So what exactly IS the issue with Warrior?

[Aureliami]

You're conflating effective hit points with required healing (i.e. mean mitigation).

In every MMO before FF14, theorycrafters took into consideration all forms of mitigation including traits like boost to incoming healing when determining eHP.

Why should FF14 be different?

[Exstal]

In every MMO before FF14, theorycrafters took into consideration all forms of mitigation including traits like boost to incoming healing when determining eHP.

Why should FF14 be different?

Warrior has 7500 HP (with Defiance)
Paladin has 6000

Attack hits Warrior for 5000
Attack hits Paladin for 4000

Cure II/Cura does 2200

Warrior now has 5030
Paladin now has 4200

Cure II/Cura again

Warrior now has 7530
Paladin is now has 6400

[Judge_Xero]

In every MMO before FF14, theorycrafters took into consideration all forms of mitigation including traits like boost to incoming healing when determining eHP.

Why should FF14 be different?

That's why in my comparison I take the party composition as a whole. The only combination that seems to match perfectly is Warrior with two healers vs Paladin with one healer and one DPS. Things I looked at are, Party DPS, Tank Survivability, and class mechanics.

In short, War + 2 Healers (Each 60% Healing, 40% DPS) = PLD + Healer + DPS

CON
- Relies heavily on good healers vs just clicking a button.
- Damage Mitigation from Heals/Self Healing occurs after damage. Maximum HP needs to account for getting 1 Shotted. >6800 HP Coil

PRO
- Generates much more enmity
- Better party composition with 2 x Healers for 1 Tank - Relative to a 4 Man Party
- Greater Survivability compared to Paladin. (138% More Heals on a Warrior with 2 X Healers + Wrath Buff which is equal to Paladin in Shield Oath + all CD's) *** Warrior will still have it's own CD's too use on top of this.

[Kitru]

That's why in my comparison I take the party composition as a whole.

Except that the game is obviously designed around a 1:1:2 ratio instead of the 1:2:1 ratio you're using thanks to the DF, as well as how the fights themselves are design (DPS races and whatnot).

On top of that, there *isn't* any advantage when using that composition for a WAR compared to a PLD: you're sacrificing damage to increase survivability. Since WAR and PLD deal effectively the same damage, a PLD could get the exact same increase in survivability by going with your 2 healer composition and it would *still* be more survivable than the WAR while having the same damage output.

Also, as I pointed out last time you brought up that composition, you're not going to a perfect conversion with healer DPS. A healer that spends 40% of their time is not going to provide 40% of the DPS of an actual DPS. If they *could*, there would be no point in bringing DPS because healers in DPS stances could match them while also being able to swap to healing when needed. A healer in a DPS stance does roughly 75% of what a DPS does (a CNJ will manage ~200 mean magic potency per GCD whereas a BLM does ~270), so the comparative loss of DPS is actually 16% (40 * .75 + 100 + 50 = 210; 100 + 100 + 50 = 250; 210 / 250 = .84). Even if you only assume that they'll use attacks 40% of the time, they'll only get as high as 32.5% of what a DPS would manage in that same time frame, which is a 14% loss (32.5 * 2 + 100 + 50 = 215).

Generates much more enmity

Where are you getting *this* from? WAR doesn't generate more enmity than PLD. In fact, it ends up generating slightly less. It's also not like healers increase enmity generation or having more healers stops that 1 DPS from still putting out full numbers, so you can't argue that it's better comparative enmity.

Greater Survivability compared to Paladin.

That's a complete and utter farce. Even if you average out the CDs rather than accounting for their burst contributions, they provide a lot more than 10.4% increased survivability: Rampart provides 4.44% over time, Sentinel 2.22%, Foresight 1.67%, Convalescence 5%, Bulwark 1.75%, and Hallowed Ground 1.39% (16.47%). Even if you factor in the WAR CD suite (Foresight provides 2.22, Featherfoot 2.5%, Convalescence 3.33%; ToB is a complete and utter joke because it's a 20% heal every 3 minutes), a WAR is going to be taking 91.95% of pre-CD damage and a PLD is taking 83.53%, which means that WAR is going to be requiring 110% of what a PLD is going to require. As such, you composition ends up providing WAR with, at best, *equal* survivability to a PLD and that's only if you're willing to treat the reactive and RNG mitigation provided by Featherfoot and Convalescence the same as the straight up static mitigation provided by 5/6ths of the PLD CD suite.

