5.0 WAR is a disappointment

[Lucy_Pyre]

No, they are not fine, every warrior that knows what they're doing will tell you that guaranteed DCrit is awful. Not only it screws with crit scaling, but also with melding for omnitanks. On top of that most raid buffs are completely useless for warrior and that's just stupid. 4.2 fixed a lot of problems for WAR but it was done in a really bad way. They should just change IR to dmg buff, or make IR only crit and bring back 60s berserk, while also giving warrior minor potency buffs. Like there's no reason for FC to not be 600 pot like Bloodspiller, or its combo finishers 400 pot. That way le new war mains™ can have their unga bunga spam™ and warrior won't be AS awful.

Yeah, I think I can confidently say that I "know what I'm doing" more than the overwhelming vast majority of Warrior players out there, and I think that IR and IC are completely fine as is. Could some things potentially be tweaked to be better? Absolutely so. But at the end of the day the only real major "issue" that WAR currently has is just a slightly lower than desired DPS profile, something that could very easily be fixed with minor potency tweaks. Barring that the job doesn't really need anything else.

[BarretOblivion]

Yeah, I think I can confidently say that I "know what I'm doing" more than the overwhelming vast majority of Warrior players out there, and I think that IR and IC are completely fine as is. Could some things potentially be tweaked to be better? Absolutely so. But at the end of the day the only real major "issue" that WAR currently has is just a slightly lower than desired DPS profile, something that could very easily be fixed with minor potency tweaks. Barring that the job doesn't really need anything else.

WAR needs skills, it needs changes. Potency will get a few people to jump on to play it due to it being "meta" but look at the tank numbers just in raiding. GNB, PLD, and DRK are fairly close in population of savage clears. WAR is down at the bottem, by a VAST amount, not even close to any of the other tanks and its damage is higher than DRK not considering party buffs. Its the same arguement people tried to make for DRKs in SB. DRKs in SB had a multiple issues, but thier damage was higher than PLD. So if DPS is truely the sole thing people care about, why wasn't DRK played more than PLDs?

<insert crickets>
Because DRK was clunky still. WAR was only up top due to yes, its DPS was top but also it had the best self mitigation cools and had an important part of what? Dropping Tank Stance and creating a high buffer of hate at the start of the fight with 0 DPS loss unlike the other tank options AND Holmgang was 180 secs back then making many fights trival due to its cooldown.
There were MULTIPLE reasons why WAR was the go to tank in SB, not just its damage, it had more strengths than that.

Now? Holmgang is now 240 secs which has led to it being far less valued than any other tank due to the new TB timings (exception to Leviathan but that requires a DRK/WAR comp to fully cheese else its pointless to value Holmgang more than any other TB in that fight). Tank dancing is not a thing anymore and there is no care about hate management for tanks. So now what is WAR's strength? It has self healing... with the worst OT skill in the game and has good personal mitigation... buuuut all of the fights require both tanks active mitigation meaning that's a pointless strength since you most of the time will use NF over Raw to self heal cause you don't need the extra mitigation.
IR? Well DRK has that now and I don't think I need to point out how Titan can completely F you over during IR multiple times in that fight.

THAT is why WAR isn't played anymore on top of one of the most complained about Tanks kit wise with again 0 changes in ShB that changed/evolved how the job functions. Not only that but DRK which legit got a skill from WAR one of their two BIGGEST COMPLAINTS IS DELIRUM! (Other complaint is Living Dead debuff).

[Lucy_Pyre]

-snipped out for post length reasons-

There's a very clear and obvious reason why WAR is significantly less popular than the other tanks, that being that it is more or less obsolete in its current state. It does more or less equal DPS to DRK while having mostly comparable mitigation to GNB. Yet each of the other tanks offers something that WAR doesn't; PLD having more DPS and significantly more utility, DRK being the reigning king of mitigation, and GNB bringing the highest raw DPS. If WAR's DPS was more closely tied to GNB's (but still slightly behind) then it would be fine, imo. GNB would still have a little more DPS while WAR would be close behind and trade a bit of raw mitigation out for healing.

