These warrior changes are great

[Aana]

If WAR got a tiny bump in dps, as well as some buffs in arguably less important things, while PLD got a slight nerf, wouldn't that put WAR slightly ahead and therefore OP at least by a small margin?

Its just the age old debate. What is balance. Who do you balance for? You cant both balance play around the lowest level of play and the highest at the same time. Its just not possible. Balance around poorer performing players and the top end pro play is jacked. Balance around pro play and there can be big swings in lower brackets. Meet in the middle and top and bottom are both going to be a little off. These debates have been raging since starcraft 1 in the 90s. There is no real answer, just philosophical choices.

War at high end play is virtually unchanged. World 1st people arent going to be winning by letting war IB 6x because their healers died. Bleeding edge content wont allow big mistakes like that in the 1st place and big disaster recovery is nigh impossible in many cases. But when I did my hells lid as war with 3 players in 310 gear who all 3 died at final boss, I could solo the last 20% of the boss with IB spam. Balanced at 'pro' level. OP at low levels. Is it balanced or OP? Both. Simultaneously. This was the same issue as Drk. Its both Balanced and UP simultaneously.

What youre asking me isnt really a fair question. Pld being more 'straightforward' has made it more powerful at lower skill levels while war was the 'harder' job because not everyone could manage their gauge and stay on top of their CDs. But at the upper level of play, its assumed people can play their jobs to max potential. Wars who can keep up with everything did more damage than every other tank. Now they made lower skill play war much more rewarding in a variety of ways without really touching the high end. So it didnt do anything to balance at the top, while completely reshaping how war performs at the bottom/middle.

Balance isnt just a binary yes or no. Its a sliding scale that shifts as individual skill and party cooperation shifts. Another example, people often complained that Drk was/is unbalanced because it lacks the same enmity tools as War/Pld. But at high levels of individual skill and coordinated parties that mange enmity well, it was an utter non-issue. Circle shirk, shade, individual hate shed abilities, etc trivialize enmity super hard at high levels that many would say it doesnt matter at all. But for jo smo drk they would really struggle.

In bronze in starcraft banelings (little rolling bombs) utterly destroy marines (small clumped up weak ranged units) by rolling into crowds and blowing up 10 at a time. At the pro level marines can BEAT their hard counter banelings by manually splitting every marine up with 400 apm so each baneling explodes on a single marine instead of 10. Balanced and unbalanced at the same time at different skill levels.

Sad truth is you cant balance for everyone. Its impossible. So you have to choose who you balance for. SE seems to have decided that they dont care if War is OP as shiz in dungeons. Its fine at the top end. Is that right? Is it fair? Those are philosophical questions more than a right/wrong. Its right and fair for the raiders. Its not for dungeons, but if you have the attitude that dungeons dont really matter, then its fine. Balance is more a perspective than a fact.

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Bleh went a little overboard, but with so much balance talk sometimes taking a step back and asking what balance even is might be in order. People see the game from their perspective, skill level, and experience. Balance is relative to all those things so there is unlikely to ever be any real agreement. But it's important to remember balance is bigger than any 1 persons perspective.

[TouchandFeel]

People see the game from their perspective, skill level, and experience. Balance is relative to all those things so there is unlikely to ever be any real agreement. But it's important to remember balance is bigger than any 1 persons perspective.

Exactly. I am in complete agreement with pretty much all you said.

The quoted bit is basically what I was getting at, admittedly in perhaps an intentionally roundabout way.

Basically both perspectives are correct and incorrect at the same time and your outlook depends entirely on perspective and what facet of game-play you look at or what part of the playerbase you fall into.

To the top-end player it's pretty much the same and therefore is seen as relatively balanced.
This is perfectly justifiable for these players and the content that is their focus.

To the lower end and mid-core players, there was a big boost in performance to WAR to the point that it arguably out-performs the other tanks and is OP.
This too is perfectly justifiable for these players and the content that is their focus.

So when one group says things are balanced for them and another group says things are not balanced for them, we really should neither hold one group's opinion and perspective as gospel nor dismiss either group just because they fall into a different group of players.

So going back to the overall balance of WAR, it's pretty well balanced in top-end raid environments but OP as hell in lower-end content like dungeons.
The real question is where do we go from here to potentially adjust one aspect of performance without messing with the other? This is where it gets a little tricky.

I would also just like to end on emphasizing one point that you made that I feel is incredibly important for people to keep in mind.

Balance, amongst many other things, is bigger than any one person or group's perspective so maybe we should all be a little more open to trying to understand other perspectives to gain the bigger picture.