is the best tank because it has such great self-healing and party healing capabilities and is more "party focused" than either WAR, PLD or DRK.
Most would likely say that such an opinion makes little to no sense, but then again opinions don't have to.

Even if we went by the lists that you presented to validate your opinion, that would mean that PLD was the best tank during Heavensward and I am quite certain that most would disagree with such an assessment.

That is why we have established and agreed upon metrics that have been vetted with which to measure the performance and value of things within the context of which they are being observed, so that the inherent fallibility of unfettered personal opinion doesn't make such attempts a veritable Lewis Carrol inspired caucus race where we all believe ourselves to be winners yet to everyone else we appear to be nothing more than a dodo running in circles.

Personal opinion is perfectly fine to establish how an individual feels about something, but it really should have no place in establishing metrics for the collective whole which are best defined through consensus and verified data.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Darklight geared WAR just couldn't survive Twintania. At i80 their kit was more effective I imagine, but at Darklight gear tier PLD/PLD was just so much safer. there was also TW/HG to cheese divebombs & snakes. Devs confessed they didn't expect people to clear T5 until i80 was released. But PLD/PLD let it happen before.

I liked the HP manipulation of 2.0 WAR too, but it was too ilvl dependent.

I agree WAR coudlnt at i70, though odd they expected i80 to do it, since i80 gear didnt have the needed accuracy (or at least I sure as heck coudlnt land hits in i80 tank gear)
But yeah, farmed up i90 gear from coils was a massive upgrade, and plenty possible in i90 if u were lucky enough to get the gear.

Pld didn't have a CD for every death sentence. But it did have a tank stance that fully mitigated and shield for all of them and CDs for most of them besides.

I was there at 2.0. On war. Tanking 1st coil. Path just healed HP. IB only healed HP. Defiance was a permanent ToB. Bonus healing per stack of wrath. Max wrath = current defiance. Using IB removed that. No passive parry bonus. Vengence didn't mitigate any damage. Holmgang wasn't an immunity, just a mutual root. IB had no mitigation. War had no mitigation except foresight.

The only way war survived was by standing there, and waiting for the entire rest of the party to virus, stoneskin, adlo etc and you had to have lv 90 gear for vit. The damn snake in T1 was REALLY rough as a darklight war. I just stood their and hoped my sch had enough lustrates while the pld was over their with sentinel and hallowed so his assigned healer could spend more time helping me with my snake.

War in 2.0 had virtually no mitigation whatsoever. Stacking every party buff/debuff in the game on you to survive ONE death sentence doesn't make it ok while pld just pops sentinel all by himself. 2.0 war was terribad.

FFS people played maurauder instead on a regular basis to truly make it just a blue DPS whenever possible because its tanking was crap.

War has been doing very well since 2.1. But whitewashing history does no one anygood. 2.0 was utterly terrible. It couldn't speed run in dungeons like pld, it could only tank raids in max ilvl gear with 100% party support, it was often excluded from content all together and people ran 2x pld (there was no limit gauge punishement for duplicate jobs then). This game is all about mitigation. War provided none for itself or others. The only mitigation tool it had was foresight.

Besides my poor memory of path, I also went WAR and PLD, and agree with most of what u said, though as long as u had the gear, u could still survive with "almost" similar effect as 2.0 WAR, the only exception being u might not have a healing bonus right away. (unless ur next skill was going to get u 1 stack of wrath)
Back then having 20% more max hp, wasnt as effective, but was nearly as effective as relying on TBN to survive a TB.
Not as good as mitigation, but if u survive, u survive.
(Though I woulda used blood bath to help heal up some of that dmg, since its such a short CD, with thrill/foresight/convo as fillers. (obviously inferior to PLDs options))

Also dont disagree with its inability to speed run dungeons, and its superior mitigation it got in 2.1.

(also not trying to say which was better)

[Shinkyo]

Sure you could survive while overgearing but at what price? The whole party had to babysit you...
Plus there was always the dilemma of IBing before or after the TB which often was wasted in over heals. It was overall better to not IB and keep the 25% healing bonus since at least it was always useful.

[Claire_Pendragon]

It was overall better to not IB and keep the 25% healing bonus since at least it was always useful.

Honestly a pretty good point my group didnt even think about lol

[BluexBird]

I've succed to survive something like one or so minute without healers. That's... absurd. The self-heal potential is insane. I've verified, as I had my ACT open, I've healed myself for 500 000K HP during the fight.

So uh... what you're saying is that now, Warriors can stay alive indefinitely, pretty much like how Paladins have been able to ever since Stormblood came out. You're right, that IS absurd! Only Paladins should be able to do it!

[Aana]

(also not trying to say which was better)

The 'idea' of 2.0 war was nifty. Pld was the defensive tank. Sword n board. Mitigation. War was the Barbarian style. Massive HP pool, stayed alive by swinging that axe in a berserker rage really hard (all the HP healing via Path/IB/Bloodbath damage and the 'thrill of battle' etc). But it just didn't work out. Sadly they had to gut war's theme so it would perform better.

In some ways they have just been slowly returning war to its roots. Equalibrium (atk power heal and TP to never stop killing). Upheaval (HP based damage). Deliverance as a whole. Red Eye Glowing IR preventing crowd control in a zerker rage. And now the hyperZerk+IR which can be used in defiance to get that oldschool surviving via rage feeling or just unleash the beast in FC mode.

I don't disagree thematically with what SE has done to war. It really brings back some of those early days chunking down the enemy while chunking up your HP battle of wills kinda feeling. But the technical side is just bleh. War had become a pretty nuanced job over the years imo, but they lost all that.

So ultimately im still really torn about these changes. There is some good feels that really embrace the fantasy of being this warrior struggling to balance contain the beast vs unleashing it. But on a technical level im disappointed with just trashing the fluid "best designed job" they crafted from 2.1 on.