The way of the Warrior. Mitigation fix

[JBar]

I think people focus too much on the self healing as being warriors go-to mechanic. I've always seen wrath - being a raging animal - as more of the key concept. A CD that made the warrior "Go into a rage and refuse to die" (not dropping below 1 HP) for 10 seconds would be a great way to balance out hallowed ground. It wouldn't be quite as good, but it would be better than what we have now. Self healing always has been, and always will be, a gimmicky mechanic that is a monster to balance. It's nearly impossible to make it functional in end game without it being absolutely OP in lower levels/ gear settings. And visa versa, it's very hard to make it balanced early and have it be at all relevant later on. % of health healing on all the abilities is the only thing I can think of that will ever even the playing field for Warriors at different levels.

[Hulk_Smash]

I think people focus too much on the self healing as being warriors go-to mechanic.

I agree completely. That is why I feel that a mechanic to either absorb incoming damage, or absorb based off % max HP, would scale better than what we have currently. Either way, the healing absorbed would be relevant and none trivial in current end game content

[Phreak]

I think people focus too much on the self healing as being warriors go-to mechanic.

People think this because Yoshida specifically said the WAR was designed to take damage and then HEAL IT BACK while a PLD was designed to mitigate that damage out right.

[JBar]

People think this because Yoshida specifically said the WAR was designed to take damage and then HEAL IT BACK while a PLD was designed to mitigate that damage out right.

And that's great! It's an important part of the kit - but it is just a Part of the whole picture. In all honesty, how many abilities do we have the truly grant health back? 3? Storms path is utterly useless - not to mention it's the last step in a three part combo, Bloodbath is laughable, and Inner Beast is *meh* at best. I think the vision is "do-able", but will require more attention from the dev team. Not to mention the only "difficult" end-game tanking mechanics SE has developed are merely spikes where you're scrambling across cd's and relying on healers to stay alive for 1 or 2 big hits. I think a broader perspective on Wrath and other functions of warrior would make for a class that is easier to balance on the dev side and will be much less toxic going into the future!

[Kitru]

% of health healing on all the abilities is the only thing I can think of that will ever even the playing field for Warriors at different levels.

It still wouldn't scale with the content properly. By having it scale with max hp, you're just changing what stats it scales with (it would scale off of Vit instead of Str/crit/det/weapon). The only way for self healing to be balanced is for it to scale off of the amount of damage taken, such that something like Inner Beast and Storm's Path restore some-to-all damage taken over the last 5-10 seconds (Inner Beast restores all damage takes in the last 5 seconds; Storm's Path restores 10% of all damage taken over the last 10 seconds). Bloodbath as a percent of damage healed is fine, since it's so comparatively small and it's a CD, but Inner Beast and Storm's Path would need to scale differently.

The bigger fix needed, in my opinion, is the WAR CD suite: the strongest WAR CD is weaker than the weakest PLD CD. Given that the devs seem to love intense damage phases and burst damage mechanisms as the tank pressure mechanisms, CD suites are *really* important.

[JBar]

The only way for self healing to be balanced is for it to scale off of the amount of damage taken

Awesome input. I'd agree that the restoration based on damage taken might be a better approach and would help maintain balance from 1-50 (it's easy for us to forget that not everyone is endgame oriented). If the Healing-to-enmity ratio on the SP heal was 1:1 (or something that works) it would also help us use the ability without feeling a significant loss of enmity from not spamming BB. Potency could be adjusted to grant the same-ish enmity while letting use actively decide between more dmg or more healing. The CD suite is certainly an issue - I think there are many routes to be taken here.

[Phreak]

1. Brewmaster is a low HP, evasive, mitigation tank. A WAR is a high HP, take it all in the face then recover tank.

2. Yes they do have self healing (nothing like WAR, BrM self heal is on a CD and isn't used as it's primary tool for recovering from damage, stagger is)

3. Brewmaster relies more on evading attacks and then shrugging off the ones that do land, a WAR takes a hit and then throws it back, healing themselves.

4. Only a bad BrM is squishy on the pull and that's only because they have to apply stagger, a warriors damage intake never changes outside CDs from start to finish their high HP is meant to be the buffer for the blows and wrath as a means to recover.

4. Your parry argument is the lamest thing, yes BrMs have the ability to parry but they never increase nor do they rely on it. Agility, their core stat, affects their odds of dodging, parry is only a consideration for strength oriented tanks it's just fluff for BrM compared to WAR where parry is their only real forum of passive mitigation.

5. If you're really gonna reach into Blizzard's pockets the Death Knight is the closest thing to the WAR class in FFXIV and in it's original form it was almost exactly like WAR only it had a much more fleshed out tanking kit (Death Strike behaved just like Inner Beast, healing back based on damage dealt and no shield). Death Knight's also were given a health boost via their tanking stance AND mitigation.

6. While brewmasters deal a large amount of damage for a tanking class they are not damage oriented in any way outside of their raid shields, they do not lean on their damage in order to tank or justify being squishier than other tanks (which isn't the case either BrM is one of the most hardy tanks there are, only 2nd to Pal) because of it. A WAR directly interacts with the damage they deal to function as a tank. All but 1 of their self healing related abilities is related to the damage they can dish out the other plays off their other core feature, a large health pool.

[Hulk_Smash]

1. Agreed. Except WAR can mitigate with parry

2. Not all heals are on CD. Healing spheres, expel harm w/ desperate measures, gift of the ox
Also, stagger is a mitigation, does not recover damage, and is only great with purifying brew

3. Implies WAR heals are based off dmg received + DMg given. So, not entirely true. What I am saying is that WAR needs a mech that scales with dmg received

4.1. You contradicted yourself on squishy at pulls. Brew needs BO kick w/ stagger. WAR needs 5 wrath stacks for +15% heals

4.2 brew does increase parry rate.
Swift reflexes, BO kick. Both Brew and WAR rely on parry for mitigation
5. Agreed, but blood Dk self heals are tied to vengeance as well. FF doesn't have a similar mechanic
But in fact needs it
6. Guard is a very important dmg absorb ability. WAR current abilities don't scale. That is partially the reason for improvements

[Firefly]

I'd like to see a self-raise option. 2 second cast, 30 second duration, 5 minute cd. Absorb the overage on the KO hit. If Warrior has 600hp and boss hits for 1000 damage, Warrior drops to 0 and then heals for the remainder gaining 400hp.

[Garnatian]

Wait, what?

Why not make Wrath reduce damage by 20% per stack while you're at it. These are incredibly bad changes and not in anyway in the spirit of how WAR was made.

The WAR is a Self-Heal Tank. If his main form of "mitigating" damage is reducing it, then they have failed making interesting Tanking classes. Tanks in MMOs should approach damage mitigation from different angles, whether it's Evading, Reducing or Healing damage.

The main issue with WAR is that its "mitigation" style does not scale with content very well so they need to change the healing received as some function of damage taken for a more long term fix as opposed to a flat increase in healing received which might make WAR on par with PLD in some areas and vastly superior in others.