Warrior Rework Idea

[MagiusNecros]

Passives aren't awe inspiring unlike say Elder Scrolls Online because they may as well not exist in XIV since they really don't do much of anything outside flavor text saying attack power is this much stronger. Which is quite boring.

Shame really. Passives could be a great thing to set classes apart.

[Kalise]

The simple solution is to scrap the passive trait bonus. Passive effects are not exactly awe inspiring to start with.

Passive effects are equivalent to buff upkeep. It can be a way to shift gameplay. For example, currently due to the passive being tied to Gauge, we want to sit with at least 50 Gauge at all times and don't really want to spend any until we're about to over cap (Either at 100 or 90 (If about to use Path))

It frees up IB use and flexibility

Barely.

Now you get to maybe weave an IB in if its beneficial to do so instead of a FC. You still cannot save IB to use as a defensive skill like you can Sheltron/TBN because you're still going to want to get your Defiance stacks up ASAP to get the reward.

It's why my idea included the 2 gauges to begin with. Since, with IB using Defiance, it's a trade off, you lose its passive (In this case, it would be 10% max health and 10% healing received) to gain damage and max health (Which offsets the actual usage, and over time once getting the gauge spent back leads to an increase overall in HP)

IB is never competing with FC for resources. IB is never getting spammed whenever available for DPS output. You don't need to time things right as damage is coming to get the defensive bonus allowing flexibility in its usage.

My iteration isn't perfect and could do with more tweaks (Especially since how it ends up playing out is you alternate IB and FC as combo finishers...)

But the 2 major issues with trying to make Inner Beast akin to Sheltron and TBN are:

1) Inner Beast competes for resources with Fell Cleave. In most situations, Fell Cleave wins out in what you want to spend resources on. Attempts to change this will often either lead to IB replacing FC in terms of usage, or removing any flexibility in timing IB with actual damage effects.

See, TBN doesn't compete with Bloodspiller. In fact, it generates Bloodspiller resources when used correctly. This means that you don't have to decide to TBN OR Bloodspiller. You simply do both.

Same deal with Sheltron. It doesn't compete with Holy Spirit. It in fact gains resources for Holy Spirit.

2) Inner Beast deals direct damage. This means that freedom of usage results in the want to use it when available for DPS gain (Especially as it hits harder than any of our other attacks outside of Fell Cleave)

Again, TBN and Sheltron do not have this. Sheltron is close in that it creates an opportunity to Shield Swipe. But at the end of the day, TBN and Sheltron deal 0 damage unless you are using them to mitigate damage to gain the ability to use another skill.

This means that if you wish to rework a skill into being a Sheltron/TBN analogue you'd need to look at something like Infuriate. Wherein you use it to mitigate damage in some way and then it provides you with resources to use FC/IB. That way, the skill itself is not dealing any damage so you have more flexibility in its use, not wanting to use it outside of situations where you get it to generate resources.

The issue at that point becomes, what kind of WAR mechanic can be used to turn "Mitigation" into proccing Infuriate granting its resources?

As I've mentioned previously, it's hard to think of an actual mechanic involving WAR themed defenses. Unless they do a PLD and allow the Parrying of spells (Like they made spells Blockable) and thus WAR could become a Parrydin and get forced parry as a theme (Which is already shown via Raw Intuition)... Though if it was tied to Infuriate and it was still providing 50 gauge, that would be such a significant DPS increase so to make it so that you'd be spamming it for AA's from bosses rather than saving it for big damage spikes (Which is one of the notable things from Sheltron, its DPS gain is relatively minor, with Shield Swipe being only 100 potency and can be triggered naturally and the MP gain from Sheltron also being not particularly large)

It all ends up being pretty tricky to balance. When you have to try and make something unique (So you can't just slap TBN on WAR and call it a day. Even though TBN is the epitome of active mitigation, wherein its effective, it amplifies CD's significantly and it becomes a DPS gain when used against meaningful damage as opposed to if you spammed it against fluff), that is a DPS gain to make its use actually wanted, but not so big of a DPS gain that you explicitly spam it against fluff (Like boss AA's) or go out of your way to stand in AoE's.

I mean, here's some other ideas I've had for such a thing but have ultimately been unable to create a satisfying iteration for:

* Having the inherent ability where you "Counterattack" whenever you parry, dealing some amount of damage back to the attacker with then some "Forced Parry" effect (With RNG parries still occurring as well as Raw Intuition).

Drawbacks are: Ineffective against spell based attackers. Doesn't specifically target damage spikes and thus parrying fluff AA's will also trigger these damage procs.

* When healing yourself while injured (Lily generation mechanic of "While injured") you deal damage to nearby targets, with bonus potency the lower your health is. (Allowing IB to situationally be higher damage than FC)

Drawbacks are: Being healed/shielded actively reduces your damage output. You want to actively take damage to then heal it back up.

