After 1 (arguably 2) expansions what is square trying to achieve with WAR (and PLD)?

[TheOperator3712]

Not just immortal. They also want the best utility, ease of optimisation and not be penalised on anything in exchange. No tank is allowed to do anything better. With it's current design, War should be botom dps. Always. But they don't want to consider other tanks. Dude literally said the tanks can't be further balanced.

Are you talking about me? If so you are completely misrepresenting my opinion. I said that all tanks needed a redesign, which includes WAR. And for the record, I want the 4.1 WAR rotation back.

“Would absolutely gut WAR’s ability to self heal”

……….to the point of still being the strongest tank for self sustain by a pretty wide margin

I’m not really sure what you consider an acceptable level here

ShB Nascent Flash was pretty acceptable to me. And I didn’t hear anyone complaining about it back then. It also required thought and planning to use it on attacks that would do a lot of damage, which was fun.

I think the point should be that WAR’s are fine to have their mitigation and their version of tanks mild self heals to be “lifesteal” based

What isn’t okay that they get a massive potency raid wide heal and can functionally bene one person per 25 seconds while also being immortal in cleave content

I would definitely find going back to “lifesteal” to be a good option, especially if the kit was designed more around it. Lower mitigation, more max hp increases, etc. Knowing SE though, this is all just wishing at clouds.

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WAR has the strongest singular Raidwide mit, … And thats not even going into its ability to boost that shield further.
All the other tanks get a clone skill that is 30% mit, WAR gets bonus reflect damage on theirs
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WAR isn't getting damage buffs on its Inner Release free crit attacks from crit buffs? HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE WE GOTTA REDO HOW THAT ENTIRE SYSTEM WORKS.

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And if you are going to make a mandatory Omni-job of everything, can it at least be more fun and engaging to play rather than Fell Cleave & Fell Cleave Accessories?

SiO getting a regen is absurd, agreed. Didn’t it lose the ability to be buffed by consuming other abilities in EW though? Even if it didn’t it’s entirely not worth it to do so intentionally.

The bonus reflect damage is the original effect, and in my opinion PLD is the only one that should have a flat 30%. Every other tank should have something suited to their flavor. I.e. WAR having 10% mitigation with 40% max HP increase and the thorns effect. But the devs are too lazy for that or to remove the thorns effect.

WAR didn’t get buffs on IR or benefit from DH as a stat from 4.2 to sometime in EW. That’s at least three years. The only reason they made that change was the increase in the amount of jobs that had guaranteed crit effects.

I will once again state that 4.1 WAR is the best iteration of WAR and should be brought back.

Warrior cannibalises everything the other tanks do without any of the downsides, because they're the loudest tank players.
It became the leech tank when Drk was supposed to do that. It took our damage when it was all we had.
It got every short tank cooldown gigabuffed except Dark knight's because that used to be it's thing, it got Aurora as a bonus effect on Equillibrium, it got a longer duration on Holmgang when that was it's only downside.
War got Paladin's rampart streamlined, it got Dark knight's Reprisal and low blow streamlined.. It even got a Shake it off buff to make sure it also got the strongest partywide mitigation in every given situation.

Warrior players want War to be the best at everything. And now that they are, they're genuinely convinced the game is super balanced. I loathe the job. We might as wel not have any tanks besides War rn, because none of them do anything better.
And when confronted with the problems they caused, they will deflect and say that the other tanks need a rework.. Which they then get, and the cycle repeats.
Other tank does something better>Wars get mad>It gets streamlined>gib rework!

It became the leech tank in 2.0 with IB and Bloodbath before DRK was even a thing. It was also the damage tank then as well.

Pretty sure the devs don’t look at the tanks and say “let’s buff this tank to spite another”.

WAR didn’t get rampart, low blow, and reprisal “streamlined”. The removal of the cross class system and addition of the role action system did.

I don’t WAR to be the best at everything; I want it to be the best at self-healing and a builder spender rotation. The game is balanced, dps wise. It’s atrociously and lazily designed though.
Every tank needs a rework. Especially WAR. 4.2 WAR is a terrible foundation.

