5.0 WAR is a disappointment

[DRKoftheAzure]

Here are some extremely minor adjustments that I PERSONALLY would've loved to see:


- increase storm's path potency to 400-420 and keep eye the same(or make it 400 idk, just make it less than path). This little change will increase skill celling and would differentiate mediocre warriors and good warriors. Just a little something to add the spice.

- make storm's eye duration 40s.
(I know with those 2 changes it will be a considerable dps increase, but dps increase is also something people wanted for warrior. And it isnt something that will put it on OP pedestal again.)

- bring back increased critical hit rating with increased gauge. Just fun lil optimization.

- make mythril tempest apply storm's eye buff. This shouldn't even be discussed at this point.

- fix holmgang. it shouldn't drop off as the enemy dies, there's no way thats intentional, you shouldn't need to untarget the boss if its too far away, are you kidding me? Its costs nothing to fix, people defend it like the cost of fixing it will be a major piece of content. Stop defending it. Is it stockholm syndrome or smthn?

- honestly i dont know about nascent flash. Its kinda fine right now, but it would DEFINITELY be better to have the ability to target yourself.

Minor minor adjustment:

- make warrior's tank trait not 20% reduced dmg, but 25% more hp and healing done, just like its tank stance before. It might make new Thrill of Battle trait not as useful, but we still had convalescence before that could be stacked with this effect. As other tanks had 20% reduced dmg as their tank stance i don't see how this can be gamebreaking. It would be nice for warrior to have at least some of its identity back. Now i know devs want all tanks to play the same so they wouldn't have to think about balancing them, but its still a thing i would've loved to see, on priority list for changing things on warrior its probably the last.

All those changes are things i've seen people desire both in balance discord, english forums and japanese forums, so im pretty sure there are people here who would agree with some of them.

Eh... the people who are going to defend the garbage WAR and DRK toolkit design will argue against this saying "WAR doesn't need adjustments" or some **** like that...

Im not talking about IR cause its a whole other topic, and i'm not sure if dev team will ever do anything about it as it seems to be the great fix and final solution to all problems for them. Expecting mnks to be able to spam forbidden chakra or tornado kick 5 times in 6.0. All i want for warrior in 6.0 is for them to bring back meaningful gauge management.

Be careful, someone might actually take that as "hey some said this so therefore they must want it so let's put it in the game"

I don't know why i wrote all this as it is clear from live letters they aren't acknowledging even a single problem that has been discussed not only in war threads but in tank threads in general(not even gnb sounds, seriously?). There haven't given even a single hint about whether they are listening to feedback or not. I'm kinda convinced they have tank forums blacklisted on their PCs.

I think they realized that the forums are infested with people who don't even play the game despite having a subscription to pay to play the game... and the people that are complaining about how "the game is too hard" clearly haven't even gotten into current Savage mode yet...

I haven't even been able to clear Savage mode because I tried it multiple times and went "this kind of difficulty isn't for me to go do with randoms in PF" so yeah...

[ovIm]

The thing for warrior is, for me, while the other tanks got things added to them, warrior stagnated and got as many things removed as added. Its gameplay is now much more simple than the other tanks, and I fully admit that this is one of the things that now deter me from the class and makes me gravitate more towards gunbreaker or dark knight.

I still love its aesthetics though, and I hope that square brings the fun back to warrior in 6.0.

[FirstnameLastname]

Yeah but why WAR gotta be so clunky though?

[DRKoftheAzure]

The thing for warrior is, for me, while the other tanks got things added to them, warrior stagnated and got as many things removed as added. Its gameplay is now much more simple than the other tanks, and I fully admit that this is one of the things that now deter me from the class and makes me gravitate more towards gunbreaker or dark knight.

I still love its aesthetics though, and I hope that square brings the fun back to warrior in 6.0.

Edge of Darkness/Shadow is more easily accessible Storm's Eye while doubling as more spammable Upheaval, and Flood of Darkness/Shadow is just the AoE version...

DRK is just magic clone of WAR which is what deterred me from DRK this expansion and made me gravitate more toward GNB, because GNB seems to be the only tank job with more than 1 single target combo(though I do not like how you have to wait 10 levels just to get the most fun ability in GNBs toolkit)...

Yeah but why WAR gotta be so clunky though?

Because of really bad players...

