6.0 WAR adjustments I'd like to see

[Nioulan]

Even though 6.0 is an entire year away and Yoshida-san himself said there would be no more tank changes in Shadowbringers, I figure I'd post on what I personally would like to see changed for WAR in 6.0. I'll put a couple of disclaimers now and say; some of the ideas I'm about to post are not all of my own. Some of these ideas come from Xeno and I feel the development team should see these ideas. However, him and I did have some overlapping ideas. I'll mark any of Xeno's ideas with a *.

Bring back the Stormblood version of Berserk and put Inner Release back to a cooldown at 120 seconds, with a slight change to it's effect. The change being the guaranteed direct and critical hits are gone. Or change the effect to just guaranteed critical hits. The reason I'd like this change is because with IR's current effect, WAR has a different meld priority from the other tanks and that's a annoying issue for people who like to play all of the tanks. Getting rid of the direct and critical part of IR would solve this issue. And I'd like the same to happen with Chaotic Cyclone and Inner Chaos. Just make them so they're only a guaranteed critical hit.

Another change I'd like to see is storm eye buff management. Make it so whenever a gauge ability/GCD is used, you get the Storm's eye buff. Similar to how whenever DRK uses Edge or Flood of Shadow, they get 30 seconds of the Darkside buff.* You can make those actions give the buff proportionate to their gauge cost. For example, Upheaval and Onslaught could give 10 seconds of the buff while Fell Cleave/Inner Chaos and Decimate/Chaotic Cyclone could give 30 seconds of the buff. This would make storm's eye buff management more.. well manageable. It would provide a more smooth experience when playing WAR. This would mean getting rid of or finding another use for the Storm's Eye GCD.

An additional change that would make WAR more smooth is a change to the Nascent Chaos buff. Instead of giving access to Inner Chaos/Chaotic Cyclone AND 50 gauge whenever Infuriate is used, just make Inner Chaos/Chaotic Cyclone cost 0 gauge instead of giving 50 gauge.*

TL;DR, 2 offensive cooldowns:
Berserk at 60 seconds with the effect of the Stormblood version.

Inner Release at 120 seconds with it's guaranteed direct and critical hit effect gone.

Inner Chaos/Chaotic Cyclone being just a guaranteed critical hit instead of a guaranteed direct critical hit.

Make the storm's eye buff application via gauge-costing GCDs/OGCDs, similar to DRK.

Nascent Chaos making Inner Chaos/Chaotic Cyclone cost 0 gauge instead of giving 50 gauge.

[Sqwall]

Like the ideas here. Coming from me where I used to main PLD and recently switched to WAR I like the new "base" that shadowbringers has made for WAR.

This is where "I think" we can start to build on WAR without getting crazy like it was in 4.0 and the massive amount of changes that came from that. I think SE has learned from their mistakes in trying to make tanks SUPER unique which bred horrible balancing issues. Shadowbringers really leveled the playing field for all tanks where each are completely viable for defense and offense in ANY engagement.

That out of the way. I want SE to start leaning into the lores of each job and pull out something that really compliments each tanks playstyle.

For instance and FUN of theory crafting sake:
Warrior - Double Attack - a skill where you get are granted a buff for a 2:1 rage cost for one ability, but you take 50% more damage until the effect is used. i.e. Inner Chaos would cost 25 instead of 50, but hit x2 harder, but the warrior loses defense. Leans into the high risk high reward in that warriors are out of control.

Paladin - Block Mastery - a skill where you enhance your shield to use 5 oath per attack taken to ensure 100% block rate for period of time. Leans into the whole sacrifice playstyle of paladin to ensure survival by sacrificing oath.

Dark Knight - Minus Strike - a skill where the lower your HP the more damage you inflict, and absorbs HP at 100% damage dealt. Leans into the whole idea of Dark Knights live very close to the edge and are very powerful the closer they are to it.

Gun Breaker - Follow Through - a skill when applied triggers a combo chain buff builds a multiplier starting with Gnashing Fang once used, after each subsequent combo including continuation combos builds this multiplier up to x6. Using Blasting Zone with this multiplier increases the damage x6 the normal amount. Leans into the idea that gunbreaker is ALL about damage and not as much on defense, kill it before it kills you idea.

I don't know I just want to throw out some ideas where 6.0 could lead and what crazy things that could be done given how "even" the tanks are now.

