A plea to reconsider Inner Beast changes

[Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam]

Now I'd like to preempt this by saying I'm happy WAR is getting some love. It's always been and always will be my main. It's had some pretty glaring flaws since day 1 (as has every class in some form really) but I'm gonna go against the grain here and state that we've never been in a bad spot like others might claim. I've tanked absolutely everything this game has to offer without any issues and whilst it's clear to everyone we have less potential mitigation (in very high damage situations) than a PLD that is absolutely not a problem. The class has more than enough tools to handle tanking everything up to and including Twintania as is.

Anyone who has spent any reasonable amount of time on WAR should pretty easily be able to point out some of the real issues the class has. Holmgang has exceptionally niche usage (resisted by almost everything worth mentioning), Storm's Path was completely useless, Steel Cyclone had very minimal use and Vengeance served mostly as a free stack of wrath rather than a functional buff. There's other minor stuff I could touch on like Bloodbath, but none that really require any noteworthy changes. I'm really glad to see these all receive buffs (Steel Cyclone still needs love, enmity was not the answer), though I think some are a bit overkill. I just wanted to touch on these before getting in to the discussion of Inner Beast to give some perspective.

Now here's my beef - the complete retooling of Inner Beast. Though some may disagree, Inner Beast is the central focus of a Warrior. The entire class and playstyle essentially revolves around Inner Beast; how you manage and build wrath, when you pop it and a number of your cooldowns (Berserk, Internal Release, Infuriate) all involve or lead up to Inner Beast. Proper usage of Inner Beast may be the most defining thing between a bad and a good Warrior.

That said, there's a lot of controversy behind the skill. Misinformation surrounding it spread like wildfire and it became common practice for a WAR to sit comfortably on his/her 5 stacks of wrath, refusing to use them unless Infuriate was available. To put it simply, you are bad if you play like this. Remember when Yoshi-P came out and stated the community was playing WAR wrong? Everyone laughed it off, called him crazy and refused to accept it. The fact of the matter is he was absolutely right. It may not encompass everyone, but the grand majority of Warriors followed this line of thinking despite it very, very rarely being the best way to play. This style of play, higher baseline gear requirements (and lack of CT tier as a bridge) for the class and PLDs ability to scale DR well with content (regardless of gear) absolutely destroyed the communities perception of WAR, despite the class being a very good tank that synergizes very well with PLD in 2 tank situations.

Now I'm going to use Titan as an example here because I imagine it's what most people have experience with, it also seems to be the first real case of people favouring PLDs and writing off WARs entirely. If you haven't reached Titan HM you honestly shouldn't be engaging in any balance discussion, each class is equally good regardless of gear prior to Titan.

Inner Beast is currently used to proactively mitigate damage. Now this can be done one of two ways, either via buffering your HP just before taking a big hit or healing it back quickly after it connects. In an ideal world it will always be the second option, but there's situations where the first is necessary too. When I hit Titan HM I could be healing from anywhere between 1000-2250 or so, with current gear I'm up to 1300-3000, with BIS you can push that to around 1500-3400 (I'm discounting STR+15 accessories and 30 STR allocation but they're an option too). As you can see that's a huge chunk of mitigation, with the option of using it before Mountain Buster connects in an emergency or shortly afterwards (timed carefully alongside heal(s)) to top yourself off. This is really where WAR differs from PLD. With the upcoming changes in 2.1, Warrior is shoehorned in to thinking and playing like a Paladin. You will pop Inner Beast before MB each and every time, healing around 333-750 (500-1200 with BIS) and reducing the MB by 20% damage. At a base level this is slightly more mitigation overall, but in cases of Berserk + Crit (not uncommon with Internal Release) it is a bit worse.

So why am I complaining? The biggest issue for me is loss of identity. No longer do we have to decide the optimal timing to use Inner Beast, you will be popping it just before Rock Buster each and every time. This is exactly how PLD plays (though with more leeway on the timing, with buffs ranging from 10-20 seconds over IBs 6). No longer do we have to have to pay any attention to our healers actions or worry about precisely timing it to minimize lost healing potency, we blindly pop it before the scripted burst damage and go back to our combo rotation.

