Tank IDENTITY

[Shurrikhan]

You have eight or so posts on this subforum alone that refer to WAR's abilities as 'life steal'.

Within this sub-forum I have only 22 posts that include at least one, at least once, among the words "life steal," "lifesteal" or "life-steal". Of those, only 13 also discuss Warrior and actually include the words in my own text (rather than only in the quote blocks):

• The first few come from this very conversation, quoting you, having to meet your term and specifically arguing against you using it deliberately as a loaded/conflated term.
• Only in quoting Luin, in drawing DRK/WAR comparisons; motifs were not in question.
• Using the term because that's the term Arch used; motifs were not in question.
• Appears only in the quote before pointing out that it's a loaded term:

Because it's not "life-leech" per se. It's, quite definitively, living off the thrill of battle. (If we're going to consider technicals, at expense to all lore, like "but it's healing based on damage dealt" then note still that life-leech wasn't originally that; it was bonus damage that happened to heal you by the same amount, quite literally leeching that HP out of the enemy.).

• Using the term specifically because of, and to contrast, Anahalise's use of the term.
• Post discusses WAR, but only uses "life-steal" in the phrase "People make a big deal out of DRK being the iconic life-steal tank to-be, but...."
• Appears only in quoting you. Specifically does not call it lifesteal.
• Term used only in response to your idea that as a WAR, if meeting Kalise's description of a more WAR-thematic raidwide than SiO, you must...

magically drain life from your enemies and generate party-wide barriers

rather than, say, a simple raid-wide Bloodbath buff via War Cry with overhealing turning into temp HP. "Lifesteal" is only used in saying what did not exist. Positives used the term "self-sustain" only.

• Used the conventional term for concision and because that was the term used by the previous 3 posts made in reply to one another.
• Quoting you, noting that "Granted, I do think there's space for them both to have 'lifesteal,' in very different ways."
• Quoting Whiskey while specifically pointing out the differences between (A) content-based throughput and purely state-based throughput and (B) healing as portion of damage dealt vs. bundled effect.

it seems truly bizarre to suggest that this isn't a vampiric effect without even an attempt at offering an alternative explanation on how said healing-on-hit works that's substantiated by lore or gameplay.

I just summarized for you the one given in the job quests and across the job's description since 1.x.
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Manipulating aether is another term for 'magic'.

Then load your terms how you will, but stick with it. If any and all healing comes down to...

You might as well give them sparkly spell casting and pretend that it's not holy magic

...then wtf is Abyssal Drain doing? And are all physical melee holy magic casters because they have Second Wind?
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Either way, you can have your magical vampiric barbarians if you want, but I just want to see some consistency in how it's executed.

Warriors are not "magical" (to any extent beyond Pugilist, Archer, Lancer, Rogue, or Gladiator are "magical" in the sense of casting specific schools of magic despite, yes, manipulating aether to do more than would otherwise be humanly possible).

Nor are they vampires. That doesn't mean they have to be barred from having self-healing.

(By this point, you have called WAR thematically unfit to have HoTs, healing-via-attacks, burst heals, shields/barriers, or burst mitigation. Because it is "physical," anything short of piñata-popping enemies to "drop potions, bandages, and medkits" isn't a permissible use of healing. Anything beyond gradual hardening and temporary bonus HP, apparently, is a no go. But I have to wonder if suddenly those, too, would be thematically "unfit" if they could hold a candle to other capacities. Would they then just be next on the chopping block?)


Again, I'm right there with you in terms of reshaping WAR's throughput slightly to better center its theme --I'd love to head back to early Stormblood Warrior, stylistically, as an anchor or guide, perhaps even bringing Berserk back nearer to the fore-- but when you play out the "physical jobs can't have X, Y, Z" basic forms of throughput to that extent, thematic cohesion does not seem to be your main objective.

[Lyth]

????

I didn't mention Bloodbath. I don't think that it makes sense as a role action, though.

I actually vastly preferred the 2.0 direction for Warrior.

