IS WAR as hard as it seems?

[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.

[Februs]

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

Another good tip is to go into your Actions page and take a look at the Cool Down timers for each move to see which ones line up and which ones don't (that includes for your cross-class skills). War's abilities have amazing synergy, and knowing which ones will be up or down at the same times will make it easier for you to plan your CD usages appropriately. Because Warriors can chain so many of their CD's together in a variety of different ways for different effects, it will be useful for you to be familiar with all of their timers. Experiment with them and have some fun.

Whatever you do though, always remember that you are a Tank, first and foremost. There is a disturbing trend at the end-game dungeons (especially 8-mans, where there is another tank) for War's to ignore their tanking responsibilities (or any responsibilities) in favour of focusing on their Dps (ignoring adds and forcing the other tank to handle it/never turning on Defiance/Never MT'ing/never stopping OT Dps to do mechs and leaving them to the Dps or Healers... etc) It's infuriating, and is outright bad play. In a lot of cases it actually makes the dungeon/trial/raid substantially harder on the rest of the team for no good reason.

[Blitzace]

Just want to note that triple Decimate is a bad idea.

Tell me how is it?

[SpookyGhost]

Tell me how is it?

Any button you spent building the Decimate could've been spent Overpowering. So let's say you use 3 GCDs building up a Decimate and then you Decimate, that's 4 total GCDs you could've spent pressing OP, which would've given you higher overall potency.

[Blitzace]

Any button you spent building the Decimate could've been spent Overpowering. So let's say you use 3 GCDs building up a Decimate and then you Decimate, that's 4 total GCDs you could've spent pressing OP, which would've given you higher overall potency.

I'm sure that works when you have DPS that actually know what they were doing and get groups down fast.

[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!

[Jamillion]

I'm sure that works when you have DPS that actually know what they were doing and get groups down fast.

Either way, the third decimate is a potency lost, better to double decimate and overpower

[ArdorGrey]

Either way, the third decimate is a potency lost, better to double decimate and overpower

Agreed. Double decimate is good times. three's a crowd though.


On the general topic: in my experience people who say war isn't complex tend to be the sort of people that think str tanking is bad and that theyre helping their healer by stacking vit. they don't maintain maim or eye and just spam bb and maybe ib. sometimes. half of them spam OP and the other half are scared to use op at all because they don't like seeing their tp dip below 700, let alone 800.

it's fair to mention that people who play at this level actually *are* helping their healer by stacking vit, since they don't mitigate properly and synergizing burst damage with bloodbath uptime is crazy hoo-haa speak they don't have time for.

[Marxam]

I'd like to think war and pld are like smn and blm respectively. They are both comparable and excel in different areas such as aoe and single target and are both "harder" than the other, depending on your preference. Imo PLD is the harder of the two since flash is your only enmity generator outside of CoS which is on a 30 sed cd. You also don't get access to Shield Oath, which is your tanking stance till 40 so you are learning to tank in your dps stance for a whole 10 levels, assuming you actually do dungeons and don't fate grind to 40.

For anyone who asks me advice on which tank to level and are serious about tanking, I almost always say PLD since they will be learning the foundations of great tanking and to not rely on spamming their aoes.

[kensatsu]

also agreed one double decimate/overpower spam,
triple is a loss or potency for your berserk.internal release, bloodbath.
it's may be a trick for you to keep PT, but just think if you have some times to regen pt after this,it's just a loss of potency. in A2S i use berserk/IR/bloodbath double decimate and overpowered spam in the 4th wave and i don't run out of PT in the fight.
on a DGN keep running between two pack will regen your PT, i don't see any room for triple decimate in the current content.

Like everyone tend to say, war is the easiest of all tank.
I don't think Pld is harder to play, but i know even if it's not harder, you will get less aggro than the war, so you can see it's harder to hold aggro with a pld.
so i agree war is certainly the easiest to play.
but don't take it so easy like other job master it take times, you have a lot to know and to try to push your war to the best level, and it's interesting to push it.