Thread: 5.0 WAR is a disappointment

Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

Bloodbath is only 20% of damage dealt converted to HP, Nascent Flash is 50% for the user. Even if you have 10% mitigation this would still leave RI inferior to Nascent.

The Bloodbath effect was referring to "damage based self-healing" buff effect not just the percentage used on the dps role action.

Frankly, I think the only viable solution to make both abilities useful in their own rights would be to unlink their cooldowns from one another, because unless RI either gets massively buffed, NF gets massively nerfed, or their cooldowns are no longer linked together, RI will keep its position of almost never being used due to almost never being superior to NF.

They can't unlink RI and NF because, just like HoS, Sheltron/Intervention and TBN, they are meant to be protect self/protect others choices. RI and NF's problem is tied into it being Protect Self vs "Protect Self AND Others" choice.

The only real options for fixing this are either removing NF's self heal or giving the self heal to RI.

Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

The Bloodbath effect was referring to "damage based self-healing" buff effect not just the percentage used on the dps role action.


They can't unlink RI and NF because, just like HoS, Sheltron/Intervention and TBN, they are meant to be protect self/protect others choices. RI and NF's problem is tied into it being Protect Self vs "Protect Self AND Others" choice.

The only real options for fixing this are either removing NF's self heal or giving the self heal to RI.

Except, self healing and sustain has always been Warrior's thing. In my opinion the best option, if SE really wants their CDs to stay linked together, is to remove the Nascent Glint effect entirely so that Nascent Flash is solidified as Warrior's personal "unique" cooldown, and then instead to add the Nascent Glint healing effect to Raw Intuition while allowing RI to be cast on a party member. At that point you have to choose between healing yourself for 50% of damage dealt over 6 seconds, or providing a party member with 20% damage mitigation and healing them for 25% of your damage dealt for 6 seconds. Although, I do see how 20% mitigation and some minor healing could be considered too powerful of a party support buff.

[QUOTE=Lucy_Pyre;5303012]Except, self healing and sustain has always been Warrior's thing. In my opinion the best option, if SE really wants their CDs to stay linked together, is to remove the Nascent Glint effect entirely so that Nascent Flash is solidified as Warrior's personal "unique" cooldown, and then instead to add the Nascent Glint healing effect to Raw Intuition while allowing RI to be cast on a party member.

I know you want NF as a personal cooldown, but Thrill of Battle is the Warrior's personal unique cooldown and RI was added as a personal mitigation cooldown back in HW. NF was always added as a support cooldown. They are not going to change that.

At that point you have to choose between healing yourself for 50% of damage dealt over 6 seconds, or providing a party member with 20% damage mitigation and healing them for 25% of your damage dealt for 6 seconds. Although, I do see how 20% mitigation and some minor healing could be considered too powerful of a party support buff.

Self-Healing has a very narrow viability window with any piece of content. Not enough incoming damage and the Warrior is effectively immortal. To much damage and the the Job ends up squishy. This is why changes were made in 2.1 to make Warrior less self-heal reliant. Despite desires for more damage based self-healing you are unlikely to ever see it core to the warrior again.

Warrior isn't "reliant" on its self healing as things currently stand. It is, however, WAR's "unique" mitigation cooldown. Besides, my suggestion would not increase WAR's self healing at all. It would simply shift the job's "personal" and "ally" CDs so that both RI and NF have clear cut uses.

Originally Posted by millktea

ToB is hardly an unique mitigation cd. Its not long enough nor defensive enough to be. It needs to be 20s. And even then, its just a temporary "10s of classic defiance" buff, and defiance was nearly useless, especially since it didn't have its true effect unless you were at max hp.

It's functionally a 20% HP shield that can be restored through healing which is nothing to scoff at.

Thrill of Battle is actually quite akin to The Blackest Night, which many players like to say is the strongest mitigation ability in the game.
ToB, by instantly healing the amount of HP gained, it is providing a 20% HP shield upon activation which is only 5% less than TBN. Additionally, it provides the healing boost which increases it's overall defensive/sustain capabilities which depending on the situation could end up being more effective overall than TBN. It also lasts 10s as opposed to the 7s of TBN and doesn't have any cost or potential DPS loss caveats like TBN does. The one thing that gives TBN a real edge is it's frequency, which while it can be used very often, in practice it is not used as frequently as possible due to it having to break or you loose MP/DPS which means that the cadence and mechanics of the content itself dictates how frequent you will be able to successfully use TBN.
So while I would still consider TBN to be the overall more powerful of the two abilities because in the right situations with the right usage, it can provide incredible amounts of mitigation, ToB is still a very good defensive ability and if you think TBN is a good ability, you should also be seeing how good ToB actually is.

