EW 6.08 Warrior: Please make Holmgang less awkward to use

[Eorzean_username]

Context

I realize that Warrior is in a solid place right now design-wise and mechanically.

I also realize that Holmgang, even with no changes made at all to its current design, is probably, objectively, the best Tank invulnerability (and also probably, objectively, always has been).

However, I think that even if a Job seems to be doing well and has strong tools relative to its peers, it's still justified to attempt to clean up Quality-of-Life issues that seem like fundamental design flaws.

"Okay fine. What are you complaining about this time?"

The Warrior action, "Holmgang", has two major issues that make it awkward to use in many situations, especially for an unprepared player that has not been informed of Holmgang's quirks by 3rd-party sources.

Both of these issues stem from the vestigial effect that Holmgang attempts to apply a (99.9% useless) "Bind" effect to the Warrior's target.

Issue 1:

The invulnerability effect on the Warrior ends immediately if the target that Holmgang was applied to ceases to exist (for example, by becoming dead).

Issue 2:

Because the nearly-pointless "Bind" effect has a range of 6 yalms, Warrior cannot activate Holmgang's invulnerability effect if the Warrior is targeting an enemy located farther than 6 yalms away.

These issues result in situations like these examples:

Example 1:

1. A Warrior activates Holmgang in order to survive an immense and dangerous trash pull in a Dungeon, because the Healer's Netflix stream was acting up and so the Healer became distracted for a few minutes.
2. While the Warrior is at 1 HP, and Holmgang still has 5 seconds remaining, the enemy that the Warrior was targeting when Holmgang was activated becomes dead, because the party's Samurai felt like single-targeting mobs today and chose this particular target as their mortal enemy.
3. Holmgang immediately ends, 5 seconds earlier than it should have, and far earlier than the Healer was expecting.
4. The Warrior becomes dead, when the Warrior should reasonably have expected to not become dead.

Example 2:

1. A Warrior is being targeted by a "tankbuster" attack that deals damage in a sufficient radius to cause any nearby party members to explode, forcing the Warrior to move 12 yalms away from the current boss enemy that the party is engaging.
2. The Warrior moves 12 yalms away, and plans to activate Holmgang to neutralize the danger of this tankbuster attack.
3. Holmgang refuses to activate, because the enemy target is now located more than 6 yalms away.
4. The confused Warrior repeatedly attempts to activate Holmgang, but does not succeed. This is sad.
5. The tankbuster activation finishes, and the Warrior becomes dead, because Holmgang was not active.
6. The rest of the party soon becomes dead and now everyone is unhappy, including but not limited to the Warrior.

Currently, Warrior players use various stop-gap measures to deal with these issues:

Stop-gap 1:

Always remember to have no target when activating Holmgang.

This option is annoying because:

• Detargeting your current enemy target is annoying in FFXIV, because in crowded situations in can be awkward and slow to reacquire the target.
• Detargeting your current target in FFXIV has the chance of both stopping your GCD spin (that's bad) or potentially causing an auto-attack to be lost (that's sad).
• The timing for detargeting and retargeting can be quite tight if the Warrior is attempting to also double-weave an offensive OGCD during the same GCD spin.
• This solution requires unintuitively remembering to remove your current target when activating a defensive tool.

Stop-gap 2:

Create a <me> Macro that always targets yourself to activate Holmgang.

This option is annoying because:

• Macros in FFXIV are tied to frame rate to initialize, and further, are intentionally (maliciously?) designed not to utilize the action queue.
• Therefore, Macros in FFXIV are clunky, unresponsive, difficult to double-weave with, and have a high chance of failing to activate when needed, unless the key is spammed with unusual aggression (and even then, maybe you'll be unlucky).

Potential solutions or improvements to this issue:

• Make the "Bind" effect only active while the Warrior is within 6 yalms of the target, but allow "Holmgang" itself to be activated and maintained from any distance.

• Separate the "Bind" and the "invulnerability" effects internally, such that if the initial Holmgang target KOs, the Warrior still retains the invulnerability effect.

• Alternatively, just remove the "Bind" effect and targeting features entirely, and simply make "Holmgang" inherently a self-buff for the Warrior that prevents HP being reduced to 0, with no other special effects.

[The_User]

Or



Make Holmgang do not require a target and instead binds every enemies in 5y radius around WAR.

This will make Holmgang partly resembling Magnai's Holmgang


and then make Holmgang retain it's "prevent hp from falling below 1" effect till the 10s duration count down to 0 regardless of whether the enemies dies or not.


And this suggestion is for PVE Holmgang only, mind you.

[Hierro]

Yeah! Yeah! Buff it even more hehe!

[Zarkovitch]

Sure after, PLD,GBN,DRK get adjustements. You can have this buff.