[...]

People make a big deal out of DRK being the iconic life-steal tank to-be, but they never no-healed the entirety of dungeons like WAR could. StB mass-pulls made DRK look invincible, but in single-target, their self-heals were kinda garbage, and it wasn't much better in HW, either. WAR, on the other hand? That job was popping itself from critical to full HP off meaty crits since 1.x. and... right up until they decided to copy PLD twice over instead of allowing PLD to better scale with its own gear and allow for actually distinct ways of tanking instead.

1.x Warrior was about "big honking crits" to instantly heal you to full HP along with doing some of the best AoE in the game.

[...]

...It's never not been a major part of its identity. That was originally tied hand-in-hand with self-healing/lifesteal, but even if Warrior's mostly lost the first there's no reason to claim that the other shouldn't be considered a core component.

...

It is what it is. If you want to make the claim that WAR's 'heal on attack' effects are not 'lifesteal' just for the sake of this discussion, we don't even have the starting point to start talking.

I personally feel that simply continuing to do something 'because tradition' means that you lose out on opportunities to improve. There are many, many ways that you can do self-sustain on a tank that do not involve vampiric effects. I listed out multiple examples in my last post of this.

There are certain jobs that you can get away with more magical effects without making them spellcasters. MNK, for example, has a Fire/Wind/Earth elemental motif running through the job. DRG has a blood-related magic theme. NIN invokes Wind/Fire/Water/Earth elemental effects. Again, visual consistency is key. Could you make vampiric barbarians who drink the blood of their fallen foes? Sure! But make it visually and thematically consistent across the entire job.

What I dislike is this dilettantism that we currently have. Oh, here's my lifesteal move. Here's my barrier shield. Here's my heal spell. You don't need multiple approaches to self-sustain on the same job. Pick something and roll with it.

You want lifesteal? That's great. Make that the centerpiece of its sustain. My attacks heal me. Overhealing gets converted to temporary HP. I time up my burst phases with tankbusters to mitigate more damage. Fantastic. Find some sort of a unifying concept that ties things together. And find something visually and thematically that justifies it for the job in question.

[Mikey_R]

I didn't mention Bloodbath. I don't think that it makes sense as a role action, though.

It is what it is. If you want to make the claim that WAR's 'heal on attack' effects are not 'lifesteal' just for the sake of this discussion, we don't even have the starting point to start talking.

I just wanted to know how you would describe Bloodbath? I'm guessing it is again vampiric, but it is available to all melee DPS, and you cannot say they all have to have a vampiric theme just to support this. This is what I was trying to get at without directly trying to steer you in that direction. However, Bloodbath is more of a life steal than Bloodwhetting, being that, Bloodbath's health gain is directly proportional to the damage you do whereas Bloodwhetting is a static heal potency. Since the heal potency is static and independent on the damage you do, it cannot be a life steal.

You also seem to have the misconception that anything involving aether is magic by nature when, in reality, it is not. See all the special effects on the weapon skills? Lorewise, that is all aether being used to enhance attacks. The circular saws on Fell Cleave? Aether, ground shockwave on Decimate? Aether. Equilibrium restoring HP? That is you using aether to heal wounds. Everything is made of aether but that doesn't mean everything is magical.

[marelooke]

It is what it is. If you want to make the claim that WAR's 'heal on attack' effects are not 'lifesteal' just for the sake of this discussion, we don't even have the starting point to start talking.

Because they aren't. Lifesteal means taking something else's life force for your own. WAR does not do that, and never has.

You can dislike the way WAR works all you want, but as long as you keep insisting it's somehow "lifesteal" this whole discussion isn't likely to go much of anywhere.

Though I'm not sure it even matters, recent changes to multiple classes indicate that "braindead" is the skill level classes are designed for now. Anything that is "creative" in any way, shape, or form, would likely be considered "too hard". I mean, apparently they thought ShB WAR was "too hard", and even EW WAR needed to be "streamlined" in 6.1 because still too complicated, so yeah...