Lets nerf WAR :D

[FallenWings]

Except not really. There is much more to Warrior's playstyle and flavor that makes them unique without having to have the highest DPS by such a significant margin (10-15%? Okay, fine. 50%? Hell no). Combined with the fact that they are one of the only classes to bring the debuff that mostly only tanks rely on, and you've got a recipe for Warriors being necessary for group comp.

If it helps make you feel better, we can give Warriors the piercing debuff, so Dragoons are also less essential (and so MCH and BRD would rejoice and sing us wonderful songs).

For future reference, Ninjas also deal the Slashing damage type and bring Slash Resist Down through Dancing Edge. Storm's Eye is not unique. The only unique skills I can remember off the top of my head are Rage of Halone, Disembowel, half of Dragon Kick(Blunt Resist Down), Rain of Death, Trick Attack, Storm's Path and Reprisal(these latter two do not overwrite each other).

I think a better point for balancing Tank Damage rather than evening their personal DPS is to adjust their respective utilities or lack thereof that would further enable more DPS. We need only look at how the DPS balance is set up to take ideas, for example; Bards and MCH's have arguably the lowest Single Target yet enable Raid Wide DPS gain through their various support functions. Ninja's have the lowest DPS against the Melees yet are balanced with the fact that they have Trick Attack, Dancing Edge, Goad, Shadeshift and Smokescreen.

I'd like the idea of PLD having excess mitigation which allows more DPS from healers that would make up for the difference that a WAR or DRK provides, but the way healer DPS works right now, that isn't plausible.

For those arguing about WAR's supposively 'violation' of the DPS upperband or whatever you want to call it.

Good WARs can only out damage bad-mediocre DPS players.

It's everyone's responsibility to contribute to the main goal of any fight and that is Kill X Boss. So the idea of "DPS is only for the DPS to worry about" is simply a narrow minded and rather selfish thought process. It's a team game, we all work together to win.




Edit+: Some ideas for tweaking came to mind.

Sheltron should be changed to a 3 second Duration mitigate 20% damage rather than a Shield Block. Does not activate for Auto Attacks. This would give PLD's a nice overall mitigation boost in both physical and magical.

The reasoning for removal of Shield Block is that Blocks and Parry can be bypassed through a crit and do not have that benefit of having the extra block/parry layer.
Take the Warrior skill FreeWrath/Abando- er.. Raw Intuition for example, people like to claim it as a purely "Phys only Rampart" that only works on the front but it also has another draw back being that it cannot further benefit from random parries/blocks like how Rampart and Shadow Skin would.

Reprisal should be changed to a 5/10 second 10% Damage with the same cooldown but does not need a parry to be activated. You could attach a manacost to it or even a Dark Arts effect like: Also reduce the target's Intelligence Stat by 10%. Stacks with Delirium and Dragon Kick.

[FallenWings]

Gameplay Mechanics > Trivial definition loyalty.

Alternatively, change the skill name if it irritates people so much.

The very concept of Reprisal is a violation of a Tanking fundamental in this game:

Never rely on RNG to save your buttocks.

And if you read my suggestion a bit more carefully, you'd notice that the cooldown of Reprisal is retained (30 seconds) and the duration lowered so that Reprisal would be used in a similiar fashion to Inner Beast for preparation of a big hit if you weren't spamming it as a DPS oGCD.

The fact that you have to hold a defensive CD just to potentially activate another CD for a big hit is poor effective design and a convoluted gameplay mechanic.

DRK is not fine. It WILL have its glaring issues surface again once content that doesn't explicitly cater to the class arrive.

A reason why people would rather suggest buffs is simply because nerfing WAR in its current state achieves nothing but make more problems.

It's like saying you should turn a fully functional hammer into a screw driver so that the other screwdrivers don't feel bad about being excluded from a hammer job.

[Ultimatecalibur]

A reason why people would rather suggest buffs is simply because nerfing WAR in its current state achieves nothing but make more problems.

No. People prefer buffs over nerfs because of the associated connotations. The term "buff" has positive connotations while the term "nerf" has negative connotations. In other words people feel buffs are good and nerfs are bad even if they would not fix the problem.