As for Titan screwing you out of IR multiple times during the fight, I don't know what to tell you other than that you're timing your IR incorrectly. It's possible for him to screw with IR exactly one single time during the fight, and that's if he does car second instead of gauntlets in phase 1 since most of the time that happens I end up having to manually click off IR after 3 or 4 Fell Cleave's so as to not get screwed over by the knockback immunity on the move. Other than that it all lines up perfectly fine, so if you're having multiple IR issues on Titan then I'm sorry to say but you're doing something wrong.

Edit: WAR isn't below the other tanks by a "vast" margin in savage clears. It's the lowest, for sure. However there are currently 18,822 logged kills for Paladin, 15,977 for Dark Knight, 13,091 for Gunbreaker, and 10.041 for Warrior across the whole savage tier. No one will argue that Gunbreaker is unpopular, and the difference between them is almost exactly 3,000 clears, in a question of tens of thousands. A difference to be sure, but not large enough to be considered a "vast" margin. The only place there is a significant margin is in Alexander ultimate, and in that case there are almost 4x as many clears for both Dark Knight AND Paladin as there are for Gunbreaker and Warrior.

[BarretOblivion]

snip

WAR has better mitigation than DRK generaly due to raw being a 15% free mitigation compared to TBN which has a cost and Dark Mind is only taken into account during magical fights.
WAR does deal more damage than DRK without any party buffs, this is a known fact and DRK only jumps above WAR when there is Battle Litany/Battle Voice because WAR gets no benifit from those two buffs.

Did you forget 2nd uplift? If you are a WAR that is placed on the S team you can get seriously cucked with being forced to delay your IR due to not being able to hit the boss. How do I know? I played it on DRK and have been cucked on Delirum (same cooldown). "Well make sure the WAR is on the N team". Lets be real, in PUG groups there is no priority on Tank locations and generally speaking unless you have a PLD who is willing to go in the back, you are cucking one tank over not being on the N team.

Finally, yes 3k behind the 2nd lowest clear rate tank is VAST because whats the percentage of that? Roughly 77% rounded up. Look at it between the first and 2nd that percentage increases. That's a fairly significant difference between all the other of tanks.
Now Alex Ult is a case where of course you are going to bring in a DRK over a WAR or even GNB, due to 2 reasons.

1) Dark Mind is useful in there.
2)Living Liquid and BJ/CC phases DRK can pad the crap out of their numbers due to having the best AoE padding of all the tanks. It gains blood and it gains MP faster with AoE rotation meaning more Bloodspillers and more Flood/Edge.

[Lucy_Pyre]

WAR has better mitigation than DRK generaly due to raw being a 15% free mitigation compared to TBN which has a cost and Dark Mind is only taken into account during magical fights.
WAR does deal more damage than DRK without any party buffs, this is a known fact and DRK only jumps above WAR when there is Battle Litany/Battle Voice because WAR gets no benifit from those two buffs.

Did you forget 2nd uplift? If you are a WAR that is placed on the S team you can get seriously cucked with being forced to delay your IR due to not being able to hit the boss. How do I know? I played it on DRK and have been cucked on Delirum (same cooldown). "Well make sure the WAR is on the N team". Lets be real, in PUG groups there is no priority on Tank locations and generally speaking unless you have a PLD who is willing to go in the back, you are cucking one tank over not being on the N team.

Finally, yes 3k behind the 2nd lowest clear rate tank is VAST because whats the percentage of that? Roughly 77% rounded up. Look at it between the first and 2nd that percentage increases. That's a fairly significant difference between all the other of tanks.
Now Alex Ult is a case where of course you are going to bring in a DRK over a WAR or even GNB, due to 2 reasons.

1) Dark Mind is useful in there.
2)Living Liquid and BJ/CC phases DRK can pad the crap out of their numbers due to having the best AoE padding of all the tanks. It gains blood and it gains MP faster with AoE rotation meaning more Bloodspillers and more Flood/Edge.

