After 1 (arguably 2) expansions what is square trying to achieve with WAR (and PLD)?

[Lyth]

The biggest travesty with tank self-sustain is that it doesn't even create interesting gameplay. What makes lifesteal meaningful in games is the potential to fail, and fighting tooth and claw to survive. You need tight restrictions on self-healing and limited resources to keep yourself up. It can't be available on demand and shouldn't keep you up indefinitely in the absence of a healer.

One way of achieving this is through making self-heals be dependent on timing and context (i.e. potential lifesteal gated by the amount of damage received in the past X seconds - Death Strike from Warcraft is the classic example). Implemented correctly, lifesteal can create opportunities for tanks to demonstrate skilled play and pull off memorable clutch saves. This game just doesn't pull it off, sadly.

What the game designers have done instead is simply create self-regenerating tanks that can heal themselves up on demand whenever they get scared. WAR's current design primarily caters to the sort of tank main that can't tolerate their HP dropping below 80% and demands that their healer constantly be healing them. I don't think any self-respecting tank wants this. The dev team really need to re-think their approach to the role.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I mentioned Savage as a point of comparison. The amount of damage you take in wall to walls is some of the highest damage in the game. I didn't say that BW needs to be where it is now. I said that capping it to a single proc per GCD would absolutely gut WAR's ability to self-heal in dungeons. I also said that the entire tank and healer roles were in need of a complete redesign.

And IMHO that would be fine.

Things were alright before BW became a thing, even when back then things like the elusive giga pull of Mt.Gulg's first and last W2W existed since ShB. That was one of the few time healers needed to pump out more HPS and likely use some of their normally unused buttons to keep their tanks alive in dungeons. Other than that, today's freecure mage without Cure II can still contribute enough party HPS to heal a W2W so long their tanks are average or decently performing. Adding BW into the wrench was such a travesty on job dev's decision, it's pretty telling & depressing to see that button left untouched for the entirety of expansion. This isn't even accounting other odd decision that they've given to buff even their partywide Shake it Off beyond recognition, but I'm not going to touch deeper into that part.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Ok so GNB in current game design would be full-time meta though. Mitigation is king unless the sustain is beyond ridiculous and most relevant damage is magical most of the time so at least 70% of the time you will run GNB-DRK.

There is a reason why we don't go heavy on those splits, as was perfectly evident on PLD vs DRK in Heavensward.

The fix to this all would be the team designing the fights getting off their ass actually doing their work. Make different kinds of fights that behave differently with different kinds of tanking needs... Not everything has to be magic damage based with just the occasional swap requiring tankbuster.

[TheOperator3712]

And IMHO that would be fine.

Things were alright before BW became a thing, even when back then things like the elusive giga pull of Mt.Gulg's first and last W2W existed since ShB. That was one of the few time healers needed to pump out more HPS and likely use some of their normally unused buttons to keep their tanks alive in dungeons. Other than that, today's freecure mage without Cure II can still contribute enough party HPS to heal a W2W so long their tanks are average or decently performing. Adding BW into the wrench was such a travesty on job dev's decision, it's pretty telling & depressing to see that button left untouched for the entirety of expansion. This isn't even accounting other odd decision that they've given to buff even their partywide Shake it Off beyond recognition, but I'm not going to touch deeper into that part.

Before BW was a thing, I used Nascent Flash for the same purpose. Before that, I could use IR and Steel Cyclone. They required more effort, but they accomplished the same thing. Namely, making sure that an inadequate healer wouldn't slow the party down.

[Aravell]

You don't understand why WAR absolutely has to keep something we've had since 2.0 with Bloodbath? How about because we don't want to lose any more tank identity?

You are attributing WAR's identity to a cross-class skill, that would be like saying PLD's identity is out of combat Raise and being able to cast Stoneskin.

WAR's identity is self-healing, which they still have a lot of without an ability that makes them immortal for 4 GCDs in big pulls.

[Supersnow845]

I mentioned Savage as a point of comparison. The amount of damage you take in wall to walls is some of the highest damage in the game. I didn't say that BW needs to be where it is now. I said that capping it to a single proc per GCD would absolutely gut WAR's ability to self-heal in dungeons. I also said that the entire tank and healer roles were in need of a complete redesign.