Much of the disagreement is about what is causing the known problem (a performance gap between the three tanks). Some see it as the Warrior over-performing as a tank while others see it as the Paladin (and to a lesser extent the Dark Knight) under-performing.

If the cause is Warrior over-performance then the best solution would be to reduce the Warrior's ability to perform, but that would require nerfs (which are "bad") so people prefer to avoid thinking about this possibly.

If the cause is Paladin/Dark Knight under-performance then the best solution would be to improve Paladin/Dark Knight ability to perform, and as this would require buffs (which are "good") so people want to focus on this possibility.

It's like saying you should turn a fully functional hammer into a screw driver so that the other screwdrivers don't feel bad about being excluded from a hammer job.

Bad analogy. A better one for the current situation is that the Warrior is a Combination Powered Circular Saw, Dark Knight is a Crosscut Push saw and Paladin is a Ripping Pull Saw.

The Crosscut and Ripping saws are better when doing the cuts that they specialize in, but the Crosscut has a bit more "oomph" because of it being a push saw. The Circular Saw on the other hand is just outright better at cutting.

[Syzygian]

Never rely on RNG to save your buttocks.

Tired of seeing this argument as well because its quite simply NOT like this in practice.
A Reprisal would be the icing on the cake, other CDs should be up. A Reprisal by itself is simply not ever going to save you.

Also again, sure its RNG, but if you don't parry once in 20 seconds with a 50-60% chance to do so, LOL, I'm sorry but that's just not a common enough problem to warrant a mechanical change.

I can see this argument working if I was trying to say that you should use Dark Dance in the hopes of parrying one specific hit, because as PLDs in T13 learned with Bulwark, you can and will get fucked over, but that's not what we're talking about here, which leads me to my next point.

The fact that you have to hold a defensive CD just to potentially activate another CD for a big hit is poor effective design and a convoluted gameplay mechanic.

Because what else would you use a parry rate increase for? Mitigating auto-attack damage before/after TBs? oh wait...

The way this works is actually very good design, IMO, because it helps shave off the amount of damage you take from autos leading up to a TB, thus requiring less heals to top you off (potentially), and then get a present for it (Reprisal).

In A2S, both were a big part of my CD rotation. While things like SS and SW were on CD I would pop Dark Dance and then put Reprisal on the Doll I was not focusing and therefore not facing and therefore unable to parry its attacks.

Here's some math:

If a boss auto attacks you every 3 seconds and you have Dark Dance up, you have around a 0.083 chance, assuming NO investment in your parry stat, to NOT get a single Reprisal proc inside that 20 seconds. If you land on the pear-shaped side of such odds, I'm really sorry, but you're probably just unlucky. I reiterate, I've never been left wanting for a proc in any situation in savage thus far in which my life depended on it. =/

I feel that the job plays extremely well, and I was not a "paper tank" as so many people warned me that DRK would be in A2S (I'm able to spend almost as much time out of tank stance in there as my WAR OT, and he only gets more time out of it b/c we kill his adds first, naturally). Does it have strengths and weaknesses? Absolutely. But so does every job in the game other than WAR (the whole point of this thread). Do its strengths/weaknesses break it? Nah.

[karateorangutang]

snip

Admittedly, I don't play DRK so this is more a direct question than a critique of your post.

Reprisal is based on parry which does happen often making the ability based on a RNG circumstance. I know dark dance makes this sort of thing likely, seems to work the exact same way as bulward + shield swipe, but shouldn't the real question for the ability be something else?

I guess from my view why should reprisal need to be, even partially, gated behind another CD? I also know Darkside should be up all the time, but if its not for whatever reason then it becomes even less likely.

[Syzygian]

Admittedly, I don't play DRK so this is more a direct question than a critique of your post.

Reprisal is based on parry which does happen often making the ability based on a RNG circumstance. I know dark dance makes this sort of thing likely, seems to work the exact same way as bulward + shield swipe, but shouldn't the real question for the ability be something else?

