SE: if it aint broke, dont fix it (War)

[Mycow8me]

I kinda hope usability was poor word choice or poor translation but honestly it could mean pretty much anything from cooldowns to the overall play of the class... Probably not gonna worry about it, more worried about dark knight anyway.

[Aana]

I kinda hope usability was poor word choice or poor translation but honestly it could mean pretty much anything from cooldowns to the overall play of the class... Probably not gonna worry about it, more worried about dark knight anyway.

It could be almost anything. Buff, nerf, complete redesign. I have my suspicions, but only SE knows for sure. So all I can do is reiterate the OP. Please don't try to dramatically change warrior. There are jobs that are in far greater need of your attention than spending development time and money on a class that is objectively fine according to play rates, clearing rates, damage capability and overall defensive capability. Don't listen to 1 or 2 high profile players and start tweaking when all the data and general consensus is that war is in a good place.

[Mycow8me]

I'm guessing it has something to do with discussions on the Japanese forums but here's something a discord friend linked me.

[Aana]

I'm guessing it has something to do with discussions on the Japanese forums but here's something a discord friend linked me.

Still begs the question. What exactly is 'hard' to use on war right now?

The only thing that annoyed me about war in stormblood was running dungeons without flash to gather stuff and pulling adds with flash as they spawn in raids faster than target+long OP animation. Dungeons burns TP real fast to gather stuff with OP/Toma before you even start the OP train. (That and playing geometry simulator to hit mobs with a triangle as you sprint through them while accounting for lag). But I've been playing war since 2.0 so it didn't take much to readjust.

TLDR: I miss flash lol.

Maybe theres some obtuse aspect about war I'm missing since ive just played it so long. But it seems pretty straightforward to me.

[konpachizaraki]

Still begs the question. What exactly is 'hard' to use on war right now?

The only thing that annoyed me about war in stormblood was running dungeons without flash to gather stuff and pulling adds with flash as they spawn in raids faster than target+long OP animation. Dungeons burns TP real fast to gather stuff with OP/Toma before you even start the OP train. (That and playing geometry simulator to hit mobs with a triangle as you sprint through them while accounting for lag). But I've been playing war since 2.0 so it didn't take much to readjust.

TLDR: I miss flash lol.

Maybe theres some obtuse aspect about war I'm missing since ive just played it so long. But it seems pretty straightforward to me.

i think it's inner release, it is tied with unchained,and spamming 6-7 fell cleave once every 2 minutes isn't as good as it seems. they will probably change it to increasing fell cleave damage instead to make it simpler

[Chrono_Rising]

i think it's inner release, it is tied with unchained,and spamming 6-7 fell cleave once every 2 minutes isn't as good as it seems. they will probably change it to increasing fell cleave damage instead to make it simpler

I'm going to take it at face value that warrior's difficulty is set too high for what it does. The thing is directly raising Fell cleave damage isn't going to make the class easier, on the contrary it would make it more punishing. Imagine losing an 800 potency Fell Cleave as compared to missing a 500 potency Fell Cleave.

As far as I understand, admittedly a limited understanding, I believe the issue stems from the high burst and missing a Fell Cleave or worse dying during battle messing up gauge. The only way I see to fix this (without really messing with the burst design) would be to increase the frequency of the bursting, like at minute or minute and a half intervals, but spread out the peak of the burst so that both peaks reach the same average height as before. This way messing up one high burst isn't as disastrous as is now.

Or we are all going to be very surprised lol.

[Lyth]

I think that one of the problems that SE is running into is that they tend to interpret player feedback very literally.

At the start of this expansion, for example, there was a lot of feedback from players about being forced into VIT only accessories. We may be tanks, but we still want to see our abilities have an impact when they hit. Instead of presenting this as "we don't want you to completely nerf our damage output", players said "we're worried about holding enmity" to try to justify the point. Cue 4.01, and a series of enmity boosts from the devs. The point was not about enmity. It was about damage.

The 4.1 change is similar. The WAR community as a whole pushed the idea that "we have less 'utility', so we should do higher damage". 'Utility' is a nebulous term that defies consensus. The dev response was to buff "utility" by turning Shake it Off into a powered-up version of Divine Veil. But the point was never about 'utility'. It was about damage.

