So what exactly IS the issue with Warrior?

[Kitru]

1. Less effective HP.

You're conflating effective hit points with required healing (i.e. mean mitigation). PLD and WAR have effectively identical effective hit points: an unmitigated attack hitting a WAR is going to do the exact same damage in percent of total hp as it would hitting a PLD. What you're attempting to say here is that WAR has inferior mean mitigation, even when you factor in the self healing that WAR gets that is intended to close the gap.

2. Inner beast is terrible. The heal is kind of meh but the worst part about it is that it removes your 15% healing buff, which means you're making it EVEN HARDER for healers to keep you alive, it's really stupidly designed.

Inner Beast is actually a *very* powerful tool, allowing you to get pretty close to making up for the extra 8.7% healing that WAR is going to require thanks to the loss of Wrath stacks. The problem is that Inner Beast doesn't scale which means that it works wonderfully in 4 man content but becomes a monumental liability in 8 man content. The entire point behind it is that you have to weigh the short term benefits of using it against the long term costs. It's not *supposed* to be a tool appropriate for all situations. If it didn't have the Wrath cost attached to it, there wouldn't *be* any reason not to use it all the time, which means that it would need to be weakened to compensate.

The devs have pretty much stated that they intended for WAR to be the skill tanks and for PLD to be the faceroll tank. In the first Live Letter, Yoshi-P dismissed any player concerns about WAR as players just not knowing how to use the class properly and that they fully expected WAR, when played well, to outperform PLD. That's pretty much the definition of a skill tank. Abilities like Inner Beast are what *define* skill tanks: if you use them arbitrarily, you're going to get piss poor performance but, if you know how to leverage them properly, you get excellent performance out of them.

For Inner Beast, it's all about knowing the ebb and flow of the fights: you can safely use Inner Beast without feeling much of the effects of the loss of Wrath stacks by using it right before you know the boss is going to stop attacking you for a window. In Coil Turn 2, use Inner Beast right as the other tank is about to pull off of you, since you can easily get those Wrath stacks back while your own stacks are fading. On Titan, you can use Inner Beast right after the even Mountain Busters without any issues since he proceeds to spend the next 15 or so seconds on Weight of the Land and gaol, which means that all that's hitting you is the 1 auto-attack he throws at you between using the two.

Inner Beast is bad (in 8 man content) because it doesn't scale like static mitigation (so that it becomes effectively worthless on any fight with more damage than your average 4 man boss fight), not because it has an opportunity cost. If you removed the cost, you'd be removing the "skill" aspect from it, which is counter to the intent of the class.

[PSxpert2011]

Sir, just listen to your FC. DOn't bother reading the WALL-TEXT on the forums, they'll only confuse you. It's better to run in blazing with people you know and can teach you.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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).