It's also a big nerf to Infuriate. You're down to one healer, they get locked in a gaol and in just a few seconds Mountain Buster is coming your way, what do you do? A quick Berserk followed by a double Inner Beast and you're back up to full HP just in time to eat the MB. Your healer may need some new underwear but the fight will go on and damn will you feel good about it. Say good bye to situations like these (and I'm sure nearly every tank out there has been in a similar situation at least once), because double IBs are now near worthless. You can prolong the 20% DR to 12 seconds but why bother? Every fight with burst to worry about has downtime between each hit. You're not eating another buster for a while, Cadaceus gives you around 15 seconds between Hood Swings (hardly worthy for saving IB for anyway), Twintania has a whopping 30 seconds between Death Sentences. Wrath stacks in general require absolutely no thought now, there's no trade off to using them.

Another problem is Inner Beasts utility prior to Titan and coil. In larger AoE pulls it may be a minor increase in mitigation in 2.1, but in near every boss up to and including Garuda it will likely lose effectiveness. Whilst DR scales better in heavy hitting content it gets significantly worse in easier stuff. No longer can I shrug off Ifrits 1.6k incinerates, healing back the entirety of it, I'll be reduced to lowering it by... 320 (on top of a 400 heal). It only gets worse from there.

So what do I propose? I honestly think IB was perfect as is, the other skill fixes were more than enough to bring WAR up to par (if not ahead of PLD). It's true PLD has an easier time eating hits in Titan and coil without requiring as much gear, but the gap is not a particularly big one. As a WAR gets more and more gear the gap gets increasingly smaller. Classes should not be identical. There is nothing wrong with PLD being a bit better at soaking up hits. Warrior can put out noticeably more damage, can generate enmity faster (great for adds, turn 4, etc) and buff PLDs damage in cases where it falls back to a DPS/back up tank. Perhaps the proposed buffs alongside the old IB would be too good? In that case you should be toning down those changes, not butchering our one class defining mechanic/skill. Drop Vengeance from the proposed 30% DR to 15-20%, if Storm's Path is a 10% DR change it to 5%. There was so many routes you could have taken when fixing/buffing WAR, but instead of playing to the classes strengths and flavour you're simply turning us in to a PLD with an axe.

This got entirely too long despite trying to avoid elaborating on every point I made, so apologies for the wall. I'd be happy to go in to anything I mentioned further if necessary.

[Vactus]

If you're getting that big a heal from IB then Titan isn't something you normally worry about at all. You overgear it by a lot. A WAR at the Titan stage heals about 1k on avg. Only mildly useful when MB/auto attack hits for over 4k.

Now would I have changed IB? Not like they did, but wrath stacks should be more useful than saving for IB.

[Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam]

If you're getting that big a heal from IB then Titan isn't something you normally worry about at all. You overgear it by a lot. A WAR at the Titan stage heals about 1k on avg. Only mildly useful when MB/auto attack hits for over 4k.

Now would I have changed IB? Not like they did, but wrath stacks should be more useful than saving for IB.

Like I said?

When I hit Titan HM I could be healing from anywhere between 1000-2250

A well timed IB (just before Rock Buster) will mitigate a bit under 2k from RB, a bit over 1k from auto, and around 4-5k from MB. Lets say 7.5k total. That's around 1500 from the DR and 333 from the unbuffed IB for a total of 1800~1850. A buffed/crit IB in 2.0 is around 2250 in just DL gear/Garuda Axe. Depending on the order of operations (when does the DR apply? Does it factor Virus, Rain of Death and 2.1 Storm's Path before or after? How about SS and Adlo?) it could get even worse. Regardless my main point wasn't really whether it was a nerf or buff. It's obviously a big buff for Twintania, debatable in Titan, nerf in most cases before that.

[Giantbane]

A well timed IB (just before Rock Buster) will mitigate a bit under 2k from RB, a bit over 1k from auto, and around 4-5k from MB. Lets say 7.5k total. That's around 1500 from the DR and 333 from the unbuffed IB for a total of 1800~1850. A buffed/crit IB in 2.0 is around 2250 in just DL gear/Garuda Axe. Depending on the order of operations (when does the DR apply? Does it factor Virus, Rain of Death and 2.1 Storm's Path before or after? How about SS and Adlo?) it could get even worse.

You can't guarantee a crit and buffs are not always up for the MB. This will always be up for MB, it always works the same (for the most part), you can stack it with other mitigation effects to make it a little better (or a lot in the case of vengeance) and best of all you don't lose your 15% healing to do it (now 20%!). You don't get the same feeling of self sufficiency by doing a big crit for a bunch of HP, but it's vastly better for Titan when working with a healer.

[Devils]

If you're getting that big a heal from IB then Titan isn't something you normally worry about at all. You overgear it by a lot. A WAR at the Titan stage heals about 1k on avg. Only mildly useful when MB/auto attack hits for over 4k.

