7 Ideas to Balance WAR

[Hundred]

This totally changes Inner Beast. It make IB stable and we can calc IB heal as mitigation per second.

True if you make that change it would be, albeit parry isn't worth enough to be worth the choice imo, would just throw out IB then and that be slightly monotonous.

of 7 suggestions i see 2 based purely on WAR skills, the rest are cross-class skills.

WAR was designed to mitigate via self-healing as opposed to PLD's mitigation. what needs buffing is WAR self healing, not taking stuff to "be more pld"

a Trait at level 50 to reduce bloodbath cooldown to half and increase its healing to 100% returned, along with storms path returning 150% and turning mercy stroke into a "heal when used in last 20%" rather than "heal on kill only" skill should give WAR all the self-healing assitance it needs at endgame, will still be more MP intensive for a WHM but we work better with SCH it seems anyway.

100% absorb for 30 seconds on a 45 second cooldown would be absurd.
Mercy stroke is meant for multi-enemy situations as I see it which is why it works the way it does, a buffer like
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Assassin's_Promise would be some nice QoL for it.
I thought about Storm path at 150% before, its something like ~1/3rd of an IB right, would be good when you're up on Enmity for some sustain given you have the TP before it. I think it can work, but I've seen another suggestion to make storm path give a buff that makes your attacks absorb (like bloodbath) which I thought was cool. Either way the skill currently is pretty useless from day 1, so a buff can't hurt it.

For a WAR with a static 15% and Fists of Earth cuts 10%. That would leave ~782 HPS to be healed Even under perfect conditions with IB you would still not catch up to PLD before they use their cooldowns.

WAR doesn't necessarily have to be at the same state before CD's even though you included RoH. They are allowed some degree of assymetry, and in contrast to RoH, WAR is increasing his damage with eye, which I think is fair enough for a divide to be made in that particular comparison between defensive and offensive strength given that when the two come together they both reap the benefits of the others debuff.
I believe you said before it doesn't matter for balance, but the lack of relevance in Storm path and even Bloodbath is kind of off-putting. Defiance nerfs the healing of Bloodbath and Storm path 25%, kind of wonky given that mitigation vs health pool has an old problem of effective healing being increased in one, with the health pool taking longer to replenish itself making it fall behind. When you're nerfing the healing of bloodbath and Storm path 25% while increasing your health pool 25% it's really backwards in that respect, especially given that Storm path never healed for anything to begin with and Bloodbath was "eh" from the first run in Satasha.

[Shingi]

100% absorb for 30 seconds on a 45 second cooldown would be absurd.
Mercy stroke is meant for multi-enemy situations as I see it which is why it works the way it does, a buffer like
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Assassin's_Promise would be some nice QoL for it.
I thought about Storm path at 150% before, its something like ~1/3rd of an IB right, would be good when you're up on Enmity for some sustain given you have the TP before it. I think it can work, but I've seen another suggestion to make storm path give a buff that makes your attacks absorb (like bloodbath) which I thought was cool. Either way the skill currently is pretty useless from day 1, so a buff can't hurt it.

100% return for 30 of every 45 would be effectively a refresh-style buff. average damage output in defiance is approx 100-130 per hit, giving you an effective return of approx 3000hp per activation (more or less) and its pretty easy to lose more than than in 45 seconds. i'm ball-parking my figures here, so they could use some tweaking.

150% return on storm's path makes it a viable option in combo rotation and tops off your HP, again, average hit on that being approx 150, that would give you 225hp, enough to assist in not being such a drain to MP on your healers if you can throw it in every 25-30 seconds.

Mercy stroke, yeah, its meant for groups as a sustaining heal, but in a group of 8, how often can you get the timing EXACTLY right to be the final attack? i know for me its far more random chance than actual skill because i never know how much damage my DD are going to throw out. its also effectively useless in boss fights, when WAR takes far more damage than from a group (and overpower+bloodbath is more effective, taking healing from multiple hits). letting it heal (on WAR ONLY) when used in the last 20% would make it far more effective at performing its role in groups AND give it a purpose in boss fights.

all in all, giving WAR's more or more effective ways to self heal in post-50 instances shortens the gap between PLD mitigation and EHP and sticks more with the theme of the job, rather than making it a "semi PLD with an axe" simply by trying to increase mitigation. I've said my numbers here are ball park, approximates and could likely use some more looking in to and fine-tuning, but for me they are far more in-theme and effective than most other suggestions i've seen thus far.

[Shingi]

As most of you already know. SE will be buffing war to make them more on par to War. I pick 7 cause thats how much things they are considering to change

1. Make "Fist of Earth" Cross Class

2. Remove Haymaker off GCD. it interrupts combos as it is now

3. Make "Flash" Blind standard

4. Add 15% healing buff to Defiance and add 2% chance to parry per wrath instead

5. Change Second Wind back to the way it was in Beta. It use to recover 15% . In Full DL I have 7500 hp, i would recover 1125 every time instead of the 600-800 i do now.

6. Make Rampart Crossclass.
In exchange for Savage Blade...why the heck did they give us Savage Blade anyway ?

7. Lastly, Make Bloodbath recover 50%(100% traited) of damage dealt for 15secs.Increase CD If you think that sounds OP, PLD has a ability that makes him invincible for 10secs.

Please like if you think these are good ideas. So This can get SE attention. Thank you

of 7 suggestions i see 2 based purely on WAR skills, the rest are cross-class skills.

