Awareness, and its effectiveness

[Sapphidia]

Mostly a question to those more in the know on a facts-and-figures basis.

I'm curious as to exactly the power level of Awareness in current 3.0 content. Outside of nullifying the penalties for Raw Intuition for Warriors, it's mostly seen as a trashy better-than-nothing cooldown, but I'm curious exactly how the figures stack up and whether it has any additional use in 3.0.

From what I understand, a crit in FFXIV is +50% extra damage as default (though players can increase their amount via crit rating), so a boss that auto attacks for 3000 could potentially crit you at any time for 4500. Do we have any idea on percentage chance to crit? I've heard 5% thrown around in threads. If it's 5% chance to add 50% extra damage then Awareness is a meagre 2.5% damage reduction when it's up, vs crittable attacks only. It would still make sense to press during a moment you're expecting burst damage so the low chance of a crit auto doesnt add to the burst, but as a generic take-less-damage-for-a-bit cooldown it would be about 1/3 as effective as Foresight.

I did hear that Crits are rolled for -first- before block/parry, so if a mob has 5% chance to crit even if you have 100% chance to parry (eg, Raw Intuition) you'll only parry 95% of the mob's attacks as the 5% crits will "pierce" your parry/block chance. I guess this makes Awareness more effective when popped alongside something like Bulwark, Sheltron, Dark Dance etc.

So outside of auto attacks, what else can crit? Is it purely physical damage auto attacks? Can the magical auto attacks from A4's boss crit despite being unblockable? Are there any tankbusters or big attacks that can crit? (I don't recall ever being crit by a Royal Fount from Oppressor). Are there any phases in bosses in 3.0 content similar to Shiva's Bow phase where there's a huge boost in crit chance and Awareness becomes necessary to survive?

Because if Awareness is purely helping around -2.5% damage reduction on purely physical/autoattacks, it's barely ever worth considering and may as well just be popped on cooldown, but if mob crit rates/damage are higher than I've heard it could be a cooldown almost as effective as Rampart against certain situations.

I'm just not sure if 3.0 -has- any of those situations yet.

[Abbul_Stonecleaver]

I think in FCoB 3% was typical. And Bahamut couldn't crit at all.

Not sure if things have changed or if the 3% was wrong. I can't parse to know

[Brannigan]

Do we have any idea on percentage chance to crit?

The standard for crittable attacks seems to be 5%. Some monsters appear to have higher crit rates (Titan comes to mind) but that could also be my imagination. A few monsters (Shiva, Kaliya add) have crit buffs. Some bosses (All of first coil, maybe a couple others) don't crit at all.

I did hear that Crits are rolled for -first- before block/parry, so if a mob has 5% chance to crit even if you have 100% chance to parry (eg, Raw Intuition) you'll only parry 95% of the mob's attacks as the 5% crits will "pierce" your parry/block chance

This is correct

So outside of auto attacks, what else can crit? Is it purely physical damage auto attacks? Can the magical auto attacks from A4's boss crit despite being unblockable?

Auto attacks, auto magic attacks ("blizzard" from a sprite), and special attacks from trash monsters can typically crit. I think some dungeon bosses might be able to crit specials as well. Raid monsters usually only crit auto attacks. A4S's steam bit crits me for sure and is unblockable - I don't remember whether or not the quarantine adds crit.

As for whether or not Awareness is good, well... no. It's a shame that a gladiator trait is wasted on it. Against the Kaliya add with 100% crit rate it's great. Against Shiva in bow mode it's also pretty okay. Everywhere else it's pretty much a coinflip - maybe it saved you from a crit, maybe it didn't. Maybe use it if your healers want to zone out for a minute and let you get really low, or if you're entering a situation where 50% more damage on an auto will ruin the run.

[Adrasteia]

It's useful in certain niche circumstances and on larger pulls (where the chance of you getting crit during the duration is vastly higher), but it's otherwise a very mediocre defensive skill. It's better than nothing, I suppose, but I'd honestly much rather just have a Paladin version of Dark Dance or Foresight or whatnot.

[Phel]

First of all, sorry for my english, I'm french.
I have a question :

Raw intuition's description is :

Parries all attacks taken from the front for 20s.
All attacks taken from the flank or rear will result in critical damage.
Grants Wrath or Abandon for 30s depending on stance.

It's not 100% parry rate, it's "parries all attacks", so I thought it means "when raw intuition is up, attacks from the front can't crit because you parry every physical attack" (so it would make an exception to the rule "crit rolled before parry").
So, can attacks taken from the front crit or not when raw intuition is up, or not ? Has someone made some tests about that ?

