Changes that war need?

[Jokersoal]

Hello everyone here!

Dear Yoshida, the dev combat team and players reading this (very) long post,

I'm Jokersoal, war player since the end of HW and raider since SB. I started to raid since that expansion but really started to optimize my war since 4.2 and then cleared all extremes and savages but not an ultimate yet (it won't last for too long I hope!).

In this post I will try to describe as best as possible how tanks (espiacially war) are, damage/rotation/skill/interest wise, compared to each others. Then I'll propose what I think should be change on war to finally do a sort of conclusion of other thoughts I have. ( I won't really cover the other tanks, not the goal of the post and I'm not the best person to do that)

My post will be oriented towards high-level contents (extremes/savages, eventually ultimates) in general then I won't really talk about solo/casual contents so I apologize in advance! Last words before starting: some information/ideas in this post come from some posts on these forums and the balance discord so don't be surprised if you see similar ideas ( and big thanks to them) !

First, is one tank really bad in particular? Not really, tank balance has never been so good (personal pleasure took apart).
But there are some disappointments regarding war when you take personal pleasure into account:

-war and drk have both the lowest damage (difference is really small compared to gnb and pld but still) and their defensive kit doesn't really make up for that (I won't go into details since it's about how the healing system works in this game->another subject, cf the end of this post)

- I think tanks' damage are not high enough compared to healers' but mainly because of how the healing system works (once again, cf the end of this post)

- kill time has a too big impact on war's dps (hits like a wet noodle outside of Inner release): you can lose around 200 dps just because you killed the boss 20s before your next IR for example.

- regarding skill, we could say pld is low-skill floor, high-skill ceiling; gnb is low/medium-skill floor, medium-skill ceiling; drk is low-skill floor, low/medium-skill ceiling and war is low-skill floor, low-skill ceiling (the skill difference between the floor and the ceiling is explained by "what you have to do to optimize the job"). My opinion about it later.

Maybe I missed some ideas but the most important are here I assume.

[Jokersoal]

So let's go to the 2nd part: the changes war need.

a) Assuming you don't want to change how war's rotation works:

- quality of life changes (=they won't really matter in high-level contents but are nice):
*put inner beast potency to at least 400 ( it still has it's old potency) to be higher than combo enders' so it's more intuitive for low level players
*mythril tempest also grants storm's eye buff for 10s : to make dungeon runs smoother
*no need for a second target for nascent flash : still cool to save a run from mistakes but not really a big matter.
*Thrill of battle extended to at least 15 or 20s eventually ?
*Make aoe gauge spenders (decimate and chaotic cyclone) worth at 2 targets again ( it feels weird to monotarget meanwhile you do your aoe combos)
*Remove anti-knockback on inner release : it’s more often a curse than a blessing depending on fights.

- adding 20 additional potency on combo enders, storm's path and storm's eye and/or 10 or 20 potency on fell cleave and inner chaos would allow war to reach or surpass gnb/pld’s dps (I’m not brave enough to go through math wizardry but it should be correct).

b) Assuming war’s rotation should be changed :

- I don’t really mind high bursty jobs but on war , kill time is almost a meme for your dps, on some fights, it ends like « your teammates are either not playing well enough or not bad enough ». So making the war’s dps less dependant on burst phase is cool (Inner chaos was a good step towards this !).

- to talk again about skill ( war=low-skill floor, low-skill ceiling), yeah war’s optimizations (dps wise) are very little and don’t even make that big off a difference so maybe we should go towards a more rewarding rotation would be nice : like 4.1 rotation for example even if it feels less synergistic than 4.2. So maybe a mix between the 2 ?

-in general, maybe the idea of chaining 5x the same skill shouldn’t be encouraged, I guess on war i’s ok because UNGA BUNGA fell cleave but still..

- having many guaranted crit/dh skills lower the war’s syngergy in a group because it can’t use well the crit/dh raidbuffs so maybe lowering the importance of those skills in war dps or make him convert the crit/dh raibuff in %dmg raidbuff ?
I guess this end the second part.

[SnowVix]

*mythril tempest also grants storm's eye buff for 10s : to make dungeon runs smoother

i highly doubt this one is on the table. design philosophy seems, based on monk/samurai/rogue/dragoon (assuming both the combo parts extending blood and not having one of them extend disembowel to be an oversight) that aoe combos will extend buffs but not initiate them. there's a good argument that since tanks need to start in aoe on pulls it wouldn't be wrong to give that, but it seems contrary to all evidence of design philosophy that we as players can see.

[Jokersoal]

And now the third and last part !

This will just be about little thoughts to avoid getting this post longer.

- In general rotations should go towards rewarding the player if he optimizes it without letting casual and beginner players left behind : in a perfect world, jobs should be low-skill floor, high skill ceiling, no ?

- regarding tanks’ damage versus healers’ damage : I think tanks’ damage should be higher thank healers in general to reward the executions of tank uptime strats since they’re harder in general.

- Speaking of healer’s damage, they are so high because even if Square enix thinks healers should focus on heals, the content is not designed for that idea (unless in ultimate) : the incoming damage in a boss fight works by spikes and not « by continuity » and they’re not even even enough damage coming (or healing spells are too strong ?) and that leads to good healers having a really high proportion of damage spells casted because they have not much to do so otherwise.