WAR was designed to mitigate via self-healing as opposed to PLD's mitigation. what needs buffing is WAR self healing, not taking stuff to "be more pld"

a Trait at level 50 to reduce bloodbath cooldown to half and increase its healing to 100% returned, along with storms path returning 150% and turning mercy stroke into a "heal when used in last 20%" rather than "heal on kill only" skill should give WAR all the self-healing assitance it needs at endgame, will still be more MP intensive for a WHM but we work better with SCH it seems anyway.

[Genesiser]

How about make inner beast give the heal like it does, but also put an absorb shield on you equal to 50% of the damage received during the last5 seconds from enemies?

That would make warriors scale with their gear in terms of the heal along with the content by getting a bubble equal to a percentage if damage recieved.

Also, when you take a big hit or a lot of damage, say 5k dmg, you heal yourself by a decent amount and the healers would have time to rescue you as opposed to having you potentially be 2 shotted in the span of 2 seconds.

EDIT....
How about this too? Leave warrior how it is, but make the warrior revolve around inner beast for real. What I mean is, let it be used with any amount of wrath stacks, but each stack makes it stronger. Kind of like this...

1 stack : heal for 60% of dmg dealt from move, get bubble equal to 5% of dmg received in last 5 seconds.
2 stacks : heal for 120% dmg dealt, bubble equal to 10% dmg received.
5 stacks: heal for 300% dmg dealt, bubble equal to 25% dmg received.

Of course, it would be better if healing bonus was tied to defiance instead of wrath stacks, but it would still be pretty good and it would add a bit more strategy to warrior tanking which is always a good thing.

[Outtkast]

EDIT....
How about this too? Leave warrior how it is, but make the warrior revolve around inner beast for real. What I mean is, let it be used with any amount of wrath stacks, but each stack makes it stronger. Kind of like this...

1 stack : heal for 60% of dmg dealt from move, get bubble equal to 5% of dmg received in last 5 seconds.
2 stacks : heal for 120% dmg dealt, bubble equal to 10% dmg received.
5 stacks: heal for 300% dmg dealt, bubble equal to 25% dmg received.

I like the make IB usable with any number of stacks, but I would make it so bubble amount is a percentage of damage dealt. The amount of incoming damage received could be used in "creative" ways to cheat game mechanics.

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

Would like to see the enhanced trait for Fracture afflict Paralysis, also with the intent that Paralysis is something that bosses aren't immune to. Might balance out once diminishing returns comes into play.

May need to be balanced some if this occurs, e.g. non-trait duration, but slightly upping its damage to make it slightly DPS attractive for cross class.

[Seidaku]

My suggestion would be to make the healing bonus apply to defiance and change IB from a heal to a skill that increases the duration of thrill of battle to 60 seconds and grants a slightly weaker form of bloodbath so we can help keep those extra hps up. They should also change unchained to a skill that we can put up to increase our dps similar to sword oath since we should not be even close to a pally under that aspect, atm unchained is about completely worthless when compared to the viability of IB.

While we are at it they need to fix steel cyclone. This ability should only be available while infuriated and should not drop stacks but I think it should refresh the stack. How nice would it be to have an aoe ability that can work in conjunction with overpower and maintain our wrath. So rather than removing all our stacks it should build one to refresh the timer. Take the dmg down to 180 or something to compensate but then it would actually be useful.

[SwordCoheir]

I still think letting Heavy Swing Build Wraith and maybe lowering the recast of Unchained would probably have the biggest impact on WAR despite being relatively small changes. Why? Well allowing Wraith to build up on Butchers block cuts down the building time by about half, it allows us to use abilities like SC, Unchained, and IB with less downtime on without full stacks which means less stress on the healers, and overall increases our DPS and self healing capability by a wide margin. As for lowering Unchained's recast it just up's our chances to do some solid DPS in a fight, that's pretty self explanitory.

[Kitru]

I still think letting Heavy Swing Build Wraith and maybe lowering the recast of Unchained would probably have the biggest impact on WAR despite being relatively small changes. Why? Well allowing Wraith to build up on Butchers block cuts down the building time by about half, it allows us to use abilities like SC, Unchained, and IB with less downtime on without full stacks which means less stress on the healers, and overall increases our DPS and self healing capability by a wide margin. As for lowering Unchained's recast it just up's our chances to do some solid DPS in a fight, that's pretty self explanitory.

The problem with this is that it still doesn't make those self heals scale with incoming damage. All you'd be doing is making WAR stronger (by a *crapton*) in easy content while making minor improvements to performance in difficult content. The self-healing needs to be made to scale, not just be made bigger or more common.

Also, the damage that a tank deals isn't part of their primary role. Increasing the damage dealt doesn't make a tank more effective at tanking. It provides a secondary advantage to bringing one along, but it's not what you bring a tank for. Increasing damage dealt is akin to increasing the utility of the class: it's a secondary concern. A tank that deals 50% more damage is still going to be left behind for a tank that takes 10% less damage for anything where you actually have to worry about a tank. All that your damage increase ideas would do would be make WARs more popular for 4 man dungeon speed runs; they'd still be horribly unpopular for anything that isn't a joke to survive through.

[SwordCoheir]

The problem with this.

Well it's a matter of perspective, allowing WAR's to build Wraith faster lowers the downtime spent rebuilding stacks and allows you more opportunities to self heal with IB reducing the stress on healers. Lowering Unchained's recast will increase opportunities for DPS for sure but it also increases opportunities for reactive healing because of higher hate thresholds (even if SE sucks) and lowers time spent fighting mobs.

But then again that's just my take on it, I'm not trying to scale everything to something that's stupid broken like SC was in 1.0, but having more opportunities for self healing does allow you to keep your own HP up and going more consistently instead of being forced to hold back all the time for "oh crap" moments seems kind of backwards progress to me.