rank cross class abilities

[ManaKeKz]

Just my 2 cents, but as a Warrior I like Flash during speed runs. When chain pulling and Overpower usage can lead to TP starvation, I'd rather have that one aoe threat skill that doesn't use TP (Cyclone doesn't, but building Wrath stacks requires either Infuriate or TP).
The rest has already been said - Voke and Conva are the ones that I really like, FF rarely feels useful, but I sometimes pop it during Unchained + Berserk + Bloodbath to bring the entire effect somewhere near a proper def CD.
Mantra is half a Conva that applies to your party, fairly weak in total effect unless the party actually needs more heals. IR is fun to use, more damage never hurts.

[Rbstr]

I like to stack Foresight and Featherfoot just to make it feel like I may have popped an actual cool-down.

The reality though is that if you took all the cross class stuff away I wouldn't really miss anything except for the 'voke, which is indispensable, and convalescence which is a really good ability.

I feel like the reason Savage Blade and Skull Sunder are available cross class is to attempt to allow some non-tank classes to have something with an enmity bonus? Like a Dragoon (or even monk) can do a bit of tanking against an add or something and skull sunder would even let him keep his job stone.

[ManaKeKz]

Both abilities are 100 potency on a *3 threat multiplier. While 300 pot is probably higher than the number on most damage skills, I daresay that the difference to a proper dps rotation is insignificant. Also considering that tanking an add locks out all position based skills I can't see why they would want to do that.

[Kitru]

Second Wind is there as a free cure and nothing more and it scales with dmg so its helpful in a pinch.

It scales with attack power, not damage, so it's buffed by Berserk and unaffected by Defiance and Unchained (though it does actually benefit from Wrath stacks). I still don't see the value given that the heal it'll provide is basically a single auto-attack every 120 seconds, and it's always better to avoid damage than to recover from it. About the only advantages that Second Wind has is that it'll affect magic damage (a pretty niche advantage given that magic attacks tend to be AoEs that barely hurt tanks or specific, predictable spikes) and that it's controllable. For those, we have a bunch of other tools at our disposal (Conv, ToB, Veng, IB) so I don't really see the point. It's not even really a significant increase in our self healing since we have Bloodbath, IB, and SP.

I would say Flash is a necessity since its basically a free aoe enmity grab. You may say the Steel Cyclone is better, and it is, but at 5 stacks I can use IB instead. In the 15-20 dungeons flash can keep you from wasting too much tp since your only threat rotation is going to cost you 130 tp very 6 secs. Though I do agree with you that when you know how to WAR inside and out flash is not needed (though handy).

The only reason you could possibly *need* Flash when you have Overpower and SC is if you don't know how to manage your TP consumption. 2-3 Overpowers or an SC>Infuriate>SC at the start of the fight are basically a guarantee that you'll have aggro on everything for the entire fight, even at low levels, which means that you have more GCDs to devote to Wrath stack acquisition and debuff application.

You can't even use Flash that many times as a WAR either, because of our absolutely pitiful mp pool. If you're in any situation where TP consumption is a factor, you're not going to get much out of Flash because you'll only get 3 uses before running out of mp (which means 3 uses before you have to go back to Overpower), then it'll take something like 25 GCDs for you to get enough back to cast it again.

As to "wasting" Wrath stacks on SC when you could IB, there are plenty of occasions where you don't really need the DR from IB. For speed run pulls, SC is way more useful to me than IB because I already know that the healer is going to be watching me like a hawk, and it's a helluva lot more useful to get a big hit that generates a crapton of enmity basically for free than it is to reduce my damage taken by 20% for 6 seconds (especially if the healer isn't swapping to CS when they don't need to heal).

Featherfoot I still fail to see the use for. Yes its 90 sec but I've been using it sine 2.0 and I have yet to notice a consistent dodge rate.

It's not supposed to be "consistent", but I definitely notice an increase in the number of occasions that I dodge while it's active as opposed to normally.

I honestly don't know which stats affect it, if any so feel free to correct me on that.

As far as I know, there isn't any stat in the game that affects evasion rate. DEX only affects ranged attack power, I believe, so the only way to increase your evasion is with skills (which basically just means Featherfoot).

Also I'm not sure if it was fixed but doesn't Awareness still block incoming crit heals? (need confirmation)

They fixed that a while back. It now only blocks crit hits (which, keep in mind, only occur on auto-attacks).

I still stand by Second Wind as from my experience it has saved me on more than one occasion where our healer died and the other healer is having trouble keeping up.

I still don't really see the point. On the occasions where I've seen a healer struggling, I've never seen Second Wind actually make a difference. If I need self heals, I've got IB, Bloodbath, and SP.