Now would I have changed IB? Not like they did, but wrath stacks should be more useful than saving for IB.

That is the biggest issue, it just isn't worth it to currently lose you wrath stacks on anything other than IB but then you better have infuriate up to get the stacks back. Cause if you are in a bad enough situation to cause you to use IB you REALLY NEED the healing bonus of Defiance.........

[Paikis]

That is the biggest issue, it just isn't worth it to currently lose you wrath stacks on anything other than IB but then you better have infuriate up to get the stacks back. Cause if you are in a bad enough situation to cause you to use IB you REALLY NEED the healing bonus of Defiance.........

Holding your wrath stacks currently means you are doing it wrong. I'm not saying use IB on cooldown, but you should use it every time you take a large hit or drop below halfish.

Using your Wrath stacks will heal you for anywhere between 1k and up to 4k (my highest so far is 3.7k and I average 1.8-2k without Berserk) and will only cost you 7% incoming heals. Yes, I said 7%.

If you take the 15% bonus as the baseline (1.15 modifier) then you remove the bonus (1.00 modifier) you are losing 13% of the heals you could have been getting [1-(1.00/1.15)=~0.13 = 13% less heals]. As you rebuild your wrath stacks, you gain part of that healing bonus back every few seconds, you end up with 0 stacks for 5 seconds, 1 stack for 2.5 seconds, 2 stacks for 5 seconds, 3 stacks for 2.5 seconds 4 stacks for 5 seconds and then you're at full. If you take the difference between the healing you WOULD have got, and look at the average healing you DID get when you used Inner Beast, it works out to 7% less average healing over the 20 seconds.

Inner Beast is really good, and the healing bonus is really... ok. Why would you NOT use the stacks?

[Kitru]

Inner Beast is really good, and the healing bonus is really... ok. Why would you NOT use the stacks?

Because the healing you're talking about is unreliable (to get those 3.7k numbers that you're so proud of, you need to be packing a lot of STR gear, have Maim and the SE debuff active along with Berserk and *then* score a critical hit which, even with Internal Release active, has only a 35% chance of occurring) and doesn't scale with incoming damage.

When you're *not* dealing with conditionally inflated Inner Beasts and are dealing with 90% of the Inner Beasts that you *will* be using, as soon as you get into an incoming damage scenario where healing actually *matters* (if you're taking so little damage that you can keep yourself alive with Inner Beast, a WHM could keep you alive with Regen and nothing else so it's not really any kind of advantage), using Inner Beast outside of Infuriate to immediately regenerate your Wrath stacks is a *net loss* to healing efficiency. The only time that you *would* want to use IB without Infuriate is if you would immediately die without using it (e.g. you're at 3k hp after Rock Buster and don't have any other CDs) because heals don't work when you're dead.

In Coil and Titan, using Inner Beast without Infuriate is a guaranteed loss in healing efficiency. It's not a question of how effective you use it. Even if you don't waste a *single* point of healing from it (which is entirely likely), you'll still require more healing than if you just kept the Wrath stacks. That's just math (and it's been done time and time and time again to prove it).

[Paikis]

using Inner Beast outside of Infuriate to immediately regenerate your Wrath stacks is a *net loss* to healing efficiency

No. It isn't.

If you're getting 2k out of Inner Beast (I haven't seen one for much less than this in quite some time. No crit, no Berserk, just Maim and SE) and using my 7% number, any time 2k is more than 7% of the incoming heals over the next 20 seconds, it is a net gain. 20 seconds is 8 GCDs and you need to receive more than 28,500 healing. 28,500/8 = 3562.5 per GCD. If you are taking enough damage that this kind of healing is needed, then YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD.

[Amida2k2]

Can't agree more. I have this aching feeling like I'm not going to feel as if I'm playing a WAR anymore, but a pseudo-PLD.

The thought alone makes me sad that our 'identity,' as you called it, is being torn apart at the seams.

[Amas]

Someone is so used to over-gearing that they forget just how bad Inner Beast is.

Protip: Player damage does not scale with mob damage, so tying WAR's external healing requirements (aka healing required after Inner Beast) to player damage rather than mob damage means the class will never be balanced. It'll underperform badly when undergeared and overperform badly when overgeared (which... it still doesn't, go figure).

DR scales with mob damage, so the Inner Beast change is actually spot-on for making sure WAR is viable at all stages of progression and in all encounters.

Out of all the WAR changes, the Inner Beast changes and the de-coupling of the healing bonus from Wrath are the best, far and away. They will do more than anything else to ensure there isn't a massive gulf in performance between WAR and PLD going forward.