Dark Mind is useful in the current savage tier as well. Tank lasers and buster preys are magical, Shadowflame is magical, pretty sure Black Smokers mini busters are magical, and the non-stack buster of Dual Earthen Fists is magical. All are busters that you mitigate, rather than invuln. Giving Dark Mind clear uses in every fight. Also, Delirum and Inner Release have the same cooldown but the points that they get used in the rotation is different. Dark Knight typically uses their first Delirium after the 5th GCD of the fight whereas Warrior uses the first Inner Release after the fourth GCD. This is a slight difference, yes, but as someone who has primarily played WAR in the current savage tier and has had very little IR issues in Titan, it very obviously make a difference. So as I said previously, the only time that IR is reliably cucked in Titan is getting car 2nd in phase 1. Otherwise it all lines up just fine.

Edit: Anyone trying to claim that any tank has better mitigation than DRK gets a 'lol' from me. TBN is so hilariously strong that you can't even try to make that claim.

[BarretOblivion]

Dark Mind is useful in the current savage tier as well. Tank lasers and buster preys are magical, Shadowflame is magical, pretty sure Black Smokers mini busters are magical, and the non-stack buster of Dual Earthen Fists is magical. All are busters that you mitigate, rather than invuln. Giving Dark Mind clear uses in every fight. Also, Delirum and Inner Release have the same cooldown but the points that they get used in the rotation is different. Dark Knight typically uses their first Delirium after the 5th GCD of the fight whereas Warrior uses the first Inner Release after the fourth GCD. This is a slight difference, yes, but as someone who has primarily played WAR in the current savage tier and has had very little IR issues in Titan, it very obviously make a difference. So as I said previously, the only time that IR is reliably cucked in Titan is getting car 2nd in phase 1. Otherwise it all lines up just fine.

Edit: Anyone trying to claim that any tank has better mitigation than DRK gets a 'lol' from me. TBN is so hilariously strong that you can't even try to make that claim.

Dark mind is only useful in 1 fight. E2S. E1S its physical and % baised damage so Dark Mind is almost completely useless. E2S its good. E3S its fine if you aren't running the WAR/DRK comp. If you are... you don't need it at all because just invuln all TBs and then use everything else during Smokers. Even if you arent running that comp... you don't need DRK mind as it makes such a small difference during smokers because all your CDs should be up by then.

Titan... all his TBs are physical so Dark Mind is a dead skill in titan. (Yes, Megalith is physical I have tested this with fient usage. All his AoEs are magical).

Lol as much as you want but Raw and TBN have the same cooldown, but one has no cost while another does. Plus math wise % is better than a shield when taking large damage and for the follow up hit making it easier on healers.

[OdinelStarrei]

Dark mind is only useful in 1 fight. E2S. E1S its physical and % baised damage so Dark Mind is almost completely useless. E2S its good. E3S its fine if you aren't running the WAR/DRK comp. If you are... you don't need it at all because just invuln all TBs and then use everything else during Smokers. Even if you arent running that comp... you don't need DRK mind as it makes such a small difference during smokers because all your CDs should be up by then.

Titan... all his TBs are physical so Dark Mind is a dead skill in titan. (Yes, Megalith is physical I have tested this with fient usage. All his AoEs are magical).

Lol as much as you want but Raw and TBN have the same cooldown, but one has no cost while another does. Plus math wise % is better than a shield when taking large damage and for the follow up hit making it easier on healers.

I realize this is a WAR thread and I'm sorry. WAR is my favorite co-tank on DRK, and I love reading this thread.

In my post history, I've detailed how Dark Mind usage needs to be considered as a Rampart replacement for auto attacks or combined with other CDs to negate damage, and with that in mind, I'll be using that logic for a good majority of this post.

E1S: Saying that Dimensional Shift, and Eden's Gravity are percentage based does not negate his ORIGINAL point of Dark Mind being useful for Tank lasers and the Tank Bleed. Those are ACTUALLY magic, and are frequently mixed with other tank mechanics that increase the overall damage taken. TBN+Dark Mind+Rampart is very high value, and depending on the fight timeline (I'm using the first usage of Tank bleed) you can catch multiple mechanics with the same CD combination. Dark Mind encourages this kind of play style. Most tanks has a way to mitigate percentage based damage. WAR with Thrill of Battle and buffed Shake It Offs, DRK has TBN for themselves/person who isn't topped, PLD has Divine Veil for party, and GNB just has to deal. But I wouldn't say Camouflage is a BAD skill in E1S because it doesn't mitigate gravity, I just use it on the Spears instead, and leverage it's longer duration for auto-attacks. I wouldn't say Sheltron is bad compared to TBN because I can't block percentage-based damage, i just prioritize double busters and AoEs. Different use cases.

