Interview with xenosys-vex

[konpachizaraki]

lol "obscenely powerful burst damage and higher dps", you're talking as if warrior deal 10-20% more damage than a pld when in reality if everything goes perfectly and mechanic doesn't mess the warrior's rotation(which is very hard to pull off) war can only deal 1-2 % more damage than a paladin at best(3-5 percent if you're lucky with your crits),meanwhile a paladin can pull off slightly lower to equal number to a warrior without giving it as much effort as a warrior.
and they have way less utility compared to them, if they give warrior utility that just makes them a paladin copy so the best is either make them the more durable and increase their survivability so they can survive more punishment than the other 2 tanks or increase their damage to make up for them having almost no utility

[Crater]

lol "obscenely powerful burst damage and higher dps", you're talking as if warrior deal 10-20% more damage than a pld

Warrior deals more than "10-20% more" damage than Paladin during burst windows. Warrior bursts up to 8-10k in current gear, whereas PLD doesn't really get above 5-6k. That's 33% more if we highball PLD burst at 6k and lowball WAR burst at 8k.

Burst damage is more valuable than sustained damage, because it can be used to push phases/mechanics, has more synergy with raid buffs, and can more easily capitalize on fights with high downtime.

If Warrior is bursting for 33%+ more damage than Paladin is bursting for, balance dictates that at the end of a fight, Paladin should be dealing 2-3% more damage than Warrior, not 2-3% less.

Instead, Warrior gets to have its cake and eat it too. The imbalance is strongly in Warrior's favour.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Warrior deals more than "10-20% more" damage than Paladin during burst windows. Warrior bursts up to 8-10k in current gear, whereas PLD doesn't really get above 5-6k. That's 33% more if we highball PLD burst at 6k and lowball WAR burst at 8k.

Burst damage is more valuable than sustained damage, because it can be used to push phases/mechanics, has more synergy with raid buffs, and can more easily capitalize on fights with high downtime.

If Warrior is bursting for 33%+ more damage than Paladin is bursting for, balance dictates that at the end of a fight, Paladin should be dealing 2-3% more damage than Warrior, not 2-3% less.

Instead, Warrior gets to have its cake and eat it too. The imbalance is strongly in Warrior's favour.

A reasonable argument, but its hard to say its absolute, as its very dependent on the fight.
but for the most part I can agree, as it's been the argument MCHs have been making for their high burst, but low sustain, all this time.

[konpachizaraki]

Warrior deals more than "10-20% more" damage than Paladin during burst windows. Warrior bursts up to 8-10k in current gear, whereas PLD doesn't really get above 5-6k. That's 33% more if we highball PLD burst at 6k and lowball WAR burst at 8k.

lol you get my point, no need to twist the word just to look smart because you really aren't. higher burst damage doesn't mean much because in the end PLD deal higher damage outside of it, in the end what you get is equal to a lowly 1-2% higher overall dps of warrior but that too only if everything goes your way. warrior isn't as "obscenely powerful" as you make them out to be in fact they're basically just paladin with less defense and less utility,
you just try to make them look that way because you're afraid if WAR and DRK get buffed they will challenge PLD for raid spot

[whiskeybravo]

If Warrior is bursting for 33%+ more damage than Paladin is bursting for, balance dictates that at the end of a fight, Paladin should be dealing 2-3% more damage than Warrior, not 2-3% less.

Balance dictates what, exactly? If war has lower utility than pld their dps should be higher because of balance, as well. That they get there through "burst" windows is just a coincidence of design. At the end of the encounter is what matters, not necessarily how they got there.

[Crater]

Balance dictates what, exactly? If war has lower utility than pld their dps should be higher because of balance, as well. That they get there through "burst" windows is just a coincidence of design. At the end of the encounter is what matters, not necessarily how they got there.

No, burst windows are inherently more valuable.

- High burst lets you push phases and skip mechanics, which not only makes fights easier from a mechanical standpoint, but has a tendency to cascade into increased party damage, as your healers no longer have to heal the mechanic you skipped, DPS don't need to accrue downtime to dodge the mechanic, etc.
- High burst is inherently easy to optimize. If a fight has 15 seconds of unavoidable downtime per minute, a tank with high burst is only going to suffer a small penalty to damage as long as they put their burst window outside of those 15 seconds - a tank that deals consistently high damage is going to lose a much higher percentage of their damage to the downtime, and there's nothing they can do about it, because every single second is equally important to them.
- High burst synergizes better with raid buffs: If your burst is 30% better than a competitor class's burst, then Trick Attack, Chain Strategem, Battle Litany, Balance, Hypercharge, etc, are all 30% stronger for you than they are for the other classes.

