Derail Prevention Thread

[Junk4Brains]

Didn't want to derail the original thread any more than it already was so decided to make my own. I feel a lot of good topics are getting derailed into WAR vs PLD discussions. So I'm making his thread to help with some of that. If you notice a thread going the route of PLD vs WAR when it was originally about something completely different, feel free to bring your derailed replies here. ^^

I'll go ahead and start us off.

One of the major things that people bring up is that WAR does more damage, enough to make their inferior damage soaking capability justified. Even if WAR does *slightly* more damage or enmity (which is what happens in the "lone" scenarios), the difference is so minute that it doesn't make one whit of a difference. People have made varying claims that WAR does anywhere from 30-100% more damage than a PLD does. That's blatantly untrue, which is what my math was intending to demonstrate. Honestly, the difference between the two is small enough that player skill has a greater impact than class choice.

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The basic reasoning I used is that, if you're bringing double WAR, you're not getting that additional damage. The WAR buffs its own damage and tangentially improves the PLDs, much like DRG improves itself and tangentially improves BRD. It is, admittedly, a bit of a fuzzy area, but I stand by how I labelled it, especially since the WAR doesn't actually benefit in any of the tangential ways from the added damage afforded to a PLD whereas the PLD itself does.

Well WAR does benefit from it. Not as much as PLD but it does. The WAR that applies it gets the damage buff and gives it. The other one, not having to use SE can use BB which has a higher potency. But more realistically if one WAR is tanking and the other is DD'ing it means the tank can ignore SE and get in more uses of SP.

But you are right in that if you have 2 DPS slots bringing a WAR AND a PLD will be better. Just like Rage of Halone can go along way to help a WAR maintain if a PLD is under geared (which I have done a few times on HM Titan.

But I stand by reasoning. A PLD wouldn't even see 1 single point of that increase DPS w/o a WAR. WAR is the one driving the DPS on that debuff, the PLD is just a passenger along for the ride. It is not fair to give PLD full credit for DPS it had NO part in creating.


PLD can do this just as easily with Sword Oath. Since neither Sword Oath nor Shield Oath require any build up or CD usage, stance dancing is, honestly, an advantage of the PLD.

Yes, but PLD has absolutely NO advantage from stance dancing. If they are DPS they can stay in Sword Oath, going into Shield Oath serves them NO offensive advantage what so ever. Where as with WAR going into defiance allows them to use their harder hitting abilities.

The 25% damage debuff from Defiance would negate any real advantage afforded by the higher potency of Inner Beast. You're turning what is a 300 potency attack into the equivalent of a 225 potency attack. Since it's only available once every 24 GCDs and the average base potency per GCD for non-Defiance WAR is 213.85, all that you're affording yourself is an additional .464 potency per GCD.

This is where I have to ask.... do you even play WAR regularly? Right in the tool tip is says both Inner Beast and Steel Cyclone IGNORE Defiance's damage penalty. So the potency of Inner Beast will ALWAYS be 300. And remember that 30% crit boost is not a 30% chance to crit but a bonus added to your crit stats. Which if you are DPS'ing and not tanking... you should stack as high as you can. So it hits relatively hard.

This is the only way that dancing into Defiance could be useful, mainly because you're directly countering the -25% damage penalty which renders the previous use of Inner Beast so irrelevant. Of course, in this case, it's the 72 GCD pulling you down: the per GCD advantage of Inner Beast in this context is 86.15; once every 72 GCDs means that it would provide an extra 1.20 base potency per GCD. Once again, largely irrelevant, especially considering the windup and CD resource usage required.

The benefit of Unchained is simple. It for a short time you can take advantage of Wrath stacks while DPS'ing. So if you use HS and then go into DF> Unchained. In 5 seconds you'll have 2 stacks. 3 stacks if you use Berserk. A fourth if you use Vengence. That is 8% bonus to crit and you still have 15 more seconds of Unchained/Berserk and guess how long the duration of Internal Release is?

Outside of tank stance, yes, a WAR is going to do more damage than a PLD, but I've never claimed that PLD and WAR have equal AoE *damage*, nor was I remarking at all on DPS stance AoEs. I specifically referenced AoE as it pertains to tanking, which is much less focused on damage and instead focuses almost entirely on enmity generation.

