How would you fix Warrior?

[mcfuzzi]

I would still love to have some type of slow or paralyze debuff at the end of our combos. Maybe it would be cool to have SP be an aoe and combo with overpower.
That way it becomes more of a trash pack / multi mob skill it wouldn't need a threat bonus or anything.

I also think like a lot of others, that the self healing needs to scale better. I don't have any good math for it, but yea I can see where it could need some tweaking. That and let the gld increase healing skill work with our healing. Since that is one of the classes we can draw skills from, the skills should at least work with ours.

[Hachiko]

Bloodbath isn't really reactive. Since it's not burst mitigation it's just "over time" and it's a small amount over a long period of time, calling it either proactive or reactive is a little bit of a mischaracterization. Same with Storm's Path, it's not usable on demand, and its only contribution is in the form of an "over time". I know you're counting all healing as reactive, but usually healers consider HoT type skills as "proactive" heals, meaning you put them on the target once they take some damage or are about to take some damage, in the hope that after they take the damage the hot will heal some of it. Essentially, Bloodbath and Storm's Path are the same way, except they are so minimal counting them as proactive seems kind of silly.

Convalescence is functionally a pro-active cooldown. You want it up before you take the damage so any pre-cast heals will get the buff from it. The effect doesn't hit you until after you take the damage, but it's something you should be pre-buffing with. I don't think you should really be counting mercy stroke at all, either, because the heal is not of use in any sort of raiding situation and even solo it's hard enough to time it between attacks / auto attacks such that you actually get the kill with it and not an attack of some other sort. You are being pro-active with convalescence, even if the healers are being re-active with their heals.

Also stoneskin is pretty amazing for a PLD. There are a lot of uses on many fights (Garuda, Titan, ADS, etc.)

But if you look by bulk mitigation, Inner Beast is clearly intended and usually does provide more than any other skill, and that is reactive. So maybe it's the design intent, but it isn't really a functioning intent anyway, so it's hard to tell if that is really what they had in mind or if they even thought about it from this angle.

[Gamemako]

Convalescence is functionally a pro-active cooldown.

I think we are not on the same page about what is meant by proactive versus reactive. Think of the tank cycle as this:

[damage taken] -> [damage healed] -> [damage taken] -> [damage healed] -> ...

Proactive abilities act on the [damage taken] cycle. They are enacted before an enemy hits you, or they have no effect. Reactive abilities act on the [damage healed] cycle. They have are enacted after an enemy hits you, or they have no effect. A few abilities, like Thrill of Battle or Stoneskin, are a bit of both: they will have an effect when enacted any time. Bloodbath, Mercy Stroke, Storm's Path, Inner Beast, Convalesce, Defiance's recovery stacks, Second Wind, and Mantra will not have an effect before you are hit because you can't heal what hasn't been hit. You may enact the ability beforehand, but that is not relevant -- the timing of the effect is the essential element, and in the case of +healing buffs, the effect is post-damage.

You certainly could consider it as a impact-by-rate, though, and PLD is easily 98% proactive while WAR is easily 95% reactive. I don't think it's all that hard to divine design intent from that sort of dichotomy.

//EDIT: Also, I want to quickly expound the implications of this and how they point to at least one obvious fix for WAR. Let's say WAR heals for 40% of it's max HP, which would be balanced with PLD's Sentinel. However, with identical eHP, PLD is flat-out better. Take this example.

->Scaryguy Readies Big Honkin' Hammer
->PLD uses Sentinel
->Scaryguy hits PLD for 60% of PLD's max HP!

PLD reduces the damage by 40% and survives easily. Now, WAR doesn't get that. Instead,

->Scaryguy Readies Big Honkin' Hammer
->WAR stares him down, eager to hit back!
->Scaryguy hits WAR for 100% of WAR's max HP!
->WAR dies.

Even though WAR could have healed it back, WAR is dead because its abilities are reactive rather than proactive. This is why WAR must have a considerable eHP advantage over PLD. At this time, PLD has identical eHP to WAR. This is just flat-out broken.

[Hachiko]

I suppose we just have different definitions on proactive and reactive. I Think of it in terms of ability useage, i.e. do you use it before or after you take damage. You think of it in terms of when the damage is mitigated, i.e. is it mitigated before or after it comes in.

