The definitive WAR answer STR vs VIT... and stat caps

[Junk4Brains]

No, we don't. A properly played PLD in Sword Oath will do more damage than a WAR outside of Defiance. Just check the math (link in sig).

Actually by your own math WAR does more damage.
It is not until a WAR is in the group that a PLD's damage sees an advantage because of the Storm's Eye debuff. WHICH is a bit of a grey area....
Honestly it is not really fair to give PLD full credit for a DPS increase gained from an ability used by another class. Generally if x job provides the debuff than that job gets credit. So you can just as easily say that 'extra' damage a PLD does because of Storm's Eye belongs to the WAR NOT the PLD.

But to be fair as possible I find in such situations that since the WAR wouldn't get added damage without a PLD and a PLD won't get that extra damage without a WAR. That the dps increase is split 50/50. So if there is a 20 dps increase from SE then 10 of that is attributed to PLD and 10 of that is attributed to WAR. And since the difference between 10 and 10 is zero. You're back and square one with WAR doing slightly more damage.

And a little more on the topic, I don't know if you are unaware or simply find it inefficient. But WAR is able to go in and out of Defiance while in combat. What does this mean for WAR DPS?

It means once a minute a WAR can turn on Defiance, pop Infuriate, let loose Inner-Beast and turn off Defiance. To add a little icing on that cake, Internal release also shares the 60s cooldown. So every minute that can be a 300 potency attack with a 30% bonus to crit chance.

And also means every 180s a WAR can effectively turn on Defiance, pop Infuriate and then Unchained > Berserk, combo as normal and Inner Beast and turn off Defiance.

And on the topic of Brutal Swing. Yes its damage might be crap... but if you aren't worried about building up the enemy's stun resistance it is FREE crap. Just every 30 seconds between cooldowns free.

And on the topic of AoE damage. If you think a PLD can touch a WAR.... haha...ha...ha...hahaha. Yes, Overpower is expensive. But you act like a WAR has to spam it to the high heavens to compete with PLD. If you include Maim, OP has a potency around 144. PLD's CoS has a potency of 220-250. That means all a WAR has to do is use OP just twice every 25 seconds. Then you add in the buffs and the fact that because of the cooldown PLD can only fit two CoS in FoF and WAR can fit... roughly 7 into Berserk. And if they are taking advantage of their stance, every minute they can do the above stance dance but instead of using IB just pop off Internal released buffed Cyclones.

Since you like math I have a fairly simple word problem for you:

If a WAR engages, with Heavy Swing > Maim > Defiance > Infuriate > Berserk > Steel Cylcone > Click off Defiance > Spam Over Power until Pacified and then went immediately afk to make a sandwhich. How much time does the WAR have to make that sandwich until a PLD makes up the difference in AoE damage using CoS?


Of course threat wise arguing which is better between either class is just too derp-mode for me. End of the day both classes can successfully hold hate in their sleep. Its like arguing which is better to shoot fish in a barrel with... either way you end up with a bunch of dead fish.

As for the original point of this topic.... Vit is the easier option. Str you will struggle a lot but as someone said before str's returns gets better and better with gear. Same can be said for vit (higher defense means higher ehp) but in the end it boils down to playing style. If you are a reactive WAR who like sitting on your stacks and sticking to SE/BB, Vit will serve you better. If you are an active WAR who is less frugal with stacks and gets SP in whereever it can fit in, str will serve you better once you get the gear to make the most of your returns.

[Kitru]

Actually by your own math WAR does more damage.

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.

It is not until a WAR is in the group that a PLD's damage sees an advantage because of the Storm's Eye debuff. WHICH is a bit of a grey area....
Honestly it is not really fair to give PLD full credit for a DPS increase gained from an ability used by another class. Generally if x job provides the debuff than that job gets credit. So you can just as easily say that 'extra' damage a PLD does because of Storm's Eye belongs to the WAR NOT the PLD.

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.

And a little more on the topic, I don't know if you are unaware or simply find it inefficient. But WAR is able to go in and out of Defiance while in combat. What does this mean for WAR DPS?

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.

It means once a minute a WAR can turn on Defiance, pop Infuriate, let loose Inner-Beast and turn off Defiance. To add a little icing on that cake, Internal release also shares the 60s cooldown. So every minute that can be a 300 potency attack with a 30% bonus to crit chance.

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.

And also means every 180s a WAR can effectively turn on Defiance, pop Infuriate and then Unchained > Berserk, combo as normal and Inner Beast and turn off Defiance.

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.

And on the topic of AoE damage.

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.

Yes, Overpower is expensive. But you act like a WAR has to spam it to the high heavens to compete with PLD.

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.

If you include Maim, OP has a potency around 144. PLD's CoS has a potency of 220-250. That means all a WAR has to do is use OP just twice every 25 seconds. Then you add in the buffs and the fact that because of the cooldown PLD can only fit two CoS in FoF and WAR can fit... roughly 7 into Berserk. And if they are taking advantage of their stance, every minute they can do the above stance dance but instead of using IB just pop off Internal released buffed Cyclones.

