Unchained. Seriously, why are we not abusing this skill?

[FallenWings]

Unchained

Recast: 120
Cast time: Instant
Nullifies the damage penalty inflicted by Defiance.
Duration: 20s
Can only be executed when Infuriated.
All Wrath is lost when used.
Effect is canceled if Defiance ends.

But Fallen, all it does is make defiance damage not bad? Why should I trade a Fell Cleave for i- FOOL!

This increases your damage under Defiance, which multiples with the enmity bonus you gain from Defiance! What does this mean? IT MEANS YOUR GOOD BUDDY PLD/DRK DON'T HAVE TO SUFFER THEIR STANCE PENALTY TO BUILD HATE! 33% more Damage/Enmity is INSANE!

By opening as MT with Unchained, your PLD/DRK gain upwards to 20% damage in their opening and don't have to rotate Rage of Halone/Power Slash! While the Warrior only loses a pitiful 5% from not having Deliverance and 1-3 Fell Cleave opportunities.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Once Unchained ends, you can(and probably should in most circumstances) quickly tank swap(if mechanics allow) so that your fellow PLD/DRK can enjoy the benefits they gain from MTing AND they can ride that fat aggro lead that will afford them more time in their Offensive stance and/or avoid more Rage of Halone/Power Slashes!

What if... You paired Berserk with it? Watch as that pitiful Black Mage's aggro bar disappears into oblivion and reap the praise you shall receive from your DRK/PLD buddy as they join you in ultra tank DPS that put terrible DPS to shame! (Nothing to be proud of really)

Honestly, I fail to understand why there are these tales of Warriors who only OT and refuse to do anything but. Never touching their Defiance button or making sure Deliverance is activated once the encounter begins. One quick glance at this skill and it should be disgustingly clear how powerful it is and what a RAIDdps benefit it would bring if utilized well. Optimize for your team dang it!

You can save your stacks you gained from rotating combos during the opener for Fell Cleaves at the end instead of popping them for Inner Beasts. So an example opener I would use would be:

(Precharged 5 stacks with Infuriate, Raw Intuition at 1 second, then pull at 10 seconds.) Unchained, TmhK/OP, HS, Zerk+IR, Maim, Pot, SE, Brutal Swing, HS, SS, BB, HS, Deliverance, FC, Infuriate, FC, Maim, Pacify, Tank swap! Etc.

If I wanted to just generate a Fat aggro lead and don't wanna do the precharge Infuriate it would look more like this: Infuriate, Tmhk/OP, HS, Unchained, Maim, Zerk+IR, SE, Brutal Swing, HS, SS, BB, HS, SS, BB, Deliverance, FC, Pacify. You actually won't drop SE if you can get a cleanse for the pacify.

Those are my openers anyways, perhaps not perfect but I implore you to create your own, optimize it, and share so we can all reap the benefits.

Bonus Points if NIN can Smokescreen you and Shadeshift the new MT so that you can rotate some more Butcher's Block in without worrying too much about aggro. Otherwise SE spam is not as bad.

[Lyth]

You should both be sharing tanking responsibilities where possible, regardless, to get the most out of your defensive cooldowns and maximize your time out of tank stance. There's less of a need for dedicated MT/OT designations now that both tanks are wearing equivalent gear (i.e. equal amounts of vit).

[Anienai]

Touch me

I could be way off, but why waste a stack on RI when you have 5 stacks of sexy?

[FallenWings]

I could be way off, but why waste a stack on RI when you have 5 stacks of sexy?

Pre-charging 5 stacks allows you to have 5 stacks of Wrath/Abandon on pull while also having Infuriate up as well. This is done by Infuriating first (60 second cooldown), waiting till your Wrath/Abandon reach 3-1 seconds left then popping Raw Intuition/Vengeance to extend it by another 30 seconds (pulling at 10 - 5 seconds left).

This enables the above opener or a quicker triple fell cleave zerk that lines up better with party buffs. i.e: Precharge 5 stack,(Fight start) HS, Maim, SE, HS Zerk (your triple FC rotation) ...

Most people won't wait for it but it's there if you wanna min-max.

[Twailaith]

Until such time that a DRK or PLD in offensive stance can deliver numbers equal to a "Tripple Fel Cleave" combo, or "4800 Potency in 20 seconds with the added 10% mitigation and a 10% damage boost to the MT", I shall continue to OT as that's what WAR is undisputably best at...

The only time Unchained is a viable use of Wrath is when you have an extended phase with a hard-hitting single target to off-tank during a dps check... And even then, Inner Beast can arguably do almost as much damage while mitigating damage better and giving your healers a breathing space.

You need to grab enmity? Provoke. You need to hold enmity? Enmity combo... I've yet to encounter a situation where the DPS can pull a mob harder than I do unless I'm eighter (a) Undergeared 10 or more Itemlevels, or (b) Doing far too many StP, EoS combos.

It's not that Unchained is *bad*, per say... It's just that popping a defensive cooldown and going into Deliverance with a berserk-boosted tripple Fel Cleave is *so much better*.

