Warrior Tanking, Potential Fix. PLEASE SUPPORT THIS!

[CardeaC]

Synopsis:

Inner Beast: Should consume 3 stacks of Wraith, and have a 15-20 second cooldown.

Infuriate: Should give the Warrior 5 stacks of Wraith, and reset the cooldown of Inner Beast.

**New Ability** Iron Skin: Gives the Warrior an absorption shield of 25% of the Warrior's maximum health that lasts for 10-15 seconds, and consumes 5 stacks of Wraith. Cooldown somewhere between 60 and 120 seconds. I support 90 seconds.

What does this new ability accomplish?

1. Gives the Warrior a class-defining tank cooldown, which it is lacking. Inner Beast is a class-defining utility versus a full blown cooldown.
2. Enhances the Warrior's defining tank mechanic, Wraith stacks, by adding another use for them.
3. Gives Thrill of Battle a way to add to effective health.

*****If you support this thread, please upvote my post on the FFXIV subreddit (with the same name). The more people involved, the more constructive we can be!*****

The Bulk:

So I've been doing a lot of thinking about the state of Warrior tanking in consideration of the recent announcement that there are plans to implement "buffs" to the warrior class to bring them up to par with Paladins. The following is my idea for a fix that I think would keep in line with having warriors play a role as a "health" tank versus a paladin being a "mitigation" tank.

Currently the largest issue differentiating Warriors and Paladins is the lack of reliable mitigation cooldowns. A warrior has 2 defense enhancement cooldowns, of which only one is BARELY a defense enhancement.

Foresight (Reliable): Increases defense by 20%, not exactly sure how much this reduces damage but it is nothing huge.

Featherfoot (Unreliable): +15% chance to evade (dodge).

The fact of the matter is you can NOT rely on Featherfoot. Sometimes it is amazing and I dodge 2-3 big hits, other times not at all and it is as if I didn't even use a cooldown. While they could change these, I would rather see stacks of wraith play a better role in our tanking as well as the addition of a new ability consuming said stacks.

Tweeks to existing abilities: I do not believe that Inner Beast should consume all stacks of wraith. It should consume two or three, so that Inner Beast is not ignored to maintain 5 stacks of wraith. I personally believe two would be ideal so that it took one combo chain to max stacks out once more.

To prevent inevitable spamming of this ability Inner Beast should be given a cooldown of ~20 seconds. Infuriate should put a Warrior to 5 stacks AND reset this cooldown; allowing the warrior to still be able to back-to-back cast 2 Inner Beasts if necessary.

New ability: Like mentioned above, warriors lack a defining tank cooldown. Paladins have Hallowed Ground, making them invulnerable for 10 seconds, that is a defining Paladin tank ability.

Now to the main purpose of this post. A new Warrior skill should be added, lets call it Iron Skin for the sake of this post, consuming all 5 stacks of Wraith, that gives a Warrior a shield based on a percentage of maximum health. On a 60 to 120 second cooldown, I believe Iron Skin would prove comparable to Hallowed Ground which has a cooldown of 300 seconds.

For the purpose of an example, Iron Skin gives the Warrior a shield of 25% of max health. A warrior with a health pool for 7000 would receive a shield absorbing 1750. This would nearly make up for the damage difference a Warrior takes over a paladin during a period it takes for this skill to come off cooldown. ALSO, Iron Skin would add a better functioning for Thrill of Battle. Thrill of Battle + this would make a bigger shield. Giving Thrill of Battle an innate add to effective health rather than adding nearly none.

[Selemar]

Epic first post =) (I just hope everyone keeps this constructive, and not the normal warrior/paladin name-calling)

[Phreak]

A 25% absorb shield will not bring the warrior anywhere near the PLD when comparing their CD suites. What has made the PLD so strong is the fact it's mitigation scales off of INCOMING damage, until WARs have their healing bonus decoupled from wrath and are given some form of mitigation that scales based off enemy damage they will always fall behind PLDs in everything but farm content.

Iron Skin would have to be 50-100% of your HP to make it worth while @ 25% and 7000 HP a PLD with Rampart up only has to take 2-3 hits from a Dreadnought w/ 4 stacks and it's already beating it in terms of mitigated damage.

Maybe instead of the shield being based on your HP make it take a % of the damage you've recieved over the past X seconds, this goes better with the theme that a WAR is a reactive, not proactive, tank. We have high HP pools so we can take hits and then 'undo' the damage.