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.

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.

Since you like math I have a fairly simple word problem for you:

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.

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.

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.

Of course threat wise arguing which is better between either class is just too derp-mode for me.

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.

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*.

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.

[Tronic]

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.

Inner beast, like the super useful steel cyclone, ignores the defiance damage debuff, and does 300 attack potency damage straight out.

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.

Aha! So might I imply from this that you're finally warming up to my idea of having flash as a cross class skill? ^_^

[Kitru]

Inner beast, like the super useful steel cyclone, ignores the defiance damage debuff, and does 300 attack potency damage straight out.

Never noticed that. With that taken into account, you're still only managing a 3.59 increase in base potency.

Aha! So might I imply from this that you're finally warming up to my idea of having flash as a cross class skill? ^_^

No. Flash on a WAR is, as far as I'm concerned, as waste: you simply can't use it often enough thanks to the highly limited mp pool and intelligent use of Overpower (and Berserk, if you're worried about Pacification) allows you to mollify the problems with Overpower enough that it's not a major concern.

Using 1-2 Overpowers is not going to completely and utterly demolish your resource management; the costs incurred by limited usage are well within the ability of you to recover from in the enforced downtime all of the primal fights and most bosses have as part of their mechanics. It's only when you use Overpower *unwisely*, generally in the ways that are often described to make it seem like WAR has some overwhelming AoE damage/enmity advantage, that Overpower screws you over. Rather than comparing the use of Overpower to Flash over a 10-15 second time frame, compare it over a 2 minute time frame. If you use Overpower in such a way that you're still capable of attacking for that entire time frame, Flash + CoS and Overpower are going to achieve rough parity on enmity and damage.

A WAR doesn't need Flash to AoE tank effectively; it just needs to know how to use Overpower rather than spamming it freely like PLDs do with Flash.

P.S. You would be inferring my meaning or intent from a message, not implying it; if what you were inferring were true, I would have been implying it. Basically, you infer something that someone else implied.

[Tronic]

No. Flash on a WAR is, as far as I'm concerned, as waste:

You'll join the dark side one day.

P.S. You would be inferring my meaning or intent from a message, not implying it; if what you were inferring were true, I would have been implying it. Basically, you infer something that someone else implied.

Ah, yes, I should've said infer.

[Ninjiitstu]

No. Flash on a WAR is, as far as I'm concerned, as waste:

What the hell are you talking about? Could you please, PLEASE, step foot in coils before you give advice on what is needed or not needed.

Flash is instant hate, which is why it is good for warrior. When you have multiple drop in adds spread out in a small space that can aoe 90% of your groups health, you NEED flash.

Your math is great and all, but its based soley on paper. Try some endgame content before you give advice to people. Most of the WAR's that come to these boards can do dungeons fine. They want advice on builds specifically for HM Primals, and Coils. If you don't have experience in those, you should refrain to comment. You are only hurting, not helping, in this instance.

[Kitru]

Your math is great and all, but its based soley on paper. Try some endgame content before you give advice to people. Most of the WAR's that come to these boards can do dungeons fine. They want advice on builds specifically for HM Primals, and Coils. If you don't have experience in those, you should refrain to comment. You are only hurting, not helping, in this instance.

First, it's based upon my practical experiences in everything *except* for Coil of Bahamut (I've done everything but that), and I've never made any claim about what is best for anything beyond that. Furthermore, concerning Flash as it applies to being used by a WAR, I refer to personal opinion. I posit my reasons but that's as far as I go. I specifically said "as far as I'm concerned". That's not claiming it as fact; it's personal opinion.

Secondly, you've brought up a single case where Flash is actually effectively required (and I don't have any experience to refute it, so I won't bother). People have also brought up a single case where Provoke is effectively required (there's a boss in Coil that requires a tank swap, afaik). Neither of these change my opinion of Flash or Provoke: I will not use either of them outside of the *specific* fights where they are required. I'll drop Awareness and pick up the single requisite ability before swapping back after the fight.

I do not claim that I will *never* use Flash or Provoke, but, barring the specific situations that require it, I'm not going to use it because, outside of those *very* specific circumstances, they take up space that could be occupied by something I'll actually use.

[Ninjiitstu]

First, it's based upon my practical experiences in everything *except* for Coil of Bahamut (I've done everything but that), and I've never made any claim about what is best for anything beyond that. Furthermore, concerning Flash as it applies to being used by a WAR, I refer to personal opinion. I posit my reasons but that's as far as I go. I specifically said "as far as I'm concerned". That's not claiming it as fact; it's personal opinion.

You are correct. I could make a argument that Provoke is usable outside of coils as well ( two bosses require tank swaps in coils, Turn 2 and Turn 5 ). Flash is needed for Turn 4.

On the other hand, what else would you use in place of them? It isn't like there is a whole lot of superior options that you can just throw in.

[Junk4Brains]

-snip -

Feel this thread is getting a bit derailed from its original point so I've posted my reply here:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...vention-Thread