It's simple enough to understand why damage output gains such a focus. For one, it's often been treated as a surrogate for skill. We've built up a culture of "I might not be able to do mechanics, but hey, check out my dps up until the point where I wiped the raid." There's also a sense since HW, especially at lower skill levels, that WAR is a good job to play if you want to give the illusion of doing high dps, without the pressure or technical skill required to play an actual dps job. It's a safe haven where you can hide under the radar.

The newest vogue has been job "difficulty". Not out of choice, but because all other excuses have been exhausted. "WAR should do more dps because it's more technically difficult to play." This is a hard sell. Players generally do not play jobs to the same level of competency. If you've sunk hundreds of hours into WAR, that's time that you didn't invest in the other two tanks. It's a very subjective concept.

The other problem is that there's a fine line between describing something as "difficult" and admitting personal weakness. Likewise, players often describe challenging things as "easy" to inflate their own skill. When players like Xeno go on about how difficult WAR is, the implication is not supposed to be that they're struggling with it. You're supposed to be impressed. As someone once aptly put it: Hardest job = my job, easiest job = your job.

The problem now is that people are scraping the bottom of the barrel for reasons why WAR could be more difficult, many of which would baffle a longtime player of the job. "B-but what if I pop all my buffs, and then, instead of pressing my highest potency attack again and again, I stare off blankly into space for two minutes?" as if this is somehow unique to WAR. I get second-hand embarrassment from reading some of these complaints. A part of me always hopes that a dps main doesn't stumble into the middle of this sort of discussion. It reflects badly on all of us.

As icing on the cake, of course, the devs once again take it in a completely different direction. "So WAR is too difficult, you say?" It's like they have selective hearing about the word "dps" when it comes to tanks.

This thread is correct. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But it's not entirely the devs' fault. Be careful what you wish for.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I'm going to take it at face value that warrior's difficulty is set too high for what it does. The thing is directly raising Fell cleave damage isn't going to make the class easier, on the contrary it would make it more punishing. Imagine losing an 800 potency Fell Cleave as compared to missing a 500 potency Fell Cleave.

There is a bit of difference between trying to fit 6 to 7 Fell Cleaves into 8 to 10 gcds and fitting 3 to 4 Fell Cleaves into 8 to 10 gcds.

Lets say Inner Release is changed increases damage dealt by gauge actions and doubles weaponskill BG generation instead of halving BG costs. This would mean that the basic 60s dps rotation would stay the mostly the same (every other burst phase would just be missing Inner Release and a Fell Cleave) instead of having 2 different burst phases in a 120s rotation.

[whiskeybravo]

Interesting. Not sure what to think of that. Only thing that really comes to mind is Unchained/Inner Release separation. But yea, I've been playing war since 2.0 too so nothing about it seems "hard to use". It's had basically the same kit the entire time.

[whiskeybravo]

I don't see how that would work and be equivalent.

Current target is 6 fell cleaves + 1 Upheaval + 2 Onslaughts in 8 GCDs, this only leaves 2 GCDs for building gauge

Proposal to increase gauge generation instead of halving costs messes up that flow. Down to 10 gauge after FC+Inf+FC+Up+On, then you use preloaded Maim/Path for 60 gauge which leaves 20 after a FC, that's 5 GCDs out of 8. You need one of those next GCDs for Heavy Swing which generates no gauge, which means you can not use a 4th FC in the 8 GCD window (20+20 = 40, because the last GCD is for FC). The only way I can see to resolve that is have Heavy Swing generate 10 gauge so you can get the last FC and end at 0 gauge. I think it would be problematic to fit in the extra onslaught.

Unless I'm missing something (probably) I don't really see that as a viable solution. Additionally, would you not have to significantly increase the damage from a single FC to make up for the fact you are replacing 2 or 3 500 potency attacks with 2 or 3 150-270 potency attacks? (ties back into the "Imagine losing an 800 potency Fell Cleave as compared to missing a 500 potency Fell Cleave.")