I'm sure healers disagree with you, and would rather more tanks be like DRK so they can actually play the game.

That’s going to depend on the healer. A lot of healers are lazy and love having a WAR. Some are just too bad at the game to even heal a DRK. And that latter camp is rather large in my experience. Sure there are those that are up for the challenge, but not all healers are.

[Reimmi]

If healers are being lazy then they shouldn't be coddled by an OP class carrying the dungeon.
The game needs to get harder in the normal content, but thats a whole other discussion. I don't think a few lazy healers is an excuse for one tank to be literally immortal.

[Absurdity]

They complained about DV/PoA as well, which was why SiO was reworked into a completely new action mid-expansion. I think that was the first time in this game's history that the devs threw out a newly added action and replaced it with a new one simply because a job's players demanded something more powerful.

SiO wasn't really replaced mid expansion. It was what, 1 patch later? And SiO was a bit of a special case because it simply didn't work half the time.
If they give you a debuff remover that should work even while stunned, but often it just does nothing, it's an inherently flawed ability.

And the funniest part was that 4.0 SiO would've been perfect to remove the pacification from Berserk, but they removed said pacification at the same time.

The bonus reflect damage is the original effect, and in my opinion PLD is the only one that should have a flat 30%. Every other tank should have something suited to their flavor. I.e. WAR having 10% mitigation with 40% max HP increase and the thorns effect. But the devs are too lazy for that or to remove the thorns effect.

The problem is also with certain mechanics, take the Abyssos bleed busters for example. 10% mit and +40% HP for 15 seconds is nice on single hit busters, but when you're taking damage over time and that damage is based on how much damage the initial buster did, suddenly you're taking way more damage and your HP buff does nothing.
We saw it already with Bloodwhetting and ToB to a smaller extend because they provided either low flat % DR or none, but Paladin drew the really short stick with bleeds completely ignoring Holy Shelltron's block.

[mallleable]

WAR is absolutely wayy over-tuned in terms of self, and party healing, but I do feel like PLD's power is mostly misplaced. I feel like instead of having high self healing, PLD should have stronger personal shielding, and mitigation. I feel like PLD shouldn't need to self heal because it shouldn't be taking damage in the first place -- it has a shield after all. I generally feel like PLD should have the best party utility of the tanks, but I feel like they should be more akin to being a protector as opposed to being a healer.

[Absurdity]

WAR is absolutely wayy over-tuned in terms of self, and party healing, but I do feel like PLD's power is mostly misplaced. I feel like instead of having high self healing, PLD should have stronger personal shielding, and mitigation. I feel like PLD shouldn't need to self heal because it shouldn't be taking damage in the first place -- it has a shield after all. I generally feel like PLD should have the best party utility of the tanks, but I feel like they should be more akin to being a protector as opposed to being a healer.

That's what paladin pretty much used to be. 40% DR on Sentinel, 30+% DR on Block, 20% DR on Cover, the only true invincibility in Hallowed Ground.

It paid for those benefits with longer cooldowns, but in todays incredibly rigid design we can't have that, so both benefits and drawbacks went out the window.

[Lyth]

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'Mid-expansion' refers to during the course of the patch series, not necessarily 4.3 specifically. The action was released on June 20, 2017 and changed on October 10, 2017. The original effect was 'removes most of all detrimental effects' on a 60 second recast, which is really funny because it would have been more powerful than a self-Esuna, given its ability to simultaneously cleanse all active cleansable debuffs instead of just one, and would likely have influenced fight design to include more cleansable DoT/Vuln effects even in raid content (i.e. tankbuster effects like Crush Helm's vuln). I think had Reprisal been the one and only raidwide mitigation tool on tanks (presumably the reason for making it a role action in the first place), there would be no reason to change it. For whatever reason, they decided to still keep DV and add in PoA at the same time, and thus the raidwide mitigation arms race began.

