Thread: Warrior 4.0 Concerns

The Mediocre
Speaking of the pacification changes...

1. Shake It Off
Removes most detrimental status effects. First of all, what's included in this list of status effects? TBD. Also, why did they have to wait until Stormblood to give us this ability, after removing pacification from Berserk? This would have been fantastic in Heavensward, but will likely be mediocre to unnoticeable in Stormblood.

Since WAR is the only tank right now with an ability like this, I predict that either:
a) the devs will add lots of nasty statuses to encounters and endgame raids to warrant its usefulness, which will give WAR an advantage over the other tanks (creative asymmetry by encounter design), since healers and bards won't have to babysit WARs for status effects as often. I personally doubt this will be the avenue the team takes in Stormblood and Omega.

OR

b) (Much more likely IMO) status effects will remain avoidable or mostly irrelevant in fights, in which case this does very little for WAR now that Berserk pacification is no more.

The best use I saw for this ability upon its preview is in PVP...except that we now know that jobs will only have a small handful of abilities in PVP, which are completely separated from their PVE kits.

I suspect that SiO will be occasionally useful in dungeons or perhaps 24 player raids, but most likely won't do much for WARs.

A filler ability with some potential - not great, but could be worse. Not every new ability will be gold, so SiO doesn't bother me too much.

2. Upheaval
Okay, so we get another oGCD damage ability. 300 potency every 30s. Seems decent.

The cost of 20 beast gauge is bearable. I imagine there will be situations where we might otherwise cap out on gauge while holding it for the next Berserk window.

My beef with Upheaval is that it's a complete rip-off of Spirits Within. Except while it costs PLDs nothing, it costs WARs some beast gauge.

The HP scaling is both uninspired and completely unnecessary, and acts as a small detriment to WARs as MTs, because you'll be losing out on some damage each time compared to OTing.

It doesn't help that we don't even know how the damage on this ability scales.

While I like the idea of having relevant oGCD attacks to use, especially after the loss of Brutal Swing and Mercy Stroke - our only oGCD damage prior to 4.0, I think this ability could be reworked slightly to be more interesting and flavourful for WAR, rather than simply copying PLD.

3. Enhanced Infuriate
At first glance this sounds interesting. Reduced Infuriate cooldown when you use your staple beast gauge moves that you're going to be using anyway? Sweet!

My concern with this is that Infuriate as-is lines up perfectly with the new Berserk, as well as Inner Release.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that reducing its cooldown in increments of 5 seconds (to a max of -30s during an Inner Release window) might not be all that useful because you want to save it for Berserk windows. If you use it early, you'll likely delay your next Berserk, which will be a potency loss.

I hope this ends up being more useful than it looks on paper.

4. Cooldowns no longer providing beast gauge (stacks)
One of the unique and fun things I enjoy about WAR pre-4.0 is its ability to mix and match offensive and defensive abilities together.

Right now, Berserk, Vengeance, and Raw Intuition each give you one stack of Wrath/Abandon and refresh the duration of your stacks.

I love being able to use a well-timed Vengeance or Raw Intuition mid Berserk for the triple Fell Cleave rotation while still reaping the rewards of the defensive cooldown.

It's also useful for maintaining your stacks mid-fight or mid-dungeon. Stacks about to fall off? Pop Vengeance or RI and you have another 30s!

Thankfully, stack duration appears to be a thing of the past in Stormblood, so this last point is moot.

Another use case was pre-pull popping Infuriate, using RI to refresh stacks at 0-1s, then pulling a boss with full stacks + Infuriate off cooldown.

Similarly with Berserk, switching into Defiance to pop Equilibrium with the attack power boost gives you a massive self-heal when you need it. This is particular combination is going to be both weaker (Berserk giving 30% down from 50%) and punished more strongly (with stance dance cost) in Stormblood.

I understand that these changes were likely made for two reasons:
1. To lower the skill floor of the job. Players who didn't realize that these defensive abilities could be used to increase their damage were missing out.
2. To separate defensive cooldowns from offense, so that WARs no longer waste their cooldowns for some extra damage in a risky manner, only to not have any cooldowns for the next tankbuster.

While this does remove some of the complexity (and IMO fun) of playing WAR currently, I'm willing to cede this point to make WAR more accessible to play.

5. Inability to generate beast gauge outside of combat
This change seems to be part of the team's design philosophy regarding how to lower the skill floor of jobs across the board.

By removing everyone's ability to perform their burst openers immediately on the pull, there's less burden of knowledge and memorization required to play a job well in Stormblood.

For WAR, this includes the changes to Vengeance, Berserk, and Raw Intuition no longer granting beast gauge, as well as Infuriate not being available outside of combat.

Personally, I'm not happy with the Infuriate change because it renders Onslaught, our new gap closer, useless on the pull - which is one of the main times you would want to use it, especially since it has an added enmity boost.

If Onslaught were reworked such that it could be used from out of combat, I would be a lot more okay with these changes to WAR, even though the loss of pre-pull Infuriate hurts.

6. Loss of Foresight, Fracture, Mercy Stroke, and Flash
With the combat system rework, WAR is losing a few of its original abilities, as well as access to some of its current cross-class skills.

Most of these changes aren't too bad.

Losing Foresight is largely irrelevant, because we can now take Rampart as a role skill! Plus, Inner Beast was actually buffed slightly (I was expecting it to be gutted with access to Rampart), so WAR will have even stronger mitigation pre-61 compared to now.

Fracture is an interesting beast (heh), in that it has an opportunity cost of not generating Wrath/Abandon stacks, while also only being worthwhile when it lasted its full duration of 30s. This made it largely situational to use, and as such, I personally won't miss it much in Stormblood.

Gone are the days of being able to easily pick up enemies in a radius around you with Flash during dungeons runs, while pacified, and/or TP floored from spamming Overpower. While pacification will no longer an issue, and WAR still has access to Steel Cyclone, the stance dancing changes coupled with the loss of Flash will make WAR more awkward and more difficult to play in dungeons runs, with your Overpowers having to be on point moving forward.

RIP Mercy Stroke. While it was a largely niche ability, it was one of our only two oGCD damage abilities, and high-skill high-reward move with a massive self-heal when successful, and very satisfying to pull off. I can understand why it was trimmed in Stormblood, but I'm going to miss those highs and the satisfaction of landing the finishing blow on bosses with it!