Is anyone surprised at this point?

[whiskeybravo]

I'm not trying to make any suppositions or projections, I would just like to unravel Lyth's logic.

Burst has a natural advantage in fights with downtime, as has been repeatedly explained, but shouldn't have a "decisive" advantage (whatever arbitrarily counts as decisive) because the only actual burst tank happens to be simplistic in it's design and easier to play than the more complexly designed sustain tank jobs. Sure. I guess. Twelve forbid there ever be a complex burst job, or easy to play sustain job.

I could be wrong but it seems to me that if you increased the burst damage window then in fights like Diamond, where WAR has a "decisive" 18 point advantage, wouldn't that actually make it a larger lead?

[ItMe]

the only actual burst tank

WAR may have the most pronounced burst phase, but I don't understand how you can say it's the only tank with one.

[Lyth]

I mean, the question that you're really getting at is whether WAR needed a damage buff at all. It didn't really. It needs its gameplay buffed.

This just about getting more people to play WAR again. But to do so, you have to make the job itself a lot more interesting. The single biggest mistake made with WAR was 4.2, in that they removed the gauge costs when IR was active. Instead of spending your downtime setting up for and carefully planning your entry into your big burst phase, you spend your downtime waiting around for your big burst phase. 10 seconds of intense activity followed by 80 seconds of waiting around. This is a band-aid solution to a deeper problem. Big numbers are exciting, but only when you earn them.

Resource-gated burst is probably the answer to how you balance out burst and make it uptime-dependent. If the boss has a five minute cutscene midfight where you all go get coffees, you just have a free reset in your cooldowns, which is what burst jobs want, since they're time-gated. You're always in your opener. If it's resource-gated, you're not building resources during that time, because your resource generation is uptime dependent. I want this game to reward uptime, not 10 seconds of activity followed by 80 seconds of coffee.

Either way, this was not the correct way to go about it.

[whiskeybravo]

WAR may have the most pronounced burst phase, but I don't understand how you can say it's the only tank with one.

Context.

I mean, the question that you're really getting at is whether WAR needed a damage buff at all. It didn't really. It needs its gameplay buffed.

This just about getting more people to play WAR again. But to do so, you have to make the job itself a lot more interesting. The single biggest mistake made with WAR was 4.2, in that they removed the gauge costs when IR was active. Instead of spending your downtime setting up for and carefully planning your entry into your big burst phase, you spend your downtime waiting around for your big burst phase. 10 seconds of intense activity followed by 80 seconds of waiting around. This is a band-aid solution to a deeper problem. Big numbers are exciting, but only when you earn them.

Resource-gated burst is probably the answer to how you balance out burst and make it uptime-dependent. If the boss has a five minute cutscene midfight where you all go get coffees, you just have a free reset in your cooldowns, which is what burst jobs want, since they're time-gated. You're always in your opener. If it's resource-gated, you're not building resources during that time, because your resource generation is uptime dependent. I want this game to reward uptime, not 10 seconds of activity followed by 80 seconds of coffee.

Either way, this was not the correct way to go about it.

I don't really see how you can maintain that position. If a gameplay buff results in making the job more complex, then wouldn't it need a damage buff to compensate for the increased complexity? Aside from that, if a burst job should "Generally speaking" have some advantage in a downtime fight but doesn't, shouldn't the numbers be adjusted?

I didn't have an issue with the old IR halving gauge costs. I didn't have an issue with NF requiring a target. Pretty much for these reasons (braindead job). But that's the position WAR is in now.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

The WAR buff was about the best we could have hoped for, under the circumstances (unless, of course, your hope was that WAR wouldn't receive any buffs).

[Lyth]

WAR didn't need any damage buffs. It needs a gameplay rework. The only reason to hope for freebies would be if you need it to mask gameplay deficiencies as a player.

...

Yes. I think that uptime should always be rewarded. I think handing out freebies because it makes everyone feel better about themselves devalues this.

Like I said in my last post, the difficulty with balancing burst that operates off of cooldown timers is that you benefit from downtime. That's not a deserved advantage. It's just an advantage. Other jobs have to compensate by just being better than you during the uptime phases. The workaround to this is to make burst resource gated, and have those resources come from uptime. In other words, you'd have to have abilities like IR and Delirium come off of a resource system that builds from actually hitting the boss, instead of standing around watching pretty cutscenes.

If you improve a job's skill ceiling and force good play, by all means, reward that.

[Absurdity]

I mean, the question that you're really getting at is whether WAR needed a damage buff at all. It didn't really. It needs its gameplay buffed.

This just about getting more people to play WAR again. But to do so, you have to make the job itself a lot more interesting. The single biggest mistake made with WAR was 4.2, in that they removed the gauge costs when IR was active. Instead of spending your downtime setting up for and carefully planning your entry into your big burst phase, you spend your downtime waiting around for your big burst phase. 10 seconds of intense activity followed by 80 seconds of waiting around. This is a band-aid solution to a deeper problem. Big numbers are exciting, but only when you earn them.

I agree that the 4.2 rework was not a good idea in hindsight, I can however also see why they did it. 4.0/4.1 WAR was an absolute mess and trying to salvage it would've probably taken too much time.

The burst setup was way too tight, something as basic as downtime would mean that your gauge and remaining eye timer suddenly don't line up anymore with what you need and your only option was either to deal with less damage during IR or delay it, both resulting in not only a dps loss but also felt absolutely terrible considering IR was a 2 minute cooldown.
Even if you executed it perfectly it resulted in about the same dps as a paladin that just went through their FoF/Req phases and only had to deal with having enough MP for Req which would still tick up during downtime, so the complete rework made sense at the time.

Could they have fixed it? I mean that kind of design works for PLD and GNB (and it worked for DRK back in SB) so sure, but it would've taken them a lot longer.

What they shouldn't have done is basically turn it into a 1 button spamfest, the removal of other tank mechanics with ShB just made it a lot more obvious since you suddenly don't have to juggle other things anymore that keep you occupied.

[Duskane]

Old IR probably be fine with Charged infuriate,especially with all the ways to extend Stroms eye now.
it was just an easy fix just to make it free essentials.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

WAR didn't need any damage buffs.

Define "need."

It needs a gameplay rework.

If you say so, but that's not going to happen any time soon for multiple reasons, so why even mention it?

The only reason to hope for freebies would be if you need it to mask gameplay deficiencies as a player.

True; all those WARs who couldn't out-DPS their counterparts at equivalent percentile just suck.

Look, some jobs are not going to perform as well as others, as a matter of course. I get that, but nobody likes that their job is being outperformed (well, maybe underdogs do, but you get my point).

Implying that people who wanted damage buffs for WAR just suck is a bad faith take and, frankly, reeks of bitterness.

[Duskane]

I honestly think war needed some attention,
was one of the only jobs that got almost nothing new in ShB.