I guess from my view why should reprisal need to be, even partially, gated behind another CD? I also know Darkside should be up all the time, but if its not for whatever reason then it becomes even less likely.

LOL, I've gotten enough critique as it is for this whole thread. I'm not taking it personally even though a lot of folks are getting REALLY mad.

To answer your question, its not really. I get Reprisal procs all the time in the 30 seconds when their cooldowns don't line up. Reprisal is *only* -10% and as I said, I'm not counting on such a piddly amount to save my life from shit in savage where autoattacks crit for 9K any more than I'm counting on getting a lucky parry. Its just an intelligent synergy between the two abilities that is A. effective and B. fun to use. That and with so many people slamming Dark Dance I'm perplexed as to why anyone would be up in arms for "wasting" it to proc a Reprisal. If it was gated behind something that doesn't already have very high uptime (20s out of every 60? cmon now. You'll have it again before you know it) or that was an extremely powerful CD that I needed to save for something else (Shadow Wall or something) then yeah, I'd agree. But its not. Its just fine where it is.

Also, based again on my experience in A2S (which is just a great example overall for these argument because it requires such high and constant CD uptime for the MT), there would be times where the only thing I would have available to me is Dark Dance, while I'm waiting for another CD or combination of CDs to come back off recast. Frankly, I'm very glad that DD is married so well to another, guaranteed form of mitigation to stack it with, as it makes it possible to pop it by itself, get a proc, and have a decent period of mitigation to fill the gap between cooldowns.

i.e. here was the CD rotation I used in A2S for double jagd (they are staggered in this way due to me using Shadow Wall and Shadowskin on the previous two phases to facilitate keeping Grit off for longer:

0s- bloodbath
convalescence
drac vit pot
10s-


20s- shadowskin


30s-


40s- dark dance
reprisal

50s-


60s- foresight
awareness

70s-


80s- shadow wall


90s- bloodbath (by this point, the entire party is stacked up in the SW corner for next wave so I'm catching a lot more AoE heals and can afford this gap in CDs)


100s-dark dance
reprisal

110s-


120s-shadowskin - one of my dolls is usually dead, no CDs popped after this point to save them for the final wave.


So I guess my point is, the fact that Reprisal can be tied so easily to DD makes DD a very viable CD by itself without having to stack anything, if you're taking a constant stream of physical damage, and the mitigation averages out to close to as much as a Shadowskin.

[karateorangutang]

Ok after reading 18 pages of this I guess i'll put in my 2 cents.

I switched to war in 3.0 because both of the guys that were my potential co tanks were PLD and DRK respectively, so I made the choice to give WAR a more serious go this time around. Honestly, I could scarcely believe how well its kit was put together. Everything has such a good and intentioned synergy with other skills that it was a real treat to level and play. Now after going back and leveling PLD for fun I can say that WAR just feels smoother, it's mitigation mixes well with both defensive and offensive mindsets. PLD lacks this synergy I feel right now. If it took a few WAR nerfs to fix the meta then that's fine, as long as it doesn't affect the general flow of the class.

Concerning Nerfs:
- Anything nerfing stack gain should be off the table, this is one of the most fun dynamics of WAR tanking in general. Do I blow RI to gain that stack for the fell cleave before the jump or do I save it for mitigation later? These are the kind of conscious decisions that make WAR appealing to some of us.
- I'd be alright with a Maim nerf. Drop the percentage to around 10% instead of 15%. That by itself would drop quite a bit of damage and not hurt our play-style at all.
- I'd also be fine with a slight nerf to both deliverance abilities. If the big number abilities are the things making people sad then that's fine too.

Nerfs that would be better served as buffs:
- I'm still of the firm stance that all tanks should have some kind of access to a slashing debuff. Tack it onto RA and away we go.
- Let's say they do these nerfs on WAR. Clemency is still unusable. Your ok with that? Clemency needs fixes yesterday.
- Shield swipe would still be broken.
- Reprisal is still a RNG based ability ( even if dark dance is a easy way to trigger it)

Even if they did nerf WAR, you'd still need to buff the other classes. There's more on the table here than just damage potential ( even if the meta clearly is geared for it right now). If we are gonna talk about the homogenization of classes then we need to bring up more than just nerfs. There's serious issues with how PLD plays right now. It's viable, but a few minor buffs to some of its key and signature abilities could take it to a more than playable level.

