Tank IDENTITY

[Shurrikhan]

There are plenty of ways to do 'too angry to die' that don't involve siphoning HP from your enemies.

Again, it's literally not siphoning. They're not absorbing anyone else's HP. The cure values aren't even dependent upon the damage dealt, not that such particularly matters when you've had the lore-based mechanic laid out for you for over 10 years of this game.

The term 'Second Wind' is an athletic term. You're fatigued, out of breath, and unable to continue. And then you suddenly find the strength to press on.... a burst of adrenaline to keep you going.

Then how is it acceptable for "finding the strength to press on" to be fine for Second Wind, but not for Warrior's self-healing? WAR's self healing is literally, repeatedly, described as such.

It was sold as the self-sustaining monster of the battlefield, able to fight on for days, even alone. An indomitable, frenzied bear of a tank. You kill it by stringing it along, wearing it down and out, or through quick and overwhelming force; face it at pace or in its element and it goes and goes and goes. How does healing through combat somehow not fit that and instead end up as "vampirism"?

And WAR isn't about high HP, any more, really. Thrill is the only action that adopts that approach. If I were designing the kind of tank that you're describing, I'd build WAR's entire kit around them building up massive pools of temporary HP. I remember up until Stormblood, players were coming up with creative ways to see how high they could push the HP pool. That was incredibly fun.

I could be cool with that... so long as it isn't a euphemism for offering little actual sustain (which would be the case if that temp HP couldn't be spent as quickly as it's gained, since it'd still leave, just through fundamental design, additional health debt relative to other tanks). The difference between the two is primarily that heal-WAR can spring back and has an actual moving HP bar, instead of merely slowly spiraling the drain.

And yeah, I miss trying to get the biggest Upheaval Direct Crit I could via absurd HP pools. That was good, that was thematic. I'd love to see it return. I just don't think actual self-heals as compared to fading shields (or temporary max and current HP increase, which is just shields but without any advantage vs. status effects / ability to shake things off) fall out of theme for that.

It's an MMO, not DnD. Second Wind doesn't lose its hit points gained or cost you an action after it ends. In this context, there's nothing wrong with a physical character self-healing. It doesn't break the game's logic/universe.

[Lyth]

A quick search through your post history shows that even you consistently refer to WAR's 'self-healing by attacking enemies' as life steal. So I'm not sure what we're basing this new fictional explanation off of, even if you manage to successfully fabricate one just for the sake of the argument. If you want WARs that heal themselves by hitting things, that's perfectly fine with me. Perhaps every time they punch someone, they make their opponents drop potions, bandages, and medkits that you can pick up. But that should be part of the visual storytelling of the action itself.

Like I've said multiple times, I have no problem with Thrill of Battle. I actually think that it's thematically great and could easily be the basis of WAR's identity. I'm a bit iffy on Equilibrium, primarily because the naming choice is somewhat random. But you could convince me that perhaps it's something thematically similar to a Second Wind type effect. I just don't get the lifesteal bit. And there's nothing in the visual storytelling of the actions that explains it how a barbarian is capable of absorbing someone's life force, potency caps on life absorbed aside. You might as well give them sparkly spell casting and pretend that it's not holy magic. Er, that's, um... the physical manifestation of channeled rage, not magic! Maybe give them Bio Blaster while you're at it too! Oh, that's not poison coming out of a machinist's tool, that's, er... angry flatus! Good work.

HP boosts in this game are a functionally better version of flat damage shields, because they translate into a shield + heal. That's why Thrill is on a longer cooldown. You'd actually need to be careful to make sure that it's not too broken. That being said, I can tell you for a fact that players found comparing massive HP pools to be ridiculously good fun. And I think that designing jobs in ways that make them all individually feel fun to play should always be a priority. And that really comes down to identify the visual story that you want to tell through each job's ability set.

[Shurrikhan]

A quick search through your post history shows that even you consistently refer to WAR's 'self-healing by attacking enemies' as life steal.

Not consistently, no. But, yes I will call it that often enough, as shorthand, when those I'm talking to aren't purposely leveraging a rough term to conflate a mechanic with a motif. Just as "healing" doesn't necessarily make for a White Mage, Holy Priest, or pure-hearted, saintly oracle-mage, healing through offense doesn't necessarily make for a vampire. "Shielding", likewise, doesn't require a technomancer motif and sci-fi shield battery.

Perhaps every time they punch someone, they make their opponents drop potions, bandages, and medkits that you can pick up. But that should be part of the visual storytelling of the action itself.

It's. Literally. Right. There. Every bit as blatantly as Souleater. How is "I gutted this man from low to high, and did a spin-flip" any more a clear visual indicator of "I just sucked out this guy's lifeforce" than progressively increasing angry red glow, some backchanneling yellow energy on heals, etc., from one's strikes?

