WAR needs love

[Anuri]

Replace warrior with dark knight and it would still hold true. But it's a warrior thread, isn't it?

Warrior is the least played tank class despite being there from day one. It can't be the rotation because "every tank has the same boring 1,2,3 rota" as many people stated before.

I'm not smart enough to know the difference, as you so eloquently put it. Help me out a bit. Why are only 2% warrior in the top 50 raid kills? These guilds seem to do it wrong too, because "WAR is fine in relationship to one another".

[ArianeEwah]

snip

No, Heirro is right. WAR is fine compared to its tank brethren.

Just looking at the "played" numbers doesn't help. In fact, we could construe the number of GNB parses as GNB being the 2nd worst/least enjoyable tank. Yet, the most recent poll from reddit and also recent forum thread GNB is one of the most liked job of all FF14 ShB jobs right now.
GNB also having the highest representation of all tanks for speed kills says it's favored.

As Heirro said:

But tanks in general, ARE NOT fine.

Also, WAR losing the most unique design mechanics, aestetics, and -last, but not least- dps from SB to ShB has hurt those "WAR mains". (I am using quotation mark on purpose bc it's mostly people jump off of WAR who enjoyed being the highest dps tank.)

I would've also rather enjoyed enhanced tank dynamics on every other tank instead of getting cuts on WAR identity, but here we are.

[BarretOblivion]

No, Heirro is right. WAR is fine compared to its tank brethren.

Just looking at the "played" numbers doesn't help. In fact, we could construe the number of GNB parses as GNB being the 2nd worst/least enjoyable tank. Yet, the most recent poll from reddit and also recent forum thread GNB is one of the most liked job of all FF14 ShB jobs right now.
GNB also having the highest representation of all tanks for speed kills says it's favored.

As Heirro said:


Also, WAR losing the most unique design mechanics, aestetics, and -last, but not least- dps from SB to ShB has hurt those "WAR mains". (I am using quotation mark on purpose bc it's mostly people jump off of WAR who enjoyed being the highest dps tank.)

I would've also rather enjoyed enhanced tank dynamics on every other tank instead of getting cuts on WAR identity, but here we are.

Mmm, I would put a pin in the GNB clear/played argument with TEA basically alienating GNB from a spot in most groups. GNB has the worst personal mitigation of tanks... and TEA you need personal mitigation as a tank in that fight (one of the few fights that require high mitigation for both tanks).
Other than that, GNB is the 'hardest' tank to play with optimization on fights from a rotation standpoint (PLD has to adjust thier rotations per fight so I balance the two out there) leading to more players going towards the 'casual' tanks of WAR/DRK or PLD with even unoptimized does well in most fights.
The biggest reason though is that 'ease of use' personally I feel as I have seen a surge of new tanks this expansion, but a mass migration of veteran tanks at the same time unhappy with where Tanks are in general from ShB. So the skill median of tanks has indeed dropped with more new tanks having little idea what they are doing even on the easy tanks (seriously I had a WAR PUG in 5S tout how they would MT and they were hot stuff... I was parsing and didn't say a word but was sitting about 3k DPS higher than the 'hot stuff' Tank).

[SpiralMask]

my main complaint on the WAR front is that DRK was basically made into a better-feeling clone of it, with the same core rotation (all the way down to infuriate and inner release) and a million ogcds to weave pretty freely (gutting the original class in the process), while WAR got no changes except a small three-hit heal for you and a mandatory ally and a new animation for fell cleave periodically.

it's certainly still fun and playable (and my go-to for soloing content with it's selfheals (minus nascent flash since that doesn't work solo)), just kinda neglected?

[ArianeEwah]

snip

Funny enough, even with the "least" mitigation GNB is still in the top parses of TEA for speed runs. My guess as to why DRK/PLD is so common there is PLDs stong party mitigation, HG, and DRK TBN -which is ridiculously strong there, it's no joke- that make it fairly easy to mitigate most damage, instead of optimizing every single incoming damage -which only a handful of people even think about. (Dark Mind is also insane, ~half of all tank busters are magical, and all raid-wides are magical, too.)

On point of increase of tank population: 'ease of use' bears a wide range of meaning here, I would like to know what you exactly mean by that.
Not only are the (dps) rotations rather dull and simple as well as aggro management becoming a joke, but mitigation is also risible. As long as a tank sits at max HP, a simple CD (like Sheltron or HoS) is enough for tank busters. This puts a heavy burden on healers, but the game doesn't really give you feedback about your mitigation skills. The tank mastery makes tanking imo far too easy. I remember that I actually had to create a cooldown rotation map, so I could optimize my dps, I had no other choice or we wouldn't hit dps check. Today's tanks can't optimize dps by mapping their cooldowns, yet this influx of tanks blame it on healers when they die or hit enrage. (my own story: I recently went E7s as healer, WAR was MT'ing. They used never used any Rampart, Vengeance nor Nascent Flash. Only 4 Raw Intuitions, which 2 of them + 1 Thrill for Shake It Off. Equilibrium also only when they invul'ed the shared tank buster. In short: they used actual "real self-mitigation" only twice the whole fight of 11 min with a freaking add phase for an astounding duration of 12s. My tank heart was f*cking crying. How can you even play tank without actually "playing tank"?!)

