I love the new warrior but....

[Voltyblast]

Let me this right away: I think warrior is still amazing and is good as it is right now. While I currently don't have a 70 warrior - I just wanted to try paladin out first - I have been one since 2.0 and witnessed every change about them and to this day, I still think HW made the warrior one of the best off tanks of the game.

With that said, I can't shrug off the idea that some skills could've used more polish or some more tweaks in this expansion, and mostly because of the new bar mechanic. They're not game breaking for sure but the more I play the SB warrior, the more I think that something could've been done. I have 3 major gripes right now and these are as follows.

1) The Beast Gauge...and how easy it is to charge it.
I love this mechanic: I feel like a true warrior now and I totally dig into it, but I can't stop thinking that it's far too easy to charge it. Now you might say "this is not a bad thing" and it surely isn't, but not only this goes in contrast with my second and third point, but this also means that I'll be spamming one rotation and use Steel Cyclone every time - or Inner Beast against bosses. Sure I do use Overpower once or twice and the aggro combo during certain moments but after the first fight I just use Steel Cyclone all the time. I mean the Gauge doesn't even decay out of combat, it's that easy to keep it charged - unless you change stances but you surely wouldn't do it BEFORE a pull, right?

This will go over on the second point too, which is...

2) Overpower is practically useless right now.
I already said I don't need to spam the BB combo most of the time - and even as a paladin at 70 I barely use the aggro combo too.

But for the AoE? Well, considering how easy it is to charge the Beast Gauge what's the point of using Overpower all the time? Beside being a one time to pull tool?

I mean yes, it is still useful, but I practically use it a total of ONE time during a combat with multiple enemies and since bloodbath was removed, Overpower has kinda lost me in transition...I just spam Steel Cyclone/Decimate and since it's super easy to charge the gauge I can do it all the time (remember, no decay, unless you change stances) I can easily spam it 3 or 4 times in a row (storm's path combo delivers 30 gauge). I thought they would allow OP to grant 5 "rage" per enemy hit or something but nope, OP is still the same old skill. It made sense why it couldn't work before ( we had a static 5 stack of wrath/abandon before), but with an actual gauge, I think it is possible to allow OP to build "rage" better the more enemies you fight! However, it doesn't stop here, since there's another "small" issue and that is...

3) The warrior has so much defense going on!
Oh no, this isn't a bad thing at all (no sarcasm intended), but at the same time, I feel some skills just don't feel as good as before.

Before SB was a thing, Warriors had basically 2 cooldowns: Vengeance and Foresight, with their biggest "cd" being the inner beast alongside their constant 10% damage reduction debuff (which is now removed and is a job role). In HW however, we got Raw Intuition, which is a 100% parry that worked for over 20 seconds but had the downside of making you get critical hits if you were hit on the sides and back....and that was stupid since most of the time the enemies would reposition themselves around me and potentially kill me.

The way I - and many other warriors - fixed it was to macro it with awareness so that you would get no more critical hits, and that's how it works to this day: only change is to awareness being a job role and lasting 25 seconds (instead of 15).
But let me ask, what's the point of having a 90cd defensive cooldown that can backfire so much and potentially kill you unless you macro it, while you have a rather tame alternative (anticipation) with a measly 60 sec cd?
Sure, 100% parry vs 30% parry is a big difference and I would definitely agree to keep RI with you...until I forgot that I also have rampart, which is a flat 20% damage reduction for over 20 seconds, and Inner Beast which adds another 20% for 6 seconds.

It surely doesn't sound so strong but did you forget that we can spam it now?

Rage build is easy, you can literally spam Inner Beast 3-4 times in a row if you time it correctly and even if you don't you might just have 5 or 10 seconds of downtime at worst. It's basically a mini rampart now, which works together with normal rampart too! And yes it's also a good combo with Raw Intuition but, considering the nuisance it is, I have basically replaced it with Anticipation and I've been doing fine as of now.

Besides, nothing stops me to have both Anticipation and (Macro) Raw Intuition with me...which means I have even more defensive skills!

I think Raw Intuition could use a tweak and have a more interesting side effect - just like Paladin's Passage to Arm forces them to stand still - and perhaps we should also get some more changes over our current cooldowns as well: Vengeance could just grant 50% damage reduction and have a bigger cool down, and Inner beast could last longer and maybe have less damage reduction?

