Warriors Thoughts

[BarretOblivion]

Some people like the core, thank you very much.

Few do. We lost a large bulk of WARs from SB to ShB and if you argue its because of GNB, its not, GNB is the 2nd least played tank so a solid portion swapped to other tanks or stopped playing tanks altogether. One of the most debated topics on the Balance discord is whether the IR rework in SB was worth it or not. Personally as a former WAR main, no, it was a terrible decision that gave WAR a death sentance as a job. Some want WAR to go back to HW WAR, some want the job to actually evolve for once an expansion unlike ShB. As a former WAR main, that's fine if you enjoy WAR somehow, I found 0 enjoyment leveling it from 70-80 week 2 of ShB and never could enjoy playing it this expansion.

[Sqwall]

Some people like the core, thank you very much.

I for one have always liked the simple core values of War that they tried to install in ARR. Key word...tried! The expansions are so caught up in evolving every single job to the point of never looking back, but I think SE forgets what makes a job fun sometimes. PLD used to be frustrating with the amount of skills and rotations it had in SB, albeit was a SOLID tank, but it was hard to manage all that for any given situation. Especially for controller players as button bloat starts to take over. SB was the worst at button bloat imo and had to addressed. SE understood this leading up to ShB and removed a TON of skills for a lot of classes. Also tank balancing was an issue also which they addressed in ShB, which is often overlooked by the population. There are some glaring issues with DRK that need to be addressed, but for the most part EVERY tank is viable in any situation.

So all that is left is the fun factor. Is the tank FUN to play? I would say this in all honesty for having a tank fun to play I personally need it to FLOW in combat. PLD does this well...I like PLD. GNB does this very well...nothing wrong with this class. DRK has good flow since it is SO flexible, when I play DRK I literally have so many options when tanking. DRK is really dynamic imo.

Then you have warrior. For me I was so frustrated to play warrior from 70-80 as I was constantly losing my eye buff. It felt like mnk losing me stacks when eye buff came of. Then I get nascent flash and I can't even use it on myself....the hell? Warrior was a hard 30 levels for me from HW to ShB. HW was fun...but not enough to make me want to main warrior.

Enter 5.3. These small tweaks really pulled it ALLLL together for me. Yes I understand I missed WAR in 4.0 when it was "at it's best". To me this is the core of warrior and I for one can't wait for what 6.0 has to offer now that they have a good base to work off of.

Can't to play more warrior.

[Kiyan]

The Nascent flash change was fine.
The duration change, made wierd moments where you are about to drop eye duration but have IR coming up feel better is fine.
These changes were QoL changes.
They DID NOT fix the job though. The core of WAR 5.0 is still rotten and bare. This did not change a slow boring gameplay the moment IR went on cooldown to be funner or more engaging. The DPS increse is only 130 or so, didn't really help WAR standout over GNB or PLD so don't expect WAR play to increase much outside of some salty DRKs swapping over.
This is like pruning up a dumpster full of trash. Sure, it looks better, but doesn't change what it is at its core.

Alright, so this is why I agree with this sentiment as a war main since 2.0, back when warrior was shit, and I still mained it.

2.1 hit and the identity was set, Warrior was the reactive meatshield tank, with short bursts of mitigation and was still hated by most healers for how hard they "spiked" compared to a paladin but was in an ok place but still lacked the stances that paladin had, most warriors didn't mind.
come heavensward, Warrior was buffed and quite frankly broken, but something was introduced that I feel while significantly improved upon the warrior's identity, also proved to be its downfall : fell cleave
Warrior mains loved it,warrior was busted, yay, The warrior gets the spotlight after being a meme in ARR (which was almost 2 years) and DRK was introduced

Dark knight was amazing, the opposite of PLD, the Selfish Magic tank compared to the Selfless magic tank, the antithesis of Paladin, the opposite element

With how strong warrior was in HW, people flocked to it's banner and got attached to it's new identity, the Berserk Fellcleaver rather than the reactive tank that old war mains played and loved

Enter halfway through HWs and Stormblood, where SE majorly fucked up and the WoWifcation began : aggro management

instead of it being a tanks job, it turned onto the already burdened DPS, where they were punished for doing good but I will come back to that in a bit

in SB, Warriors were still the best, DRK had the Mindless Darkarts spam, and dealt less damage and not to mention it's invuln is very situational and depends on which healer do you have.

1/2

[Kiyan]

Enter ShB The Tank changes hit, and they hit hard, Aggro management was becoming a problem so they decided to completely remove it, hence causing the 3 Tanks to lose half their identity as tanks, now we are over-glorified DPS, but that's fine, the problem is how they did it, the 3 tanks were "ported" to ShB trying to maintain their old identities in a different world/Era.

