#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[CKNovel]

Were WARs completely useless in ARR and HW when they were like that?

Running 2 paladins was better in ARR, there was no penalty for double jobs back then and WAR only had a tank stance.
It's only until HW that WAR got a lot of fixes and had a strong DPS while Paladin fell down due to many reasons related to TP or its identity as a physical tank without physical encounter.

[Tint]

Running 2 paladins was better in ARR, there was no penalty for double jobs back then and WAR only had a tank stance.
It's only until HW that WAR got a lot of fixes and had a strong DPS while Paladin fell down due to many reasons related to TP or its identity as a physical tank without physical encounter.

WAR got fixed in patch 2.1, so shorty after ARR release.

When WAR got buffed they basically added PLD mitigation on top of the (slightly nerfed) self heals and better dps and WAR was the best tank from 2.1 onwards. Holmgang only had a 3 minute cooldown back then, Vengeance a 2 minute cooldown compared to PLDs Sentinel with 3 minutes, Inner Beast was the first on-demand "cooldown" with 20% mitigation. WAR had more mitigation than PLD back then thanks to the shorter cooldowns. Plus party mitigation with Storm's Path and raid dps with Slashing debuff (at least when they added NIN later in ARR, before that you could make little use of it).

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...c43828a#battle (there is an error, it says Brutal Swing instead of Marauder)

When they added the dps stance for WAR and Fell Cleave in HW the balance was completely off, but WAR was powerfull even before that. It was only between 2.0 and 2.1 that WAR was useless. WAR could not even reach the accuracy caps for Coil T5 without the axe from the ex primals they added in 2.1 if I remember correctly. The job was a complete oversight.

[Absurdity]

Warrior technically didn't lack mitigation, it was just another tradeoff.

Defiance gave you 20% more max HP which functioned as mitigation and 20% more healing from GCDs to aid healers with keeping you up, but reduced your damage by 20% unless you had Unchained active.
Inner Beast gave you 20% mit for 6 seconds but cost 50 gauge.
Neither of them weak, they did however come at the cost of DPS output so you rarely factored them into your mitigation plan in Stormblood.

Raw Intuition on the other hand suffered from the same problem as Paladin in HW since you can't parry magic.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Aurora by itself is not a problem. Tanks strong self mits by itself is not a problem. But once you combine both, that is how you get today’s ‘healer issues’—alongside other plethora of ‘smaller issues’. You may think it's small amount enough it wouldn't replace healers. That's not entirely wrong. But that's just another instance of "Oh I see there's Aurora ticking, I guess I'll just bench my Tetragrammaton for now then", not including the fact that my Tetra also has less effective HPS vs Aurora at the same cooldown. You know what else makes me think like that? Other smaller stuffs like... say, SMN's phoenix heals and Lux Solaris. MNK's Earth Reply. PLD's Knight Benediction, and so on.... How many more 'small issues' do we want to add to the list?

Glance over at the basic premise of a trinity system, then it’s only natural that people would first glare (pun intended) at the healing tools. On top of that required HPS is already on the lower side of the spectrum. I certainly won't ignore a free shot of 69k total heal per charge, not accounting the crit ticks..

[CaptainLagbeard]

The thing is, the more you reduce the healing from Tanks and DPS, the more it will move back to Healers needing to heal rather than just being subpar DPS.

WAR is kind of an outlier, but it's a matter of job identity as well... Unless you want even more homogenization on tanks, just make all 4 tanks play the exact same just with different visuals...

Healers are currently the role with the most issues to them, making them better and more vital is more important in my opinion than redesigning tanks.

[Rithy255]

The thing is, the more you reduce the healing from Tanks and DPS, the more it will move back to Healers needing to heal rather than just being subpar DPS.

WAR is kind of an outlier, but it's a matter of job identity as well... Unless you want even more homogenization on tanks, just make all 4 tanks play the exact same just with different visuals...

Healers are currently the role with the most issues to them, making them better and more vital is more important in my opinion than redesigning tanks.

I just find it weird that we're willing to nerf PLD/GNB/DRK's self healing survivability but when it comes to warrior it's suddenly apart of its identity.

The larger issue is that if you were to balance warrior with "less mitigation" it would need a better upside then just sustain alone, but giving warrior something like more damage makes it outright better because damage is higher value then mit (dmg > mit > sustain, is usually a safe order of whats more useful in hard content).

I think it's also safe to say that some form of PLD's identity has to do with healing, it's literally a Knight with white magic.

It has to be some middle ground, some sustain is fine but not current levels, but also warrior shouldn't just be left alone outside removing target heals... I'm sorry but warrior shouldn't be the sole exception to the rule when it's the one with the most problematic sustain out of all tanks.

[ForsakenRoe]

I think it's also safe to say that some form of PLD's identity has to do with healing, it's literally a Knight with white magic.