I don't know what to say, but this is just my thoughts about my warrior right now so don't take all of this as a rant: is more of a discussion I wanted to bring up and if people agree that's fine, no need to pull your torches and forks.

[BluexBird]

1.
OK, so you think the beast gauge is too easy to charge. Well... our main skills are locked behind charging that. Not only is it our class mechanic, but it's pretty much all we got. Delaying the charge would delay the skills that make Warrior feel fun. Or do you think we want to spam Storm's Path (with the eventual Storm's Eye) the entire time? No. Nobody wants that. This game has a global cooldown of over 2 seconds, and that alone has been enough to make people question why they should play it when you compare it to other MMOs like BDO, BnS, GW2, etc. If you look into what makes combat in this game "fun", you'll notice that things like charge mechanics, oGCDs, and procs lie at the heart of it. It is WHY every high-level character CRINGES whenever they get Sastasha on their leveling roulette! They're stuck using 2 skills over and over again! Same as level 30 Warriors, who get a beast gauge that fills up and starts flashing, yet have no way to interact with it. Now personally, I don't get where you are coming from by saying it fills up too fast. It fills up just fine and let's you do enough with it.


2.
FIRST OF ALL, Overpower is not MEANT to be spammed! It's meant to quickly get enmity from lots of enemies at the start of pulls. If you are spamming Overpower, unless you are surrounded by more enemies than you can be bothered counting, you are doing it WRONG! It has always been like this! Also, you feel that the beast gauge fills up too fast, and yet here you introduce a method that would make it fill up faster? Like... huh? Overpower is not useless. It is a great way to get agro when your beast bar is empty, and even when it's not empty, it is a more effective way to get AoE agro than Steel Cyclone. Sure, you can Steel Cycle two times or even THREE times, but you won't be doing it for the enmity. Personally if I notice there are too many enemies, I favor Inner Beast over Steel Cyclone, because more enemies mean more damage, and I'd rather make it easier for my healer. And even before Stormblood, Overpower was a GREAT skill because - unlike Flash - it actually dealt damage. Yeah sure you have to aim it, but I never had any trouble landing all my hits.

3.
Complaining about Warriors having "so much defense" and blaming Inner Beast is like pointing the finger at Paladins and crying about how unfair it is that they have a shield and can block. Like... please don't. Yes Inner Beast is great and all, but the other tanks have things that can compete with it. And the way Raw Intuition is right now makes it kinda fun to use. Makes you actually think about using it, instead of popping it carelessly all the time. I like how it's not just a fixed damage reduction like Rampart and Vengeance, just like how I love that Thrill (which is ALSO a cooldown, by the way) gives you more HP. They're all different in their own way. I'd also argue that Equilibrium is a cooldown, despite only being use in tank stance.

[Ragology]

When I think of spam, I imagine a monk repeating snap punch while under perfect balance, or a Black mage using fire IV until their mp runs out.

Since it takes six globals to build enough gauge for inner beast, that doesn't look like spam to me as there's too many globals happening before the next inner beast.

[FreyjaAshe]

See my biggest beef with WAR, especially with the proposed changes coming tomorrow, is how locked into Path we are by the way beast gauge works now. I think if BB gave 20 gauge and could be used in place of Path I would probably be 100% content. As of now I've run into problems in fights like Lakshmi specifically with staying in the #2 spot on the enmity list. Throwing out cheesey provokes is risky, so I just wish BB had more conventional use

[Ekimmak]

And throwing out cheesy provokes followed by Shirk has the issue of reducing your current threat by 25%, so a DPS catching up to you is still coming close.

[Soraki-Muppe]

And throwing out cheesy provokes followed by Shirk has the issue of reducing your current threat by 25%, so a DPS catching up to you is still coming close.

Why would you shirk after the provoke? Makes no sense, personally I shirk before the provoke to first buff the MT and in turn my own enmity vs the dps.

[Areic]

Do you even really play warrior? First of all, yeah beast gauge is kinda of easy to charge, it should be, our /prime/ tools rely 100% on the beast gauge. Our primary mitigation in tank stance, our primary DPS tools in DPS stance.

