WAR Adjustments

[bokchoykn]

So can we agree that there isn't much to adjust?

I do.

We have no reason to complain. Warrior is a well-made class in a game where not every class is well-made. That's saying a lot. People just want to see their own class get stronger and stronger, with no regard to the real class design issues that would actually make the game better. They want their class to get all the love and will never be satisfied. This is the case in every MMO ever. Whiners will whine.

Warrior. Is. Fine.

I don't have the numbers for this on hand, but I might go out of my way to make some more up to date ones later anyway. A sword oath Paladin actually will have higher dps than a off stance Warrior in equivalent gear, though. Don't be fooled by the big axe.

A Non-Defiance Warrior's DPS is actually very slightly higher than a Sword Oath Paladin's, but where Warrior's DPS really shines is their DPS while they're tanking and ESPECIALLY in situations where they are required to change in and out of tanking stance.

Warriors have Unchained, which removes the tanking stance damage penalty. Paladins don't have an equivalent to this. The maximum uptime on this ability is 20s duration / 120s cooldown, or 16.6%. However, in situations where Warriors constantly bounce in and out of Defiance (Turns 6, 7, 9), the adjusted uptime on this ability is much higher because Warrior is only tanking for some of the time. Warriors also have Inner Beast, which not only does a ton of damage but also conserves TP since it has no TP cost.

On top of that, Warriors swap between tanking and non-tanking stances much easier than Paladins do. With Paladins, they lose two GCD's: one for going to Sword Oath and another for going back to Shield Oath. Warriors don't because stance changes are off GCD for Warriors. It's like Warriors get an extra GCD for every tank swap. Moreover, their combos don't get interrupted when they swap stances.

In tank swap situations, Paladins have to be careful how they use Rage of Halone, lest they rip aggro back as soon as their tanking partner vokes. Warriors can continue by using Storm's Path/Eye combos plus an actually good Fracture in these situations, so they can continue to DPS hard without fear of ripping aggro.

So, while a Sword Oath Paladin can hang with a non-Defiance Warrior, actual raid situations call for both classes to tank at some point. Warriors should blow Paladin DPS out of the water.

[Kitru]

Warrior. Is. Fine.

You realize that, even though I'm arguing that Holmgang needs to be fixed and that Foresight could stand to get looked at so that it's not the joke that it currently is, I actually agree with you on this, right (I disagree with a vast majority of what the OP has said though, as you could probably tell)? Saying "WAR is fine" is not the same as saying "there are absolutely no problems with WAR whatsoever" nor does saying that WAR could use some fixes mean that other classes will not receive tweaks. Balance/QoL changes are not zero-sum. You can say that WAR is a very well designed tank while simultaneously having some problems with a few of the abilities.

The problem with Holmgang isn't that it's weak. It's that it has too many disparate functions in a single ability such that they end up interfering with one another. If each of those functions were placed on different abilities, WAR wouldn't be appreciably stronger, but you can be damned sure that you'd actually be getting the intended functionality out of them.

Also, as to the whole "Holmgang can interrupt stuff that nothing else can": WHM and SMN are both much better suited to KB interrupting than WAR is. Fluid Aura is on a 30 sec CD and Shockwave is 90 sec, and they're both abilities that exist to serve that single purpose so using them as such isn't going to waste them. If you use Holmgang for a KB-interrupt, you're screwing yourself out of your uber-CD as well as your physics immunity for the next 3 minutes. Acting as if WAR KB silencing was actually a major piece of utility is akin to saying that Selene's silence makes her an absolutely amazing pet (not entirely the same thing though because Selene can still silence while doing everything else she brings).