Dear Square Enix, please give me my Shake It Off back.

[Tiem]

I was severely disappointed to see that it was being removed, and every time I play the game I look at this mockery that it was replaced with in dismay... yet the irony is that I cannot shake that off.



Edited: Apparently the character limit wouldn't let me post the original message, and my copy/paste failed so now I don't have the post anymore.

The new Shake it Off (8-24% hp shield, uses up all your defensive cooldowns for maximum effectiveness) is something that really only would be used in two situations: when everything is going well and thus you don't really get much benefit out of it, or when everything has gone to shit and it isn't really going to save anyone. Because it ends all of a warrior's defensive cooldowns that means that it should not ever really be used as a main tank; only as an off-tank and only ever when there is no chance of needing to switch in as the main tank for the next minute or two (meaning not savage content, or most things that have mechanics that require tanks to switch).

In truth, the best possible situation that I can think of for it to be used would be just before a party-wide damage mechanic that is also a tank swap, using the ability while the buffs it consumes are only a few seconds away from expiring, and also within the timeframe (15s) of keeping the shield active when the party-wide damage goes off. However, as most content of this sort is such that a single AoE shield from a Scholar or Astrologean would be able to cover the party 80-150% as well as Shake it Off, it hardly seems like a necessity and instead would simply be something that is there to save a single cast and some mana on a healer. So obviously the maximum usefulness would be in a party that has 2 white mages, because it would be the only party-wide shield.

If the warrior is off-tanking and uses this ability, their defensive abilities would be on cooldown if used to full effect, and if used at base value 8% of maximum hp is not a shield that will do much to mitigate damage to most of the party. It would also prevent the warrior from swapping in for the main tank if needed because nearly all of his/her defensive cooldowns would be unavailable. For 4-man content the damage mitigation from defensive cooldowns is going to be more useful to the party than the AoE shield as most mechanics in 4-man content are not the sort that would be able to wipe out a party without shielding.

So again, I really do not see the usefulness of this ability outside of trying in vain to save a run that has more problems than 8-24% of their HP... or being icing on the cake of something that is already going well.

Old Shake it Off had a number of uses, and there are a lot of things that you could do with the old version that the new version cannot.
1. Removing all (not one) removable debuffs can save several casts of Esuna in some fights, freeing up a healer to focus on other things.
2. Being able to remove an effect like Heavy or Vulnerability can mitigate more damage to the tank than the shield would be able to during a fight.
3. Fixing hilarious DF mistakes, like healers that don't put Esuna on their bar or don't know to/don't pay attention to removing Doom in v4 or Dun Scaith.
4. Soloing SB A ranks. You can't do it nearly as well as with the old Shake it Off.

In summary: I miss this ability, because it let me do things that I can't do now and what they replaced it with is useless in nearly every situation except when everything is already going exactly according to plan and therefore you don't need it.

[Arek]

You must be joking... right ?

The new Shake it Off is incredibly powerfull in Omega 4 Savage.

I switch from Dark knight for several reasons, but THAT shield, helps alot.

[Legion88]

You think curing a negative status effect is more worth then a shield for the whole party?
In a time when most (all importent) negative status effects are not cureable?

[Canadane]

You think curing a negative status effect is more worth then a shield for the whole party?
In a time when most (all importent) negative status effects are not cureable?

To be fair, it cured ALL removable debuffs. Not just one.

[Satarn]

Requiring to eat WAR's own cooldowns to be effective doesn't make Shake if Off useless, it makes it awesome. The change to the skill was honestly genius - not only was a crappy, useless skill replaced with something very useful, but at the same time it added depth to WAR's cd management. You can't just pop it whenever it's up and a raid buster is coming like you'd do with Veil, because like you said, 8% of target's hp isn't gonna do much. What you do instead, is plan out all your defensives to not only get as much mitigation as possible but also to get opportunities to spend reminder of your cds to boost Shake it Off. You don't need to convert your buffs into shield right away - you can as well wait until they've got just 1 second left on the timer. For example you know that there's a raid aoe coming 10 seconds after a tank buster, so you plan out your cds to use Vengence and Thrill for the tank buster and after you took it, you can safely use Shake it Off to protect your group.

[Dianova]

It you could count on one hand how many uses Shake It Off in game. 99.9% of all relevant debuffs it did nothing against.

[Tegernako]

Quick everyone, post "are you kidding me" images.

[silverlunarfox]

I cannot take this seriously....the change to Shake It Off was the best thing to happen to Warrior. Esp since our group runs two.....

go home, you're drunk >.>

[Ranmyaku]

As this seems to be an unpopular opinion, I do somehwat feel shake it off could see another look.
1. The group shield aspect is nice but isn't exactly required to clear content. (at the very least this is something DRK can't do).
2. The group shield aspect isn't needed if a PLD is present.
3. Paladins have Passage of Arms and Divine Veil to accomplish similar group-wide damage reduction without having to burn/eat all their other cooldowns. (now admittedly the paladin can't benefit personally from divine veil but the guaranteed block on passage of arms will generally help).
3.1- I think half the reason they redid it to this was because they needed raw intuition to have a purpose in content considering parry is fairly worthless outside of big pulls; compared to the super-buff paladins got from being able to suddenly block magic damage.

So i don't know if re-adding the status-removal aspect of it would be the way; but i don't feel its perfect the way it is either.

[Hruodig]

I don't think you actually play this game. New shake it off is incredibly nice for helping healers whenever possible. Any extra mitigation is helpful. Old shake it off was...I maybe used it once, and not in savage that's for sure.