E2S: Dark Mind is really good in here, but only because it can actually serve as the Rampart-replacement for auto attacks to it's maximum capability. You just have to decide whether you need the 20 second or 10 second duration, or combine the two depending on what the boss is doing at the time.

E3S: Yeah, Leviathan's auto attacks are physical, and literally every buster except 1 (that is dependent on tank comp) is invuln'd. You know what it isn't invuln'd? Tsunami 2 lasers and the Tank flares. Tidal Roar is magic! Kitchen sinking during Black Smokers means instead of taking minor damage, you're taking literally zero damage. If anything, this is the exact opposite situation to E2S. Instead of having Dark Mind casting a wide net over an entire fight that you can pick and alter your cooldown map with, Leviathan has VERY specific points where Dark Mind usage is practically being thrown in your face, because you don't have any other options to use it elsewhere. Both tanks are being auto'd, so both tanks sacrifice Rampart for auto-attacks under increased damage situations. (Tidal Roar) It's the same mentality to invulns. If it's up, and I'm not going to need it later within it's own recast timer, I'm going to press it. The argument that it makes a small difference is a slightly slippery slope. It doesn't matter how small of an impact pressing Dark Mind is, because it's an objective benefit over pressing nothing. You can apply that same sentence to things like Reprisal, Addle, Feint, or actually any tank damage you've mathed out to be survivable with only one cooldown or even no cooldowns. jUsT HeaL mOrE. That's a bit hyperbolic, I know, but if the opportunity is there to stack CDs, or at the very least, DM yourself during an AoE so you get topped easier, why not take it? It makes it easier on healing. It's a bit irrelevant now that we have so much gear, but that will change when we prog something new.

E4S: I have severe pushback against Dark Mind being useless in this fight. It's not exclusively for busters! On surface level, as you said, every AoE is magic. That is a GOOD thing for Dark Mind, because if you're MTing, the last thing you want is an AoE to cleave out a fourth of your health bar. Better to TBN+Dark Mind to zero out voice in phase 1 just be safe. Would TBN alone be fine? Yeah, absolutely, but it's intelligent CD mapping to place it there, and directly free up Rampart as a result for Crumbling Down prox markers, getting whacked by Phase 1 Titan in general, and it makes it so much easier on the healers, a point you yourself pointed out for Raw Int. Also, all of Titan's tankbusters are NOT physical! Stonecrusher, based on the same logic from E3S, is a complete non-factor because all of them are invuln'd regardless of comp.

That means we're left with two busters. Earthen Anguish, which is magic, and Megalith, physical. First Earthen Anguish lets me do a simple combination of at minimum Dark Mind + Rampart, and the TBN is now free to give to my co-tank, since they lack Dark Mind on the attack. Equalizes the damage, and makes the follow up early Phase 2 Megalith more even from an HP percentage, particularly if Phase 1 Titan ends in Landslide form, or I am not targeted for Fault Line, using up my Shadow Wall. Second Eathern is kinda whatever, use whatever you want, Dark Mind, TBN the MT, GG. But the third? The third Earthen, and Phase 3 in general, is MASSIVE in Dark Mind's favor, because again, unless you invuln it, you only need Dark Mind not to take a significant amount of damage. This means you have free'd up TBN for yourself if MTing, or your co-tank if they are and are not invulning AND if you place it late enough, it bleeds into the following Voice. Now you have Rampart and your personal cooldown for the auto-attacks and marker explosions, and your 30% for the megalith stack. By the time you even get past the last Megalith, you have Dark Mind again, and can either delegate it for the final merry go round pulse with TBN or on the last tumult/voice combos of the fight. A similar logic can be applied to GNB Camouflage during 1st and 3rd MGR while saving Rampart and Nebula for the busters. You just need to apply Dark Mind in a different way, and emphasize it's strengths as opposed to lamenting it can't do literally everything in a less optimal way. And this is without me saying that all of Phase 2 Titan's auto attacks are magic. Dark Mind is not a dead skill in E4S, it's a major reason I did all my weapon farming on DRK over other tanks. (others being TBN or me being a one trick, pick your poison)

