WAR-Trying to think out of the box: Should Defiance be always Active during fights?

[Shinkyo]

Hi all,

First, I'll start saying that I am not at all in endgame content yet, am just trying to throw a silly idea out there and get a constructive discussion. So please, don't trash at me :-)
I come to you because I don't have the knowledge nor means to properly evaluate my question.
WAR self healing (on paper) in supposed to be our mitigation method and key differentiation with PLD.
I have this feeling that there could be benefit in removing Defiance mid fight on certain situation to increase dmg and self healing.

Things that bugs me with Defiance:
1- What's the point having a skill that we'd leave active all the time except for Solo Play? just make it a trait then.
2- Defiance recast time is 10 sec which is not too high considering you could recast it before Bloodbath ends.
3- Defiance has little benefit when you're already low on HP and you're out of Wrath.

[Shinkyo]

Here's the scenario I'm trying to evaluate:
- WAR takes a big hit, is under 50% HP and at this point, you don't benefit from the +25% HP from defiance but still have the +15% healing.
- you'd through Bloodbath + IB + Infuriate + IB to self heal and then you're out of wrath.
(continue)


So here's my question: during that time where you have no wrath and your HP still isn't in top shape, could it make sense to undo Defiance in an attempt to increase self healing (of course, you'd activate Convalescence to compensate the healing bonus) and hopefully mitigate more?
Then as you get healed and get back above 75% HP, you'd reactivate Defiance and rebuild wrath as Bloodbath ends.

I'm not all thinking that it would Fix WAR, maybe only maybe there could be potential to our life a little easier.

[Kitru]

So here's my question: during that time where you have no wrath and your HP still isn't in top shape, could it make sense to undo Defiance in an attempt to increase self healing (of course, you'd activate Convalescence to compensate the healing bonus) and hopefully mitigate more?

No. The additional HP you'd get out of Bloodbath without Defiance active (~30% more than with Defiance active; remember: Wrath stacks also bring crit stacks so it's not a straight up 33% increase, which is what it would be at 1.0/.75) would pale beneath the additional healing you'd get out of the faster rebuild of Wrath stacks. Bloodbath provides a relative pittance and you're screwing yourself out of a lot of +healing to slightly increase that pittance, not to mention that you *should* get brought back up to full while Bloodbath is still up. On top of that, reactivating Defiance increases your max hp but does nothing for current hp so, when you activate it, you don't benefit from that +hp until your healers have topped you off (which will be harder than before because you don't have +heal stacks yet).

The only time that Defiance should be off is when you don't have aggro or aggro simply doesn't matter. Interestingly enough, that actually happens pretty often in the end game. When I'm doing Garuda, I don't even bother turning Defiance on until partway through phase 2 when the adds actually spawn. On Ifrit, if I'm not MT, I don't turn it on at all. In Amdapor Keep, on the Demon Wall, I don't have it on at any point in the entire fight (not even for the bees) because that fight is all about DPS and randomly targeted damage.

If you're actually *tanking* and not just waiting to tank, Defiance should be on. If it's not, you're just making your healer's life harder.

[Destro]

When im tanking AK with my healer buddy I always turn defiance off 90% of the time depending on the situation. Makes the run much faster and fun, specially with internal release+berserk I even beat some dps in parses .

[Dhex]

Here's the scenario I'm trying to evaluate:
- WAR takes a big hit, is under 50% HP and at this point, you don't benefit from the +25% HP from defiance but still have the +15% healing.
- you'd through Bloodbath + IB + Infuriate + IB to self heal and then you're out of wrath.
(continue)

If you shifted out of Defiance at this point you'd need to still be at a super low HP* - if the Healer is casting on you at this point you might as well immediately begin building Wrath again and span the next few seconds of Wrath stacking with either Foresight or Convalescence. Let's say you drop Defiance - Healer was going to try and fill that 25% gap they were seeing and Over Cure on you. You're at a lower HP rating now - everything as far as stringing HP return is technically down - you're not going to be building your 15% Healing Potency return again either if you drop the Defiance.

If you're full Defiance HP drop Defiance - activate Defiance - Infuriate - Inner Beast - you've effectively wasted the potential of that self-heal, and put yourself on an unnecessary CD.

*[Think of Defiance as 125% HP static and +15% active incoming HP depending on Wrath. If you drop to 50% of your health in Defiance you're shifting to a higher % with non-Defiance health but at a lower high cap.]
EX:
Base HP = 1000
Defiance HP +25% = 1250

50% of 1000 = 500
50% of 1250 = 625

Dropping Defiance would lead to 625/1000 with an inbound cure -> 1000HP (likely over cure - possible free cure but this is RNG)
but then you're going to be 1000/1250 the instant you Defiance again -> requiring cure - no wrath having been built in the down time (causing the healer to have to fill HP gaps without active help from you)

Dropping Defiance isn't the route I would take unless you're OT on something with long periods of no Adds. I would build Wrath V and Unchained and use that 20s to wait out the CD on my self healing (Infuriate, Bloodbath) while again building a Wrath V to use for Inner Beast or hold onto for +15% Healing.

[Ehayte]

Just wanted to pick up on the outside the box thread, as I abandoned a PLD just before end-game-ish content to begin leveling up a WAR.

Have we thought about how healers should be healing WARs? With WAR spike damage and spike recovery, is there something healers should be doing fundamentally different so that the overheal/overlap of those spikes is lessened?

i.e. should WARs be healed differently than PLDs? It would certainly make a genius and interesting MMO if what tank you had in the group changed how every single other player played. Like how having a BLM lets you sleep mobs efficiently, but having single target DPS you need to AE aggro and mitigate a lot more damage.

[Corkafish]

i.e. should WARs be healed differently than PLDs? It would certainly make a genius and interesting MMO if what tank you had in the group changed how every single other player played. Like how having a BLM lets you sleep mobs efficiently, but having single target DPS you need to AE aggro and mitigate a lot more damage.

I don't know about specific styles, but SCH seems to be better at healing WAR due to their ability to place absorb effects. Their toolkit of external cooldowns helps to offset WAR's lack of personal cooldowns. WHM's Stoneskin and Protect are also useful, but any good SCH will have those cross-classed.

[Dhex]

I'm of the opinion SCH/WHM should be front loading as much as possible with a WAR - I know this is inefficient from a numeric standpoint but with the way HP recovery is you have to devote extra MP on the WAR after a spike. With enough front load shields a WAR can feel less intense, but still requires as much focus.

[Shinkyo]

Thank you for the responses.
All make sense to support keeping Defiance active all the time while tanking. I was trying to get disruptive a bit and also like the idea of a tank having to switch between off/def stance to actually tank.

Just an example of what I had in mind:
Base HP = 4000
Defiance HP +25% = 5000

Let's say you're down at 1000/5000, you could drop Defiance and get your hp at 1000/4000 if it took more than 10sec (defiance recast time) for the healer to get you close to the 4000HP and then re-activate Defiance so you don't get over healed. then maybe during those 10 sec, you'd be able to do enough damage with your true offense potential to self heal more than the +15% heal.
if I assume that a Defiance WAR does 100 DPS, and hoping that DPS would raise at 130 by dropping it, over 10 sec you'd get 325 HP more (25% of 130 over 10 sec) than in the normal scenario.
Pretty negligible but I don't have a feel of how much the +15% heal would provide over the same period

[Shinkyo]

Was wondering if someone out there could make sense out of it :-)
I'd love to see SE tweak WAR so that our DPS becomes our key for survivability (while not matching true DPS classes). Something like, x% of our damage becomes a buffer similar to stoneskin.