Is anyone surprised at this point?

[Argyle_Darkheart]

WAR didn't need any damage buffs.

Define "need."

It needs a gameplay rework.

If you say so, but that's not going to happen any time soon for multiple reasons, so why even mention it?

The only reason to hope for freebies would be if you need it to mask gameplay deficiencies as a player.

True; all those WARs who couldn't out-DPS their counterparts at equivalent percentile just suck.

Look, some jobs are not going to perform as well as others, as a matter of course. I get that, but nobody likes that their job is being outperformed (well, maybe underdogs do, but you get my point).

Implying that people who wanted damage buffs for WAR just suck is a bad faith take and, frankly, reeks of bitterness.

[Absurdity]

Look, some jobs are not going to perform as well as others, as a matter of course. I get that, but nobody likes that their job is being outperformed (well, maybe underdogs do, but you get my point).

Implying that people who wanted damage buffs for WAR just suck is a bad faith take and, frankly, reeks of bitterness.

This might not be aimed at me and I can make no statement about whether or not they're bitter but just because a job is being outperformed by other jobs within the same role does not automatically justify damage buffs, even if it might "feel bad".


You'd have to look at warrior's toolkit.

It has the same base mitigation tools as all the other tanks, 20% on a 90sec cooldown and 30% on a 120sec cooldown.

On top of these it has ToB, a 20% HP increase and 20% selfheal, and Equilibrium, a 1200 potency selfheal, which I'd argue are the cooldowns competing with cooldowns like Dark Mind, Camouflage, Aurora and...well, nothing from Paladin really since I can not count Clemency as a regular mitigation tool. Dark Mind, unlike ToB, only works on magic damage and Camouflage can basically only be counted as 10% mitigation since the parry is too inconsistent and ToB adds a 20% heal on top of 20% more HP. Equilibrium has the exact same potency as Aurora and Clemency, but unlike those it heals instantly, doesn't cost resources, does not need to be cast and does not cost you any dps nor does it disrupt your rotation.
And then for short term mitigation we have the choice between Raw Intuition, which is stronger than Heart of Stone and equal to Shelltron (arguably even better since Shelltron is inconsistent against enemies that can crit), or Nascent Flash, which on average heals for more than you could mitigate with The Blackest Night, neither of which cost you resources or can lead to a dps loss.

So all in all I would say that warrior has the most reliable, most consistent and strongest defensive kit out of all the tanks and with that in mind I would say it is justified that you do less dps than other tanks. This is why you normally only compare logs with other warriors, to see how skilled you are compared to other players of your chosen job.

Now we could argue whether or not we really need those strong defensives when all other tanks can survive every mechanic just as well and deal better dps on top of that but looking at the entire warrior kit then I can't agree that warrior really needed or deserved potency buffs. If doing less damage than other tanks makes you feel bad then sorry but just deal with it, you are the beefier, tankier tank and you can't have both top damage and top mitigation, and this coming from a warrior main.

[Lyth]

...

At the end of the day, it comes down to value.

Clearing content isn't the issue. Gear makes content easier over time. So how do you define what makes a player good or not? Damage output is a measure of this, but only if you can correlate higher skill with higher damage output. If you're just doing more damage because you picked a particular job and rolled your face across the keyboard, then it has no value whatsoever as a measure of skill.

Game developers think that if you make the average player feel good about themselves, they'll stick around and make more purchases. That's true in the short-term, as evidenced by countless F2P cashgrabs, but shortsighted. You only value the the things that you really worked for. You need differences in skill to correlate to differences in performance. Otherwise, the average player has nothing to look up to, and nothing to aspire to. There's no reason to stick around and get better.

Alarm bells should ring in your head any time somebody buffs your base combo without doing anything else to raise the difficulty of your job. Congratulations, you paid your subscription. You won the game, you are the best of the best. Please buy more mogstation glamours. Is there any surprise why tanking and healing ennui is so prevalent? I don't know about you, but I would feel embarrassed to be handed a win without putting any work into it. I wouldn't feel good about that at all, but apparently some people do.

My stance always has, and always will be this: skill differences should translate into performance differences. I want to play a job that is recognized by the playerbase as high skill, with a low performance floor and a high performance ceiling. Ideally a tank, given that I've spent the better part of 15 years playing tanks. Ideally something with a cool aesthetic, like big greatswords swung at high speeds. That's why I liked DRK in Heavensward.

But my biggest requirement is that skill correlate with performance, across all tanks.

[Absurdity]

I mean, the question that you're really getting at is whether WAR needed a damage buff at all. It didn't really. It needs its gameplay buffed.

This just about getting more people to play WAR again. But to do so, you have to make the job itself a lot more interesting. The single biggest mistake made with WAR was 4.2, in that they removed the gauge costs when IR was active. Instead of spending your downtime setting up for and carefully planning your entry into your big burst phase, you spend your downtime waiting around for your big burst phase. 10 seconds of intense activity followed by 80 seconds of waiting around. This is a band-aid solution to a deeper problem. Big numbers are exciting, but only when you earn them.

I agree that the 4.2 rework was not a good idea in hindsight, I can however also see why they did it. 4.0/4.1 WAR was an absolute mess and trying to salvage it would've probably taken too much time.

The burst setup was way too tight, something as basic as downtime would mean that your gauge and remaining eye timer suddenly don't line up anymore with what you need and your only option was either to deal with less damage during IR or delay it, both resulting in not only a dps loss but also felt absolutely terrible considering IR was a 2 minute cooldown.
Even if you executed it perfectly it resulted in about the same dps as a paladin that just went through their FoF/Req phases and only had to deal with having enough MP for Req which would still tick up during downtime, so the complete rework made sense at the time.

