Thread: Consolidating Warrior 4.0 Feedback Thread

Random thoughts about the new WAR.

- Stance swap penalty feels awful, like really bad, for anyone that was used to the fluid warrior of old. A flat cost is bad because to removes any skill from the equation and punishes the wrong end of the problem imo. You wanted to avoid the situation where you can switch from defiance to deliverance and unload the whole gauge, you applied this cost as a fix. Now you're punishing things like switching from deliverance to defiance and using IB because you need mitigation suddenly when the MT died. Keep the halving of the gauge, but never reduce to below 50. This prevents the tanking into hexacleave, but gives a lot of room for switching easily. OR just accept that 20 sec hexacleave while tanking is just fine and remove the penalty altogether (would feel the best). Potencies and BG costs can always be adjusted after you make WAR fun again.

- Staying in deliverance all the time is better now and it seems like that's what you want. But no one else wants that. Tanking is too easy because you have to make it easy enough to faceroll your way through content or bad tanks won't be able to progress. The only way we have to improve is to stance dance to optimize our dps. Now it's still possible, you have to take the swap cost into account, which is harder (good?) but it feels bad (real bad, for everyone not just the optimizers). So that option is only for the spreadsheet-crunching emotionless robots at the 99th percentile imo.

- Warrior should have a unique role. Let us be the dps tank at cost of utility (we have none now that NIN and SAM apply their own slashing debuff and DRG sucks causing the end to the piercing meta). This is our identity, don't homogenize the tanks so we're all the same with different skins because it's easier to balance for you. You are hurting your own game by taking the easy route. Balance it by giving more utility to the other tanks so they are better in other situations.

- Inner release and Unchained have VASTLY different power levels. When you make them share their cooldown, one of them might as well be removed from the game (or you hamfistedly prevent people from changing stance like you did). Unlink their cooldowns or make Unchained competitive. It isn't bad, it's just a bit dull and outshined by the giant hexacleave.

- Stuns etc that used to have potencies should remain potency-less. It was a good change. They should be used to stun, not be an oGCD in your rotation. However it's removal from the rotation should be compensated. There is a lot of feeling that WAR took a step back instead of forwards because we lost so much and our new stuff is lackluster.

- Hexacleave, which promising on paper, turns out to be a bad direction to take WAR. It changes our fluid think-on-your-feet stance dancing job into a plan-ahead job. The two minutes between the big payout is rigid and kinda 'meh' now. It also requires a 20 sec uninterrupted window to apply it as well and the punishment for having to do mechanics in that window is severe. At least we don't lose our buildup by phase transitions like the new DRG.

- Keep the 3 combos, they seem fine and each have their unique roles. Tank, buff, dps.

- Shake it off does nothing because it barely works on anything and esuna already exists and healers need to watch for debuffs for everyone else anyway. Make it do something worth pushing the button.

- Make Onslaught usable like I mentioned in a previous post. I'll quote it again for completeness.

Onslaught (while really fun to use!) is just stupidly designed, and that stupid design influences everyone's ideas of how it should be balanced as well. Like brutal swing('s replacement) is now, it should have no place in any rotation. It is a very thematic reactionary movement ability that should be used to let the warrior hurl himself across the battlefield at will.

I would change it in the following way:
- No cost. A BG cost on a reactionary ability screws up the rotation and it's worthless in any serious content even if you did make up the immediate potency loss.
- Same(ish) cooldown.
- Make the damage miniscule, like 40. I'd say none, but the animation indicates at least some damage. The next point deals with this.
- A minimum range (6 yalms?). This prevents that 40 dmg from having any effect on your rotation, which the devs rather stupidly tried to solve with the BG cost. No one is going to take the time to run back and zoom in again for 40 potency. The range can be adjusted to insure it would always be a loss.

There you go, now the warrior has a thematic charge ability that is only used for movement instead of a useless ability just sitting on the hotbar annoying us. That's Shake It Off's job! Bonus, it can be used to charge INTO combat! And maybe even give back some of the Warrior feel you bungled up so badly in 4.0.