IS WAR as hard as it seems?

[Brian_]

You can't say that things are non-issues or easy and then go on to specify that you're basing such assessments on a very low performance standard.

Is it easy to be bad at your job? Yea. It's easy to be bad at any job. If all you want from your job is to get by, then all the tanks are easy to play. The skill-floor for tanking is very low by design.

But, if you want more, WAR is the hardest tank to play at a high level. The reason is because of how complete the WAR skill-set is. The result is summarized in the current tanking meta where min-maxing is about meeting the survivability thresholds and then contributing as much DPS as possible.

All tanks essentially have a shared resource between their offensive and defensive capabilities. As a PLD, you can't be in Sword Oath and Shield Oath at the same time. You can't have the Rage of Halone debuff up if you are only using Royal Authority. As a DRK, you can't have Grit up and not have Grit up at the same time. You can't Blood Weapon with Grit on. You can't Dark Arts everything all the time.

In order to maximize your DPS, you have to make defensive sacrifices. In order to maximize your survivability, you have to make offensive sacrifices.

And, of the tanks, WAR has the most nuance in playing within that balance of offense and defense because of how well their skill-set connects the two things. For example, on PLD or DRK, if you are sitting on your defensive cool-downs long enough to lose an activation, it's not really a big deal if you didn't need them. For WARs, it's a different story because of their stack management and skill synergy.

For WAR, if you are sitting on Raw Intuition or Vengeance for long enough to lose an activation, you are losing stacks. If you use Berserk, Raw Intuition, or Vengeance actively but do so while at max stacks, you are also wasting stacks. But, If you sit on Berserk for too long, you lose effective up-time. At the same time, if you use Berserk off-CD without proper planning, you will mess up your combo-finisher / stack spender usage within your 9 GCD window. If you line up Blood Bath with your Berserk windows, you are also losing survivability due to your loss in damage.

And once you have worked out all your stack management, you then have to properly plan your stack usage. For every Inner Beast you use, you lose the better damage (and sometimes even better survivability) from Fell Cleave or Decimate. So, it goes back to the meta where you only want to use Inner Beast when you absolutely have to and want to push DPS otherwise. And, if you need to save stacks to Inner Beast an upcoming tank buster, every stack builder you use while sitting on 5 stacks is a wasted stack you could avoid by tweaking your earlier GCD usage.

So, in order to be a good WAR, you really need to be good with long-term resource and overall GCD planning. DRK also has their own resource management to deal with but theirs is much more in the moment and they have less stuff to micro-manage.

[Februs]

You can't say that things are non-issues or easy and then go on to specify that you're basing such assessments on a very low performance standard.

I'm assuming this is in response to me, given that I'm the one who said they were "non-issues." If so, you're making a very incorrect assumption. I never said I was bad at the job. I said I was less experienced at it then Drk and Pld. There's a huge difference. With Drk's and Pld's I know every button to push in every situation fluidly and without hesitation because I use them so frequently it's like second nature. With War, I have a slight delay simply because I don't use it as often and am not as familiar with the hotbar. So, by comparison, I don't quite feel like I'm maximizing my potential as War just yet.

That being said, I'm not about to lie to someone and come up with the fantasy that War is somehow difficult to play. Even with less experience, rolling with War is like tanking on easy mode. Their abilities are ridiculously easy to find synergy for, Wrath stacks handle themselves, and their absurd Self-healing makes me almost never worry about my Hp pool. Inner Beast is the only skill that requires any thought (over Fell Cleave/Decimate), but that just takes knowledge and experience... which you need for any tank. It's not complicated. It just requires practice.

[Donjo]

Warrior is currently the easiest Tank class to play in all respects. Xeno means very well and is greatly worth respecting, but he truly is not the best at making guides.

The best way to learn the job is to just go play it. Leveling is easier than ever these days. Go ham on dungeons on the way up and you'll get a good idea of the way things work.

[Jamillion]

I agree with Brian, Warrior probably has the widest skill floor / skill ceiling jump. You can get by without much effort but if you want to be a contributing member of a team you'll have to learn how to plan your actions several gcds in advance. However, that being said, once you get in the groove, Warrior is one of the most intuitive classes in the game to play. Everything in their toolkit has a purpose and synergizes with something else. You don't wind up with contradictory skills in your employ *ahem Dark knight*

[Syzygian]

War is easy *because* of how well designed it is. The only remotely complicated part of the job is triple cleave/decimate and managing when to use vengeance/ri for stacks or for mitigation. It most certainly is not as difficult as Drk.

[Ashkendor]

Well i defiantly dont plan to savage period let alone on WAR, that being said i just hit 30 and it made a world of difference and i am actually starting to enjoy the job now, so thanks guys ill be sticking with it to see what happens =P im slightly less scared now, i think it was just partially i am used to taking so little damage on pld and not always being so low on TP so i was feeling like a bad lol

From a healer's standpoint, WAR can seem squishier simply because their hp will tend to yoyo a bit more than PLD/DRK. Defiance offers no damage reduction like Shield Oath and Grit do, but instead offers an increase in HP pool and the effectiveness of healing. All three tank classes are comparable in effective hit points, though. I have to admit there's a few big pulls I'll do on PLD that I don't feel comfortable at all doing on WAR simply because of the 10 second 'lol screw all you guys' window HG provides for the healer.

[Bashum]

War is easy *because* of how well designed it is. The only remotely complicated part of the job is triple cleave/decimate and managing when to use vengeance/ri for stacks or for mitigation. It most certainly is not as difficult as Drk.

I only have DRK up to 46 so far, and already I can see that it's definitely gonna be more prone to carpal tunnel syndrome than playing a warrior is!

[BrielleBeaudonet]

Easy to learn, could take a lifetime to master

The most useful things you could pull from Xeno's guides and other WAR faqs is the synergy of abilities. As you start to understand how off-GCD abilities benefit each other (Vengeance + Berserk + Bloodbath, Thrill of Battle + Convalescence, stacking Berserk + Internal Release + Storm's Eye before using Fell Cleave), you'll get a well-rounded view of what makes the Job different.

After that, it's a matter of feeling out the "flow" of a fight, and that comes with time and practice. With that, you'll start to know ahead of time, as the fight proceeds, whether to use Storm's Eye for extra slashing damage, Storm's Path for mitigation, or Butcher's Block for aggro + damage. For most fights below Alexander Savage, you mostly just rotate between the combos, benefitting from all.

[SerDakota]

Well i defiantly dont plan to savage period let alone on WAR, that being said i just hit 30 and it made a world of difference and i am actually starting to enjoy the job now, so thanks guys ill be sticking with it to see what happens =P im slightly less scared now, i think it was just partially i am used to taking so little damage on pld and not always being so low on TP so i was feeling like a bad lol

[Ragology]

..., i think it was just partially i am used to taking so little damage on pld and not always being so low on TP so i was feeling like a bad lol

I'm sure you already know but for anyone else reading, just keep in mind that WAR and PLD have the same effective HP in tank stance and so being squishier is just a perception thing. PLD's body responds better to incoming heals heals ( I think it reacts 5% better than WAR does) but war makes up the 5% with self heals.

Also it gets real fun on WAR where you can use Berzerk+Bloodbath on one pack and then Convelescence+Unchained on the next. There's so much hate with overpower spam while buffed, and alternating this way makes it seem like you've always got something for the next pull.