[ArianeEwah]

But I really don't know the best way to fix it. A few ideas I've tossed around in my head would be either baking self-heal into our beast gauge moves, or perhaps something like basing NF's heal on a flat potency per action instead of scaling with damage (this would at least free it up to be used in any part of the rotation instead of needing to line up with burst). Separating it from RI and making RI either self or party cast might work too, but this feels kinda basic like PLD Intervention. Not sure, but the point being there's a lot things we can discuss without having to tear it all down.

Excuse me for the late reply. I just wanted to say I agree with your whole post, and also want to focus on the last bit. It's actually quite frightening how my first ideas for fixes were exactly the same as yours

But that is actually an important point to make when playing WAR below 76. As many might know WAR used to be a beast in self-healing if required. Inner Beast might have been locked behind Defiance, but with its 300-350 potency - which just got buffed to 400-467 potency thanks to slashing debuff on target and old maim/SE dmg buff of 20% - you would heal for 400-467 (current healer) potency, or 600-700 during old Berserk, party buffs or Bloodbath not included.
In 4.2 - with the Inner Release change - they nerfed SE buff from 20% to 10%, which I get when they made certain moves guaranteed crit-DH. But this just screwed over Berserk. Whether you, me or anyone else like or don't like current version of Inner Release, never have I ever heard anybody say they like the current version of Berserk. Well, this flaw might've been overlooked for a long time because there wasn't as much "old/synced" content as we have now, plus it got changed mid-expansion, and we were still able to use all our other abilities without any further adjustments, including Inner Beast. At the end of the day, at least our self-heal was secured, even buffed.
Hitting 5.0, we lost ALL our previous self-healing "GCDs" with the exception of Storm's Path. The self-healing part became less and less an active part of WAR, in addition to the fact that the job became less and less "party material" (no more slashing debuff, no benefit on certain party buffs, from the top dps tank to the "lowest", no more "Defiance Adlo"). I can't blame SE to nerf, or remove certain aspects of WAR that made this job OP in previous expansions in the first place, but the more they do that more clear the flaws WAR is suffering come to light. And for not addressing those issues I can blame them.

I honestly think the following sh*tpost sums that up well enough for a tl;dr:

4.1 Warrior was really fun.

WAR sure works well enough on max level, but synced content is part of every job experience - even after several expansions. Once synced down, the issues are clear as day. A bad designed Berserk, fewer buttons/no oGCDs (Fracture/Brutal Swing/Mercy Stroke), fewer self-healing options - actually non at aoe, damage buff on a 3-GCDs combo (instead of 2 GCDs like in ARR/HW), extenuated Inner Beast, missing/reduced gauge interaction etc.
All those points, including the generic tank mastery trait, and the self-healing aspect especially, do damage the identity of WAR. Yet I believe this it could've been preserved.

And I would like to quote you - bravo - again, I agree that this would've been the better approach from SE:

So I'd rather just take a step-by-step approach, make some minor adjustments to specific functionality here and there rather then tear it all down and build again. Because there's very little to indicate that a total rebuild would be worth pursuing.

[DaulBan]

It's kinda like 4.2 WAR was cursed to be a poor foundation for the job going forward, and anyone who lauded the changes back then was a fool.

[Hierro]

It's kinda like 5.2 WAR was cursed to be a poor foundation for the job going forward, and anyone who lauded the changes back then was a fool.

Maybe the fool was you all along for the grave mistake of confusing 4.2 for 5.2! Ah ha ha! You see? I've found the fatal flaw in your argument and now no one will ever take you seriously!

[DaulBan]

Maybe the fool was you all along for the grave mistake of confusing 4.2 for 5.2! Ah ha ha! You see? I've found the fatal flaw in your argument and now no one will ever take you seriously!

You got me there.

[Kabooa]

Maybe the fool was you all along for the grave mistake of confusing 4.2 for 5.2! Ah ha ha! You see? I've found the fatal flaw in your argument and now no one will ever take you seriously!

Never go in with a Hrothgar when SHAME is on the line!

[Satarn]

It's kinda like 4.2 WAR was cursed to be a poor foundation for the job going forward, and anyone who lauded the changes back then was a fool.

As has been foretold. And yet they called us fools.

Honestly at this point I've so given up on WAR, that all I can do is laugh at those who kept playing it while simultaneously crying over shattered pieces of DRK, because that wound is still too fresh.