It is also not really like "classic Defiance" because the main issue that players had with Defiance was that it didn't heal the extra HP provided when switching to Defiance and so it required a bit more extra healing resources and time to become effectively equal to the other tanks stances which provided an immediate 20% damage reduction. This was compounded with the more fluid style of play that emerged for WAR where stance switching was more common, resulting in this discrepancy coming up more often. In 2.0 Defiance was especially painful since Inner Beast didn't provide a damage reduction buff but a massive self-heal which didn't help much for really big tank-busters since it only regained HP after the hit and that hit may have been big enough to just flat out kill you.
ToB acting like an at-will shield with the bonus of increased healing for it's duration avoids all the major pitfalls of classic Defiance.

If you compare ToB to the 90s unique defensive abilities on the the other tanks, you can see that it stacks up pretty well and in some cases surpasses them.

Compared against Dark Mind, DM has a lower recast of 60s but is magic damage only. It also provides 20% damage reduction as opposed to a 20% HP shield, which is better will depend on the amount of incoming damage. If the amount surpasses ~100% of your HP (not ToB buffed), then Dark Mind will handle more damage. If it is less, then ToB will handle more. That is also not even factoring in the healing bonus from ToB. They both have the same duration of 10s.
That gives Dark Mind the edge in fights with hard-hitting tank-busters where the 20% reduction makes the difference or frequent periods of high magic damage where the shorter recast makes the difference. In all other scenarios ToB will be better. It must also be considered that outside of scenarios where DM shines, it tends to have severely reduced effectiveness such as if a fight is very physical damage heavy you just won't be able to use DM on much. It really depends on the content and it's design as to whether DM is super powerful or essentially pointless. ToB does not have that consideration and is effective in all content.

Compared against Camouflage, ToB has a shorter duration but provides stronger defenses during that time. If the damage is fairly low, ToB could essentially negate all of it for 10s. If it is a high damage spike like a buster, ToB can reduce a decent chunk of it. Camo on the other hand is not very effective against spike damage since the base reduction is low at 10%, the parry increase may not even trigger and even if it does won't reduce the hit that much more, and the longer duration doesn't really do much since the damage is concentrated. Camo is really most effective in periods of sustained frequent smaller hits, like mitigating the damage from auto-attacks especially if you are getting hit by multiple targets where the parry increase and longer duration can really help.
So in most trials, bosses, etc. ToB will likely be the more effective of the two.

Compared against Divine Veil, well you obviously get a very drastic difference in that ToB is self-mitigation and Divine Veil only provides protection to the other players in your party. I would say that in most scenarios ToB has the edge simply because it protects you as the tank, provides greater protection and doesn't require extra input to activate like Divine Veil does. Divine Veil could potentially be more useful than ToB but that would require a fight where there is a lot of high AoE damage that the healers may need assistance on to keep in check.

So based on those comparisons, I would say Thrill of Battle is quite good as a unique tank defensive and is probably the most "general use" of them since all the other tank unique defensives have some pretty heavy caveats or considerations that make their usage more selective or niche. In the right situations the other unique defensives could outshine ToB, but ToB will always be an effective defensive no matter the situation.

Thrill of Battle is actually pretty good when you think about it, compared to other skills that just reduce damage by percentages.

Assuming you have 150k HP, getting hit by an 80k attack will put you at 70k HP.

If you use a cooldown for 20% reduction, that damage drops to 64k, so you're left at 86k HP after the hit.

With Thrill of Battle though your HP will jump up to 180k HP. The hit will go unmitigated, so you'll lose the full 80k HP but still be left at 100k HP which is still going to be there after Thrill of Battle runs out.

Not only that but heals you get afterwards will be improved, PLUS they only need to heal you back to 150k since those extra 30k are just a bonus that will go away.

In practice though, Thrill is probably my least-used cooldown. I only use it after Holmgang to help with self-healing. For everything else, there's Mastercard. And Vengeance/Rampart/Raw Intuition. Hell, even Equilibrium sort of counts as a cooldown if you think about it.

I was reading that, which was a good read, and I had this feeling you were leading up to something and then...

Mastercard.

I love it.

If you aren't trying ToB in with Equilibrium and/or Nascent Flash to maximize your healing gain post-TB you're not using the cooldown properly. Pop Vengeance/Rampart + ToB just before a buster and then Equil or NF after the buster. Healer now has to do exactly nothing to you and can keep DPSing.

Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

If you aren't trying ToB in with Equilibrium and/or Nascent Flash to maximize your healing gain post-TB you're not using the cooldown properly. Pop Vengeance/Rampart + ToB just before a buster and then Equil or NF after the buster. Healer now has to do exactly nothing to you and can keep DPSing.

Not sure if it's just me, since I've been trying to be more conscience of using NF this cycle, but it seems like IR/NF line up with more busters than last tier.