“Would absolutely gut WAR’s ability to self heal”

……….to the point of still being the strongest tank for self sustain by a pretty wide margin

I’m not really sure what you consider an acceptable level here

[GoatOfWar]

My earlier post has never implied that I wanted to change WAR any ways in raid environment. I don't know why you mentioned Savage Fight in your reply. I was solely speaking of dungeons---W2W specifically. That being said, my point still stands: WARs (or any non healers, really) don't need 8s Benediction with 17s downtime.

A WAR can cycle through their cooldowns long enough to use 5 (4 if it's Dead Ends) BWs in those W2W pulls before actually dying without healer's help. This SHOULD NOT be possible. If WARs insists to keep this much of a HPS, what else can be concluded other than "I want to be immortal!!" which ultimately makes you ask: why do you bring a healer? To make sure DF queue pops?

Not just immortal. They also want the best utility, ease of optimisation and not be penalised on anything in exchange. No tank is allowed to do anything better. With it's current design, War should be botom dps. Always. But they don't want to consider other tanks. Dude literally said the tanks can't be further balanced.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

You are attributing WAR's identity to a cross-class skill, that would be like saying PLD's identity is out of combat Raise and being able to cast Stoneskin.

WAR's identity is self-healing, which they still have a lot of without an ability that makes them immortal for 4 GCDs in big pulls.

I mean, I agree with you there but Bloodbath *was* a WAR skill from 2.0 to 3.58... so that isn't exactly the equivalent of what you described with Paladin.

A proper comparison would be PLD's Awareness and Convalescence from 2.0 to 4.58, of which the former got axed 5.0+ and the latter... became a trait Upgrade of WAR's Thrill of Battle.

sips choco milk in WAR getting various tank specific stuff to their kit (PLD Conva -> Thrill trait, PLD Iron Will -> Inner Release, DRK Reprisal -> omni action of which WAR gained, PLD Veil -> made better for ages with Shake it Off)

[Supersnow845]

I think the point should be that WAR’s are fine to have their mitigation and their version of tanks mild self heals to be “lifesteal” based

What isn’t okay that they get a massive potency raid wide heal and can functionally bene one person per 25 seconds while also being immortal in cleave content

[Oizen]

I'm just tired of the favoritism honestly. WAR is being designed in a way where it feels like the developers are telling me I have to play it, because it is the best at literally everything under the sun, and is intentionally being pushed that way, and playing what I want to play is throwing.

WAR has the strongest invuln, so strong that it warps savage fights to basically downgrade the 2nd tank to a secondary DPS.
WAR has the strongest short mit, which is even stronger when applied to another target, effectively allowing you to double the amount of healing you're outputting for no real cost to yourself.
WAR has the strongest singular Raidwide mit, previously the balance behind it was DRK and GNB have literal clone skills of each other that only mit damage, with the upside of being timed mitigation rather than a shield, then they decide they should effectively nullify that advantage by giving Shake it off a Regen, which functionally does the same thing, on all damage types. And thats not even going into its ability to boost that shield further.
All the other tanks get a clone skill that is 30% mit, WAR gets bonus reflect damage on theirs


Dark Knight and Paladin cant benefit from skill speed due to being mixed attackers? Tough. GNB struggling to keep all of its buttons inline due to its endwalker additions? Who cares.
WAR isn't getting damage buffs on its Inner Release free crit attacks from crit buffs? HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE WE GOTTA REDO HOW THAT ENTIRE SYSTEM WORKS.

PLD falls so far behind that we have to rework it for being inherently incompatible with EW's gameplay? Eughhh fine but we better give WAR some more attention and make sure SIO remains superior to veil because it has to be.

Like I'm fine with the job having advantages, but it can't EVERY advantage, and if it is EVERY advantage, it shouldn't also be topping the DPS charts.
And if you are going to make a mandatory Omni-job of everything, can it at least be more fun and engaging to play rather than Fell Cleave & Fell Cleave Accessories?