Warrior PvP Feedback - experienced warriors

[AorusCorsair]

After a few hundred matches in crystal my experience as WAR is that I'm the primary target about 80% of the time. It's not about defending other people at all. It's about surviving long enough to make good use of my CC abilities to secure assists for my teammates.

Since I am the bait, my uptime is very low. I pull in a target, wait for them to purify, stun them, and them immediately begin retreating while trying to heal and shield. Hopefully my teammates can convert that into a kill, but I don't have the luxury of hanging around to find out. About 1/3rd of the time I'm already dead at that point since all 5 players are chain stunning + imping me. If I do so survive, about half the time I end up with 1-2 people breaking through our lines to chase me back to spawn so they can try and finish me. My teammates are aware of this about 0% of the time. At this point I serve as the distraction. I continue to retreat towards the closest spawned potion. If I can get to a potion then I get to live (yay!) and I'll start making my way back to my teammates.

At this point attention has finally shifted to my teammates so I can rend in and complete a small burst on the lowest hp enemy before I become the primary target again. If my teammates are paying attention then they'll focus that target and eliminate it, otherwise it's shield and retreat time again. If we can get a couple of kills then I don't have to retreat anymore since I can heal fast enough against 2-3 players to not be bursted down. At this point it actually becomes fun to play and I can begin doing my rotation, escorting the crystal, and using my CC abilities to maintain control. One of the most underrated aspects of this control is WAR's ability to prevent stalling by using primal scream to drop your opponents' guards. It's actually better to use it against one or two shielded targets instead of waiting for the whole enemy team to show up first. If you can kill the stallers in the ~10 seconds that they were expecting to have before their teammates show up then you've turned that 5v5 at the finish line into a 5v3 which they're going to lose.

Once the CC snowball has crossed the finish line you can expect to show up dead last on your team in damage and receive zero comms because people don't realize that you were the punching bag for the first half of the match and contributed through CC instead of DPS. If you die early and the snowball doesn't happen then you can expect your teammates to start spamming "nice job!" and "good match!" as if you weren't already desperately trying to purify/heal/shield through all the sleep/stun/silence/imp spam that they didn't have to deal with.

[Gserpent]

I'd recommend playing PLD, man. What you're describing your WAR gameplay as makes it sound like you're trying to be a PLD. WAR *can* initiate, and is very good at it, but they can't Leeroy into the enemy team - you *need* DR to survive that kind of thing (which also means DRK is out, as is GNB unless they're licking a tank for Nebula.) In all honesty, if you can arrange it with quickchat (which is hard since quickchat is so worthless for actual communication), you actually want a different person on your team to be the man out front. WAR works best as a *counter*-initiator. Like you have a MNK Leeroy in, or even your team's healer or something, and you punish the enemy for trying to gang up on that person with Rend and Blota (as well as Onslaught for the focus target and Orogeny to help your buddy survive.) WAR does need to practice a kind of dive-retreat-dive-retreat pattern in some cases. PLD can afford to get stuck in thanks to Sacred Claim, Atonement, and the DR on Sheltron. WAR can't, not after the needed BW nerfs. If they swap to you, you need to be ready to bail out because you're more twiggy than most melee DPS. High skill players know this, and will actually target WAR preferentially because of this. If there is an enemy SCH or DRK (or both), you need to be *extremely* careful because Mummification/Sole Survivor will just ruin your day (it's also very effective at ruining a PLD's day.) Try to avoid getting stuck in if you know the Sole Survivor/Mummification hasn't been used yet.

WAR definitely experiences some fall-off in high skill games because those players have enough experience and skill to capitalize on WAR's weaknesses. I do not think WAR is a weak class by any measure, but I do think that they are trickier than any other tank when playing against high skill players and, especially, *coordinated* high skill players.

If you're wanting to lead the charge, PLD is your jam. After the boosts it received in 6.11, it's a *damned* good class and I would say it's *probably* the best overall tank now - very rarely a good focus target, moderate DPS, and Guardian is just fucking *disgusting.* Watching someone just chug a potion in front of you because the Paladin is giving them a green twizzler just feels bad.

One thing to keep in mind, though: it's not actually that bad to die if you forced the enemy team to spend a ton of resources to do it. This is something you see a lot in high level MOBA play - you can totally take that 4v5 fight and come out ahead if the other team had to blow a lot of cooldowns, mana, etc to kill your teammate. You'll see this happen a *lot* in CC, too - maybe you can Leeroy in and delete someone on the enemy team, but if you had to overextend to do it and had to blow Purify or Guard or a bunch of mana to sustain through it... you're probably going to get obliterated. Sometimes being bait works out in your team's favor, so long as you don't die without having used any of your stuff and forced the enemy team to blow a lot of stuff to kill you. WHM poly is a major example here, as WHM's contribution between LBs is pretty much literally just poly - if they don't have LB and just used poly, that WHM is basically off the field until one or the other comes up again.

[KickRox]

I'd recommend playing PLD, man.