It should be noted that I use all of my CDs actively rather than waiting until I "need" them. Featherfoot isn't going to be a useful contributor in a single use, but, over time, it most definitely has an impact (also, you should never stack Featherfoot on top of any other CD except for ToB; if you dodge, you're completely negating the benefits of any other CD you have active so you wasted a portion of that time; the best way to use Featherfoot is to stagger it with your other CDs to try and keep at least 1 CD or IB up at all times that you're tanking so that none of them decrease the effectiveness of the other).

[SirTaint]

Flash is pretty nice IMO. 360 degree aggro move for pulling groups and using to conserve TP. Brayfox you can pull with flash and then Spam overwhelm once everything is pulled.

Useful for the first t5 pull and holding the first three snakes.

For a cross class it's a solid tool to have on your belt.

[bokchoykn]

*snip*

I wouldn't judge Second Wind solely on the amount healed. Yeah, 550HP every 2 minutes is nothing. Featherfoot, Mantra and possibly even Awareness will grant more HP in the long run, but you can't simply crunch the numbers and decide that Second Wind isn't as good.


The value in Second Wind is in the way it delivers the HP. Unlike Featherfoot and Awareness, it gives it to you when you need it. Unlike Mantra, it will help you in the absence of a heal and can be activated in reaction to needing a heal instead of having to do it before hand. What's better? 500 HP when you need it or 1000HP whenever it feels like giving it to you?

Not topped off before a burst? One hit away from death after a burst? Second Wind basically grants you the equivalent of about 30 Vitality in these situations.

I'm currently working on Turn 9 right now, we're using a two-tank strat for the first phase so I'm required to take Ravensbeaks in DPS jewellery. The Ghost of Meracydias in the third phase are also hitting me very hard. Second Wind is really coming in handy in this fight. It has saved my life twice in the last few days of attempts (My HP dropped to an amount less than what the Second Wind healed me for seconds earlier).

One ability I don't get is Awareness. Boss auto attacks have a less than 5% chance to crit. It will crit you once every 50-60 seconds. Awareness is more likely to do nothing than it is likely to do something. When it does do something, you are still taking damage from the attack so it might not even save you.

[Kitru]

One ability I don't get is Awareness. Boss auto attacks have a less than 5% chance to crit. It will crit you once every 50-60 seconds. Awareness is more likely to do nothing than it is likely to do something. When it does do something, you are still taking damage from the attack so it might not even save you.

And, to make it even less sensible, I'm pretty sure that an attack that is parried or blocked cannot score a critical hit either. When you get down to it, the chance of an individual attack scoring a critical hit on you is almost entirely negligible.

Of course, the value of Awareness isn't so much in the fact that it mitigates your incoming damage as much as it stabilizes it; while Awareness is up, the maximum potential damage you can take over an period of time is capped out much lower. It's not going to do a good job of making you take less damage, but it will do an excellent job of making sure that your incoming damage is more predictable.

People were saying it at release and it still holds true now: the only way that Awareness is going to be anything more than the absolute worst tank CD in the game is if they create some specific boss mechanic that basically *forces* you to use Awareness, such as an attack that hits as hard as DS and applies a buff that causes the next attack to be an automatic critical hit (it would also be an effective way to force a tank swap since, if it happens every minute, you'd have to swap tanks because Awareness has a 120 sec CD) or a boss that has an increased chance to score critical hits that, every time it scores one, it gets a stacking buff that increases damage by 10% for 15 seconds (the only way to get rid of those stacks is to either get really lucky or to use Awareness to become immune to crits long enough for the stacks to fall off).

[Instrumentality]

*snip*

I would rather they completely removed Awareness from the game than introduce a mechanic that forced it to be used, being honest. Also make tanks uncrushable because being crit as a tank is pretty dumb.

[Kitru]

I would rather they completely removed Awareness from the game than introduce a mechanic that forced it to be used, being honest.

Well, they could either add mechanics that force tanks to use it, or they could simply increase the crit rate on bosses so that you can actually expect to get some benefit out of it (which would require reducing the standard damage). As it stands, it's pretty much useless, which is what pretty much everyone agrees upon.

Also make tanks uncrushable because being crit as a tank is pretty dumb.

I, personally, don't mind being crit as a tank because it leads to a level of unpredictability in incoming damage rate which makes it more interesting to heal. The problem is less so in being crit and moreso in the fact that crits are so rare that you can go entire fights without ever being crit. If crits actually occurred more often, they would actually have to be accounted for by both the players and the devs (which also means decreasing planned spike hits so that you don't have RNG gibs).

[Marxam]

Kitru would you mind sharing some of the sources that you have gained info on. All I have is this, which I'm pretty sure is outdated for the most part and I sometimes check the BG site for some info. You seem to have a good handle on numbers so I would like to see it as well. Idm min/maxing my play style but I do like to keep things fresh and experiment hence my stance on my choice on Second Wind. Pls and Ty.