Teach me how to WAR!

[Richiealvian]

Thanks, that was comprehensive! I actually read the entire thing.. I just recently finished ifrit xm with my healer and man, it was very intense on the tanks. Someday maybe I'll get there and try it out as a tank.. I feel that healers have it good cause they don't die often. I'm now thinking of good builds for war, but probably I'd lean more no defensive as I'm going the 30 vit path. Tanks be tanking! Although, having a main stat as a secondary is good fun. I think I want to weigh vit and str equally when gearing up with slightly more leaning towards vit but getting as much str as possible.

[Gandora]

Thanks, that was comprehensive! I actually read the entire thing..

I am sorry for the long post, I love my WAR & I am passionate about it so I did not know how to explain the thing to you with shorter phrase. :3 I use to mock Kitru for his wall of texts, I did not do better on this one..

I just recently finished ifrit xm with my healer and man, it was very intense on the tanks. Someday maybe I'll get there and try it out as a tank..

I personaly think its good to do that kind of event on your main job because of the stats, especialy when you have an important role such as healer or tank, but you're right to try and you have all of my /cheer here.

I feel that healers have it good cause they don't die often.

Talking about healers, the fact you level a tank now is very valuable for your main job, it will give you a different approach on the healer job. you will see things that can be annoying for a tank, situation like when the healer cast regen on you before you pull, or when they cast stoneskin while you pull, both things get the aggro back to the healer & get him killed in most case. It will improve your skills overall.

I'm now thinking of good builds for war, but probably I'd lean more no defensive as I'm going the 30 vit path.

Quite simply, start with Darklight or "Armor of Light" from CT if you can, I know that DL is ugly but it will give you more accuracy than Armor of Light. Accuracy is important for a tank, DL legs giving you 43, yours may have to be capped around 460-470 to start with.

The stats you may look into to start with are

VIT > STR
Accu > Parry > Crit > Det <-- You may need to ask other WARs around because again this is my personal choice.

I think I want to weigh vit and str equally when gearing up with slightly more leaning towards vit but getting as much str as possible.

When you start gearing iLv70-80 its the way to go. However when you go for iL90 (Myths & Allagan) you will have more flexibility (1stly because you will use Feets & head slot where DL doesn't.) The increase in VIT and STR will be slightly superior from the gears at this point, as well as the global defense. One big loss you will notice as soon as you change from iLv70 to iLv80+ is the drop in accuracy from DL pants, AF2 or Allagan doesn't matter at this point because both wont give you any accuracy.

You will hardly be able to match STR & VIT equaly because of the VIT bonus traits from MRD. Now (from a personal opinion again) If you plan to take over BC on WAR, you may need to focus on having at least 8k+ HP with Defiance on 1st (include use of food), once you reached that number of HP with enough accuracy then you can look into filling the lack of STR. Be aware tho, I think the cap of efficiency for STR (attack/parry% increase) are 405 & 445 (Can anyone confirm/give the accurate number please?)

Last thing, the weapon, if you have acces to Dual Haken go for it.

I thinks thats all I can say~ but again, don't take that for granted as it is my personal experiences, others WARs around may have different experiences to share with you and they may have better ideas/macro than me.

Anyway, if you have any other question feel free to ask and i'll glady answer.

[Riyos]

With trash pull with tomahawk, then overpower and main combo( HS->SK->BB) using flash after SK. After this continue to rotate main combo between enemies(and use overpower sometimes), checking sometimes the enmity bar. And yes, try to keep up maim always, it's a huge dmg/enmity buff, so why not using it? Cooldown wise, Foresight and Bloodbath have a short recast time (90 secs) but they aren't that strong(especcialy Foresight), use them with trash to mitigate a little bit of damage and recover some HP. Cast Berserk (possibly with Bloodbath, but use Bloodbath first, then wait 10 secs and use Berserk, so you will not waste 5 seconds of Bloodbath with pacification). Use the stun too, it gives you 5 seconds of reduced damage(a stunned enemie can't obv attack), so it's quite useful. About Defiance, use it ALWAYS, you can only switch it off with when you are finishing a weak enemy, so you can kill it faster.