HP boosts in this game are a functionally better version of flat damage shields, because they translate into a shield + heal.

You do realize that shields likewise increase both your current and maximum HP, right? They don't convert HP into the shield. It goes... on top.

An 20k HP boost does not increase your maximum eHP at that moment by any more than a 20k shield. The shield just has the further benefit of preventing status effects, including knockback, if its applying damage is less than the shield value.

I'm a bit iffy on Equilibrium, primarily because the naming choice is somewhat random.

It makes sense less today; it was literally a matter of balancing throughput vs. sustain when it was made. The job was previously very much about trading out how to use Wrath stacks.

And there's nothing in the visual storytelling of the actions that explains it how a barbarian is capable of absorbing someone's life force.

They're not. It's not someone else's lifeforce. It's the Warrior own aether being stimulated.

That being said, I can tell you for a fact that players found comparing massive HP pools to be ridiculously good fun.

I literally just agreed to that.

And I think that designing jobs in ways that make them all individually feel fun to play should always be a priority.

I've never argued with this.

And that really comes down to identify the visual story that you want to tell through each job's ability set.

Which apparently will be ignored unless it falls into your rather narrow constraints:

"Is this job obviously magic (must use MP and have actual spells)? If not, it cannot have access to barriers or self-healing because all the lore put forward to say how and why should be held suspect" despite being in a game where all physical combatants, and indeed virtually all people, inherently channel aether within themselves to surpass normal limitations.


That's the issue at hand here. We do not need to restrict all seemingly "physical" jobs to the scraps of whatever mechanics the ostensibly "magic" ones leave behind in a world in which every person capable of taking a teleport or over level ~15 is habitually using aether manipulation to some extent. You may as well watch some Martial Arts B-movie and take offense at someone leaping a larger gap than is normally human could just because they're "not a wizard."

If you just look that larger span of jobs, Dancer being capable of heals, Monk and SAM of mitigating even magic damage, etc., etc. WAR's visual tells are still (less than they were, but still) mostly cohesive and sufficient. Yes, I'd rather WAR build more upon and around its old core, but it's not a problem that it heals as it attacks.

[Lyth]

I think that you're needlessly digging a hole for yourself here purely for the sake of saving face. Most people do see WAR's lifesteal as actual life steal, and you yourself are on record as stating the same. There's nothing particularly clever about this; it's just the way the actions are designed. I have nothing against WAR being the best at self-sustain, but I do want to see an appropriate visual theme around it. There are plenty of other ways of doing it other than vampirically siphoning off someone's life force. Honestly, there's no shame in just dropping this particular argument. I won't hold you to it, but I don't think it lends anything constructive to either your case or this discussion.

The reason why Thrill is better than a flat shield is because it still has value if you don't mitigate any damage with it. When the effect expires, you still retain the HP gained from it. There are plenty of ways of doing interesting temporary HP mechanics, including having your overheals persist as HP. But that's a different conversation.

There can be multiple ways of achieving the same goal. WAR is a purely physical job focused around raw strength. They don't need magic. Why cast healing spells on yourself when you have enhanced wound healing and regeneration? Why shield yourself when your skin is as tough as iron? Why teleport across the arena when you can simply jump? Why cast a barrier on your allies when you can give a rousing battle cry that raises their stats? Why cast offensive spells when you could punch the ground and make rocks fly out? There's no limitation on that. It's literally one of the easiest jobs to come up with a consistent theme for, and you don't need to introduce magical elements to keep it competitive.

I suppose the bottom line is that I would like to see the development team sit down and think about the visual story that each job is telling through the action set, even if it means reworking some actions. It's probably something that would be helped if they had specific design 'leads' for each job who have a sense of the overarching 'theme'. When players complain about identity, it usually indicates a lack of a focused 'vision' behind the job's playstyle. It really needs to be coherent and consistent. The means are every bit as important as the ends here.

[Shurrikhan]

I think that you're needlessly digging a hole for yourself here purely for the sake of saving face. Most people do see WAR's lifesteal as actual life steal, and you yourself are on record as stating the same.

By all means quote me on where I've said as much. Not "they heal through damage dealt," but actually "stealing the lifeforce of their enemies" vampirism.

The reason why Thrill is better than a flat shield is because it still has value if you don't mitigate any damage with it. When the effect expires, you still retain the HP gained from it.

A current-and-max HP bonus will only ever outperform a shield if...

1. you're not already topped off, and
2. you wouldn't consume the shield within its 30-second duration.