Balancing damage versus damage, higher burst should always be weighted more heavily than total DPS at the end of a fight. If you and I both do exactly 4,000 DPS at the end of a fight, but I did 4,000 DPS in every single second of that fight, and you did 8,000 DPS every minute in a 20 second window and 2,000 DPS in the remaining 40 seconds, your contribution was more valuable, because you had the ability to heavily contribute to phase skips, add burns, etc, and I did not.


The idea that Warrior has significantly lower utility than PLD is also pretty spurious as well, if that's the basis of an argument that Warrior should be better in both burst damage and total DPS. Divine Veil is far and away PLD's biggest contributor to party utility, and Shake it Off is just as powerful. Past that, Passage of Arms is PLD's second most powerful bit of utility, and considering the DPS loss for using it, it's only situationally helpful (and those situations are pretty much limited to "Unending Coil, and low-iLevel Neo Exdeath"). Warrior's second most powerful bit of utility is being able to generate huge amounts of enmity on a pull while losing almost zero DPS, by using Tomahawk and Equilibrium before immediately dropping into Deliverance. This is useful in every fight in the game.

Once you get past those two big examples of utility for the two respective classes, you're left comparing marginal, fringe benefits, like Intervention (only really useful for shared tankbusters), Cover (which is only ever "utility" in situations like the Neo Exdeath Delta aggro reset, and is otherwise just a mediocre defensive cooldown for PLD), and Tempered Will versus Warrior getting their own personal Slashing debuff for add pickups or party splits, using Defiance for a free 20% buff to a Deployed Adloquium, or using Onslaught's mobility to keep Alte Roite centered during Thin Ice, dealing with numerous knockbacks in Exdeath and Neo Exdeath, etc.

You'd probably have to give the nod to PLD over WAR in the 'practical utility' race, but only by a hair. And considering the relative importance of damage versus utility in the first place, that advantage is peanuts compared to what WAR brings to the table offensively.

[whiskeybravo]

No, burst windows are inherently more valuable.

Unfortunately, this entire line of argumentation can be dismissed for this particular raid tier. There aren't any "phases" to push, fights are 100% scripted. The only mechanics you're skipping are due to a faster clear, and in this regard burst damage is equally valuable as sustained. The only real phase push in current content is in Shinryu, which is pug content at this point. The adds in v3s barely live long enough for more than 1-2 fell cleaves, and the other adds are just used for pad nowadays.

Furthermore, higher burst can not be inherently easier to optimize than sustained. I really can't believe that would be argued. It's much more difficult to line up small burst windows into even smaller raid utility windows. I don't optimize to that high of a level, but Xeno said he uses 9 different rotations based on party comp? How many does his paladin have?

Overall I'm in agreement with you that burst is slightly more valuable than sustained, but you're including caveats in your argument such as the actual structure of the current raids (phase pushing when there are no phases to push) and synergy with raid buffs (party comp dictates performance). Both of these are dependent on the content design and party comp, not inclusive to the job itself.

Well if utility should, like Xeno or Whiskey are claiming, balanced around DPS, DRK should be hand down the best damage dealer out of tanks. However argument against it will come as much as necessary, because no warrior wants to be beaten in damage.

I have no problem with this personally, but myself and I'm sure others agree, just buffing drk dps doesn't solve the problems with drk overall.

[SyzzleSpark]

I have no problem with this personally, but myself and I'm sure others agree, just buffing drk dps doesn't solve the problems with drk overall.

Xeno conveniently left WAR out of the balance equation when talking about DRK, and went on a long tirade about DRK having inferior utility to BOTH tanks, and that low utility should be balanced by higher personal DPS, and then in his closing paragraph on that segment, stated specifically that DRK should deal higher damage than only PLD (omitting WAR from the statement altogether).

If buffing the living hell out of DRK's personal DPS wouldn't solve all of the job's problems, that just explains why Xeno suggested it. He's a self-professed WAR fanboy and it is the only job for which he will demonstrate attention to detail when discussing balance.