[BarretOblivion]

Funny enough, even with the "least" mitigation GNB is still in the top parses of TEA for speed runs. My guess as to why DRK/PLD is so common there is PLDs stong party mitigation, HG, and DRK TBN -which is ridiculously strong there, it's no joke- that make it fairly easy to mitigate most damage, instead of optimizing every single incoming damage -which only a handful of people even think about. (Dark Mind is also insane, ~half of all tank busters are magical, and all raid-wides are magical, too.)

On point of increase of tank population: 'ease of use' bears a wide range of meaning here, I would like to know what you exactly mean by that.
Not only are the (dps) rotations rather dull and simple as well as aggro management becoming a joke, but mitigation is also risible. As long as a tank sits at max HP, a simple CD (like Sheltron or HoS) is enough for tank busters. This puts a heavy burden on healers, but the game doesn't really give you feedback about your mitigation skills. The tank mastery makes tanking imo far too easy. I remember that I actually had to create a cooldown rotation map, so I could optimize my dps, I had no other choice or we wouldn't hit dps check. Today's tanks can't optimize dps by mapping their cooldowns, yet this influx of tanks blame it on healers when they die or hit enrage. (my own story: I recently went E7s as healer, WAR was MT'ing. They used never used any Rampart, Vengeance nor Nascent Flash. Only 4 Raw Intuitions, which 2 of them + 1 Thrill for Shake It Off. Equilibrium also only when they invul'ed the shared tank buster. In short: they used actual "real self-mitigation" only twice the whole fight of 11 min with a freaking add phase for an astounding duration of 12s. My tank heart was f*cking crying. How can you even play tank without actually "playing tank"?!)

I agree all tank rotations are far too easy, but I think the DRK/WAR rotations are outliers of being exceptionally easy.

[Liam_Harper]

At least DRK (while indeed far too simple) has some oGcd's. War's entire ST dps toolkit fits on 9 buttons. It's basically the "baby's first tank" of the four.

Am I the only one disappointed they removed the 1% crit passive per 10 beast guage too?

So the skill median of tanks has indeed dropped with more new tanks having little idea what they are doing even on the easy tanks

Both tanks and healers.

It's baffling seeing tanks 3-4k below what they should be when they have 9 buttons to manage and 3-4 busters the entire fight, or healers at 80 spamming the wrong GcD heals doing a quarter their potential damage when they only have 2 buttons to handle. Tank and healer roles have both attracted the inexperienced player, who click with it because it feels miles easier than dps, then defend playing poorly with "I'm not a dps, I'm meant to hold agro/heal", but they don't even do that well because they were never interested in learning to play well in the first place.

They ripped tank/healer away from the veterans and gave them to those players.

[AncientCrystal]

Job has like the lowest button count of all jobs. The whole Fell Cleave a million times is whack. Job needs a complete overhaul.

Oh, and bring back Butcher's Block.

[Ripax]

When WAR crit became part of the attacks over criting them, it made me lose the will of playing it... my WHM do more damage with Afflatus than my WAR with Nascent flash...

[millktea]

No, Heirro is right. WAR is fine compared to its tank brethren.

Just looking at the "played" numbers doesn't help. In fact, we could construe the number of GNB parses as GNB being the 2nd worst/least enjoyable tank. Yet, the most recent poll from reddit and also recent forum thread GNB is one of the most liked job of all FF14 ShB jobs right now.
GNB also having the highest representation of all tanks for speed kills says it's favored.

As Heirro said:


Also, WAR losing the most unique design mechanics, aestetics, and -last, but not least- dps from SB to ShB has hurt those "WAR mains". (I am using quotation mark on purpose bc it's mostly people jump off of WAR who enjoyed being the highest dps tank.)

I would've also rather enjoyed enhanced tank dynamics on every other tank instead of getting cuts on WAR identity, but here we are.

Says Hierro is right and that warrior is fine, then goes off about GNB. What are you arguing? This doesn't explain how WAR is fine.

Warrior is the least favored. Warrior is not popular on social media.

Warrior lost all its utility, its unique features, its party synergy, and its damage (and deliverance, a strong part of its identity). It didn't get anything new and lost almost everything.

Warrior wastes 3 gcds just to do an aoe rotation. You waste 6 gcds to do 1 beast skill in aoe, then 4gcds (6, 4, 6). It only refreshes 10s, but you lose nearly 3s just applying it, making 4 to 6gcds just to have a comfortable time to execute IR. This is atrocious in dungeons. If its 2 targets, war uses fell cleave. Wow, even in aoe, they can't escape FC. So war has to wait 4/6 gcds to do 1 Beast ability, but has no variance unless its 3 enemies? When it used to be decimate?

Holmgang duration is based on the target. If you apply it and the enemy dies 1s later, that holmgang doesn't get the rest 7s duration.

WAR doesn't bring enough damage, utility, nor aesthetic to justify it being "fine". And if you want to talk about war mains, hi. We said its not fine.

And warrior needs to be top dps. It even still has the punishment as if it is (if you wanna balance). A lot of wars stopped being war because removing its damage is wrong, especially with what yoshida exclusively stated. They also don't play it in protest.

Also, I already had this type of thread made in AUGUST 2019, why are you splitting? We should all be in the same thread. Sigh