Put it all together and you get a composition that deals less damage and has no advantages. You really need to stop talking about your alternate composition as if it somehow *solved* problems rather than being completely and utterly absurd from the start (assuming you're capable of making simple logical leaps like "healers do less damage than DPS" and realizing that the PLD CD suite stops the living *hell* out of the WAR CD suite).

[Maelwys]

That's why in my comparison I take the party composition as a whole. The only combination that seems to match perfectly is Warrior with two healers vs Paladin with one healer and one DPS. Things I looked at are, Party DPS, Tank Survivability, and class mechanics.

Without going back (again!) over the reams of math... exactly how "endgame" are we talking about?

Taken in a vacuum, PLD needs less healing when taking prolonged heavy damage.
WAR can self-heal medium spike damage and be pretty much immortal versus light damage.
They both do very similar DPS (assuming identical gear + stat distribution) but WARs are more self-sufficient than PLDs when geared for +DPS.

Taken in a Party context, the ideal endgame 8-man raid group has two healers: one SCH and one WHM.
Amongst other things, a big reason for this is because SCHs shields don't stack. It basically gives the best balance of damage prevention before a big hit and ability to top-up HP again after that big hit.

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+ SCH gameplay allows them to deal high DPS (via DoTs) alongside high Healing Output. In extreme situations they can go full healing and micromanage their fairy and just ignore DPS, but for the most part they can get by in Cleric Stance (for DoTs) using Lustrates and their fairy.

+ WHM gameplay requires them to choose a focus: ST damage via light DoTs and AoE Damage via Holy, or Healing (they can still do a little DPS when healing, and a little Healing when DPSing; but it's largely one or the other - aside from "Benediction" which recovers the same HP even when Cleric Stanced, and "Regen" which can be cast before stance swapping).

Taken together, you're virtually always going to have the equivalent potential of EITHER 1 Healer + 2 DPS or 2 Healers + 1 DPS (via your Healing Classes, in 8 man groups).

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That's where the issue lies - PLDs generally require lower healing due to their mitigation cooldowns, so for easy or medium difficulty content the WHM can switch to DPS mode. For HARDER content like bosses, the WHM can run in Healing mode and give the party maximum capability to "Turtle Up".

For WARs, they require virtually no healing on "Easy" content due to self-heals, and on medium difficulty content they are roughly on par with PLDs, but for Harder content the Healers won't quite be able to keep a WAR up for as long as they could keep a PLD up (so if the brown stuff REALLY hits the fan, the WAR party has less capability to completely Turtle up).

Therefore, for your comment "The only combination that seems to match perfectly is Warrior with two healers vs Paladin with one healer and one DPS": the average 8-man party with a WAR can already have "two healers and one DPS" - with both SCH and WHM in Full Heal mode - but they can effectively swap a Healer for a DPS on demand via the WHM swapping to Cleric stance. Conversely, the average party with a PLD can already have "one healer and two DPS" - with the WHM in Cleric stance - but they can effectively swap a DPS for a Healer on demand via the WHM swapping back out of Cleric stance. Now... at endgame, what situation is more likely: suddenly needing the equivalent of another Healer, or suddenly needing the equivalent of another DPS? (And bear in mind that the Tanks can ALSO swap out of Tank Stance to contribute more DPS in certain situations!)

Yes, you could bring another WHM. But even if the two WHM work together perfectly and the tank is never overhealed, the DPS tradeoff hurts the average party way too much - the optimal 8-man team healer combination is widely known to be 1 SCH and 1 WHM (or if you're really stuck, 2x WHM - but there's less effective HP without the SCH and thus less margin for error).

If you're talking about 4-man dungeons, then PLD + WHM is virtually always going to be the better option than bringing a SCH or a WAR from an efficiency viewpoint, purely because of Mob herding + Holy Spam... but realistically unless you're speedrunning, none of the classes should struggle in the slightest...

[Kitru]

In every MMO before FF14, theorycrafters took into consideration all forms of mitigation including traits like boost to incoming healing when determining eHP.