* A skill where you absorb a percentage of the incoming damage (Before mitigation) and then deal a counterattack for a certain potency (Increased by max health increases)

Alternative: Reflect a portion of the enemies damage back at them (Before mitigation). Damage dealt is capped at specific potency (Increased by max health increases)

Drawbacks are: Intentionally taking damage to deal more DPS. Fluff damage can be exploited for DPS gains.

Hmmm...

I think that final idea might have some usable design space, reflecting damage would certainly cause the desire to save it for hard hitting attacks. I think the question is trying to figure out where to place it in terms of cost, CD etc.

Maybe as a secondary Defiance spender? Where you then IB during fluff damage and then use this during spike damage? Perhaps as a sort of mirror to Upheaval as an oGCD 25 Gauge spender...

I will take some time and muse on this as well as prior skills and maybe design something.

[Kalise]

Update:

I've changed some things within the rework in the OP.

Highlights include:

* Defiance is no longer gained from taking damage and is now only generated through actions.

* Defiance gauge no longer grants max health and healing received and instead gives Parry.

* Butcher's Block combo no longer has increased Enmity gain, instead enmity is focused solely into Unchained.

* Butcher's Block no longer grants MP and instead gives a 10% DR buff.

* Gauge Spenders are no longer tied to combo's and are instead readily usable (Provided you have the 50 Gauge to spend)

* Overpower and Storm's Eye combo's no longer generate gauge.

* Infuriate reworked into Furious Guard, allowing for an Active Mitigation effect that can be timed for DPS increases.

* New Trait Fractured Earth at level 66

* New Skill Furore at level 72

* New Trait Deep Wounds at level 74

* New Skill Inner Calm at level 76

* New Trait Magic Counter at level 78

* New Skill Tectonic Fissure at level 80

[Tint]

But how necessary is a stun specifically?

Especially when I've made Interject work against all interruptible skills (Be they ability or spells).

Stun stops an enemy for 5 seconds from attacking you at all.

Well, it's not that necessary, but it becomes handy for example in Eureka when you fight against mutatet monsters 5 levels above you with the wrong element in defense...
Leviathan Ex, the add wich casts fear. Stun it right when it spawns and you have 5 seconds more to burst it down.
Stun the last boss in Qarn Hm when a party member is tethered, so the boss can't run after him and he doesn't turn into a mummy.

A stun is not only an interruption, but also a mitigation tool.

[Raldo]

I like to use stun in dungeons when there's one mob in a pack that takes longer to kill than the rest (or one that's just getting killed slower). When it's near death, I kick it in the face for the long stun, then run off toward the next set of trash.

[Shurrikhan]

I think I get what you're going for here, but honestly... the skills themselves seem to have been left lackluster to accommodate the dual-gauge, instead of the effects (rather than merely the resources) of the dual-gauge being really milked/made milkable to grant those skills depth. It's a good enough direction but something just feels slightly... bland, about it?
(Of course, a lot of that will come down to my comparing it with pipedream revisions of combos so that we needn't (technically or just effectively) hit 111222111333222111 etc.)

Not sure why people are hung up on the stun, as more mobs can be silenced and pacified than stunned, so this would actually make it more reliable -- though at cost of diminished AA damage taken, easier positioning for melee, and a secondary CD. But, honestly, I too would prefer to just see it as a stun, and then have stuns automatically degrade to silence/pacify when the target is stun-immune. I'd also prefer it again be called Brutal Swing, albeit in the same RA slot as Low Blow and, say, Riot Shield.

I don't much mind the Provoke change but at the same time, it, too, seems... a little off? I'd like to know more of the context of MP usage across all tanks, though, if I'm to judge it fairly.

I don't like Onslaught being pushed to a 30s CD. I prefer it be a damage-loss-unless-saving-a-GCD-of-uptime with good alternate enmity generation utility.

Furore reminds of when we literally had a skill called Barbaric Yalp, but more importantly makes me question the MP usage...

Equilibrium now seems a bit... weird? I would have figured it'd have more to do with equilibrium now that you have a dual-gauge -- e.g. by granting half the lead of one gauge to the other and then boosting both by half of the lower gauge's value or whatnot -- Or at least giving gauge-scalar HP and MP, even if that might make it a little less obvious or easily accessible/reliable. We seem to have that in spades, and I'd honestly prefer a few more moments of glory on Warrior over simple unvaried reliability. That's just personal preference, though, ofc.

Inner Calm doesn't seem very Warrior-like. There's doubtless something nearly synonymous that would, along the lines of a battle trance, but this isn't quite that. I'm also not sure a consumable ability is the best place for a self-HoT, even if I do like the synergy/anti-synergy of it? It feels like a lot has been left disconnected to the gauge systems that could be deepening them without making Warrior overly sluggish to accommodate changing situations.