[Absurdity]

Generally interesting ideas, the only thing I'm not a fan of would be the Infuriate change. It would essentially do the same thing as it does now, but I do like the extremely niche use of Infuriate as on-demand gauge for something other than Inner Chaos. Since the buff currently lasts 30 seconds you can always use part of the 50 gauge for something like Upheaval or Onslaught, if you messed up at some point in the fight, and still generate enough again for that IC. Changing Infuriate to only reduce the gauge cost of Inner Chaos and Chaotic Cyclone to 0 means it has absolutely no uses besides gaining access to those 2, which would only make it more boring.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Bring back the Stormblood version of Berserk and put Inner Release back to a cooldown at 120 seconds, with a slight change to it's effect. The change being the guaranteed direct and critical hits are gone. Or change the effect to just guaranteed critical hits. The reason I'd like this change is because with IR's current effect, WAR has a different meld priority from the other tanks and that's a annoying issue for people who like to play all of the tanks. Getting rid of the direct and critical part of IR would solve this issue. And I'd like the same to happen with Chaotic Cyclone and Inner Chaos. Just make them so they're only a guaranteed critical hit.

Bringing back Berserk and removing the Direct Hit effect would just make Warriors damage very swingy again as the Warrior's damage would once again be heavily determined by how much RNG favored the Warrior.

The problem you are describing is actually better solved by making the direct hit stat have no effect on tank damage.

[Daniolaut]

I personally would like to see jobs expanded with the expansions.

I feel it’s pretty messy when they keep trying to recreate the jobs every expansion. It’s also not fun to relearn a job every other major patch. What would be fun in my opinion is jobs being so well made and fun they don’t need to be reworked because they work right and are fun right from level 1 and only get better the higher your level!

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Bringing back Berserk and removing the Direct Hit effect would just make Warriors damage very swingy again as the Warrior's damage would once again be heavily determined by how much RNG favored the Warrior.

The problem you are describing is actually better solved by making the direct hit stat have no effect on tank damage.

I mean every tanks dmg is very "swingy" at the moment, I don't see why Warrior should be an exception to the rule anymore. Also don't see the need to remove Direct Hit from tanks, personally.

But in the event DH was to be removed from tanks, this should also extend to healers, if the devs choose to go down this route of locking stats, outside of tenacity and piety.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

I personally would like to see jobs expanded with the expansions.

I feel it’s pretty messy when they keep trying to recreate the jobs every expansion. It’s also not fun to relearn a job every other major patch. What would be fun in my opinion is jobs being so well made and fun they don’t need to be reworked because they work right and are fun right from level 1 and only get better the higher your level!

Pretty much this is a pipe dream at best, this isn't always an easy thing to accomplished as past expansions have proven, also it's not just common in xiv, but in many other games both inside this genre as well as outside of it.
There is only so much devs are gonna be able to see, where a fresh pair of eyes ( the playerbase) can find things that weren't so obvious to the dev team.

[Launched]

I don't want to see any of this. The job isn't perfect, but the solution isn't to remove the things that are different about it. Guaranteed crit+dhit on a few skills is a bit different to the usual smaller damage buff over a longer duration, Eye's buff being on a combo keeps WAR and DRK separate (and Eye is easy to manage so you can't really justify simplifying it even more), and Infuriate giving gauge is good because it lets you spend it on Onslaught/Upheaval if you need to.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I mean every tanks dmg is very "swingy" at the moment, I don't see why Warrior should be an exception to the rule anymore.

All the other tanks have far less "spiky" rotations where failing to get a direct hit, crit or direct crit on even the biggest hits will not influence their damage significantly. Due to so much of WAR's damage originating from Fell Cleave and Inner Chaos failure to get even a direct hit on one is the equivalent of missing 1 or more normal gcds each time.

Also don't see the need to remove Direct Hit from tanks, personally.

With Post-3.5 gear, Direct Hit is only gained from melds. The availability to tanks/healers is completely the result of the slap-dash way they replaced Accuracy with Direct Hit.

But in the event DH was to be removed from tanks, this should also extend to healers, if the devs choose to go down this route of locking stats, outside of tenacity and piety.

Which is really what should have happened back when Direct Hit and Tenacity were introduced back in 4.0.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

All the other tanks have far less "spiky" rotations where failing to get a direct hit, crit or direct crit on even the biggest hits will not influence their damage significantly. Due to so much of WAR's damage originating from Fell Cleave and Inner Chaos failure to get even a direct hit on one is the equivalent of missing 1 or more normal gcds each time.

Right, except Confiteor literally just about doubles in damage when it crit DH's compared to a standard hit, this can be significant to make or break a parse over the course of a fight. What about DRK in Delirium, which has an identical burst to WAR in terms of button presses where it's burst is "swingy" due to random rng, so again can't see why WAR has to be an exception anymore.

With Post-3.5 gear, Direct Hit is only gained from melds. The availability to tanks/healers is completely the result of the slap-dash way they replaced Accuracy with Direct Hit.

I do understand how it was implemented, I have been playing since HW. But I was more or less amending your statement to include healers, not just tanks, if that route is taken, but I highly doubt the devs will bother, it's more work than worth.

Which is really what should have happened back when Direct Hit and Tenacity were introduced back in 4.0.

Again, more work than needed really, it means devs would have to go back and change every piece of fending and healing gear to exclude DH.