And this concludes my long post. A big thanks for the brave that read everything !

English is not my native language so I hope I was clear enough, didn’t make too many mistakes.
Constructives ideas are welcome.
Thanks for your attention !

[shao32]

you can edit you first post to bypass the character limit ^^

both DRK and WAR are low skill flow/skill ceiling, heck they don't even have a optimization channel on balance discord, both jobs needs some help, basically are mostly the same with diferent skin.

[Esmoire]

A very much advocate for some kind of change to make Mythril Tempest grant Storm's Eye even if the buff isn't up yet. Feels like we need to do at least three GCDs with Nascent Flash on the pack before we can take a moment to get the buff up, and we want to buff up before we spend resources. This kind of system for keeping buffs up only after they have been applied already works OK for melee DPS because we don't really have any other responsibilities. It's a bit clunky on a tank.

I don't think we necessarily need to do potency increases for the sake of bringing tanks closer since they are all already so close together, though I would like if WAR had the crit bonus on the gauge returned since that was just one more thing to distinguish warrior players of varying ability.

[Makeda]

- regarding skill, we could say pld is low-skill floor, high-skill ceiling; gnb is low/medium-skill floor, medium-skill ceiling; drk is low-skill floor, low/medium-skill ceiling and war is low-skill floor, low-skill ceiling (the skill difference between the floor and the ceiling is explained by "what you have to do to optimize the job"). My opinion about it later.

Yeah that seems about right

I would say:

PLD: low-low skill floor, low skill ceiling
GNB: mid-low floor, medium ceiling
DRK: mid-low floor, mid ceiling (but this is a guess - I have only just started playing 5.0 DRK last night)
WAR: low floor, exact same ceiling - as in, once you put the icons on the screen you have mastered the entire 5.0 version of the job... /cry

To me it's the boredom factor...

WAR used to be insanely fun to play, even in base 2.0 when people said it sucked... it was absurdly fun. 5.0 just... ... ... took ... all ... of ... that ... away ...
It's just so absurdly simple, and you get like... 3 buttons total... or at least it feels that way... and you just mash them and collect your commendations...

Job balance is great... I do miss that WAR is no longer the top tank... but given how amazingly dull it is... (it is more fascinating to sit in a corner and stare at the wall)... I'm kinda glad it's not THE meta anymore...
- I miss maining it...

While I am only 62 on this character, before Shadowbringers I had '4 mains' and split the jobs between them by role, so my old 'tank main' had them all at 70 but I was always a WAR to the core at heart... this toon is only my main because I was so attached to my old tank character that I decided to "risk" dancer and viera on my least used alt... and ended up loving them, then added GNB... and now I've been getting all the jobs back and tossed 3 of my old characters into the 'ignore those on the login screen' list...

So... I was mostly a WAR main from 2.0 forward... and I'm leveling it now... but...

WTF happened to the fun of this job?

Yes, they made it easy to pick up and handle the tanks now, and they more or less 'homogenized' them for difficulty and power... but they did it by improving PLD and DRK, never messing up with GNB to begin with, and then absolutely killing all the joy out of WAR...

When I say "as soon as you put the icons on the screen you're done" - I say that because there's just nothing there anymore for this Job... just click the obvious buttons, or the ones that are flashing, and it won't ever really vary by much... and... meh...

My favorite job got killed...

It's potent, and effective... but it's still dead...

I dunno what to fix... but please fix something... without buffing or nerfing... just give me back some joy-buttons...

[BarretOblivion]

PLD: Low skill floor with medium ceiling. Slight tweaks to PLD rotations can make lining up requiscats to keep uptime on certain bosses at times where all other tanks would lose DPS uptime.
GNB: Im actually going to give this one medium/high skill floor. The reason why is you have a very real issue with droping combos or losing charges if you are gaining a charge at the wrong time. Not only that but mitigation wise GNB is the worst when it comes to personal mitigation of all the tanks with an extreme reliance on keeping uptime to finish combos.
DRK/WAR: These ones are both low for cieling and floors with DRK likely being a slightly higher floor than WAR with how TBN works and the MP management as a MT.

That being said, notice something. There are no real clear cut options for a high skill required tank (outside of GNB for arguments sake) while all other tanks have an issue with a low skill requirement and low... satisfaction I would argue. Sure, tanks don't need to be as complex with thier rotations as DPS, but asking them to be more comparable isn't a reach, especially with WAR having a signficant issue with APM as well as overall job skills to begin with out of all the other tanks. Its one of the reasons why the leveling process of WAR from 70-80 is an unsatisfying experience as you only get 1 new skill with Nascent flash from leveling while the chaos varients are more like passive skills than new skills.

[ReviaInfantry]

I don't really mind changes though for 5.0 and beyond but maybe that's because I just unlocked butchers block before update comes in.

If anything, I'd say next update fixed infuriate so FC/Decimate/Inner Chaos/Chaotic Cyclone to reduce infuriate cd by 10s. I am pretty sure this will not upset the balance too much. /s

[Nedkel]

Storms eyes should be a trait buff with 60 seconds duration activating after use of any ability (oGCD).

And the storms eye combo should be AOE that would debuff enemies dmg same as reprisal.