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

Ok after reading 18 pages of this I guess i'll put in my 2 cents.

I switched to war in 3.0 because both of the guys that were my potential co tanks were PLD and DRK respectively, so I made the choice to give WAR a more serious go this time around. Honestly, I could scarcely believe how well its kit was put together. Everything has such a good and intentioned synergy with other skills that it was a real treat to level and play. Now after going back and leveling PLD for fun I can say that WAR just feels smoother, it's mitigation mixes well with both defensive and offensive mindsets. PLD lacks this synergy I feel right now. If it took a few WAR nerfs to fix the meta then that's fine, as long as it doesn't affect the general flow of the class.

Concerning Nerfs:
- Anything nerfing stack gain should be off the table, this is one of the most fun dynamics of WAR tanking in general. Do I blow RI to gain that stack for the fell cleave before the jump or do I save it for mitigation later? These are the kind of conscious decisions that make WAR appealing to some of us.
- I'd be alright with a Maim nerf. Drop the percentage to around 10% instead of 15%. That by itself would drop quite a bit of damage and not hurt our play-style at all.
- I'd also be fine with a slight nerf to both deliverance abilities. If the big number abilities are the things making people sad then that's fine too.

Nerfs that would be better served as buffs:
- I'm still of the firm stance that all tanks should have some kind of access to a slashing debuff. Tack it onto RA and away we go.
- Let's say they do these nerfs on WAR. Clemency is still unusable. Your ok with that? Clemency needs fixes yesterday.
- Shield swipe would still be broken.
- Reprisal is still a RNG based ability ( even if dark dance is a easy way to trigger it)

Even if they did nerf WAR, you'd still need to buff the other classes. There's more on the table here than just damage potential ( even if the meta clearly is geared for it right now). If we are gonna talk about the homogenization of classes then we need to bring up more than just nerfs. There's serious issues with how PLD plays right now. It's viable, but a few minor buffs to some of its key and signature abilities could take it to a more than playable level.

The first thing I want to say is thank you for being understanding. Leveling a Paladin and doing more than just dungeon content is what it will take for other tank jobs to understand what we're working with (in the case of this expansion and the end-game content...what we're not working with.) I believe it also takes more than just doing Savage to understand how the job can't be played even if Paladins try. You bring up the fact that Warrior without a doubt has the best content clearing kit in the game and that's the truth; quite frankly the only way I see this dilemma truly being solved is to rework some existing jobs with each successive expansion. People argue that homogenization will happen.....it's going to happen regardless of what Square does with each successive introduction of new jobs.....The reason for this is plain if you look at a few things:

1. Jobs can only perform a certain amount of actions based on current stats that we can directly manipulate through skills. I feel as though we've rather abruptly reached that limit with this expansion. We're already at the point where some jobs overlap enhancing skillspeed, spellspeed, mitigation shields, damage enhancements, etc. That's part of the reason why Paladin is where it's at currently......at this point, what can we do that other jobs don't do as well? They'll either have to create new stats, blanket buff abilities, or maybe even create a new Job Role tier system where jobs themselves would be like their base classes that advanced to more powerful and varied versions of themselves. Sword Saint for Paladins, Berserker for Warriors, Samurai for Dark Knights as examples. Lots of games try all of that and for the most part do okay....lots of games try all of that and fail miserably. I liken this argument to trying to say that there's no word that hasn't been said yet. The entirety of a person's lexicon, learned in the prime of their life, has been said before their very inception. It's inevitable. Our very existence is tied to repetition and similarity in a multitude of ways. If it was even conceivable that we could endlessly create then we wouldn't even be humans, we'd be gods.

2. Jobs can only do things that fit within their role in terms of abilities and utility. If they made Paladin into a tank/healer hybrid we'd be crossing into the realm of overpowered. I feel as though I don't really need to say anything more with this statement.