[Sapphidia]

I just tested it on some mobs in Azys Lla and you can DEFINITELY be crit from the front when Raw Intuition is up.

Pulled 3 mobs and stood there with RI up, massive string of parries, and a single attack crit and went through at full power. This is without the mobs moving at all as all attacks afterwards were also parried.

So yes, Raw Intuition sets your Parry Rate to 100%, but the game still rolls for Crits first. Popping Awarenss during it therefore isnt -just- for stopping the side/flank crits, but also ensuring the front hits work.

[Phel]

thanks !
So pop awereness with raw intuition increase the effect of those skills even if there are only front hits.



Before 3.0, I had second wind and flash instead of awereness (except for shiva or coil11)

Now... As a warrior I think it's better than second wind in encounters with lot of trash (A2) because of raw intuition and because the chance of you getting crit during the duration is vastly higher, and better than flash in encounters with no trash (because "do something when you are in pacification" is not sufficient effectiveness)... So yeah, maybe a "better-than-nothing" cooldown. Maybe mantra could be more effective ?

But I've always considered it as a "be sure nothing wrong happens when I take defiance off" cooldown. So I don't use it for its real effectiveness, but in order to be sure that bad luckcan't kill me. If a mob has 5% chance to crit, it still can crit 5 times in 15 sec. And sometimes when I'm in dps stance, this kind of bad luck can cause problems to my healer. So, even if it have only 1% chance to happen, I remove the rng factor. Same thing with post-tank-buster auto-attack. But it's a better-than-nothing effectiveness again.


For a pld... All jobs have not-very-useful skills. Before 3.0, foresight had always little effectiveness. Awareness was sometimes less effective than foresight, and sometimes more, depending of the encounter. So I think it was well-balanced. Now... I agree with you. Not really effective if there is no encounter with phases with an higher crit rate.

For a drk... Maybe a better-than-nothing cross-skill.


And again, sorry for my english.

[SpookyGhost]

WAR - Awareness has 2 major uses, and one common use. The first major use is with RI, as mentioned, preventing crits if hit from the back. The biggest caveat of Awareness + RI is that Awareness lasts 15s and RI lasts 20s. This leaves a 5s window where you're vulnerable to being crit, and if you're tanking a bunch of mobs this usually means 5s of non-stop crits. It's actually really good vs bosses, since damage rolls checks crit before parry which means you can still get crit from the front. The second major use is in Deliverance, where a crit will actually do significant damage because you're lacking the +healing, unless you have Thrill + Conv up. I usually pair Awareness with RI or Foresight in Deliverance for most effective use. The common use for Awareness - one all 3 classes benefit from - is in situations where you only have lesser CDs available and the main thing threatening your life is a crit. In this situation, Awareness shines, even if it did nothing at all.

PLD - No reason not to use it. Useful in SwO, during Bulwark w/ multiple mobs, other stuff idk.

DRK - Useful outside of Grit, useful when the only thing threatening your life is a crit.

So. Unless a fight has a high crit rate phase (Shiva, T11) then Awareness is best used when being crit would otherwise kill you. Since the chance of monsters actually critting you is very low, Awareness seems useless and should be popped on CD - but that's not really using Awareness effectively. You can pop Awareness on CD if there's no point where a crit would kill you, but I'll usually hang on to it just incase I've needed to pop excess CDs at some point.

[Kleys]

Knowing the % of crit chance from bosses is pointless. It is low. Low enough so you shouldn't use Awareness like Foresight when you suddenly remember that you have "garbage" cooldowns, because Awareness isn't garbage and have its own good ways to be used.

Awareness is what prevent an "oh-shit" situation when your healers have to deal with a tank-buster, because while tank-busters usually can't crit, bosses will still auto-attack you right before and after a tank buster, which might put you into an unexpected and unwanted situation if those auto-attacks crits.

Basically, Awareness is what allow you to know exactly the amount of incoming damages within the next 15sec, so if you use this in a tight situation, this will lower the pressure on your healers as they won't get caught off-guard by more RNG, which is always nice. Of there might be a lot of "tight" situations but what matter is that your healers are aware of your Awareness (ha, ha).

[rawker]

When you play as a healer, the difference is very noticeable. It's an ability that is best but not limited to be used in conjunction with other defensive cooldowns, tank stance included. 0% chance to not receive a crit hit greatly helps them in topping you off. Unless of course, your healer crits like a boss, you should be using this ability off cooldown.