[Kalise]

I think I get what you're going for here, but honestly... the skills themselves seem to have been left lackluster to accommodate the dual-gauge, instead of the effects (rather than merely the resources) of the dual-gauge being really milked/made milkable to grant those skills depth. It's a good enough direction but something just feels slightly... bland, about it?

You're welcome to offer suggestions to improve said skills.

As of right now, I'm keeping IB and FC mostly intact given that as is, just being high potency skills makes us want to spam them over any combos.

Though, I kind of imagine that the 4 new non-combo skills that cost MP to be able to compete with them for damage. Offering a break in the combo spam wherein you fit in one of those skills as they come off CD/you generate the required MP.

I don't much mind the Provoke change but at the same time, it, too, seems... a little off? I'd like to know more of the context of MP usage across all tanks, though, if I'm to judge it fairly.

Well, MP usage for PLD and DRK I'd imagine would stay mostly the same. With PLD wanting to use MP for Holy Spirit/Requiescat and DRK wanting to use MP for Dark Arts (Whatever form it takes)

As such, the Provoke change makes the skill much more flexible in usage, but due to the precedent of MP being actually useful for DPS, it would be less likely to be spammed on CD for DPS/Enmity.

WAR is the only job that would have some concerns with MP being less relevant, though, hopefully the inclusion of those MP using CD's should cause enough contention for MP that you wouldn't spam Provoke.

I don't like Onslaught being pushed to a 30s CD. I prefer it be a damage-loss-unless-saving-a-GCD-of-uptime with good alternate enmity generation utility.

The CD increase is mostly just to stop DRK's from crying about how much mobility WAR has because of the difference in CD between Onslaught and Plunge.

Also, it allows for there to be a more consistent balance around anti-knockback skills (Especially if Plunge stopped being a DPS increase to spam and if Tempered Will was brought down to a 60s CD similar to the mDPS Role Action Arm's Length)

Furore reminds of when we literally had a skill called Barbaric Yalp, but more importantly makes me question the MP usage...

MP usage is to create a secondary dynamic and resource competition with enmity oGCD's.

Without competition for resources with the likes of Provoke and Onslaught, these skills would simply be used as available for (Albeit very minor) DPS gains. As opposed to being utilized when necessary for their enmity (Or mobility). With Onslaught being moved off of Gauge as we now have increased competition for gauge usage with the higher costing Upheaval.

The secondary aspect is that MP generation becomes a thing. Since, you'd want to be trying to generate enough MP to use all of these MP costing skills on CD. Meaning that things like Refresh can benefit you, as well as leveraging Butcher's Block combo's (Thus leading to Inner Beast usage to dump Defiance) being a possibility to occasionally make focusing on Defiance a higher DPS gain than focusing Deliverance and thus Fell Cleave.

Equilibrium now seems a bit... weird?

What do you mean "Now"? Are you implying that Equilibrium doesn't already feel weird in its current state of being TP restore in Deliverance and HP restore in Defiance? Thus having even less relevance to any sort of "Equilibrium"

I would have figured it'd have more to do with equilibrium now that you have a dual-gauge -- e.g. by granting half the lead of one gauge to the other and then boosting both by half of the lower gauge's value or whatnot -- Or at least giving gauge-scalar HP and MP

The issue with such things is it will promote even more Fell Cleave spam (Via Deliverance focus). Since any dual gauge generation will be leveraged to maximize Deliverance to spend on Fell Cleave.

While the whole point of the Dual Gauge system was to remove some of the single minded focus onto Fell Cleave >>>>>>> All.

Inner Calm doesn't seem very Warrior-like. There's doubtless something nearly synonymous that would, along the lines of a battle trance, but this isn't quite that. I'm also not sure a consumable ability is the best place for a self-HoT, even if I do like the synergy/anti-synergy of it?

Inner Calm was designed based of the Tactics A2 skill of the same name. Wherein it is a defensive boost (In Tactics A2 it increased evasion... But that's not a particularly balanced thing for XIV)

Thus the idea of a HoT made sense. Calming the inner beast to regain life (As opposed to angering it and gaining damage)

As far as the consuming goes, I think it makes perfect sense. You pop a CD to soak a big hit, then afterwards, you consume it and gain a HoT to help heal up the damage you did take from it. Meanwhile, if there isn't a damage spike you can pop the HoT before you put up your CD's and get layered defenses to deal with constant incoming damage.

[Cabalabob]

Probably because role actions are boring at best and superfluous at worst.