[Riyos]

Fracture is quite good, it's like a 300 potency hit, but actually i use it very rarely, you can use it for an extra DPS, but yeah, it's not necessary. Never use skills without combo (SK BB etc.), avoid/stun aoes, mark enemies, comunicate with people and stuff like this.
This is tanking before 33. After you have important skills as Inner Beast, Storm's path, vengeance and infuriate. IB heals you for 100% of damage, so if you hit or 300 you will recover 300, it's not that much, but yeah, quite useful. The important thing about IB is the 20% damage reduction for 6 seconds, that's a HUGE buff, it will be your main mitigation skill. Use it before big hits, or immediately if there aren't big hits.

[Riyos]

Finally, Infuriate, it's good if you must use an IB but haven't enough wrath stacks, or to "extend" 20% mitigation duration(use IB->use infuriate->wait 6 secs->use IB). Then there are "minor" skills like Storm's eye(10% slashing resistance, good for boosting your dps), steel cyclone(moderate aoe damage, useful if you must use overpower/flash but don't have enough TP/MP), Thrill of battle(good for moderate auto heal or for preparing before a big hit, makes Stoneskin and Lustrate more powerfull, tell that to your healers), Holmgang(a big hit is coming and you know that you haven't enough HP? Use this, and then convalescence) and Unchained( dps boost, good for enmity and autoheal with bloodbath).
So yeah, that should be everything you must know about tanking, sorry for bad english and welcome to the warrior side >

[Riyos]

You recover your 5 wrath stack in 17-19 secs, so theoretically you have 20% damage mitigation for 6 seconds every 18 secs, so roughly you have a 20% mitigation for 1/3 of your time passed as a war, obv if you don't use overpower, flash etc. Then, storm's path, absorbs 50% of damage, and that's a shit, you will recover more or less 100-120 HP, BUT the enemy will deal 10% less damage for 20 secs, and that's a lot, the enemy you are fighting should have always that debuff on, especially if it's a boss. Vengenace, delivers an attack with a potency of bla bla bla, it's not that much, can be "good" with bloodbath for extra HP (more or less 15 HP per hit, WOW), but yeah, it's not special for that, it's special for a huge 30% of mitigation, it's a "oh shit" moment CD, and it's very good, also it gives you one wrath stack, so you can pop IB faster.

[Leiron]

She's probably thinking something similar to a game like RIFT.
Where abilities that pierce elemental resistance, take 10% away from the actual points rather than the resistance directly.
So if 200 s 20% elemental resistance.
10% elemental piercing would b

200 - 20 = 180 = 18% elemental resistance for the ability.
Which would be a 2% or so increase.
FFXIV and FFXI dont do that thankfully

[Richiealvian]

Hey guys, so I was wondering about builds now, I've finally reached 50 and want to try some level 50 dungeons. Now thinking about gearing up, would it be wise to sacrifice 25 vit 20 parry for 45 str 45 dex 40 deter? (want to use all gryphons with deter/vit/parry melded to it)

[Paikis]

Hey guys, so I was wondering about builds now, I've finally reached 50 and want to try some level 50 dungeons. Now thinking about gearing up, would it be wise to sacrifice 25 vit 20 parry for 45 str 45 dex 40 deter? (want to use all gryphons with deter/vit/parry melded to it)

Gryphonskin is fine for everything that isn't Twintania. Keep a set of Allagan/Hero's jewellery as well though, cos sometimes the healers need help, and you will eventually want to tank Twintania.

[Beliel]

Also Gandora, its probably best to specify that str is increasing the Parry % dmg reduction and not % of the parry rate. Ppl might mistake that.
Other then that your post was very good and very informative.