[CardeaC]

Thank you for the constructive feedback. You raise some very good points about how damage is mitigated.

Maybe instead of the shield being based on your HP make it take a % of the damage you've recieved over the past X seconds, this goes better with the theme that a WAR is a reactive, not proactive, tank. We have high HP pools so we can take hits and then 'undo' the damage.

That is an interesting idea. On fights such as Hydra or Titan those nuke hits could be used to create quite a formidable shield.

[Mysteltain]

Maybe instead of the shield being based on your HP make it take a % of the damage you've recieved over the past X seconds, this goes better with the theme that a WAR is a reactive, not proactive, tank. We have high HP pools so we can take hits and then 'undo' the damage.

I second this, but would say it should scale off of where your current HP is with regards to your max HP. That way it adds some strategy to its use: do I want my healer to keep me topped off and I use this after a big hit, or do I tell my healer to lay off until I'm at critical HP and then pop it and get topped off? After all, if they mistime a heal and the effect kicks in at 6500/7000 HP, you just wasted it. But if you coordinate and pop it at 500/7000 HP, then your healer tops you off, you've got one hell of a high amount of working HP.

I think giving it such a high risk/reward would be good way to balance it.

[peaches]

I second this, but would say it should scale off of where your current HP is with regards to your max HP. That way it adds some strategy to its use: do I want my healer to keep me topped off and I use this after a big hit, or do I tell my healer to lay off until I'm at critical HP and then pop it and get topped off? After all, if they mistime a heal and the effect kicks in at 6500/7000 HP, you just wasted it. But if you coordinate and pop it at 500/7000 HP, then your healer tops you off, you've got one hell of a high amount of working HP.

I think giving it such a high risk/reward would be good way to balance it.

As a Scholar, the idea of letting a Warrior get down to under 1000 health scares me. Do you know how many Physicks it would take to cure 6000ish health? o.O I cure around 700-800, 1200 on a crit, and my fairy cures for 300ish. It would take me at least 6 Physicks with my fairy also curing to get you back up there.

Not saying it's a bad idea, it'd just work better with a WHM, or I'd have to pop all three Lustrates, or... something :P But it's an interesting idea

[CardeaC]

I still favor my original idea, but maybe decrease the cooldown and up the percentage of max health the shield is up. Having a 5000 damage shield once a minute would be a solid addition to our "cooldown suite."

Perhaps 75% of max health as a shield, on a 60 or 80 second cooldown.

[peaches]

I still favor my original idea, but maybe decrease the cooldown and up the percentage of max health the shield is up. Having a 5000 damage shield once a minute would be a solid addition to our "cooldown suite."

Perhaps 75% of max health as a shield, on a 60 or 80 second cooldown.

I don't have any tank class yet, I just enjoy this kind of discussion, so please forgive my ignorance - but wouldn't a 75% shield be basically as effective as a Paladin's invulnerability? With their damage mitigation, I don't think they'd be taking much more than 5000 damage over the duration of that ability, and to have that short of a cooldown seems a tad crazy :O Then again though, 5000 mitigated damage on a PLD would be a crap ton more unmitigated on a WAR. Still, 120s or so seems appropriate.

[SpookyGhost]

Just a thought:

Take this -

Maybe instead of the shield being based on your HP make it take a % of the damage you've recieved over the past X seconds, this goes better with the theme that a WAR is a reactive, not proactive, tank. We have high HP pools so we can take hits and then 'undo' the damage.

- and put it on Inner Beast's healing potential.

[Mysteltain]

As a Scholar, the idea of letting a Warrior get down to under 1000 health scares me. Do you know how many Physicks it would take to cure 6000ish health? o.O I cure around 700-800, 1200 on a crit, and my fairy cures for 300ish. It would take me at least 6 Physicks with my fairy also curing to get you back up there.

Not saying it's a bad idea, it'd just work better with a WHM, or I'd have to pop all three Lustrates, or... something :P But it's an interesting idea

I don't really play healers, so I wasn't really sure just how intensive it would be on you. That being said, we Warriors get a healing boost from Wrath (15% boost at 5 Wrath), as well as being able to use Inner Beast+Convalescence to get a huge heal, assuming they bothered to level up GLD for the skill. So it really wouldn't be that bad on you if the Warrior knows what they're doing.