Okay here is where it sounds like you are back pedaling a bit but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. It could be my misunderstanding so I'll take the hit and say I''ve misinterpreted.

No, I don't. I act like Overpower has an inordinate cost that, even if you use it only 2-3 times, has a drastic effect upon your ability to deal damage down the line thanks explicitly to that high resource cost. Flash, from a long term DPS/enmity standpoint, not just free; because it costs no TP, it actually provides a net gain of 50 TP per GCD, which extends your effective resource time 3.75 GCDs. Every time you use Flash, you're buying yourself more than an entire Halone combo's worth of net TP. Each use of Overpower provides a drain of over ~7 GCDs worth of single target TP consumption. When the total burn time from full to resource dry is ~76 for each, Overpower consumes ~9% of your time to deal optimal DPS every time you use it. Using Overpower even *once* has a massive detrimental effect upon your ability to deal damage. Unless you have regular TP recovery periods, it's going to screw you over hard.

And this is where the point was brought up a WAR can use Flash AND Overpower. In the end though one is not better than the other. When it comes to AoE threat generation both classes get the job done. Nuff said.


First off, if you're going to bring up buffs, bring up all of them. Maim is factored into the end multipliers. Defiance hits Overpower harder than Shield Oath hits CoS and Fight or Flight provides more for CoS than Berserk does for Overpower. If you're going to bring up direct comparisons, do it correctly and include all factors on both sides.

Again I was talking about WAR Outside of Defiance. But In Defiance WAR still has better AoE damaging tools. Since we can also add Internal Release and 10% crit from Wrath. The more targets you hit more your chance to land a crit so your already high crit rate skyrockets with more targets.

Secondly, your comparison of CS and FoF to Overpower and Berserk is monumentally one sided. Using Overpower 7 times in a row is going to very nearly bottom out a WAR (At 80 TP net loss/GCD, you just burned through more than half of your total resources even at full) so, unless you just don't care about the damage you deal 2 minutes from now, you just cost yourself a crapton of damage output. Overpower's limitation is *specifically* its resource cost. Comparing it to an ability that has no cost but is on a CD is *obviously* going to create a massive artificial advantage for one over the other. You're not even *trying* to compare the two equally.

Well one of those 7 will be devoted to Cyclone. So that one is free then you have 6 actual OP's. And the point is after doing that much damage I can accord to 'coast' for a while. Just wait a second or two between combo swings for a bit and in a minute or so I'm right as rain. Managing your TP is not so hard that wasting half of it is so detrimental.


And I have a counterargument: how many DPS would be able to pull off of either a WAR or a PLD blowing their respective loads to maximize AoE enmity generation? Redundant enmity generation is just that: redundant. It doesn't matter how large your enmity cushion it; it only matters that you have *more* enmity. The WAR you refer to in your "word problem" would be screwing itself over because of resource costs. Sure, it blew its load nice and early to make itself look fancy, but, 2 minutes later, it's going to be sitting around doing nothing because it doesn't have the TP.

Again. Talking DPS potential between WAR and PLD. NOTHING at all to do with tanking. And again, TP management. Delaying your attacks even by just a little bit here and there can go a LONG way.

Once again, I feel compelled to point out that nowhere have I ever said that PLD does more or even *as much* damage as a WAR is capable of in the short term if that WAR is willing to sacrifice performance later on. People seem to get focused upon my statement that WAR and PLD have balanced AoE capability without actually understanding what I'm saying. WAR has the ability to put out a lot of AoE damage (still nothing compared to even a bad DPS, which is another one of the things that people continually forget about; even OT damage pales in comparison to a *real* DPS's) in a short confines at great cost, if it so chooses, but, over the long term, the PLD will do both more damage and generate more AoE enmity because Overpower is just too damned expensive.

And again the point of a WAR can use BOTH OP and Flash to generate hate. And that is useful. OP might be a cone but it has a further reach than Flash so if you have enemies running straight at you, OP has the advantage because it can mean the difference between using OP and getting them all or having to wait to use Flash for that one straggler mob to get into range. And WAR can use Flash a couple of times, And then use OP. By the time they need to grab more AoE hate, they have recovered some MP. If not they can pop an ether. But again... all a moot point. Both classes hold hate perfectly fine.

