10 changes which will make WAR competitive with PLD!!

[Lharz]

no, turning inner beast's heal into shield， is the second priority thing to do， 1st of course is defiance.

I didn't read well. Turning heal into shield would be ok. But not both, as I thought you wished.

[CrstyCaptin]

Played war for the first time since 1.0 in AK last night. Very unimpressed. I've ran that dungeon a good 30 times and the way I was getting hit with a good portion of my gear being ilv60 was just stupid. I was a total mp sink. The class just seemed unfinished. Pld is all about mitigating damage, which works. War is about... kinda parrying, kinda restoring hp with skills that don't restore that much hp... I duno, hung up my axe and finishing pld now. I agree with the need to 'enhance' war abilities, not nerf other classes.

[hola]

I didn't read well. Turning heal into shield would be ok. But not both, as I thought you wished.

get to lv 50 then talk

[Lharz]

get to lv 50 then talk

Stupid reaction. You're ended.

[hola]

4 : NO. We are NOT paladins.
.

why?
because you are pld so you can get TWO dmg mitigation skill? which basically offer the same effect, even tooltip are the same. while war only get A defense boost skill??? defense does absolutely nothing to magic attack.

not to mention pld can use foresight as well. EXACT the same 20% defense boost, just longer CD.

[Teroril]

The only thing WAR needs, is more reliable HP generation, and maybe moving the 15% healing buff to defiance instead of wrath.

IB shield (instead of heal) that stacks with SCH shields and stoneskin could be interesting. War also needs a way to dump aggro when doing certain 8mans. Apart from certain bosses, it makes no sense to have two tanks in those.

Before today, I was a terrible war tank, but after discussing the job with a pld friend of mine, whose wife is a healer that I've run instances with. I figured out how to play properly, and I now have no problems tanking the 50 instances up to and including HM ifrit.

[SatrinaKali]

Your class isn't a paladin. Learn to deal with it, or go level up paladin as your next job. Stop trying to make every class the same...

[Stonebears]

I think an absorb shield on Inner Beast would be useful.

Maybe an increased parry chance after using Steel Cyclone or Vengeance could fit with WAR too

[Derza]

I think it would be cool if they did something like immune to all damage while in the animation of Steel Cyclone (~1 sec) would make it viable to use to avoid big hits on bosses but very hard to do it well... or maybe take 50% damage but have it be 2-3 secs. Would make the skill good for aoe tanking as well as avoid huge damage from boss nukes.

[Hachiko]

Original Post

1. Defiance is OK as it is. It adds a lot of depth to our class and makes Infuriate a useful defensive and offensive cooldown. The bigger issue is with the usefulness of skills that eat our stacks.

2. Inner Beast heal is actually very good. It would be better if it was a shield effect though, and I think this would be a fair change. The biggest problem is how often it overheals, or causes a cure 2 to overheal.

3. 3 stacks would be way too powerful even if it didn't need the stacks for the healing and crit chance (like you suggest dropping the requirement). 3 stacks would mean a 1k self heal ridiculously often. IMO it would be broken. I could see 4 stacks, but that would only be if it still required you to stack for the healing / crit bonus.

4. I don't think Foresight should be taken from PLD, though it could be slightly better I don't think it should be buffed that much...

5. Yeah storm's eye is problematic. As it is it makes improved maim a completely worthless trait because you have to go through a maim combo more often to apply the slashing resistance debuff every other combo anyway. The alternative is dropping storms eye from the rotation, which seems a bit ridiculous considering it's our level 50 MRD skill...

6. Bloodbath isn't very good for a cooldown, I agree.

7. Mercy Stroke is probably one of our most useless skills. I would like to see it reworked as a proper execute: I.E. 200 potentcy attack, 60 second cooldown, if the target is below 20% health it deals double damage. If it kills the target, apply the heal it currently does. At least then I would macro it into something...

8. Steel Cyclone is trash. Damage is too low, and it's only good for aoe enmity except if you are aoe tanking losing your fury stacks from defiance is too high of a price to pay. Would love to see it consume only 1 stack of Wrath, and be usable while not infuriated. Currently there would never be a situation where you should use it over flash or overpower.

9. Brutal Swing should have a lower stun duration and a shorter cooldown. Enhanced brutal Swing should reduce the cooldown to 20 seconds instead of making it last 5 seconds. It's nice how it has flavor and is off the GCD though. Homogonzing it to be like paladin shield bash would be horrible.

10. The 5 seconds after berserk is necessary to counteract the huge damage bonus it gives us. It's still probably the best DPS cooldown in the game, with the possible exception of Blood for Blood which would be completely unusable by marauders anyway. The time can be well utilized by defensive cooldowns and dropping a flash.

So I agree that some of the things you bring up are issues but I think all your solutions need more thought.