Maximizing DPS as a Warrior

[MythToken]

I don't think ive seen this addressed for 2.1, but in terms of maximizing damage is IB worth using if infuriate is not up?

My point being you would be losing out on crit while trying to get back to max stacks, where as if you only used it when you had infuriate ready, you would not lose out on max crit uptime.

Wondering others thoughts on this.

[Marxam]

Take off Defiance. That's it.

[Kitru]

My point being you would be losing out on crit while trying to get back to max stacks

The +crit contributions of Wrath stacks aren't worth delaying the use of your Wrath consumers. Ignoring the baseline crit chance for simplicity's sake, 10% crit translates into a 5% increase in damage (10% chance for 50% more damage = 5% more damage over time) which basically means that each Wrath stack adds 1% to damage. When you are generating Wrath stacks, you average 2.35 Wrath stacks over time (8.5 GCDs required on average to get to IB) since the benefits of Wrath aren't factored until the following attack and I'm reasonably confident that they're not factored into the Wrath consumers. Ignoring Maim and SE since they're equal multipliers to everything, without using IB, the BB>SE rotation generates 206.67 pot/GCD from special attacks (((150 + 200 + 280) + (150 + 190 + 270)) / 6); using IB ever time that you can with the same basic rotation generates 229.41 pot/GCD ((206.67 * 15 + 300 / .75 * 2) / 17). If you tack on the 83.33 pot/GCD from autoattacks, you end up with 290.00 and 312.74, respectively; factor in the simplified crit bonuses and you end up with 304.5 pot/GCD (290 * 1.05) and 320.09 pot/GCD (312.74 * 1.0235), which is basically a ~5% advantage towards immediate Wrath consumer usage compared to storing Wrath.

It's important to remember just how hard IB hits: it's the equivalent of a 400 potency hit while you're in Defiance since it ignores the damage penalty. Delaying an ability that massive in order to get a miniscule bonus just isn't worth it.

[HakuroDK]

How I maximize DPS as a Warrior is thus:

1st Method: The "The party only needs one tank, and there are two tanks in the party" method.

1. Turn off Defiance.
2. Profit

2nd Method: The "I'm tanking, but I really want to help DPS maximize damage while I'm tanking" method.

Disclaimer: Use this for bosses only! Other enemies will not be alive long enough to take advantage of this method.

1. Use Enmity-generating combo for about 45-60 seconds. That would be about 5-7 full, uninterrupted rotations. If the party generates a lot of enmity on their own, try shooting for a full 90 seconds, or 10 rotations.

2. Once you've generated enough enmity, switch to your Maim rotations and use Fracture in-between rotations as needed.

3. If you get 5 stacks of enrage, go ahead and use any of the three enrage-using abilities, depending on the situation. Unchained if you haven't used it yet, Steel Cyclone if you're trying to pull adds, or Inner Beast under any other circumstances.

When using the second method, under no circumstances should you ever use Berserk. Berserk ends with a Pacification debuff, which can cause you very critical seconds in which the tide of battle could change signiricantly. For the first method, you can trust the other tank to cover you, so it's fine. But if you're tanking, Berserk is a HUGE no-no. The damage bonus is not worth the uncurable stun-like aftereffects.

[MrDiezel]

Since everybody is being witty about not using Defiance, your biggest damage boost (with Defiance) is going to be, after a Storm's Eye Combo: Unchained - Internal Release - Berserk. This is rather general, as unchained, internal release and berserk can be weaved into your Storm's Eye combo. You can also Infuriate to get your crit boost.

if for whatever reason you arent producing enough enmity with this or would like some additional heals, Bloodbath before the other buffs.

You should macro Berserk so that you let your party know you will be Pacified in # seconds. Esuna/Leech

[Kyana]

If I'm tanking I use 1 hate combo followed by Storm's Path and Storm's Eye combo, then alternate between hate and Storm's combos as needed.
Usually my damage is high enough to hold hate without more than a Butcher's Block combo every 2-4 rotations.

When not tanking, deactivate Defiance and keep alternating between the two Storm's combos to help your damage and make the fight a bit easier for healers and tank.

I also find that it's not required to go full tank gear for Warrior against not so hard bosses/trash.
Often the increased damage from more Str and secondary stats will outperform more Vit.
As long as it's not hurting the party I'm swapping in and out Str/Vit gear as needed.

[Jaeral]

-snip-

While i totally agree with the 2 methods you mentioned i'm kinda confused why you advocate not using berserk. Both Flash and Provoke are still usable during pacification as well as your defensive cooldowns.
Spamming Berserk on cooldown might line up the pacification in an ugly moment but especially when you are running things with competent healers, they will esuna/leeches your pacification quite fast too.
Especially on your second method your enmity-creation for 60 seconds/90 seconds would create enough leeway to keep the enemy on you during the pacification.

Edit: On top of that, don't forget that using berserk actually gives you one charge of wrath and can sometimes be just what you need to get the Inner Beast up in time(Looking at you, twintania's DS).

[MythToken]

@ Kitru, thx for the awesome reply on wrath stacks, makes a lot of sense. And that was some great info!
As for defiance duh lol

I am talking about maxing dps with defiance up/tanking. There is another thread this relates too about parry being worthlessish, and this is sort of taking it to the next level.
If we are assuming that maximizing DPS as a tank is the best way to go, then this is what this thread is about. (you don't have to agree, but please don't post stuff about how parry ect ect, this is just to explore the idea of doing max damage)

So lets assume we are +30 Str, do we try to max Det then Crit? or Crit then Det? Is a little bit of SS a decent dps increase without too much TP starvation? How much?