CoS generates the same enmity as a use of Overpower for free. Flash acts as a substantial net gain on TP whereas Overpower represents a massive net loss. To match AoE DPS, a WAR need only use 2 Overpowers every 10 GCDs, but that comes at the cost of increasing their TP usage by roughly 100% so that WAR ends up having slightly more than half of the operable time as a PLD.

Again as a WAR I use both Flash and OP. And once you find a balance between the two you really shouldn't have much of an issue with your MP or your TP.

Arguing about AoE damage dealing is just as derp-mode, especially when you ignore the monumental delayed costs incurred by Overpower. The DPS provided by a tank is nothing when compared against a DPS's. Try comparing what a WAR or PLD can do, even when temp buffed, to any other job out there: a healer will blow you out of the water with Holy/DoT+Bane, especially since healer gear actually improves DPS efficiently whereas tank gear is mostly focused on it tangentially.

I like how for some things you're all "MATH IS ALL THAT MATTERS! NUMBERS OR GTFO" And then other times you post assumptions like this with little to no base in testing to see how big the gap is. Just throw it out there, like I am sure you know what a WAR is capable of in tank gear but if a WAR was to gear for 100% DPS... but I digress. The point was not WAR DPS vs Others DPS. Its about comparing PLD and WAR.

It's just like arguing that bringing a tank that deals 10% more damage than the other one is really providing all that much when tanks account for all of 10% of total DPS on a good day. You're basically arguing that a 1% improvement in total DPS is going to make or break *anything*.

While a tank might not be at the top for the DPS charts the damage they do is still significant. Over the course of a long boss battle that 1% difference can equate to a difference of thousands of damage at the end of the fight.

The only thing that matters is that Tank DPS and enmity, both AoE and ST, is close enough that there is no appreciable advantage to bringing either, as far as damage/enmity is concerned. Mitigation is most definitely a lopsided construct that favors PLD heavily.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0QYzabYWT4 is a video that might interest you. Tanking DPS, Enmity (both AoE and ST) I agree they are close. But AoE DPS is a lopsided construct that favors WAR heavily.

Over all though I'd like to say you have this awful awful habit of going "X amount is small so X amount doesn't matter." And being dismissive of quite a few of WAR"s advantages. To which you are half right... yes a lot of WAR's advantages are small but where you are wrong is that doesn't automatically mean they don't matter.

WAR is an "Everything and the Kitchen Sink" kind of job. If you aren't squeezing every ounce of utility out of ALL of your skills you're not playing WAR to the best of its abilities. Yes by themselves those numbers are small and unimpressive when you look at them by themselves. But when you start using them TOGETHER, all of those 'small' numbers start adding up. And soon all those little 'insignificant' amounts start to become significant.

I don't mean this in a rude way because I really do enjoy your math and insight on a lot of things but WAR just may not be for you. I have a friend who is a math whiz and can give me so many theories and formulas and plotted trajectories on how to make the perfect basketball shot. And it all looks good and it all sounds good... but then you actually put a ball in his hand and tell him to shoot and most times he's lucky if he even hits the rim.

Math and theory are great great tools but they are not the end all and be all of game play. In the end what makes a skill useful or not is not always purely about how effective it is but rather how effectively it is used. A weak skill used properly will always have a purpose and a strong skill used wastefully will always be a detriment rather than an advantage.

[Coramac]

Math and theory are great great tools but they are not the end all and be all of game play. In the end what makes a skill useful or not is not always purely about how effective it is but rather how effectively it is used. A weak skill used properly will always have a purpose and a strong skill used wastefully will always be a detriment rather than an advantage.

This isn't basketball. This is a simplistic simulation. A more accurate comparison would be a basketball video game and your friend telling you how to make a shot from half court every single time.

The bastion of defense of those who don't understand or care about theorycrafting is the, now age old, "skillz" refuge. Video games are not difficult and Final Fantasy Reborn ranks on the low end of the not difficult spectrum. Very fun though from my experience at least, which I suppose is all that matters.