Making WAR More Diverse/Fun Again

[NefGP]

So, as most of us Legacy players will recall, WAR was a hell of a lot more fun in 1.23 and this was largely due to its dual nature - You could either tank or dps depending on the gear you had and what skills you took.

I'm not completely against the changes in ARR (though I'm not a fan of the system as a whole) however I do think a few things could be different to better distinguish WAR from PLD and make it a more exciting Job to play.


So the first obvious thing is to allow MRD/WAR to wear offensive gear again. In 1.23, PLD WAR & DRG could all equip the offensive Darklight Armor, with the Heavy variant being reserved for just WAR & PLD. Now it's LNC/DRG only, and that blows. It was fun being a high HP dps in 1.23, and it strikes me as a bit silly that a Job that wields such massive great axes can't double as a dps role, so that's step 1 (Allagan gear too of course).


The other (bigger) change is to rework Unchained. In its current form it simply allows you to deal full damage again for 20 seconds. I'd much rather it be changed to an alternate stance skill similar to Defiance, but with DPS buffs instead of tanking. Instead of gaining wrath with each attack as you do with Defiance, in this new form it gradually builds up over time/as you attack and grants bonus effects to your weaponskills based on how much wrath you have. Enmity is also lowered rather than increased.

Finally to make this work properly, certain skills would have to function differently in this new offensive mode, all your weaponskills that normally grant increased enmity had reduced instead as that would be counter-productive.

I haven't really worked out all the kinks, but this is just a basic concept I thought of the other day to spice things up a bit and to allow WAR to contribute more in situations where you're the Offtank and don't need to be soaking damage for the group. I hate how bland the armory system is in this game compared to XI's job system.

[Abigs]

your ideas on unchained are interesting

but i dont agree with the offensive gear..

the last thing you'd want to see are warriors tanking dungeons wearing offensive gear and blaming the healer for their deaths

also, dps wars will further increase the shortage of tanks

[Ryock]

the last thing you'd want to see are warriors tanking dungeons wearing offensive gear and blaming the healer for their deaths

Eh, lots of warriors do this anyways. I don't think being able to use that same armor would really change anything, anyways.

I like your thought on Unchained, though I must admit... when being thrown into a role, people expect that character to perform only that role. The warrior's dps would have to be lower than all the other dps, but still high enough to contribute. Otherwise, just because of their defensive abilities and the fact that they don't have to hit the enemy a certain way like monk and dragoon do, people would prefer to bring them along if given the choice.

[Gwaeron]

I loved Berserk and Rampage in 1.23! I feel like the huge Steel Cyclone nerf was enough, but they went ahead and ALSO completely removed Rampage (or rather, replaced it with defiance). The idea that you got better at tanking the more you were hit was pretty nice, so you couldn't just put rampage on, use Steel Cyclone and switch back to berserk. However, with the HP regeneration from critical attacks, it was a tiny bit overpowered...

I think 2.1 did a great job at making WAR fun again. It's still a bit to go to reach the 1.23 level of fun, but at least it's not like in 2.0 anymore. "Here you have a bunch of cool abilities, but you may NEVER use them!"

Also bring back the original Steel Cyclone sound please.

[Brannigan]

Rampage healing was a "tiny" bit overpowered? Haha.

Without old Steel Cyclone, though, it wouldn't be that bad. The healing component of Rampage as a MRD trait so that warrior can better take advantage of the 10% crit boost that Wrath grants would be pretty cool.

[abzoluut]

Another "I want to dps as a tank" thread. xD

On a more serious note, which FFXI tank meets your description, I'd very much like to know!

What SE needs to do is make WAR feel more like they're doing dps. They started out good with the self-heal path they chose. However, when they had to change WAR, they took the easy way out by just buffing us giving us more mitigation. They should have taken the time and redesign the self-healing skills (tweak, add). I guess that would also mean to change the content which would be far too much work since WARs did not scale with conten (<--- main problem right there).

I do like how WAR plays now and it's on par with PLD. I agree with you up to a certain point: it would be nice to have WAR play more like a berserker. No dps gear and stuff though.. We just need abilities/traits/side-effects which buffs our dps for short times or a "berserker stance" which buffs our dps a bit.

[Ehayte]

I think you just want a DPS job based off MRD? Which would be freakin' sweet.

If WAR could double as DPS, PLD better be able to double as a Healer, and MNK better be able to tank. Allowing one role to do 2 things really well would break the crap out of this game. WAR's already have a DPS stance in NOT having defiance on, and keeping Maim up all the time.

I know I am kind of sounding like a nay-saying jerk right now, but it would just be way too powerful.

[stanrir]

i really like these ideas if Wars could be dps or tank, omg that would help mix things up a lot ^.^,

[Zakalwe]

I frankly would like a melee DPS job like the old Champion class in Lord of the Rings Online. I have no idea what Champs are like over there with the class revamps, as I quit playing lotro when this game came out.

Champs were the king of aoe DPS. They could also be spec'ed to concentrate more on single target DPS, but this game really has no room for different builds to jobs. (They also had a tanking stance, but that was mostly just for OTing or for easy content in small groups.). The Champ had a real warrior/berserker feel to it, and I always used a big 2h axe as my weapon. They wore heavy armour, but in their strongest DPS stance couldn't parry or block.

But in this game, unless SE changed its mind and decided to let a job play more than one role, I wouldn't hold my breath on them implementing the otherwise good ideas put forward by the OP.

[Gwaeron]

So many people saying it wouldn't work! It has been done; it was exactly like that in 1.23. Two stances, Berserk for DD and Rampage for tanking. They would need to be "charged up", so you couldn't just switch to Berserk for one WS and then switch back. Rampage would get more effective (higher parry rate and faster attack speed) the more you got hit and was reset by Steel Cyclone (which had its critical hit rate increased based on how strong rampage was). When berserk was on, your damage dealt would increase based on how many times you attacked the enemy. It was reset by... Godsbane I think? Don't remember clearly. Basically, the wrath thing comes from this. You can keep it for a buff, or spend it on an ability. It was just expanded a bit in ARR.

As it stands now, we really are forced into our respective roles. If you queue for a dungeon as ACN, you WILL be a damage dealer. There is no gear for PLD or WAR that allows them to deal damage. Basically, SE doesn't want us to do anything other than what they say we should do. The diversity within classes/jobs that we had in FFXI and XIV 1.23 is gone, both for good and for bad. MNK used to be able to use what is now the DRG-specific darklight set, and DRG could use the now BRD-specific set. DRGs would use the eyepatch and so on. I think that DF makes this difficult to implement in a good way, but I would love to see the gear and role diversity return.

More than likely, the damage dealer aspect of old WAR (1.23) will be moved to a secondary job that uses MRD as its main class. Berserker or Dark Knight sounds about right. And that's cool too!