I'd second this and add, in the most proactive and non-derogatory capacity, that those other tanks are there to be played if you're looking for a different type of tank. Warrior's LB & the rate in which it cools down, is very indicative of it's "glass cannon" type kit. I think because of how heavily its used in lower tiers it comes off as this ultra-tanky, pipe hittin' monster when in fact, if not played correctly, it can go down faster than some melee like MNK. I also think as it was said in someone's reply that WAR is often primary target. I mean, I love killing warriors, I'll admit it.

PLD has I higher ceiling/floor and once you get the hang of it, is incredibly fun to play. You won't set and records on the board (maybe dmg taken) but you'll definitely be MVP in your teammates eyes, and LB can really turn matches around. Just make sure your teammates know when Cover is coming, and that they know to start using elixir the second it does!

[NyneSwordz]

It's just not fun to be blown up and feeling like you have no counter measure to even survive. I don't know... I just want some help surviving a bit longer. At least increase blood whetting health shield back to 20%. The healing nerf is fine for the most part.

Also, orogeny and onslaught not interacting with the health shield from blood whetting makes me wonder if the shield even works sometimes. Does it? Because using orogeny does straight damage to the warrior's health pool without any reduction even when the health shield from blood whetting is up...

[NyneSwordz]

Seriously, I think Blood Whetting needs a damage % reduction modifier. It really isn't fun having practically no defense in a team fight. The healing doesn't even help because of CC. But a % damage reduction modifier would...

[Lihtleita]

i have come to terms with the fact that war is a chonky dps and not the tank it was in previous versions of pvp

that aside i do think its in a good place right now in terms of how satisfying its kit feels to execute. its a perfect distillation of PvE warrior to its basic components.

[NyneSwordz]

i have come to terms with the fact that war is a chonky dps and not the tank it was in previous versions of pvp

that aside i do think its in a good place right now in terms of how satisfying its kit feels to execute. its a perfect distillation of PvE warrior to its basic components.

Can't dps when you're running for your life. DPSing also kills you by costing you 20% of current health for orogeny and 10% for onslaught - pretty hefty price considering neither of those actions benefit from blood whetting at all.

I say just increase the health shield from blood whetting back to at least 20% (if not a bit more) health and it should be fine. Warrior will still have the weakest defense of all tanks, and less than some melee dps. Right now, getting focused means you have to mash on shield really fast and hope for the best or run while mashing on recuperate, potion to full health, and then come back hoping they don't focus on you anymore.

Limit break is really fun - but outside of that, it kind of isn't fun against groups that are good at bursting.

But I admit landing Primal Rend, Chaotic Cyclone and Orogeny against a group during limit break does feel really good.

[Lihtleita]

Can't dps when you're running for your life. DPSing also kills you by costing you 20% of current health for orogeny and 10% for onslaught - pretty hefty price considering neither of those actions benefit from blood whetting at all.

I say just increase the health shield from blood whetting back to at least 20% (if not a bit more) health and it should be fine. Warrior will still have the weakest defense of all tanks, and less than some melee dps. Right now, getting focused means you have to mash on shield really fast and hope for the best or run while mashing on recuperate, potion to full health, and then come back hoping they don't focus on you anymore.

oh i think theres room for making it a bit tankier, possibly in exchange for a longer CD on Rend, but numbers aside the core experience is fun.
its like the opposite of PvE drk, the best dps but not the best "gameplay feeling" in content, you know?

[NightHour]

I'd like to see Primal Rend's cooldown increased to 25 or the stun not being AOE.

Blota needs a longer cooldown or needs to be changed from a long range pull to say a 50% heavy.

In exchange, give some damage buffs or add say a 10/15% damage reduction to Bloodwhetting

[NyneSwordz]

I'd like to see Primal Rend's cooldown increased to 25 or the stun not being AOE.

Blota needs a longer cooldown or needs to be changed from a long range pull to say a 50% heavy.

In exchange, give some damage buffs or add say a 10/15% damage reduction to Bloodwhetting

Why would primal Rend cooldown increased to 25 seconds and removing blota's ranged pull ir heavy be necessary?

Warriors ability to help teammates would decimated by removing either the range or the heavy.

As for increasing primal Rend's cooldown to 25 seconds, I think that's a little too long considering the stun is only 2 seconds, even if it is aoe. It also interferes, potentially, with warriors rotation and how it interacts with blood whetting.

Maybe increase primal Rend's cooldown to 20 seconds and increase stun by 1 second.

And I agree, even a 10% damage reduction on bloodwhetting would help a lot to keep Warriors alive long enough to be fun at higher ranks.

Just to sum up, I would suggest one, or a combination, of the following changes to SLIGHTLY increase warrior survivability:

(1) add a 10% damage reduction on bloodwhetting, or

(2) reduce the self damage/health cost on onslaught and orogeny to 5% and 10%, or

(3) change onslaught and orogeny to weapon skills so they can benefit from blood whetting's healing per hit, or

(4) increase blood whetting's health shield to 20% to 25% of current health.

Ideally I'd like to see (1) adopted, as it probably would have the most beneficial effect, and is probably the easiest change to implement.

(3) is also a good change, and I like having more interactions among actions. But it could potentially be problematic as it could increase warrior's self healing during LB if the warrior manages to hit multiple opponents with orogeny.

I hope warrior gets something to help them survive a bit longer.