Do Warriors have any single disadvantage?

[NFaelivrin]

Warrior as it is right now is essentially completely mandatory in raids in such a manner that it makes a DRK/PLD comp seem entirely non-viable unless the content is already on farm and you can essentially afford to mess around.

Now, the typical and so far only real complaint about Warriors in this board is based off an overreaction to a single screenshot of Fell Cleave hitting for 11k in Ravana EX. The complaints about Fell Cleave are largely exaggerated and ultimately it feels like its an intentional design decision to make Warrior the highest burst DPS tank, aswell as potentially the highest DPS tank in general.

The issue arises when you combine this intentional design with no genuine weakness to the job, Warrior cooldowns being bad has been generally proven to be a complete myth, specially given that while the percentages of defensive cooldowns such as Vengeance are lower, Warrior defensive cooldowns have the highest uptime of all tanks, and are not entirely dependent on damage types except for the case of Raw Intuition and the inherently terrible Foresight. Meanwhile Paladin's two shield cooldowns and the shield itself turn into paper defense in magic-heavy fights such as most of Alexander Savage and DRK only shines in Savage specifically because the heavy amounts of magic damage make Dark Mind highly useful. Even the supposedly inferior Holmgang has a fairly short cooldown and is much easier for healers to work with than say, Living Dead.

So we know that Warrior hits like a truck and generally has no problem taking hits regardless of damage type thanks to reliable cooldowns with higher uptime than other tanks. Then we have its utility, which, while essentially only boiling down to the two Storm's combos, is incredibly good during progression, as Storm's Eye buffs the Warrior's own DPS as well as that of any Ninjas or other tanks hitting the boss and can be kept up fulltime without much difficulty. Storm's path is invaluable during progression since its a straight out 10% damage reduction on your target and, while a DPS loss, significantly increases your survivability and that of any other raid members.

Finally, to add to all of this, we have the issue that Warrior, aside from its stack management which is largely trivial to anybody with any experience playing the class, is the only tank in the game with no resource issues whatsoever, Equilibrium being able to restore TP in Deliverance effectively gives Warriors unlimited TP, and Warrior was already a class without many TP issues on single targets in 2.X thanks to the natural TP usage downtime from Inner Beast and Steel Cyclone aswell as the pacify timer from Berserk. Since 3.0 gave offtank warriors their own No TP cost GCDs in the form of Fell Cleave and Decimate, it feels entirely pointless and overkill to also give them access to 200 free TP every minute, even if you're MT you can easily find a window to go into Deliverance, gain back 200 TP, and then sneak back into Defiance, given that Warrior is the only tank job in the game that does not have to interrupt its combos or lock itself out for 1-2 GCDs to switch stances.

So far, the only 'weakness' I can see to Warrior is the (trivial) need to build stacks to perform certain abilities and the fact that Inner Beast is on the GCD and thus requires significantly better timing than Rampart or Shadowskin to use. Given how these are basic abilities every serious Warrior main should possess at this point in the game, what I feel we're left with is a job that has an absolutely guaranteed spot in every raid group and carries with it no significant weaknesses in comparison to those possessed by Dark Knight and Paladin.

[Ditto]

No.

Warriors are everything and more right now.

[Phoenicia]

WAR's main weakness is it does so much DPS it is pigeon-holed into the OT role! /sarcasm

WAR is "less safe" than the other tanks due to stricter timing on IB and Holmgang.

WAR is slightly behind in effective healing. This is made up for with self heals and slightly higher EHP from CD synergy.

WAR's only real weakness is the player behind it.

[Ditto]

WAR is slightly behind in effective healing.

wat

/10char

[NFaelivrin]

wat

/10char

Warrior's 20% healing buff vs its 25% HP increase makes it slightly worse off in effective healing vs PLD and DRK, mathematically. Too bad they also have so many self heals that this disadvantage is nullified.

[Whiteroom]

It definitely seems a lot harder to heal WAR right now. But maybe every single one I've been paired up with is bad.

[Giantbane]

Defiance healing bonus doesn't work on healing abilities like lustrate, essential dignity, etc.

Also doesn't work with convalescence, which is arguably most important for the WAR as they need it to make ToB more than just an increase in eHP.

[Orihara_Izaya]

It definitely seems a lot harder to heal WAR right now. But maybe every single one I've been paired up with is bad.

I think it's the player, i've healed warriors that barely take any damage and paladins who take so much damage it makes my mana bar cry. It just depends on gear and their skill.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

Defiance doesn't affect healing abilities, WAR deals less sustained DPS than DRK (with slashing debuff), WAR loses the most defensive capability of the three tanks when out of tank stance, and Raw Intuition is detrimental/inapplicable in certain situations and/or requires Awareness to function.

But let's be honest here, this thread isn't really about exploring any of the disadvantages of WAR.

[NFaelivrin]

Defiance doesn't affect healing abilities, WAR deals less sustained DPS than DRK (with slashing debuff), WAR loses the most defensive capability of the three tanks when out of tank stance, and Raw Intuition is detrimental/inapplicable in certain situations and/or requires Awareness to function.

But let's be honest here, this thread isn't about detailing any of the disadvantages of WAR.

Defiance not affecting healing abilities is a minor disadvantage given Warrior's multiple self-heals. WAR OT DPS might not trump that of DRK + Slashing debuff on a 2 minute parse, but the key difference is that after 2 minutes and 20 seconds that Dark Knight will be begging for a Goad while the Warrior can -essentially- go on forever. WAR's loss of defensive capability out of tank stance is fair, but I believe it doesn't outweigh the issues I've mentioned, specially since Warrior can seamlessly switch stances and turn its Abandon stacks into Wrath and thus already have Inner Beast ready when you switch back to Defiance, Raw Intuition's disadvantages apply exclusively to trash mobs and AS2 unless you have some brand new kind of tanking strategy I've never head of such as "not facing the oppressor while I have Raw Intuition up" and, like you said, even this disadvantage is nullified by a throwaway cooldown such as Awareness.

You want honesty? The honesty is that as a career tank who appreciates game balance I would rather see the game and the raids be such that all three of the tanks can viably perform any of the tank roles without being at a massive disadvantage compared to the others, I strongly disliked PLD being always MT and WAR always OT in 2.X (and in fact found T12 strategies where these roles were reversed fairly refreshing during my farms) and I strongly dislike that no raid composition without a WAR is viable in current progression. I'm sure you think you caught my super secret plan to make this thread about how I want PLD to have all of WAR's toys but the reality is that the terrible balance of the three tank jobs in the game currently irks me to no end. There's a reason neither Elysium or Lucrezia have even considered PLD/DRK for Savage and its because WAR is 100% essential for progression raiding in the game right now.