Warrior Rework to Balance the job

[Lyth]

...

Job designs converge when you introduce in an effect that is powerful enough that every job needs a copy of it to stay balanced. Take invulns, for example. You can easily design tank gameplay without invulns. I'd actually argue that in a fight design standard where you only see four to five tankbusters to be split between two tanks, it actually makes sense not to have them be available at all. But since the existing tanks all have invulns, every tank job introduced from this point forward will also need to have a job-specific invuln. The combined effect of these convergent designs is that tank gameplay starts to feel very similar. That sense of sameness what players are referring to around their experience of 'homogenization.'

The Role Action system was originally designed to combat this by moving essential 'role functions' off into a common pool. But the approach to this has historically been sloppy. We converted Reprisal into a role action in Stormblood so that every tank can contribute to raidwide mitigation. Great. But PLD also kept Divine Veil and gained Passage of Arms. Then WAR players burst into tears and demanded that Shake it Off should become their second raidwide mitigation tool. Then you have to give DRK and GNB second raidwide mitigation tools as well to maintain balance. Eventually, every tank job has two or three hotbar slots dedicated to raidwide mitigation, just so that they can all be on a level footing with each other. More and more of your hotbar space gets overrun by layers of defensive actions, while your offensive rotations are progressively simplified.

Self-healing is just the latest part of this trend, where we just run around slapping on 'Additional Effect: Heal' on to every action. You might as well add it as a tank trait at this point. In truth, I think the real reason for adding it is because some people become unbearably anxious when they're at low HP numbers, and start furiously typing at their 'trolling' healers to heal. I personally liked it better when tanking was self-selecting, and if you weren't able to cut it playing chicken with your healer at sub-20% HP, you just picked another role.

If you want job designs to diverge, you need to build around a theme. The temporary HP that WAR used to be designed around is one such example. You could build all of WAR's defensives around the concept. Another could be designed with more of a barrier focus. A third could make use of block effects. It doesn't have to be every tank with an Excog action and a 20% HP buffing effect.

Either way, I'm glad that you feel that you're 'winning' at something here, but I think this design direction will be detrimental to tanks in the long run. The reason for having a variety of jobs in each role is to draw in players with different tastes, and that doesn't work out in the long run if there's only one or two go to choices in every situation. We'll see what happens in 8.0, I suppose, when the job reworks and possibly a fifth (hammer?) tank enter the picture.

[Ramiee]

Its people saying "Lalala warrior is fine" and people saying "Lalala warrior is op" you're both as bad as each other.

[MikoRemi]

Its people saying "Lalala warrior is fine" and people saying "Lalala warrior is op" you're both as bad as each other.

And yet not only are we not infringing on others because our egos need stroking, were winning as is with a fun job. So whose really doing bad here hmm~?

Not our fault the forums have a few people wanting to loop a braindead desire in a vain attempt in hoping this time it somehow works.

[Alice_Rivers]

The more I read this thread the more I come around to the idea that tanks (especially WARs) neither need or want healers and we should just remove the healer requirement from content.

[CKNovel]

The more I read this thread the more I come around to the idea that tanks (especially WARs) neither need or want healers and we should just remove the healer requirement from content.

One hell of a strawman.

We already pointed that nerfing WAR won't make healers magically fun and backed it up with data and examples from other content, then proposed solution to make healers more fun.
But nope, we're the baddies who don't want healers to have fun.

The discussion always cycled back to "but but but war healing!! it's not fair!! trinity is dead!!".

I want to healers to be fun while retaining Bloodwhetting as it is, so it opens the door to many other tools stepping out of the lines rather than closing it.

[Alice_Rivers]

It's not an argument in the first place, it's merely a statement of fact, disappointing a fact as it is. I came into this thread with some modicum of optimism and hope that there would be room for diplomacy, that a compromise could be reached, I tried to reach such compromise and yet, here we are again. What other conclusion am I to draw?

[CKNovel]

It's not an argument in the first place, it's merely a statement of fact, disappointing a fact as it is. I came into this thread with some modicum of optimism and hope that there would be room for diplomacy, that a compromise could be reached, I tried to reach such compromise and yet, here we are again. What other conclusion am I to draw?

What compromises? You just screams for a nerf without accepting any other solutions, that WAR healing is a problem despite data showing it's not.
Don't talk about diplomacy when you present your solution as the only worth to consider.

Also here the conclusion, that I've been repeating for pages, you are to draw:

I want to healers to be fun while retaining Bloodwhetting as it is, so it opens the door to many other tools stepping out of the lines rather than closing it.