No, they didn't. In every MMO before FFXIV, tanks were still defined by 2 different methods of calculating survivability because not all mitigation mechanisms behave the same way. Games that calculate eHP by factoring in mean performance of all mitigation mechanisms rather than discretely separating those mechanisms that increase constant eHP from mean mitigation end up with *loads* of problems (for the last year, Shad/Sin tanks in TOR have been effectively unable to tank anything but 4 man dungeons because they had ~75% of the eHP of the other tanks but the devs thought they were actually *stronger than they should have been* because they were using mean mitigation for eHP). Many games can ignore this by not relying on burst damage as their tank pressuring mechanism so that eHP doesn't actually mean anything so that it becomes all about mean mitigation, but FFXIV is *not* one of those games, as evidenced by fights like Titan and Caduceus with their spike mechanics.

eHP represents the ability to survive spike hits. Where surviving spike hits are concerned, RNG mechanisms, like evasion and parry, and reactive mechanisms, like self healing and increased healing received, do nothing because RNG will inevitably fail and you have to *survive* a hit for reactive mechanisms to do anything. If you average out the performance of mitigation based mechanisms, 20% evasion compared to 20% damage reduction, they'll have the same mean mitigation, but, as soon as the devs put up a spike that's supposed to reduce them to 20% of max hp (like Mountain Buster), the damage reduction will allow the tank to always survive if above 80% hp whereas the evasion tank will simply *die* 20% of the time because it's not active constantly. If you factor in reactive mechanisms, the ability to heal yourself for 25% of your max hp either because that attack will do more than your max hp every single time and you'll just die.

Pretty much *every* MMO has been forced to shift their tank balance paradigm from a single value to 2 separate values. FFXIV *isn't* any different.

[Irenae]

The issue with warrior is that it cannot decide if it is a Damage Dealer or a Tank!

[Kitru]

The issue with warrior is that it cannot decide if it is a Damage Dealer or a Tank!

Not really. The only people who think that WAR is confused as to its role are people that look at the axe and assume that WAR is supposed to have higher damage than PLD (which isn't true; WAR and PLD are pretty much tied on damage dealt). Maim and Storm's Eye are just mechanisms to enforce a rotation that's more complex than just spamming a single combo ad infinitum (*cough*PLD*cough*). Even when not in Defiance, PLD and WAR are pretty evenly matched on damage dealt thanks to Sword Oath.

Mechanically, WAR is well defined as a tank. The problem is that some of the mechanisms that WAR uses are underpowered compared to PLD, which means that WAR is squishier than PLD, and, because people often make the assumption that everything is an explicit choice and that things are balanced because of this, they assume that WAR deals more damage to make up for it. It doesn't help that WAR is good at putting up big bursty numbers (Maim + Storm's Eye + Berserk + Inner Beast crit) rather than the higher number of smaller numbers that PLD generates (ex. Fight or Flight is *way* stronger than Berserk because it lasts 50% longer, not to mention not having the Pacification effect) and the human brain measures events based upon deviation from the average rather than actual performance.

The idea that WAR is somehow "confused" is, basically, due to flawed logic and unreliable initial perception.

[Deceptus]

Not really. The only people who think that WAR is confused as to its role are people that look at the axe and assume that WAR is supposed to have higher damage than PLD (which isn't true; WAR and PLD are pretty much tied on damage dealt). Maim and Storm's Eye are just mechanisms to enforce a rotation that's more complex than just spamming a single combo ad infinitum (*cough*PLD*cough*). Even when not in Defiance, PLD and WAR are pretty evenly matched on damage dealt thanks to Sword Oath.

Here's where the argument is lost. If both have the exact same damage output, why would you ever bring a warrior when a paladin brings the same damage as well as a shield and better mitigation?

[Kitru]

Here's where the argument is lost. If both have the exact same damage output, why would you ever bring a warrior when a paladin brings the same damage as well as a shield and better mitigation?

It's not even an argument because PLD isn't *supposed* to have better mitigation. The devs up a said it in the last live letter. WAR and PLD are *supposed* to have the same effective damage and same effective survivability so that the choice between them is largely based upon secondary utility and player preference, much like deciding between healers and DPS. You're acting as if the classes are already in a balanced state when they're not.

WARs aren't sacrificing survivability to increase their damage, like some people seem to think. They've simply got lower survivability and people attempt to justify it by claiming that WAR has better damage because they want the game to always be perfectly balanced and everything to be fair (even though a tank with higher damage and lower survivability is pretty much worthless in the confines of a trinity MMO). Right now, PLD and WAR are not on equal footing; PLD is explicitly better. The devs have explicitly said that they're going to address this in 2.1 and specifically said that they're going to be changing WAR in 6 different ways.