Final Fantasy XIV Hot Takes

[Absurdity]

Stormblood set a bad precedent for WAR, as it had been dubbed too OP in HW and they decided to give its stance swapping a severe penalty. Players were outraged, so the Devs took away the penalty. Players then began to complain about truly banal irritations with the job, saying it was too hard to get its entire burst off etc. So come SHB, they altered Inner Release, and pretty much introduced us to the dull, two combo, Storm's Path oriented WAR we have today.

God I miss Butcher's Block.

Inner Release was changed way before ShB, in 4.2, from 120s recast, 20s duration, 50% Beast Gauge reduction to the 90s recast, 10s duration, 100% Beast Gauge reduction and 100% critical direct hit.
All Shadowbringers did was staple the Storm's Eye extension to it.

And arguably people weren't wrong about pre-4.2 Warrior. You had to spend 2 minutes building up to your Inner Release+Berserk burst to get your big 6 Fell Cleaves, Upheaval and like 2 Onslaughts and any kind of downtime would throw a wrench into it, back when melees still had a lot more downtime and during a raid tier where the last boss reset aggro, forcing you to build up enmity again which completely threw off your expected Beast Gauge gain.