Warrior: was hit the hardest, it lost a majority of its core: the meatshield, the stance-dancer and became the most basic of all tanks, where the only thing they have is self-heal -incredibly situational- and Fellcleave+berserk
Dark knight: was hit pretty hard, lost Dark arts (a part of its identity, just badly implemented)became a pseudo-war, and the only thing maintaining its identity right now is TBN and Resource management.
Paladin: apparently the only tank from the old trio to still feel amazing to play in the current expansion with some jankiness (rampart, shield bash, Cover) but still maintains it's identity as the Support tank

Gunbreaker: was designed for this expansion, absolutely fantastic class and most people who tried it out (even if they didn't stick to it) would agree that it's nice


now, before people bash me and say : but all tanks are balanced now, you just want warrior to be OP again

I just wanna say this, I've been playing Warrior since launch, I never cared about numbers and this discussion isn't about warriors Prowess or balance, it's about feel, about fun and it's about the tanks identity which right now is just extremely lacking

(pardon my english, not my first language)

TlR the old tanks feel like a bad port from a different era
2/2

[Leiron]

Alright, so this is why I agree with this sentiment as a war main since 2.0, back when warrior was shit, and I still mained it.

2.1 hit and the identity was set, Warrior was the reactive meatshield tank, with short bursts of mitigation and was still hated by most healers for how hard they "spiked" compared to a paladin but was in an ok place but still lacked the stances that paladin had, most warriors didn't mind.
come heavensward, Warrior was buffed and quite frankly broken, but something was introduced that I feel while significantly improved upon the warrior's identity, also proved to be its downfall : fell cleave
Warrior mains loved it,warrior was busted, yay, The warrior gets the spotlight after being a meme in ARR (which was almost 2 years) and DRK was introduced

Dark knight was amazing, the opposite of PLD, the Selfish Magic tank compared to the Selfless magic tank, the antithesis of Paladin, the opposite element

With how strong warrior was in HW, people flocked to it's banner and got attached to it's new identity, the Berserk Fellcleaver rather than the reactive tank that old war mains played and loved

Enter halfway through HWs and Stormblood, where SE majorly fucked up and the WoWifcation began : aggro management

instead of it being a tanks job, it turned onto the already burdened DPS, where they were punished for doing good but I will come back to that in a bit

in SB, Warriors were still the best, DRK had the Mindless Darkarts spam, and dealt less damage and not to mention it's invuln is very situational and depends on which healer do you have.

1/2

Stance wise both WAR and PLD were equal.
The 20% damage reduction from iron will was equivalent to WAR's 25% HP increase from Defiance. Previously it wasn't, where WAR only had a 20% increase.
Yeah, people didn't like how more spiky damage wise it was for WAR to take damage but that's because they didn't really care for the numbers too much.
It didn't have sword oath as a stance but it didn't need it because once you removed your stance you dealt damage similar to a DPS. So it was pretty neat.
I do miss inner beast healing you, it felt nice to be a bit of a drain tank. Now everything is homogenized.

[Brandedblade]

The Nascent flash change was fine.
The duration change, made wierd moments where you are about to drop eye duration but have IR coming up feel better is fine.
These changes were QoL changes.
They DID NOT fix the job though. The core of WAR 5.0 is still rotten and bare. This did not change a slow boring gameplay the moment IR went on cooldown to be funner or more engaging. The DPS increse is only 130 or so, didn't really help WAR standout over GNB or PLD so don't expect WAR play to increase much outside of some salty DRKs swapping over.
This is like pruning up a dumpster full of trash. Sure, it looks better, but doesn't change what it is at its core.

if it improves what is already there that's more then enough for me.

[Lyth]

War? War never changes.

What has changed is that people are slowly realising that they can live in a world without War. And perhaps that isn't such a bad thing after all.

[Layla-chan]

So.... 5.0 you had issues with warrior... but with 5.3 it's better?

It literally didn't change at all. You just have an additional 15s of eye with IR every 90s... it doesn't add dps or change the looping rotation that WAR has of Eye path path path eye path path gauge dump eye path path IR eye....

"Gimmicky nascent" Nascent is LITERALLY the exact same thing. You just can use it in solo pleb content now... like, okay? It's the same thing. It's LITERALLY the same thing. How is it so bad in 5.x but now it's magically better?

This folks, is what the placebo effect is. Thinking something is different, when it is the same thing but just looks different.

Like. TBN is "gimmicky" then, because you can use it on self or on a person in raid, Heart of Stone is gimmicky, same reason, intervention is gimmicky... like for real man I just don't even understand this logic as it applies to LITERALLY all of the tanks with their person CD.

Raw Intuition is the personal, solo version of Nascent.

I actually I feel the same way, and no I don't think it's placebo. I didn't want to play WAR on 5.0, but now in my alt I am having a blast as a WAR. Could just be more than the Nascent Flash though, the QoL change of longer Storm's Eye adds to it too. It's way more comfy now.

[Leiron]

War didn't change, it just means you gain a slight DPS boost over the course of...several minutes?
It plays the exact same before, the only real change is nascent glint being solo used now.

[Absurdity]

War didn't change, it just means you gain a slight DPS boost over the course of...several minutes?

You gain "a fellcleave" after like 10 minutes, we probably gained slightly more dps from Eye not falling off anymore in our opener and during phase changes but that's about it.
The Nascent changes are nice for doing stuff solo but it basically has no influence on party content.