How is overpower useless? In what world is an aoe aggro generator that requires no prep time at all useless? Sure, sometimes you'll have gauge to carry over to your next pull in some dungeons and get out that nice steel cyclone, but not always. Not to mention any raids we get, SE is a fan of throwing packs of mobs at you. Besides that, for the massive pulls in dungeons you can do, overpower is still the best DPS aoe of any tank when it comes to pure damage, and you can spam the hell out of it until about 200 TP

And raw intuition is fine. It's a marvelous skill that has a drawback to it, 20% damage reduction, don't get hit from the sides or back. 100% great on boss fights as an added mitigation. Great for packs of mobs too if you can position them right or use your crit immunity. I see no reason to change this.

You need to point out the real deal breakers for warrior. Our charge is massively situational and rarely worth the cost DPS wise, it's mostly a skill of comfort. Our big fel cleave spammer makes another ability completely useless since they share a CD. Shake it off is completely laughable as a new ability, it's a spit in the face to us since the only /real/ use would've been to take off pacify from berserk and they got rid of that. And they took away the only utility we brought.

What we /had/ and what skills carried over from heavensward are great. No need to change them. What we got in return for that which was taken away is flat out stupid compared to what the other tanks got. Hopefully the changes tomorrow boost our DPS enough to at least make us the go-to DPS off tank like the last xpac if anything

[BluexBird]

See my biggest beef with WAR, especially with the proposed changes coming tomorrow, is how locked into Path we are by the way beast gauge works now. I think if BB gave 20 gauge and could be used in place of Path I would probably be 100% content. As of now I've run into problems in fights like Lakshmi specifically with staying in the #2 spot on the enmity list. Throwing out cheesey provokes is risky, so I just wish BB had more conventional use

Yeah, I'll agree that it sucks how it seems Storm's Path is better than Butcher's Block in every situation. It's like they completely killed the skill - no reason to use it, not even for enmity during dungeons since Overpower/Steel Cyclone already secures it.

That said, I believe this is only a minor problem. It doesn't really affect our playstyle, since at the end of the day, if Butcher's Block gave 20 rage as well, that would just mean a potency increase, which we don't really need. And not only that, but it would make Storm's Path useless (although I guess it could be said that one of these would be useless regardless of what fixes they make).

tl;dr - Yes, it's annoying how we never use Butcher's Block anymore, but right now it's not worth complaining about.

Also, for those of you having trouble with Lakshmimi, you don't need Butcher's Block - just use Provoke a bit after/during the first Pull of Light. The best time to use it is when your Berserk runs out and your next attack will be a Heavy Swing, cuz that minimizes the risk of you stealing agro. This is assuming your tank is in tank stance. If they aren't, you can arrange to use Shirk to get the two of you with an agro lead over everyone else. After the tank has a big enough agora lead, use Provoke and then have the main tank use Shirk on you. Then the main tank will use Provoke and YOU use Shirk on them. It takes some practice and you should talk with them first.

[DrCynapsis]

See my biggest beef with WAR, especially with the proposed changes coming tomorrow, is how locked into Path we are by the way beast gauge works now. I think if BB gave 20 gauge and could be used in place of Path I would probably be 100% content. As of now I've run into problems in fights like Lakshmi specifically with staying in the #2 spot on the enmity list. Throwing out cheesey provokes is risky, so I just wish BB had more conventional use

Try Provoke followed immediately by Shirk to fix #2 enmity issue. It's not a total fix but allows breathing space. Depends how good that SAM is.

[Ogulbuk]

Why would you shirk after the provoke? Makes no sense, personally I shirk before the provoke to first buff the MT and in turn my own enmity vs the dps.

Lets say you are the off tank on a raid. It is your job, in some fights, to stay second in agro. Lakshmi for instance will throw a lot of mechanics at whomever is 2nd top enmity. If you die, or just start falling behind, it's very easy to provoke the boss, then shirk 25% of that enmity back to the MT. Boss will rarely even land a blow on you, and you are back to #2 hate spot without wasting your DPS time using a BB combo.

See my biggest beef with WAR, especially with the proposed changes coming tomorrow, is how locked into Path we are by the way beast gauge works now. I think if BB gave 20 gauge and could be used in place of Path I would probably be 100% content. As of now I've run into problems in fights like Lakshmi specifically with staying in the #2 spot on the enmity list. Throwing out cheesey provokes is risky, so I just wish BB had more conventional use

If BB gave 20 gauge, why would we ever use Path? This is part of the issue with having 3 combos, all need a reason to be used.

I use BB combo when I'm dealing with VERY good DPS that actually build agro, mostly just in boss fights in dungeons, though.