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.

[Vyrerus]

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.

Everything after 4.1 is a blur to me. But thanks for the reminder. Whenever it was that they rolled Berserk into Inner Release was a dogshit tier update to WAR, and I hated it.

[Absurdity]

Everything after 4.1 is a blur to me. But thanks for the reminder. Whenever it was that they rolled Berserk into Inner Release was a dogshit tier update to WAR, and I hated it.

At the time I didn't mind it, it made the job more usable without having to map out the entire fight and Warrior's gameplay still had some nuance to it. Optimizing your Deliverance crit buff through gauge management, minimizing Storm's Eye uses while making sure you had at least 17 seconds left on the buff when you went into IR, GCD manipulation with Onslaught and knowing when to use Infuriate so you never accidentally overcapped or wasted cooldown reduction during IR.

But had I known that 4.2 was the beginning of what would eventually lead to current Warrior I would've been livid.

I actually still have the 4.0/4.1 guide document for the job, it's a nice throwback. Especially the "When everything goes to shit" section and the "Raid Buffs" section not showing 120s on everything.

[Supersnow845]

WAR is just a collective insult to the entire game at this point and I hate how many people are willing to defend it from both ends

Casuals- hahaha healing go brrrrr
Raiders- why you angry at casual content WAR is only 50% too strong in savage that’s not that bad

[Rithy255]

WAR is just a collective insult to the entire game at this point and I hate how many people are willing to defend it from both ends

Casuals- hahaha healing go brrrrr
Raiders- why you angry at casual content WAR is only 50% too strong in savage that’s not that bad

I agree, I don't even mind the self healing, but its the fact how effective it is in AOE (Per enemy needs to go) also how it has group and target healing better then a Paladin... Warrior to me doesn't even fit its job fantasy its just boring and gets everything other tanks get but better, Wouldn't be surprised if they gave warrior a second aoe mitigation, but it's not only if you can position it like PLD's at this point

Personally I think Tanks & Healers Need a rebalance, Both should Work together Instead of having a tank be able to solo stuff without losing any damage at all for it. I think partly they need to increase the general damage tanks take, reduce some self healing, focus on Tanks & Healers having fun Damage buttons while also making Utility kits at least a bit more intresting then they do.. with utility/defensives I'm starting to think Less is more.

[ReynTime]

Well on that topic, my own hot take is at this point not many jobs in XIV fit their fantasy, nor match their classic gameplay styles. Healers and tanks specially.

DRK for example was stripped off its trademark mechanic to be turned into an edgy parody of itself.

[Supersnow845]

I agree with that

SCH’s descent from a “bag of tricks” battle tactician to an “UWU fairy mage” pains me to this day

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Counterpoint , warrior is for people who can't tank effectively so they have to use game breaking self heals that have no business being part of a barbaric, viking style, axe wielding, basket case's skill kit.

Spoilers: many of those WARs still can't play effectively even with their game breaking self heals. Mostly the ones that pops BW the moment their health drops to 80%. They are still getting carried by the other 3 players.

The bar is really low.

[Oizen]

Spoilers: many of those WARs still can't play effectively even with their game breaking self heals. Mostly the ones that pops BW the moment their health drops to 80%. They are still getting carried by the other 3 players.

The bar is really low.

WAR actually doesn't teach you to play well.

Proper tanking focuses entirely on preemptive mitigation, using your mitigation at low health does nothing because there's nothing to defend after all. This is true of all tanks but especially Dark Knight.
WAR has a very strong feedback loop for Regenerating health, so a lot of players are going to take damage raw on WAR and try to regen it back. This is completely viable in normal content, and feels more effective than standard tanking.

That style of WAR completely falls off in high end content, because high end content tbs will just kill you unmitigated.
You end up with a lot of WAR players who don't know how to mitigate well.

I also think its why Dark Knight gets such a weird rep, people buy into the idea that it just plays like WAR, go to play it and then just eat shit because Dark Knight simply can't do the regen health after damage loop.
So obviously the job is bad and it has nothing to do with the fact you're trying to play Dark Knight like Warrior.

[Raoabolic]

Hot take?
This game is going down the path of WoW in terms of gameplay and the direction the game is going. All we need is a 9.1.5. nuclear disaster at this point, lol.