Thread: WAR's 2.1 changes.

If warrior's are meant to be the offtank why do paladins have a dps stance?

MT or OT warrior is, in fact, a tank. I assume you understand what this role means and imo off-tank is an irrelevant term. Many people think of OT as a tank that just sits back and enjoys the fight (maybe grabbing a few adds) while the MT is struggling to stay alive. That is the main reason there are tank swaps, both tanks soaking damage etc. But if you want my sincere opinion, its just all about skill. I know warriors that were able to tank T5(since you mentioned 2.1) and therefore dealing with death sentence which used to require any kind of mitigation, with darklight gear and others that couldn't even with i120 or i130.

The reason Warrior got such an overhaul was not just about it struggling in Coil and Titan Hard mode.But because the Tank to be utilized properly in these areas required a much higher level of player skill.
This resulted in a lot of the player community acting toxic towards Warriors in this content.A lot of healers would refuse to have to be healer for a warrior tanking in those situations and a lot of parties would only let PLDs into the parties.Despite there haveing been coil turn 5 clears with Warriors at the time.

Originally Posted by Metalwrath

The reason Warrior got such an overhaul was not just about it struggling in Coil and Titan Hard mode.But because the Tank to be utilized properly in these areas required a much higher level of player skill.
This resulted in a lot of the player community acting toxic towards Warriors in this content.A lot of healers would refuse to have to be healer for a warrior tanking in those situations and a lot of parties would only let PLDs into the parties.Despite there haveing been coil turn 5 clears with Warriors at the time.

It was actually more because of some bad design (healer effectiveness was tied to a consumable resource that self healed causing a conflict of interest) and the Warrior suffering from a concept known as the "Immortality Curve."

The first part is well known the second part isn't as much.

The Immortality Curve is a curve generated by plotting the amount of damage a character or class takes after resistance based mitigation effects against the amount of damage it can mitigate on average through self-healing or self-shielding (be it natural regen, spells, potions, drain attacks or self-heal abilities). When the self-healing/self-shielding rate is higher than incoming damage the character is Immortal. When the self-healing/self-shielding is lower than the incoming average damage the character is dying and needs to be healed every so often of they will die. Different classes have different curves and those that can not mitigate enough damage in comparison to other classes at the same damage amount are "squishy."

When the Warrior was first released it had a very sharp self-heal based Immortality Curve compared to the Paladin's much more gradual resistance based Immortality Curve. At the damage amount inflicted by Coil at i70 to i90 the Warrior was far far more squishy than the Paladin even though it was nigh unkillable in all other available content.

Originally Posted by Metalwrath

The reason Warrior got such an overhaul was not just about it struggling in Coil and Titan Hard mode.

In 2.0, WAR has no mitigation whatsoever. Not on Vengeance, not on Inner Beast, not on Storm's Path...and Holmgang didn't prevent you from dying.
Between this, and "I have the highest damage output while having on par, if not better, mitigation that other tanks", there should exist some kind of middle-ground.

But now, it's too late...Nerf WAR, and it's not Niddhogg's horde you'll learn to fear

The standard level 50 PLD toolkit can handle pretty much every tankbuster set in the game. It's rare to see tankbusters less than 30 seconds apart, because you're getting into the range where you could start to use one cooldown for two tankbusters. Rock-paper-scissors with Brawler typically is technically 14 seconds for each attachment, but these are not guaranteed tankbusters. Most fights tend to have tankbuster intervals in the 35-60 second range, usually in sets of 3-4 at most before you initiate a phase change or the boss forces a swap. Phase changes typically give you an intermission to recover most (if not all) of your cooldowns.

For single hit tankbusters, it's important to remember to time your cooldown so that the hit lands at the end of the activation period. This shortens the effective recast period. Rampart effectively becomes a 70 second recast and Sentinel effectively becomes a 170 second recast if you do this. It's easy to see why 35+ seconds is a really nice interval in this regard.

Even fights which supposedly "favour" certain MTs don't, really. You don't need Sheltron for Thor or Seph Ex. If you know when the tank busters land and time your cooldowns correctly, you shouldn't run out. Short recast cooldowns like Sheltron and DM are more like icing on the cake. They simply free up other defensive cooldowns so that you can spend more time comfortably tanking out of stance.

In fights with shorter intervals between tankbusters, on the order of 30 seconds, you can comfortably go for two to three minutes on the level 50 PLD kit, depending on whether you include foresight in the mix. The one fight where I could see this to be potentially an issue is unsynced Odin, so maybe you could count that one in favour of WAR's IB.

IB is not without its costs, however. In 2.1-2.5, you would sometimes need to hold onto stacks in order to have it available for a particular tankbuster. In addition, dropping stance cost you stacks, and IB is stance locked. The introduction of Deliverance in 3.0 greatly simplified these issues, but the trade-off is that you're now disincentivized from spending stacks on IB, because of FC.

It's easy to see why RI was added to the kit in HW to fill the 90 second recast slot, but this really only helps for physical fights. ToB works in a pinch, but you get 5% less eHP than Rampart, it increases healing requirements, and its longer recast usually prevents you from using it for alternating tankbusters in a set like you could Rampart/RI.

IB gives WAR's toolkit most of its flexibility, at a cost. This might be an advantage on certain fights if your PLD or DRK only played one job. But a sizeable number of us play the raid slot like Dissidia's Cecil, swapping from PLD to DRK based on the situational advantages of the fight, and the gearing on this raid tier (and likely the next) strongly facilitates this. So there will rarely be a situation where your WAR will have an easier time simultaneously tanking and maximizing their dps than your PLD/DRK.

tl;dr: Don't worry about it. PLD/DRK may require slightly more careful planning on tankbusters on a case by case basis, but simpler is not better.

Originally Posted by FallenWings

No. There is no strict OT or MT.

Paladin was literally designed to be the highest defense-based tank in the game.

Originally Posted by Rhode

Paladin was literally designed to be the highest defense-based tank in the game.

So what? There has to be balance otherwise we come to the silly 2.0 era of tank exclusions.

The content must be tuned where the weakest tank mitigation wise can handle it. Otherwise if only PLD can handle the content, then WAR and DRK will effectively be excluded from the content until they get enough VIT to have comparable eHP as a PLD to do said content.

Not to mention excessive mitigation is pointless if there is a trade off of damage for it; which there always will be. Can survive by a longshot but deal 10DPS vs Can survive enough but deal 1000DPS.

I.E:
WAR: Hey guys can I join you for SuperDeathOverlord9001 EX?
Group: Sorry dude, you don't have enough HP and your gear isn't enough for your class. Come back in 1 or 2 months when you have more tomestone gear or something.
WAR: But I have the same gear as your PLD?
Group: Yeah, well he's a PLD and you're a WAR. You don't have as much mitigation as him and will get one-shot by the tank buster.

2 months later.

WAR: Hey guys can I join now? I have just enough eHP to survive like your PLD from 2 months back.
Group: Yeah sorry dude, we're gonna take our PLD just because he has experience and we want to clear it without having to deal with the eHP our PLD had 2 months ago.
WAR: But.. Fudge this I'm switching to X class!

(Replace this with Coil and you have my personal experience in 2.0 Coil pug raiding as a fresh WAR who just got into its first trinity based MMO minus the quitting WAR part.)

[Insert image of War-chan sitting on a bench with Drk-chan]
[Insert image of DF queue times because only 1 tank is viable]
[Insert image of disproportionate tank population because of horrid imbalance. Oh wait, we already have that with WAR.]