It has to be some middle ground, some sustain is fine but not current levels,

Yeh, the 'middle ground' for all of the tanks (except PLD) was SHB.

PLD in SHB: Literally zero selfhealing in their rotation
PLD in DT: 1000p per 22s via Holy Sheltron, 1600p per minute from Confiteor combo, 800-1200p per minute from Holy Spirit/Holy Circle

WAR in SHB: X healing from Nascent Flash (X being equal to damage dealt, so weaker hits like Overpower = weaker healing. Also, on an ally the healing was reduced by 50%), 20% HP restored per 2min via Thrill of Battle, 1200p per 60s from Equilibrium

WAR in DT: 1200p (that is always 1200 and does not scale) per 25s from Bloodwhetting, 2200p per 60s from Equilibrium, 20% HP restored per 2min via Thrill, 1500p restored per 2min via Damnation

GNB in SHB: 1200p per 60s from Aurora
GNB in DT: 1800p per 60s from Aurora (now 2 charges too), 900p per 25s from Heart of Corundum, 20% HP restored per 2min via Great Nebula


Doing the maths, these three tanks (DRK's a little less egregious IMO due to it relying more on 'barriers' than 'direct HP restoration') have had their 'free healing via OGCDs that don't cost them any damage to use' increased by over 2000p per minute. PLD is expectially crazy, given it started with zero 'free' healing, so it went from 0 to about 5500p overnight

This also isn't including Barrier effects like Guardian and Brutal Shell, or the basic 123 combo healing like Storm's Path. Or the raidwide mitigations like Shake It Off (800p total) or Divine Veil (300p)


So, going back to SHB levels of self-sustain would be a big step. Wouldn't solve the issues overnight, but it's a start. Course, we won't be going back, because the Tanks would feel like they're not the main character anymore

[Rithy255]

Yeh, the 'middle ground' for all of the tanks (except PLD) was SHB.

I mean even then warrior was clearly a outlier.

I was thinking more between shb war-gnb sustain, but yeah it should be a lot lower then current Imo.

[ForsakenRoe]

I mean even then warrior was clearly a outlier.

I was thinking more between shb war-gnb sustain, but yeah it should be a lot lower then current Imo.

It was, but at the same time, there were some restrictions keeping WAR at least slightly more controlled compared to now (before 5.3 at least):

- The healing was 1:1 with the damage dealt. So, using it for a 123 combo meant less healing than using it when you're doing an IR window, so there was sometimes an aspect of 'maybe it's better to hold it for a few seconds, to line it up and get more healing from it by aligning it with my big damage'.

- You couldn't self-target Nascent Flash originally. It HAD to be used on an ally, which meant that the situations we see sometimes now, where a WAR (and only the WAR) is left alive and solos the dungeon boss from 50% all the way down to 0 over the course of like 15 minutes, that wasn't possible back then, because them being the last one alive would leave them with no valid targets for Nascent. Raw Intuition was a simple '20% mit' with no other effects at the time

- Equilibrium didn't have the over-the-top HOT effect tacked on until EW came out

SHB GNB is probably the ideal balance. 1200p as a HOT once per 60s, 200p healing from the '2' in their 123 combo, 200p barrier on self from that same '2', and the ability to transfer that barrier effect to someone else with Heart of Stone. We didn't need more than that

[Absurdity]

WAR in SHB: X healing from Nascent Flash (X being equal to damage dealt, so weaker hits like Overpower = weaker healing. Also, on an ally the healing was reduced by 50%), 20% HP restored per 2min via Thrill of Battle, 1200p per 60s from Equilibrium

It doesn't mention it in the tooltip from back then but Nascent only healed you for 50% of your damage dealt and that was reduced by another 50% for the ally you targeted.

Nascent Flash, even when usable on yourself was somewhat fine back then, as before up to the release of 5.0, Inner Beast had the effect of healing you for 100% of the damage it dealt... So you could Inner Release to throw out 4-5 free Inner Beasts for a good amount of healing with a short lingering 20% mit... Though the difference is that Inner Release was on a 90s CD instead of Nascent's 25s.

The IR + Inner Beast spam also came at the cost of a sizeable dps loss, so even if you technically could heal for a ridiculous amount every 90 seconds you really didn't want to, the 5x Fell Cleave during Inner Release were like 50% of your total damage.

Nascent Flash in ShB was kept in line by Warrior's basic 1-2-3 simply not being very good, you couldn't just spam it on cooldown unlike Bloodwhetting.
All you would get out of random NF usage without proper setup was wet noodle healing since Warrior even back then had most of it's damage stuffed into the IR windows and your "downtime" DPS was pretty bad.

But this is probably also why they changed it with Endwalker, bad Warriors complaining about NF's low healing because they used it on a Heavy Swing -> Maim -> Storm's combo.