This is why I think the intent is hard to divine. It's difficult to tell what the devs had in mind with this specific type of nuance, because so many of the WAR's available mitigation skills are meant to be used before the big damage comes in, even if the general idea around it is self healing.

I will just say in general that reactive abilities are also generally crappier because they aren't as reliable, and they are prone to having you die from burst, and they have a tendency to end up as overheal. Which is why moving Inner Beast to a pro-active shield would do wonders in terms of balance.

[Jediman]

problem goes away if they turn it into dps war instead.

[Kitru]

problem goes away if they turn it into dps war instead.

Except that you create a game where there is only one option for tanking, which is bad. The entire point of having multiple classes is so that you actually have options for playing a given role. If the devs turned WAR into a DPS, like so many facepalm-worthy Gladiator fanbois on this forum seem to want, then tanking would stagnate because there's only a single option. It would be like finding out that there are only 4 classes in the game: PLD, BLM, WHM, and MNK. If you want to tank but think that PLD is boring as hell, you're either screwed or bored. If you want to rDPS but don't like BLM, you're either unhappy or screwed. If you want to mDPS but don't like punching things, you either learn to cope or you're screwed. If you want to heal but don't like the fact that you don't have any support tools aside from direct healing, you either learn to like have 8 abilities that all do the same thing or you're screwed.

Class choice is one of the few major choices that players get concerning their character. You choose between tanking as a WAR or tanking a PLD, and the choice matters because they tank *entirely differently*. Even if one tanks slightly worse than the other, it's still a choice that matters and it *needs* to be there because only having one way to do a role gets boring *really* fast.

[Gamemako]

I will just say in general that reactive abilities are also generally crappier because they aren't as reliable, and they are prone to having you die from burst, and they have a tendency to end up as overheal. Which is why moving Inner Beast to a pro-active shield would do wonders in terms of balance.

As I was just editing in, the issue is more that you have to design around it. Self-heals can end up as overheal, but not all reactive abilities are self-heals. +healing bonuses are also reactive, and they're effectively identical. The problem that WAR has is that WAR is almost exclusively reactive in nature (i.e. effects are post-damage rather than concurrent with damage). This requires that WAR have a considerable eHP advantage over PLD as a rule. When you give WAR 25% more eHP over PLD, then it's not a problem at all. Instead, you can do this:

->Scaryguy Readies Big Honkin' Hammer
->WAR stares him down, eager to hit back!
->Scaryguy hits WAR for 75% of WAR's max HP!
->WAR retaliates and recovers 25% of WAR's HP!

WAR ends with 50% of its HP, and you're back to the fight as before. Same boss, same incoming damage, but now WAR walks away just fine. The only thing which matters in implementation is when the mitigation comes. This is why I just cannot for the life of me figure out why WAR doesn't have a large HP advantage over PLD. This is not a matter of scaling, either; this is true in every single case.

[Hundred]

Storm paths absorb is too low, should be more than 50%.

[Knives]

Remove "Wrath" skills from the GCD.
Steel Cyclone: Remove wrath requirement, Combo action from Overpower grants 230 potency. 15% of damage is drained for HP. High (130-160) TP Cost.
Defiance: Determination increases as HP get's lower.
Wrath: 1% chance to intimidate attackers per "wrath"
Infuriated: grants conal damage to auto-attacks
Unleashed: Converts damage taken into added healing potency on self for duration. Potency caps at 50%.
Storm's Path: Conal AoE (mostly because the name simply suggests...)
Holmgang: AoE from target.
Berserk: Is replaced with the effect of "Pure Will" when HP is reduced to 0 during berserk. duration: 5 seconds
Pure Will: Refuse to die. Unable to use weaponskills, movement speed reduced by 50%, enmity reduced by 50%, Healing potency received reduced by 50%

All of this is in addition to current effects, outside of Steel Cyclone.

[Calypsx]

Steel Cyclone: Remove wrath requirement, Combo action from Overpower grants 230 potency. 15% of damage is drained for HP. High (130-160) TP Cost.

THIS! I would love a combo AOE move. It's an awesome looking move that is also hindered by it's wrath requirement.