Like, many role actions are literally useless (Break, Drain, Goad, Surecast, Foot Graze, Leg Graze, Arm Graze), or incredibly niche (Convalescence, Awareness, Arm's Length, Crutch, Eye for an Eye, Rescue, Mana Shift, Apocatastasis, Palisade, Erase, Feint, Addle).

With some actions seemingly only existing to create ability bloat (Protect, Peloton, Cleric Stance - Literally all 3 could just be passive effects)

There are very few Role Actions that are actually meaningful. Thus, with such few meaningful Role Actions, why not make new animations for the same basic tools? Or fit them in with the already existing Job actions that are completely useless anyway?

Except you’re not suggesting remove role actions altogether or remove useless role actions, you’re suggesting remove useful ones and add them back in again for every tank job.

Why not do this? Waste of development time, the time they spend making another rampart and convalescence clone for every new tank job with its own name and animation could have gone into a new unique skill. That’s the whole point of these moves being role actions.

Same goes for your idea for anticipation and provoke. What it boils down to is remove it and give every job their own version. You also wouldn’t want to attach provoke to a tanks only ranged attack skill, that won’t end well.

I also question how much endgame you’ve done based on the role actions you consider niche. Like you don’t even need to be talking savage, even ex primals see use out of most of those skills like convalescence, awareness, surecast, arm’s length, feint/addle, MANA SHIFT (?!?!).

I won’t bother getting into the “useless” ones but I’d say they are the more niche moves. It’s more that the way the game is designed invalidates them most of the time more than anything.

[Kalise]

Except you’re not suggesting remove role actions altogether or remove useless role actions, you’re suggesting remove useful ones and add them back in again for every tank job.

Actually I am suggesting removing useless ones. That's the whole idea about only keeping the useful ones (By adding them back into the normal kits of jobs so that the Role Action section no longer exists)

Why not do this? Waste of development time, the time they spend making another rampart and convalescence clone for every new tank job with its own name and animation could have gone into a new unique skill. That’s the whole point of these moves being role actions.

At the same time, one might have to consider how they're going to have to spend time messing with Role Actions anyway (Since, Invigorate, Goad and Tactician are becoming useless with the removal of TP) to say nothing about the unique skills they already had before they decided to replace them with default ones that use a single generic animation (Based on a specific class's prior skill...)

Or should we just do all development cutting and give everyone more generic actions?

Tanks no longer have unique combos, instead their Enmity and DPS combos are now role actions.
Healers have their smol heal, large heal, AoE heal, instant heal + regen/shield as role action.
Healers have their DoT and nuke as role action.
Mages have their first level nuke as role action.
mDPS have their combos as role action.

Since it's a waste of development time to create job specific versions of these right?

I also question how much endgame you’ve done based on the role actions you consider niche. Like you don’t even need to be talking savage, even ex primals see use out of most of those skills like convalescence, awareness, surecast, arm’s length, feint/addle, MANA SHIFT (?!?!).

Convalescence is mostly redundant outside of Critlo fishing because healers already have enough throughput to massively heal Tanks up with their oGCD rotations.

Awareness is a minor mitigation bonus against AA's (Which aren't really a big deal) outside of specific encounters where bosses gain critical rate buffs (The only one I can remember off the top of my head is Shiva)

Surecast/Arm's Length are only useful when a boss does a knockback/pull and are otherwise useless. Given that knockback/pulls aren't a constantly used mechanic, they're niche.

Feint/Addle are niche because they rely on specific damage types for them to work. A boss doesn't do physical damage with its strong skill? Feint is useless. Vice versa.

Mana Shift is niche because the number of times when a mage can actually sacrifice their MP is very limited. Usually coming down to the most accessible usage of Mana Shift being on a BLM during their UI phase (In which they only want to spend 2 GCD's in). RDM already only thrives off of Lucid CD's and has potential Verraise MP to keep. SMN has some more flexibility due to Aetherflow, though again it depends on how many Raises they need to use.

It’s more that the way the game is designed invalidates them most of the time more than anything.

But... Why have them if the game is designed in a way that invalidates them?

What does the existence of "Role Actions" actually serve? Especially during this post "Every Role Action Can Be Equipped" change (Where before, you had to actually make a choice of which 5 actions where the most useful for the upcoming engagement)

[Seraphor]

Why do all these job rework threads start with “remove all the role actions and give each job their own version!”. That’s kinda the point of the role actions, so they don’t have to keep making new animations for the same basic tools for every job...

A lot of role actions used to be job specific skills that did similar things, they've already removed a lot of job unique skills to dumb down the system we have, so the animations already exist.

All healers had their own unique Esuna for example, with their own animations, but now we all share the WHM spell instead.
We've lost variety in flavour, and WHM lost some identity.

I just hope they don't continue the trend by giving all healers 'Raise' as a role skill, or all tanks 'Unmend' and 'Flash' as role skills.