These are questions I have.

[ManaKeKz]

So lets assume we are +30 Str, do we try to max Det then Crit? or Crit then Det? Is a little bit of SS a decent dps increase without too much TP starvation? How much?

I don't have any numbers for the damage formulas, but for healing 1 det is slightly more useful than 1 crit (roughly 1.33 crit = 1 det for overall output). The choice really depends on what items are available - 11 crit vs 11 det? det! 16 crit vs 8 det? crit!
With the iLvl 110 gear, you can usually get both stats or just one of them for that slot to begin with. The only noteable choices are 29 crit vs 20 det on pants and 13 crit vs 9 det on belt, but these differences are so small that you likely won't notice any difference in your dps.

Skill speed is another matter, I for one don't like it at all for the sole reason that unlike crit/det, it doesn't improve your damage per tp. In a world with unlimited resources (read: for black mages), speed is actually a pretty good stat, but in any fight where your tp are finite, the other stats are more useful. If you wanted to find a perfect balance on skill speed, you would aim to finish the fight with as little tp left as possible while never starving yourself, but that number varies hugely with different encounters and a good number for a dodge heavy fight may well be way too much for an encounter like t4.

[Kitru]

1. Use Enmity-generating combo for about 45-60 seconds. That would be about 5-7 full, uninterrupted rotations. If the party generates a lot of enmity on their own, try shooting for a full 90 seconds, or 10 rotations.

I dearly hope you're not talking about just spamming the BB combo. It's lower damage and lower enmity than any of a number of other rotations. The highest enmity rotation is actually SE>BB>BB>BB, so, if you're advocating cranking out enmity for the first minute or so, that's what you should be using.

2. Once you've generated enough enmity, switch to your Maim rotations and use Fracture in-between rotations as needed.

Fracture isn't really worth it since it costs so much and doesn't really offer a particularly impressive increase to damage. In fact, because it's not part of your combos and inhibits uptime, it ends up being a wash, basically. And, once again, if you want to maximize damage dealt, you're talking about the wrong rotation. BB>SE is the highest damage rotation we've got so, if all that you're aiming for is damage, that's what you should be using.

When using the second method, under no circumstances should you ever use Berserk. Berserk ends with a Pacification debuff, which can cause you very critical seconds in which the tide of battle could change signiricantly. For the first method, you can trust the other tank to cover you, so it's fine. But if you're tanking, Berserk is a HUGE no-no. The damage bonus is not worth the uncurable stun-like aftereffects.

If you honestly think that you should never use Berserk because of the Pacification debuff, it's because you don't know the fight. Berserk is an amazing tool when used properly and is only going to screw you over if you use it indiscriminately instead of waiting for the proper time, when you know that you'll have a safe time frame to be Pacified in 20 seconds, which actually happens quite often. About the only time it's going to screw you over is if adds are about to spawn.

Also, the Pacification can be esuna/leeched off of you, so it's not as if it's incurable. It's only 5 secs long so it's generally not worth it to burn the healer's GCD.

Now, if you really want to talk about generating a massive enmity cushion before going on to using lower enmity-higher damage rotations, spamming your high enmity combo for the first minute is actually a pretty inefficient way to go about it. I can generate the same amount of enmity in 20 seconds as someone using BB spam does for the first minute, and I do it as part of my starting attack string:

(Brutal Swing)HS>SS>BB>
HS>Maim>SE(Vengeance)>
HS(Unchained)>SS(Berserk)>BB(Brutal Swing)>

From here, you can go one of two ways. There's a higher enmity variant that uses

HS(Internal Release)>SS>BB>HS>SS>BB>

But I tend to prefer this lower enmity/higher damage variant that actually maintains Maim (I generate more than enough enmity with this anyways)

HS(Internal Release)>Maim>SE>HS>SS>BB>

And then you finish off either of those with an IB right before you get Pacified by Berserk. The order of CD usage is really important. You want to use Unchained before Berserk so that the last GCD of Unchained isn't eaten by the Pacification as well as making sure you get the Wrath stack from Berserk (not because you want to avoid wasting Wrath stacks because the rotation wastes 2 already, but because it gives you 2% extra crit for the first 2 rotations); this also means that you have 1 GCD at the end where you do not have Unchained but do have Berserk, which is when you use IB (which wouldn't benefit from Unchained anyways). Internal Release because used 2 GCDs after Berserk is used means that you won't have IR for the first buffed HS (not a big deal) but you will have it around for the IB at the end (which is a big deal).

The enmity generated by this attack string is obscene. Using it, I routinely reduce PLD tanks using FoF and RoH spamming in Shield Oath to tiny slivers of enmity. I also end up pulling bosses that other tanks have had a full 40 seconds to build up enmity on their own before the rotation finishes. Berserk and Unchained combine to increase your damage by ~87% while they're up, which means that, for the 3 BB rotation, you're basically getting 5.6 BBs for the cost of 2. Toss in IR on top of that and you're basically doubling the value of every ability you use while all 3 buffs are active.

In general, I try to do this attack string every 2 minutes or so and, in between, I almost never bother using BB (I end up doing SE>SP; the only reason I'd use BB is if I elect to do SE>BB for the extra damage if I think we don't need the SP debuff) because I have such a massive enmity cushion that there's no reason to try and generate more.

If you seriously want to give advice to people, make sure you actually know what you're talking about. Pretty much all of the advice you provided was wrong (beyond the whole "turn off Defiance" derp, because, you know, it's not as if it never occurred to anyone else to turn off the stance that reduces damage by 25% when they don't need to tank).