For evidence:

The more raid utility a class has, the less solo damage it should do. Because if that’s not the case then you end up in situations like the current one, where Dark Knight is just abysmal. After the Shake it Off change there’s no reason to bring a Dark Knight, because Warrior does more damage and now has better utility.

Paladins have insane amounts of utility, and they still do more damage than Dark Knights. Why would a job that has more utility do more damage than a job that has less utility? That doesn’t make any sense at all.

Paladins have Intervention, Divine Veil, and Cover! Cover is so stupid good it’s insane, and so is Intervention. Sheltron is also busted. The fact that you can block magic now just completely shits on Dark Knights. That literally took away all of their individuality. They were supposed to be the “magic tank”. Why can magic be blocked, but not parried? If you can block it, you should be able to parry it.

Xeno's argument implies that DRK should be at the top in tank DPS. He comes right out and says DRK has less utility than both WAR and PLD.

It also implies that as soon as WAR got its buff to SiO, it lost its argument for getting additional DPS buffs because, sing it with me folks -

The more raid utility a class has, the less solo damage it should do.

Lets take a tally here by Xeno's scoreboard.

Utility:
PLD: 1st
WAR: 2nd
DRK: 3rd

DPS:
PLD: 2nd
WAR: 1st
DRK: 3rd

His logic suggests that to make up for DRK being 3rd in one category, it should be 1st in the other.

Both of the other tanks have more utility than Dark Knight, so Dark Knight needs some potency increases so they can do more damage. That’s all they need. Dark Knight needs to deal more damage than a Paladin, and it needs to be enough more to outweigh the extra healer GCDs that you get by bringing a Paladin.

Here however, he conveniently says that DRK should have more DPS than PLD ONLY. He mysteriously neglects to mention WAR. So, essentially he is saying DRK and PLD should be balanced with eachother, but WAR should bring more DPS than both, while also having more utility than DRK. Does this sound familiar to anyone else? I'm getting severe deja vu here. Oh, right, this is what we had in Heavensward. Isn't that interesting.

I'm sure that Xeno is a talented player and an asset to the PF community. His logic skills however, need some work.

[TouchandFeel]

snip

The problem with his logic is that it is nonobjective and bias-blinders play into what data forms the basis for the proposed arguments.

The interview displays a number of blatantly lop-sided logical arguments where points were very much selectively brought to bear, often to a hyperbolic degree, or just straight up omitted if they didn't reinforce the predetermined argument, not to mention some of the side-by-side comparisons being dubious at best.

Essentially the interview can be boiled down to "PLD has good DPS now and brings good utility, buff Fell Cleave ... oh and DRK sucks ... WAR needs moar deeps!".

As you said, great player who does great things for the community but people need to see his opinions as just that "opinions", which are very much skewed by heavy job preference.

[DaulBan]

Here however, he conveniently says that DRK should have more DPS than PLD ONLY. He mysteriously neglects to mention WAR. So, essentially he is saying DRK and PLD should be balanced with eachother, but WAR should bring more DPS than both, while also having more utility than DRK. Does this sound familiar to anyone else? I'm getting severe deja vu here. Oh, right, this is what we had in Heavensward. Isn't that interesting.

I don't think he's comparing WAR to DRK here because when it comes to balance the biggest issue is tanks relative to PLD, not tanks relative to WAR. He's comparing DRK to the best tank (PLD). I'm sure that if Xeno was actually putting together a video talking about balance he'd mention DRK vs WAR, he just didn't think of it here.

- High burst is inherently easy to optimize. If a fight has 15 seconds of unavoidable downtime per minute, a tank with high burst is only going to suffer a small penalty to damage as long as they put their burst window outside of those 15 seconds - a tank that deals consistently high damage is going to lose a much higher percentage of their damage to the downtime, and there's nothing they can do about it, because every single second is equally important to them.

Just as a side note because all your points are valid here, if a jump lands just before when WAR can get its burst window out it gets punished pretty hard. It is worth noting that because WAR ppGCD outside of Zerk or IRZerk is so bad that if, for example, a boss jumps before zerk comes back up again (ie Exfaust) WAR loses a lot of damage because it can't necessarily get back that damage later. Burst damage is excellent when your windows land before jumps, but is absolutely terrible when the jump happens before you can use it. WAR and MCH both are on tight schedules, and while they can hold their burst (usually bad) they can't speed it up at all. The one minute zerk and two minute irzerk trains come when they come, no sooner.