That is not likely to happen. That is much less often the case than a hefty shield preventing a debuff, which simple added max-and-current HP cannot do.

They don't need magic. Why cast healing spells on yourself when you have enhanced wound healing and regeneration?

They naturally manipulate aether, just like every other physical job in this game. That is the only way anyone has superhuman strength in XIV. Have you never seen a Bard? They're not a "mage" --they're a physical combatant-- but still very, very obviously manipulate aether. Warrior's product/form of that aether manipulation is self-enhancement and self-healing.

But, no, Warrior does not have "magic" in the sense of casting spells. Warrior has no spells. Warrior has no casts.

Equilibrium, meanwhile, is that regeneration. I'd be fine with turning it into temp HP and a HoT. But it is not a healing spell any more than Second Wind would require a Sharlayan dissertation and complex spellforms. Not all healing abilities have to be "magic" in the sense of magecraft or magic swordsman.

[Lyth]

You have eight or so posts on this subforum alone that refer to WAR's abilities as 'life steal'. I'm really not sure where you'd want to start, and anyone can see this with a simple search. I don't mind that you're playing the devil's advocate here as usual, but it seems truly bizarre to suggest that this isn't a vampiric effect without even an attempt at offering an alternative explanation on how said healing-on-hit works that's substantiated by lore or gameplay.

What you're describing with temporary HP is just an eHP problem. If I'm at 1 HP going into a tankbuster, TBN isn't going to save me any more than a 125% max HP boost will. If TBN was a Thrill of Battle effect and not a barrier, it would be broken.

Manipulating aether is another term for 'magic'. You're going to end up going into an aether vs. dynamis discussion with this next, I can sense it.

Either way, you can have your magical vampiric barbarians if you want, but I just want to see some consistency in how it's executed.

[Mikey_R]

You have eight or so posts on this subforum alone that refer to WAR's abilities as 'life steal'. I'm really not sure where you'd want to start, and anyone can see this with a simple search. I don't mind that you're playing the devil's advocate here as usual, but it seems truly bizarre to suggest that this isn't a vampiric effect without even an attempt at offering an alternative explanation on how said healing-on-hit works that's substantiated by lore or gameplay.

How would you describe Bloodbath?

[Shurrikhan]

You have eight or so posts on this subforum alone that refer to WAR's abilities as 'life steal'.

Within this sub-forum I have only 22 posts that include at least one, at least once, among the words "life steal," "lifesteal" or "life-steal". Of those, only 13 also discuss Warrior and actually include the words in my own text (rather than only in the quote blocks):

• The first few come from this very conversation, quoting you, having to meet your term and specifically arguing against you using it deliberately as a loaded/conflated term.
• Only in quoting Luin, in drawing DRK/WAR comparisons; motifs were not in question.
• Using the term because that's the term Arch used; motifs were not in question.
• Appears only in the quote before pointing out that it's a loaded term:

Because it's not "life-leech" per se. It's, quite definitively, living off the thrill of battle. (If we're going to consider technicals, at expense to all lore, like "but it's healing based on damage dealt" then note still that life-leech wasn't originally that; it was bonus damage that happened to heal you by the same amount, quite literally leeching that HP out of the enemy.).

• Using the term specifically because of, and to contrast, Anahalise's use of the term.
• Post discusses WAR, but only uses "life-steal" in the phrase "People make a big deal out of DRK being the iconic life-steal tank to-be, but...."
• Appears only in quoting you. Specifically does not call it lifesteal.
• Term used only in response to your idea that as a WAR, if meeting Kalise's description of a more WAR-thematic raidwide than SiO, you must...

magically drain life from your enemies and generate party-wide barriers

rather than, say, a simple raid-wide Bloodbath buff via War Cry with overhealing turning into temp HP. "Lifesteal" is only used in saying what did not exist. Positives used the term "self-sustain" only.

• Used the conventional term for concision and because that was the term used by the previous 3 posts made in reply to one another.
• Quoting you, noting that "Granted, I do think there's space for them both to have 'lifesteal,' in very different ways."
• Quoting Whiskey while specifically pointing out the differences between (A) content-based throughput and purely state-based throughput and (B) healing as portion of damage dealt vs. bundled effect.

it seems truly bizarre to suggest that this isn't a vampiric effect without even an attempt at offering an alternative explanation on how said healing-on-hit works that's substantiated by lore or gameplay.

I just summarized for you the one given in the job quests and across the job's description since 1.x.
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Manipulating aether is another term for 'magic'.

Then load your terms how you will, but stick with it. If any and all healing comes down to...