[Alice_Rivers]

I thought I'd go back through the thread to find all the instances where I've suggested or discussed doing things other than or in addition to reducing WAR's self healing, here's what I found:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6557324

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6557380

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6557492

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6557508

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6557523

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6557585

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6557679

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6558753

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6559196

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6579806

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6580274

[CKNovel]

Cool taking your posts from weeks ago, yet your stance clearly evolved since then.
You're still hellbent on nerfing Bloodwhetting and drawing poor conclusions.

It's even more questionable, despite linking your post, how can you believe tanks don't want healers?

[Shurrikhan]

And yet not only are we not infringing on others because our egos need stroking, were winning as is with a fun job.

Because reverting Bloodwhetting to again be advantaged by banked gauge, combo position, oGCDs, reflective damage, autos, raid buffs, vulnerability windows, etc. makes it less fun?

Again, unless by "gameplay" you mean solely power (the degree of effort or optimization required to perform a given task) rather than playflow (the processes and considerations of actually doing that task, especially if optimally), your issue here seems nonsensical.

If to you, {higher skill ceiling} = {less fun}, than can we just dispense with the tangents and just discuss compromises in "accessibility" for those who don't want feel encouraged to optimize things?

Otherwise, if this is truly a preference just for unique advantages (with compensatory disadvantages), can we discuss to what degree you'd be fine with Warrior being left out of certain fights it's less advantaged in... in exchange for its being an encouraged/obliged pick for what content it is advantaged in, and/or why it'd be fine to make an entire content type just "Warrior's" until said content type can be redesigned to repair its degree of choice for (and only for) Dawntrail and onward?

We already pointed that nerfing WAR won't make healers magically fun and backed it up with data and examples from other content, then proposed solution to make healers more fun.

The data and examples from other content shows the same thing people were saying about EW/DT Bloodwhetting/Nascent and Warriors' balance overall. It and they overperform generally despite ALSO enjoying significant specific advantages (far more so than anyone but PLD-in-a-specifically-healer-less-but-high-ST-damage-taken-encounter), e.g.:

• whenever stackable mitigation falls within its duration + 15s of a raidwide and/or a raidwide requiring mit falls within 15s of a prior one that did not specifically need tank mit to avoid needing GCD barriers,
• whenever AoE attack opportunities are alignable with one's on-demand,
• whenever having the by far shortest invuln in the game can rope an extra cheese per fight, allowing for rDPS saves or a more lenient CD schedule to recover from mistakes,
• whenever heals can actually be simultaneously pressured for raidwides and anti-tank damage,
• and anywhere one can make any use of having generally some 44-50% more sustain (not even counting overhealing or excess barrier HP, though exempting emergency Clemencies) for ~2% less aDPS (which, heck, was less than half a percent until the latest patch).

Like, seriously, how the hell are we supposed to "solve" that imbalance just by increasing healing requirements... when that would hugely exacerbate that imbalance's impact on the clear speeds (assuming healers don't just outright oom without enough Warriors or Paladins to make up the difference) and likelihood of wipes (from the extra rDPS lost to healing when not WAR/PLD or WAR/WAR)? On the contrary, it would make the matter exponentially worse. I don't understand how anyone could look at that discrepancy and think "Well, if you just made its advantage MORE impactful, then it'd get balanced again." ???

At this point, Warrior's theme isn't self-healing or temporary HP or thrill of the fight or anything so iconic; it's themed most around, simply, copied tools with their friction and skill ceilings then pruned away or their floor itself given enough output to be competitive even without optimizing the skill.

And that should not be the case. Warrior deserves a real identity beyond just "everyone else's skills, but distilled to their most practical core (+ occasionally some unique advantage that, also uniquely, comes with no real or net cost)."

But its "identity" is more than likely going to remain that haphazard crap for however long players --whenever the questions are applied to THEIR job--

• insist that specific advantages should not come with compensatory practical weaknesses,
• insist that content be built uniquely around them ("Don't nerf Bloodwhetting; just remove AoEs from dungeons instead"),
• insist their skills be/remain relatively skill-proofed ("Our sustain should be competitively strong even when we don't optimize it, but it should still reward us for optimizing it"), or
• --just as importantly-- refuse to understand that broad categorical differences in strengths simply prune what jobs are competitive for particular fights and/or at particular levels of gearing... far, far more than they add to job flavor (whereas many other approaches do fine -- just not that one).

I would love to build up a strong Warrior identity. I'd love to see a 4.1 approach revitalized. But I get the feeling that isn't really the priority here for most people expressing allegedly related concerns. Instead, rather like Endwalker Summoner discussion, ease of power seems the more core motive.