3. Evolution applies to more than just organic beings. As it stands with each successive advancement we're going to have to perform more and more like each other or certain jobs will die....I liken this to Cro-Magnon VS. Neanderthal. Currently Warrior is very obviously the Cro-Magnon.

In all honestly, I don't want to see the Warrior's potential to be reduced. Some of their skills may or may not be okay on other jobs but when it concerns what to do and not do, it isn't up to me though and I'm thankful for that. No matter what Square-Enix does, they'll be the perceived enemy when it's really our existence and our understanding of it that's really at fault.


EDIT: What is it with me and existentialism.....

[Snowy_Mist]

Leveling a Paladin and doing more than just dungeon content is what it will take for other tank jobs to understand what we're working with...I believe it also takes more than just doing Savage to understand how the job can't be played even if Paladins try..

Whats with the contradiction there?
Can't be played? why was there a Lucrezia's team for the first 2 floors?
If paladins managed to clear the 1-3 floors in the same week as the world 1st's, and the 4th was the only floor that was delayed then its the raid design of the last floor and not necessarily the entire class being total shit and unplayable, meaning most likely as yoshida said its probably just gonna end up being more phy dmg in the next set of floors change in plds utility and war wont get nerfs

Honestly I don't think paladin is as bad as people make it out to be, i actually found it was the easiest to stance dance and level via dungeons.
/rant

[Shining_Tiger_Excalibur]

Whats with the contradiction there?
Can't be played? why was there a Lucrezia's team for the first 2 floors?
If paladins managed to clear the 1-3 floors in the same week as the world 1st's, and the 4th was the only floor that was delayed then its the raid design of the last floor and not necessarily the entire class being total shit and unplayable, meaning most likely as yoshida said its probably just gonna end up being more phy dmg in the next set of floors change in plds utility and war wont get nerfs
Honestly I don't think paladin is as bad as people make it out to be, i actually found it was the easiest to stance dance and level via dungeons.
/rant

Now that you point out how awkward my statement sounds I feel terrible. I need to "git gud" at saying what I need to say in more understandable terms. My intention with making the statement was to express that if you only do dungeons with a Paladin, you'll only see part of some issues; it's also the same with just doing fates until 60 and reading guides for how you can play Paladin "optimally" to do Savage. Obviously you'll need to do the 60 dungeons to obtain Esoterics so you could get a feel for Paladin as you build up to Savage. Wow, I don't think this attempt is going too well either in regards to clarification.....basically what I'm saying is it takes a couple of months doing all sorts of content (to include dungeons, Primal Ex's, and Savage,) to gauge where it's at in a general sense when compared to other tanks. The pacing of all of these encounters will give you the best idea of where Paladins stand....and most of what I'm reading isn't a lie. In dungeons you will clear 1-2 minutes faster at worst and 5-8 minutes faster at best with a Dark Knight and Warrior depending on party composition. In "end-game" content there will be noticeable advantages through easier and faster clears; you'll not only be able to get farther in phases because you can push easier from sheer dps but it will be more reliable because of what Dark Knight and Warrior currently bring to the entirety of all content.

In regards to the "can't be played" statement I meant I can't help burn down enemies with AoE. As another example, and this may actually wind up hurting my arguments in the future, I find that using bloodbath is useless on Paladin even with an entire STR right side loadout. I don't do enough damage to justify it taking up a slot so I used Mercy Stroke instead which is arguably just as useless unless you consider slightly higher dps on the ending of a pull. My burst damage is almost non-existent in comparison in either stance. Don't get me wrong, I'm okay with what I've said (barring my feelings that I can't do as good.) Right now it just takes longer to do content with a Paladin, which can't even make up for it's own shortcomings, to do not just end-game stuff but regular stuff too. I do believe we're okay on floors 1-3, assuming we're at low item level, if the group works great together. It's just that the hardest floor forces other players to help me along and that grabs me by the heart. I just hope none of this comes off as jealousy or anger, I'm truly okay with how the other tanks are doing, I just don't appreciate the skills I've been given in relation to current and future content.