Could they have fixed it? I mean that kind of design works for PLD and GNB (and it worked for DRK back in SB) so sure, but it would've taken them a lot longer.

What they shouldn't have done is basically turn it into a 1 button spamfest, the removal of other tank mechanics with ShB just made it a lot more obvious since you suddenly don't have to juggle other things anymore that keep you occupied.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

The WAR buff was about the best we could have hoped for, under the circumstances (unless, of course, your hope was that WAR wouldn't receive any buffs).

[Duskane]

Old IR probably be fine with Charged infuriate,especially with all the ways to extend Stroms eye now.
it was just an easy fix just to make it free essentials.

[Duskane]

I honestly think war needed some attention,
was one of the only jobs that got almost nothing new in ShB.

[WhyAmIHere]

I honestly think war needed some attention,
was one of the only jobs that got almost nothing new in ShB.

Barring GNB because it's the new hotness...

What really was added to tanks? Like purely take away things that were removed then returned in another form, e.g. Bloodbath on WAR -> Nascent, or Scourge on DRK -> Living Shadow.

PLD got instant casts on their spells. That's kinda cool, no lie. It helps them out massively in movement, and they got a new magic-phase finisher. Plus a new-ish melee DPS skill?
WAR got...
DRK got... party mitigation in dark missionary?

. . .

I mean we could go further and say "well what did the other roles get?" But you'd find one semi-common thread: not a whole lot changed for tanking/healing IMO. DPS though? RDM's got scourge; NIN, MCH, MNK got flat out redesigned, two of 'em mid-expansion; BRD; SMN and DRG got a whole new phase to play with; so on and so on.

It's not just that WAR got DPS numbers buff. It's not just that DRK has been shafted in terms of expansion adjustments. It's all those and more. There's nothing being done to make, arguably the most important roles to play, engaging and rewarding to play. This is a problem, because if there isn't something done with 6.0 to address this, you'll just see even MORE threads complaining about the lack of tanks/heals in the long run. Sure people are gonna flock to try the new classes, SGE and whatever the Maiming DPS will be, I'm one that's considering switching to SGE if it's fun enough myself! But later on into 6.0's lifecycle we still have this same status quo? If the team behind job balance doesn't try to shake up the formula and is again just kicking the can down the road?

Not looking forward to that prospect at all.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

[Balancing offense versus defense]

I have no issue with this argument.

I won't argue that WAR "deserved" the recent buffs any further than pointing out that there was a damage imbalance. Whether it "needed" addressing or not, I can't say definitively; I don't feel particularly strongly one way or the other.

That said, I stand by my comments towards Lyth.

What really was added to tanks? Like purely take away things that were removed then returned in another form, e.g. Bloodbath on WAR -> Nascent...

Honestly, I don't think Bloodbath compares favorably to Nascent Flash, at all. With that in mind, I would argue that Nascent Flash was a massive addition for WAR in both gameplay and performance.

There's nothing being done to make, arguably the most important roles to play, engaging and rewarding to play.

I don't know how other tanks feel in general, but I would be reasonably satisfied if SE just increased tank damage across the board. However, I don't really share in the dissatisfaction with the tanks' core gameplay loop that seems common around these forums.

[WhyAmIHere]

Honestly, I don't think Bloodbath compares favorably to Nascent Flash, at all. With that in mind, I would argue that Nascent Flash was a massive addition for WAR in both gameplay and performance.



I don't know how other tanks feel in general, but I would be reasonably satisfied if SE just increased tank damage across the board. However, I don't really share in the dissatisfaction with the tanks' core gameplay loop that seems common around these forums.

point 1) It's "do damage, achieve life drain," just by another name. It wasn't a massive change, it was "just returning what was taken away, but in a different form." I'll concede it was a helpful change, but it's not like WAR's were sweating for life gain/sustain before; their invuln doesn't kill them outright for lack of healing innately.

2) most tanks just want "unga bunga brain off go brrrr ha ha numbahz go up." Just saying "give them more damage! That'll fix the problem" is what is going on now.
The issue with tanks gameplay loop is the trivialization of tanking. No longer is hate a thing that has to be managed. Just set it (your stance) and forget it! Positioning isn't an issue anymore, not really. Dungeon bosses won't hit hard enough for most awake-at-the-wheel groups ot worry about, and nothing is done to say "X must be tanked in location Y; else BAD STATE." Tanks, as it stands now, are just gimped additional DPS that do less numbers by virtue of intent. There's no other justification for it besides "that's how the devs want it." I am ambivalent about it, because it's still a simple enough task for me to just shut my brain off, unga bunga ha ha numbahz go up do brrrr. But it got stale real quick, and it keeps getting stale.

EDIT::

Dark stuff at least looks different and Flood and Edge of shadow feel Different.

[bias post incoming]
Edge/Flood is just dark arts. Devs heard all the kvetching from the casuals and bads about having to weave an oGCD just to make your next GCD hit more and the casuals and bads didn't like it because "me wan go unga, do bunga, not have make headhurt from bigthink numbers count."
[/bias]

E/F is just DA, but instead of buffing your next global it just does the damage. And with the MP rebalancing it's even easier to keep track of if you can unga bunga E/F. 3000 MP? You good. 3000 too hard to keep track of? Just drop the last two digits and only look at the first two! 30 or more? unga goongo. not at 30 yet? No bunga goongo. that """proc""" dark arts is a joke and a reminder that TBN, the blackblood gauge, and MP have been seperated and interplay between the three is no longer as direct as it used to be, for whatever reason.