The fact that 3.0 gave WAR a dedicated dps stance that bursts harder than the melee jobs, while simutaneously indulging Yoshi P's love for bursty dps races and bosses with long invincibility/untargetability windows simply makes Unchained redundant....

[BattleGrace]

snip

you think too small if you think that your triple fell cleave is the be all and end all of dps and frankly it's selfish to think that just because your personal dps is good or decent that you are helping the raid. the fact is that WAR has the best threat and will do 5% less damage with a unchained opener and 1 less FC while also providing a massive boost in overall raid dps thanks to your PLD or DRK doing X% more damage thanks to not being in their tank stance.

whats funnier more is you claim that WAR still does more burst then any melee, that right there is a complete lie.

so do please tell me why again you should be the OT? it's not damage, it's not raid damage, it's your over inflated ego that thinks it's topdog dps.

[Ragology]

so do please tell me why again you should be the OT? it's not damage, it's not raid damage, it's your over inflated ego that thinks it's topdog dps.

Wasn't WAR sort of shoe horned into the off tank role because of the rep it got for not being very tanky? The job overhaul (the one that added a damage reduction to vengeance and some other changes) made them solid tanks, but PLD were too high and mighty to step away from the main tank role.

[Twailaith]

you think too small if you think that your triple fell cleave is the be all and end all of dps and frankly it's selfish to think that just because your personal dps is good or decent that you are helping the raid. the fact is that WAR has the best threat and will do 5% less damage with a unchained opener and 1 less FC while also providing a massive boost in overall raid dps thanks to your PLD or DRK doing X% more damage thanks to not being in their tank stance.

whats funnier more is you claim that WAR still does more burst then any melee, that right there is a complete lie.

so do please tell me why again you should be the OT? it's not damage, it's not raid damage, it's your over inflated ego that thinks it's topdog dps.

Firstly; I am just as likely to use my DRK as I am to use my WAR, They literally have the same gear and Itemlevel and I'd like to think that I'm decent at both of them, with PLD slowly climbing it's way to 60 as well...


My oppinion is based upon what I've seen and experienced with the classes, both as MT and OT.

The 20 seconds after you activate Berserk, you'll do roughly 4800 Potency's worth of damage. If there's a melee (We all know that MCH has *The* Burst combo) that can do the same or better in the same amount of time, please prove me wrong and I'll happily cede that claim... Also; Please refrain from calling me a liar.

I'm not even sure what your actual argument here is... A WAR *Has* the best dps of the tank classes. The Raid's priority *is* (after survival) the amount of damage it does to the boss, as virtually all end-game bosses has a enrage mechanic that hits unless you kill it within a given amount of time.

A Raid *will* have two out of the three tank classes. A WAR *is* the best at dpsing, the same way DRK mitigates magic damage and a PLD is unbeatable at taking physical hits.

A DRK's main mitigation skill and resource gain *requires* it to be hit. A PLD's entire shtick is to have Block on top of it's cooldowns to passively mitigate damage and ease the burden on your healers.

A WAR's entire toolset *is* designed around boosting it's own damage and self-heal rather than mitigate damage. Unlike the other two it doesn't need to be MT to utilize it's full skillset, and it's raid-affecting skills both rotate from it's non-enmity combo.

The only instance where another tank class needs to leave tank stance is when a DRK uses Blood Weapon, which it can do and still hold aggro if it's properly timed and you communicate with your raid's DPS and healers. Dark Arts and Powerslash is a wonderful thing when combined.

That you've somehow gotten it into your head that a DRK or PLD in offensive stance is better at dpsing than a Deliverance WAR is beyond me. That you somehow think that higher enmity (which still always caps at "The boss is hitting me") is more important than higher damage confuses me.

A competent tank *will* hold aggro, no matter what class it is.

So yes, it is my honest and sincere oppinion that WAR's greatest benefit to it's Raid group is as a Deliverance-using Offtank that takes advantage of it's skillset to pack as much concentrated dps into it's rotations and cooldowns as it can.

It is my oppinion that a WAR that's MT'ing should rely on Inner Beast rather than Unchained, as it can hold aggro anyway and the 6 seconds of mitigation and the 300 potency self-heal offers more Raid-wide benefits than "Pulling harder on the boss I'm already pulling and holding".

[Syhrwyb]

Isn't this old information? I thought this was common knowledge, and I don't even main WAR. Then again, my group on A5S has the PLD pull for some reason... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[SpookyGhost]

Because a lot of the WAR population now consists of people who started in 3.0 and don't know how WAR works, only that they do a lot of damage.

Isn't this old information? I thought this was common knowledge, and I don't even main WAR. Then again, my group on A5S has the PLD pull for some reason... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A5S is actually kinda weird since the MT gets knocked with damage down stacks and then gets stunned for like 10s. I wonder if the WAR pull would still be optimal there, especially with the reduced damage the boss takes during that time. Hard to say.