(Random Fact: With a WAR/PLD or DRK(risky WHM) comp, you can invuln every megalith as well by combining the last stonecrusher and last megalith into one ten second invulnerability skill. Very high value, super useful, saves Feint for only Phase 1 and Phase 3 autoattacks, which are honestly better ideas)

Raw Int/HoS are 25 seconds. TBN is 15 seconds. That's 10 seconds of difference, which seriously adds up if you're pressing both those skills on cooldown during a phase. Within just 1 minute, you got an entire two usages over RI/HoS. Just gotta plan mana for it. TBN will negate around ~35K (25%) HP worth of damage, regardless of cooldowns.

If you take 150K worth of damage, and ONLY use RI, you're scrapping 30K off that number, and that exact number will go down the lower the incoming damage is, AND the more CDs you stack on it due to multiplicative buff stacking, whilst TBN does not suffer from that issue. Gets to the point we have now where even within it's own kit, Nascent Flash is better than Raw Int in an overwhelming amount of situations. Due to that, I have reservations about saying it's easier to heal RI versus proper TBNs.

(Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...fTyzTGXXk/edit ; Page 29)

I will compliment Nascent Flash, despite being as clunky as it is, it seriously provides results if optimized. I notice the difference when I have a WAR co-tank using that skill properly.

One of TBN's biggest benefits is not only it's pure shielding value, but also the fact that it doesn't care what you get hit with or what buffs you have. As long as 25% of your HP goes down, it's negation is all-encompassing. Proper TBN usage, because it gives Dark Arts, does not have a cost for your MP or your rotation unless you're demolishing 13K MP under burst, where EoS needs to be delayed until raid buffs.


To be on-topic, I miss 4.1 WAR. I disliked the IR change in general, but I think it would've been okay with auto-Crit and potencies split throughout the kit rather than jamming them all in the IR phase. Adding DH on top has just made melding annoying. And removing higher Beast Guage = higher crit rate felt unneeded. Had to move all that optimization potential and move it into NF healing high scores.

[Lucy_Pyre]

Dark mind is only useful in 1 fight. E2S. E1S its physical and % baised damage so Dark Mind is almost completely useless. E2S its good. E3S its fine if you aren't running the WAR/DRK comp. If you are... you don't need it at all because just invuln all TBs and then use everything else during Smokers. Even if you arent running that comp... you don't need DRK mind as it makes such a small difference during smokers because all your CDs should be up by then.

Titan... all his TBs are physical so Dark Mind is a dead skill in titan. (Yes, Megalith is physical I have tested this with fient usage. All his AoEs are magical).

Lol as much as you want but Raw and TBN have the same cooldown, but one has no cost while another does. Plus math wise % is better than a shield when taking large damage and for the follow up hit making it easier on healers.

Sorry but no, you're wrong. The raid damage in E1S are % HP but the busters are not. The tank lasers and prey busters are both magical damage, and Dark Mind is useful there. The dual busters of Dual Earthen Fists (the artillery ones) are, in fact, magic damage and Dark Mind does work on those.

[Khimer]

Yeah, I think I can confidently say that I "know what I'm doing" more than the overwhelming vast majority of Warrior players out there, and I think that IR and IC are completely fine as is. Could some things potentially be tweaked to be better? Absolutely so. But at the end of the day the only real major "issue" that WAR currently has is just a slightly lower than desired DPS profile, something that could very easily be fixed with minor potency tweaks. Barring that the job doesn't really need anything else.

I JUST said what's wrong with IR and IC in the post you even quoted and yet you still claim that its completely fine. Also learning the rotation doesn't mean you know the job and what's good for it. Ever heard of Balance discord? You should check it out some time and ask warriors and mentors there how they feel about current iteration. I'm pretty sure they know way more than some randoms on forums.

[Khimer]

I feel like people that defend current warrior design either only care about about their parses, and they love that you can just get orange by just pressing 1 button without even having to think OR people that are just "lul fell cleave spam amirite guys, i love big flashy numbers, unga bunga amirite guys". But people who actually enjoyed warrior for what it was before hated 4.2 patch and everything that came after.