[Shurrikhan]

So long as it's still going to be called Holmgang, better for it to still bind or tether (and perhaps prevent most knock-backs, similar to when it used to bind you as well), though the invulnerability (and knockback immunity) effect should be applied as a buff separate from the debuff inflicted to enemies. As User suggested, it'd make decent sense for it to be AoE.

Now, trim 2 to 4 seconds off its duration as to warrant its CD. And fix Living Dead. Then we'll really be getting somewhere.

[ForteNightshade]

Sure after, PLD,GBN,DRK get adjustements. You can have this buff.

Yeah! Yeah! Buff it even more hehe!

This isn't a buff though? Holmgang has an odd holdover where it requires a target only if you have a target selected. If you de-select the game then takes a second to realize that before allowing you to use it freely again. Compare that to literally every other CD in the game that activates immediately without the need of a target whatsoever.

What adjustments do GNB and PLD need? HoC is actually better than Bloodwhetting in 8 man content. And all PLD needs at this point is higher damage output; something WAR also needs. DRK is the only tank with gameplay relayed jank that should be sorted out first.

[Shurrikhan]

This isn't a buff though? Holmgang has an odd holdover where it requires a target only if you have a target selected. If you de-select the game then takes a second to realize that before allowing you to use it freely again. Compare that to literally every other CD in the game that activates immediately without the need of a target whatsoever.

What adjustments do GNB and PLD need? HoC is actually better than Bloodwhetting in 8 man content. And all PLD needs at this point is higher damage output; something WAR also needs. DRK is the only tank with gameplay relayed jank that should be sorted out first.

I'm 90% sure Hierro was being sarcastic, as Holmgang has been considered the most attractive invuln, and Warrior the most reliably supported (and defensively stacked) tank since 4.1.

The "adjustments GNB and PLD need" are probably aimed at their invulns. Superbolide has almost no advantage over Holmgang, given how few debuffs can be prevented via invincibility, but has a longer cooldown. The penalty-less invincibility of Hallowed Ground, meanwhile, is usually considered worth less than the shorter cooldown of Holmgang. And then there's DRK.

[Azuri]

The "adjustments GNB and PLD need" are probably aimed at their invulns. Superbolide has almost no advantage over Holmgang, given how few debuffs can be prevented via invincibility, but has a longer cooldown. The penalty-less invincibility of Hallowed Ground, meanwhile, is usually considered worth less than the shorter cooldown of Holmgang. And then there's DRK.

"Few debuffs" include the single debuff players actually care about - Damage Down. Unlike "HP cannot be reduced below 1" abilities, true invulns allow GNB and PLD to get hit by mechanics you are "really not supposed to get hit by" for uptime. It worked for Anti-Air Phaser in E9S and works now for Predatory Avarice in P2S. While WAR has to run to the edge of the arena and Tomahawk, GNB just uses Bolide and stands in half arena cleave. This is a completely unique advantage only Hallowed Ground and Superbolide have.

[NightHour]

Issue 1:
The invulnerability effect on the Warrior ends immediately if the target that Holmgang was applied to ceases to exist (for example, by becoming dead).

Oh no, the best invuln in the game has a downside!

Holmgang is the best invuln in the game in 99% of situations simply because of it's stupidly low cooldown.

The "adjustments GNB and PLD need" are probably aimed at their invulns.

GNB needs adjustments to No Mercy's duration and the range on continuation abilities.

Continuation needs to go from 3y to like 5 or 6y.

No mercy needs another 3-5 seconds added to it's duration. Adding more abilities to the burst window but not increasing the burst window is kinda dumb.

[Shurrikhan]

No mercy needs another 3-5 seconds added to it's duration. Adding more abilities to the burst window but not increasing the burst window is kinda dumb.

Needs? No. The No Mercy window falls only a single oGCD short of a reasonable mapping. That would mark a need for a further second, not a further 3-5 seconds.

Otherwise, shouldn't Monk, who now needs to fit a double-Blitz into each RoF window as of EW, therefore get a 2-GCD longer Riddle of Fire? Nevermind its favored position, of course, just as we surely should ignore GNB's damage when deciding it needs to place more of that within damage windows and thus be increased.

Where do we draw that line (beyond merely whether Xeno's got a bandwagon ready to go)?

Continuation needs to go from 3y to like 5 or 6y.

I wouldn't be opposed to it, but it's also far from vital and can pretty easily be explained off as a constraint owed to having the highest combined damage and mitigation among current tanks. Until such time as PLD and WAR's damage or DRK's sustain performs more closely to GNB or, say, DRK can hold multiple DA stacks and WAR can prepop Inner Release so long as it's in combat, there's no precedent or broadly usable warrant by which to prove "need" for this. It'd be simply a removed constraint for the already best all-rounder tank.

Given GNB's already favored position, there is little reason to insist that another job should suffer from a basic programming oversight until you get your every desire.