Periodic Warrior complaint thread

[Leigaon]

Our utility sucks.

What kind of utility would you like to see?

I do not think you'll see anything that will keep you alive so much in the DPS stance, but I always thought it would be nice if IB did something depending on your stance that you're using.

They could go a long way with this.

I'm generally uninformed about this stuff as I only started seriously tanking recently, what utility do PLD's have that Warrior's lack?

Though I've been screwing with war since 1.0, i'm new to this b/c I'm actually looking at what I'm doing so don't take what I say 100%

I think this person means more along the lines of party utility. In some cases a PLD will pop Passage of Arms for us to get behind, or a will give The Blackest Night. While Warrior, we don't have much to help the party out. Then again every time I ask a question in these forums I get told the last veteran who told me about stuff is an idiot and to listen to them.

Then again, most of these complaints come from a raid standpoint and I find no point in doing savage so I tend to fade away after that.

[Umbeliel]

I'm generally uninformed about this stuff as I only started seriously tanking recently, what utility do PLD's have that Warrior's lack?

What kind of utility would you like to see?

I do not think you'll see anything that will keep you alive so much in the DPS stance, but I always thought it would be nice if IB did something depending on your stance that you're using.

They could go a long way with this. snip snip snip

Thank you both for asking! Bluebird touched on it pretty well, and Leigaon pretty much has the idea. Utility(and to a lesser extent, identity) is pretty much the purpose of taking any nonspecific job to content over any other given one. What we contribute to the team as a whole. Paladin has a pretty good selection of utility in Clemency, Intervention, and Cover- skills that help protect and keep the party alive. Warrior used to have this in Path, and more problematically as the only source of slashing debuff with Eye.

Other good and easy examples would be Ninja, who has trick attack and a variety of enmity modification skills. Even Samurai has utility in it's own way- it's dps is significantly high enough to compensate for the LACK OF utility, which is utility in itself(which is why I mentioned Warrior's dps lead not being large enough to compensate). Dragoon has Litany, etc etc.

Obviously the purpose of simply "tank" is fulfilled just fine, but that's the bare minimum. What else does it do? Why am I here? Why should anyone take me to parties? What's my purpose outside of tanking? Coming from 1.0 and 2.0 and the class quests, we're given the impression that it's either a dps or a lifesteal/self sustain tank but as time goes on they only really seem to take away our healing, leaving us with dps. But our dps isn't really all that far ahead of the other tanks either, never really has been(Though your mileage may vary here in how you interpret the numbers, but generally speaking even at the end of HW the dps potential of a Paladin compared to a Warrior wasn't more than 5% or so. I don't remember the exact numbers.).

To answer Lei's question, I don't actually care too much what the utility is. More lifesteal + increased recieved heals and turn us into a sort of set & forget tank? Sure. Exceptionally higher dps and we're the samurai of tanks? Sure, I can roll with that even if I don't actually want to just be an extra dps that can also tank. Group buffs via war cries? Shields similar to adloquium? Demoralizing shouts? I seriously don't care at all, I just want to know what I'm supposed to be.

Also, worth noting, it's only kind of from a raid standpoint. The issues of balance, identity and utility actually affect casual and midcore players more than hardcore- a hardcore raider will, generally, not actually care what class they're playing. Usually just the role. Warrior having merit in the eyes of someone who doesn't care and will just use whatever is best doesn't really matter so much. Conversely, someone who identifies with a class and sticks with it for life at the hindrance of their party members because it's weaker than what that person could be. The latter person is waaaay more likely to be casual or midcore, and that's why this matters at all.

[Tufelhunden]

I like the War Cries idea.

War cries is what we should bring. Instead of switching stances and going dps, how about we spend our gauge and issue a war cry giving our rage to the party increasing dps and/or heals by X% for 20 secs.

[whiskeybravo]

I like the War Cries idea.

War cries is what we should bring. Instead of switching stances and going dps, how about we spend our gauge and issue a war cry giving our rage to the party increasing dps and/or heals by X% for 20 secs.

Double war comps for 40 sec dps increases lol

I think DPS buffs should be mainly on DPS classes. I kind of like the Thrill of War suggestions, though so many people are complaining about excessive HP I can't see them being satisfied with a raid wide HP increase.

I think a unique ability for war would be something like "Sacrifices 25% of current HP to create a damage absorbing shield on ally party member". Or just a straight up heal since the other tanks have a shield already. Or, they probably wouldn't do this but give war something like the old Storm's Path damage reduction. That was like the perfect/minimal amount of utility needed.

[Tufelhunden]

They could put a debuff that lasts 30 or 60 seconds so another warrior can't give the same cry. That way it can't be abused like you talk about. I'm just trying to think about party utility we could give other than being the top DPS tank. Heck split the heals and DPS rallying cries to make us choose one or the other and the debuffs affects both.

Double war comps for 40 sec dps increases lol

I think DPS buffs should be mainly on DPS classes. I kind of like the Thrill of War suggestions, though so many people are complaining about excessive HP I can't see them being satisfied with a raid wide HP increase.

I think a unique ability for war would be something like "Sacrifices 25% of current HP to create a damage absorbing shield on ally party member". Or just a straight up heal since the other tanks have a shield already. Or, they probably wouldn't do this but give war something like the old Storm's Path damage reduction. That was like the perfect/minimal amount of utility needed.

[BluexBird]

I like the War Cries idea.

War cries is what we should bring. Instead of switching stances and going dps, how about we spend our gauge and issue a war cry giving our rage to the party increasing dps and/or heals by X% for 20 secs.

They could have done that with the stance swap penalty. I had suggested in another thread once that instead of the lost beast gauge points just getting lost, they get convertred into buffs for the Warrior. Defiance to Deliverance giving extra damage for a few seconds, and Deliverance to Defiance giving you a Bloodbath effect.

But the idea of making THAT be our utility would have been AWESOME! Just imagine, filling up your beast gauge in Defiance... then when you switch to Deliverance, you lose half of your gauge, but everyone nearby gets increased damage for a few seconds based on how much gauge you lost!

And if you change from Deliverance to Defiance, they'd get a buff that increases their max HP for a few seconds or something.

Sadly, with the penalty now gone, I feel we won't be getting something like that anymore. :c