I suppose another factor was the fact that IR, released at the same time, cleanses a large number of debuffs anyways as well, so the end result would be a tank that was functionally just immune to debuffs across the board. It just so happened that they replaced one overpowered concept with an even more overpowered one, in response to player demand.

[Hyperia]

WAR is absolutely wayy over-tuned in terms of self, and party healing, but I do feel like PLD's power is mostly misplaced. I feel like instead of having high self healing, PLD should have stronger personal shielding, and mitigation. I feel like PLD shouldn't need to self heal because it shouldn't be taking damage in the first place -- it has a shield after all. I generally feel like PLD should have the best party utility of the tanks, but I feel like they should be more akin to being a protector as opposed to being a healer.

WAR is way beyond over-tuned and outright broken in its self-sustain and DPS abilities. I've watched on several occasions a WAR solo current content dungeon bosses and sometimes nearly wall to wall pulls. At the rate there buffing the job, the joke is going to be: What can WAR do - Yes.

[TheOperator3712]

...

The problem is also with certain mechanics, take the Abyssos bleed busters for example. 10% mit and +40% HP for 15 seconds is nice on single hit busters, but when you're taking damage over time and that damage is based on how much damage the initial buster did, suddenly you're taking way more damage and your HP buff does nothing.
We saw it already with Bloodwhetting and ToB to a smaller extend because they provided either low flat % DR or none, but Paladin drew the really short stick with bleeds completely ignoring Holy Shelltron's block.

I don't see that as necessarily being a problem. It could be an excellent opportunity for creative game design to shine. It would make dealing with those mechanics harder for WAR in the sense that they would have to hit more than one button. WAR already has self-healing in their kit and identity though, and could use that to mitigate the damage of such dots. Alternatively the devs keep adding more and more external mitigation tools to tanks and healers. Why add tools if you're not going to make uses for them? I think the game needs more situations where job design allows for creative solutions, not less.

[Araxes]

My personal issue with the imbalance currently is that, as some already mentioned, the Healers or rather their purpose. In a dungeon you dont need one. Simple as that. You can also do treasure maps or even some normal trials without one. Now before the ultimate crew jumps at me: only a small percentage actually does or clears that content. All the Legends you see are cause of a different problem that is off topic here. That mentioned, there is now people that clear ultimates without healers. It should not be possible, simple as that.

There is simply 2 solutions: Dispellable debuffs need to be a constant thing since only Healers can remove them in a reliable way and while that would be the boring option it would at least be SOMETHING.
The other one would be: be brave and nerf the heck out of self sustain so that healers actually feel like they matter. You could also combine the two.. just saying.

One of the other MMO's i played completely killed of Healers as well but for a different reason (PvP related group play that made it impossible to kill them due to server issues and the resulting lag. Their response was to nerf Healing a flat 60 % as of now but the problem still exists). Now i barely play that one and only on the free 2 play option. People there now play mostly in tanky setups and keep themselves alive with.. you guessed it... self sustain skills. I guess Tanks are the next ones getting nerfed to the ground.

That now aside, a trend i see in the duty finder is that more and more have Adventurer in need: Healer. I just hope SE will be doing something and soon.

[Oizen]

WAR is absolutely wayy over-tuned in terms of self, and party healing, but I do feel like PLD's power is mostly misplaced. I feel like instead of having high self healing, PLD should have stronger personal shielding, and mitigation. I feel like PLD shouldn't need to self heal because it shouldn't be taking damage in the first place -- it has a shield after all. I generally feel like PLD should have the best party utility of the tanks, but I feel like they should be more akin to being a protector as opposed to being a healer.

Every PLD player I have talked to tells me they want to be dead last in terms of damage output but get all the support tools under the sun, which I think is fair.

WAR is the main issue here because it doesn't pay for what it has. PLD loses damage with tools like Clemency and Passage, WAR doesn't.
Some tanks having superior support tools isn't a problem, the problem is when those tanks are also topping the dps charts. Then you get into "flat upgrade" territory, which is where WAR's design currently sits.