4.0 Warrior Feedback

[ovIm]

When I saw all of the changes Square Enix planned for the Warrior in Stormblood, I was hugely sceptical. I, personally, don’t see the fun of preparing to use the same skill 4-6 times in a row. However, all scepsis aside, I wanted to give it a try, since I have been mainly playing Warrior since 2.3 or 2.4 - I dont really remember if I am honest, its been too long.
Thing is, while I played Warrior, there are some things that were made well and some other things that felt limiting in such a way that it made the class less fun to play. So, as to give some feedback and my thoughts as someone who plays Warrior in a casual raiding group and in dungeons a lot. In general, I refer to this feedback in my head as:
Warrior - the good, the bad, and the clunky


The good:

Not gonna lie, main tanking with the Warrior now feels pretty good, as long as I stay in Defiance, that is. When I was tanking Susanooh, between inner beast, raw intuition + awareness, rampart, reprisal and vengeance I felt like I always had a CD running. So, with that many defensive tools at my disposal, I could combine some of them with inner beast and ease the strain on my healers.

The sprint change in general is amazing. I tremendously enjoy popping sprint to charge into the next battle, throwing myself into the fray first and dishing out before anyone else does.

I like the fact that the Gauge does not decrease with time (though, constantly running around with the super sayan energy sparks around me gets old pretty fast).

The new changes of Berserk are nice to have, really. Its a bit weaker sure, but now its CD aligns better with some other skills, allowing me to use it much more efficiently.



The bad and the clunky:

It saddens me to see the "the good" part of my feedback cut so short. But, those are, at least to me, my biggest issues with the current Warrior are general clunkiness and, to be honest, design choices that have not been thought through properly.
First and foremost here is the Beast Gauge. While the theory is actually pretty solid, the actual implementation of the gauge is lackluster at best.
The biggest issue here is the penalty for switching stances. Halving the gauge when switching stances is not too big of an issue for Paladin, who only has 2 skills dependant on his gauge. But for Warrior, who has 8 skills depending on it (inner beast, steel cyclone, fell cleave, decimate, unchained, inner release, onslaught, upheaval), this is a huge hit to the general availability of my kit and the resources available to me.
For example, especially at the end of a pull, I used to switch to Deliverance if incoming damage was reduced enough, so I can regen some TP with Equilibrium to keep my TP high enough that I can keep pulling with no real downtimes. Now however I am hesitant to do just that, because then I would lose, at worst, 75% of my gauge. With so many skills tied to it, I really dont want to lose access to my kit. Speaking of TP, the fact that I have lost flash is another, albeit small, issue. Currently, due to gear etc, some DPS really create a lot of aggro. So, even with alternating my aggro combo and adding in the occasional overpower, I burn through my TP fast. I used to use flash to let my TP regenerate a bit. Now, without a melee goading me, I find myself more and more in the situation that I see my DPS getting painfully close to my aggro bar, with me not being able to do anything against it. Though perhaps this issue is also my fault for not managing the resources I have properly, I feel like it has become increasingly hard to hold myself against my DPS.
Speaking of OP and Flash, overpower needs a target to work, and only attacks things in a cone in front of me, so depending on enemy positionals, I don’t always hit everybody. This is another thing I used Flash for, to make sure the initial aggro is on me first and foremost before positioning the mobs. Usually, instead of Flash, I can also use Steel Cyclone, if I have enough gauge (or, previously, stacks). But, keeping the Gauge up for those situations and pulls, it also means stance dancing is even more out of the question.
Of course, I would also love to pull with my new gapcloser, Onslaught. However, this skill costs 20 Gauge and has a potency of 100 (+ increased enmity), and I would rather use that Gauge on Unchained during a pull, as I get much, much more of the points spent there.

Im afraid I was unable to use WAR a lot in trials yet, but what I did see with my Level 70 kit is that my entire combat is now revolving around berserked fell cleaves even more than at 60, to the point where I just get bored. In theory, fell cleaving so often would sound satisfying, but in reality, getting to press the same button 4-6 times for DPS is just... stale really. I don’t feel like I accomplished much here. With the old triple FC, it took me some thinking, planning and some stack management to pull it off, but it felt oh so satisfying. Now that hexa FC is easily achieved, I dont feel the same kind of satisfaction anymore sadly. All I bring in a Trial as an OT is some DPS, and nothing else really. Unlike DRK and PLD, I can’t protect my teammates from incoming damage (Reprisal being the one small exception).

Those are just a few examples. In general, I feel like the game seems to punish me for trying to use all of my skills. Warrior used to be a fun, versatile and dynamic class, giving me the option of changing what I do depending on what is currently needed. It had a nice fluent gameplay, and I feel like with 4.0, a lot of that has been abolished.

However, I keep asking myself, what can be done to at least improve the situation? Well, first and foremost (and most importantly), don’t nerf either Paladin or Dark Knight. I’m still unsure about DRK, but PLD seems to be in a genuinely good spot at the moment.
Rather, for Warrior, the imho easiest bandaid to these issues to remove the penalty from stance switching. DRK has no negative impact at all and PLDs impact is noticeable, but not as severe. Warrior gets the most from switching stances and loses the most when he does so, so I think changing this will give the class some versatility back.
Another nice thing would be to remove the gauge cost of Onslaught (perhaps at the cost of a higher CD of 30s like Plunge), so I don’t feel bad for wasting 20 gauge on that one.


These are just my thoughts and my own feedback, but of course, I don’t mind hearing others as well. What do you think of 4.0 Warrior?


Edit - 3rd July 2017

After playing some more, Im copying what I wrote on another thread what my "whishlist" is:

Changes I would implement

• Remove cost of stance swapping
• Storms Eye now generates 20 Gauge
• Storms Path now generates 10 Gauge
• Storms Path now reduces target damage dealt by 5% for 10s
• Infuriate is now usable out of combat
• Beast Gauge depletes by 5 every 5 seconds when out of combat
• Onslaught Aggro Modifier halved
• Onslaught CD increased to 30s
• Onslaught now generates 10 Beast Gauge, using it does not cost Beast Gauge.

WAR is missing out on a lot of utility. Returning a weaker Storms Path to the kit would make the class more viable in 8 man content.

To ensure that Path is not being overused, the extra Gauge generation should be given to Eye.

Generating stacks between pulls is not a bad thing. However, to make sure WARs dont keep the group waiting for a minute to generate 100 Gauge, it should fall off before Infuriate is back up again.

Onslaught needs to be improved imho, its lackluster compared to Plunge. I consider those changes good enough as a combat initiator and extra Gauge generator.