You might as well give them sparkly spell casting and pretend that it's not holy magic

...then wtf is Abyssal Drain doing? And are all physical melee holy magic casters because they have Second Wind?
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Either way, you can have your magical vampiric barbarians if you want, but I just want to see some consistency in how it's executed.

Warriors are not "magical" (to any extent beyond Pugilist, Archer, Lancer, Rogue, or Gladiator are "magical" in the sense of casting specific schools of magic despite, yes, manipulating aether to do more than would otherwise be humanly possible).

Nor are they vampires. That doesn't mean they have to be barred from having self-healing.

(By this point, you have called WAR thematically unfit to have HoTs, healing-via-attacks, burst heals, shields/barriers, or burst mitigation. Because it is "physical," anything short of piñata-popping enemies to "drop potions, bandages, and medkits" isn't a permissible use of healing. Anything beyond gradual hardening and temporary bonus HP, apparently, is a no go. But I have to wonder if suddenly those, too, would be thematically "unfit" if they could hold a candle to other capacities. Would they then just be next on the chopping block?)


Again, I'm right there with you in terms of reshaping WAR's throughput slightly to better center its theme --I'd love to head back to early Stormblood Warrior, stylistically, as an anchor or guide, perhaps even bringing Berserk back nearer to the fore-- but when you play out the "physical jobs can't have X, Y, Z" basic forms of throughput to that extent, thematic cohesion does not seem to be your main objective.

[Lyth]

????

I didn't mention Bloodbath. I don't think that it makes sense as a role action, though.

I actually vastly preferred the 2.0 direction for Warrior.

[...]

People make a big deal out of DRK being the iconic life-steal tank to-be, but they never no-healed the entirety of dungeons like WAR could. StB mass-pulls made DRK look invincible, but in single-target, their self-heals were kinda garbage, and it wasn't much better in HW, either. WAR, on the other hand? That job was popping itself from critical to full HP off meaty crits since 1.x. and... right up until they decided to copy PLD twice over instead of allowing PLD to better scale with its own gear and allow for actually distinct ways of tanking instead.

1.x Warrior was about "big honking crits" to instantly heal you to full HP along with doing some of the best AoE in the game.

[...]

...It's never not been a major part of its identity. That was originally tied hand-in-hand with self-healing/lifesteal, but even if Warrior's mostly lost the first there's no reason to claim that the other shouldn't be considered a core component.

...

It is what it is. If you want to make the claim that WAR's 'heal on attack' effects are not 'lifesteal' just for the sake of this discussion, we don't even have the starting point to start talking.

I personally feel that simply continuing to do something 'because tradition' means that you lose out on opportunities to improve. There are many, many ways that you can do self-sustain on a tank that do not involve vampiric effects. I listed out multiple examples in my last post of this.

There are certain jobs that you can get away with more magical effects without making them spellcasters. MNK, for example, has a Fire/Wind/Earth elemental motif running through the job. DRG has a blood-related magic theme. NIN invokes Wind/Fire/Water/Earth elemental effects. Again, visual consistency is key. Could you make vampiric barbarians who drink the blood of their fallen foes? Sure! But make it visually and thematically consistent across the entire job.

What I dislike is this dilettantism that we currently have. Oh, here's my lifesteal move. Here's my barrier shield. Here's my heal spell. You don't need multiple approaches to self-sustain on the same job. Pick something and roll with it.

You want lifesteal? That's great. Make that the centerpiece of its sustain. My attacks heal me. Overhealing gets converted to temporary HP. I time up my burst phases with tankbusters to mitigate more damage. Fantastic. Find some sort of a unifying concept that ties things together. And find something visually and thematically that justifies it for the job in question.

[Mikey_R]

I didn't mention Bloodbath. I don't think that it makes sense as a role action, though.

It is what it is. If you want to make the claim that WAR's 'heal on attack' effects are not 'lifesteal' just for the sake of this discussion, we don't even have the starting point to start talking.

I just wanted to know how you would describe Bloodbath? I'm guessing it is again vampiric, but it is available to all melee DPS, and you cannot say they all have to have a vampiric theme just to support this. This is what I was trying to get at without directly trying to steer you in that direction. However, Bloodbath is more of a life steal than Bloodwhetting, being that, Bloodbath's health gain is directly proportional to the damage you do whereas Bloodwhetting is a static heal potency. Since the heal potency is static and independent on the damage you do, it cannot be a life steal.

You also seem to have the misconception that anything involving aether is magic by nature when, in reality, it is not. See all the special effects on the weapon skills? Lorewise, that is all aether being used to enhance attacks. The circular saws on Fell Cleave? Aether, ground shockwave on Decimate? Aether. Equilibrium restoring HP? That is you using aether to heal wounds. Everything is made of aether but that doesn't mean everything is magical.