Great post, this is about what I feel and a few other warriors feel in the guild I'm in. It's just well said and I hope the devs re-evaluate the warrior class and put us in line to at least comparable range of knights group game tanking. Not sure why most of our forum warriors are so worried about dps stances when this is more of an issue. As for my personal experience I end up 5-boxing my group my (main being a warrior) with my girlfriend along being a SK. The things I see her do is just unreal and it's just crazy the difference in heals needed between the SK and Warrior. It's like every 1 heal a SK needs, a warrior needs 5, or a warrior tanking 1 mob uses the same heals a SK tanking 5 mobs. A warrior with no utility should be out tanking knights that come with a whole bunch of other tools but we've been stagnated to death, had our abilities farmed out to other classes and it's to the point where we all get excited when they give us something so tiny it doesn't make much of a difference. A lot of times I wonder why I even stay as a warrior and not main change to something else, it's just so disheartning. Alot of warriors were able to stomach being out tanked a bit back before the shield specialist barrage of nerfs because we were well ahead of knight dps. Now we've been nerfed so hard that warrior dps is less then SK dps and the warrior class doesn't have anything to offer that's better in the group game compared to knights (at least for SK's can do). Honestly back then even when our dps was great during that time I still would have preferred to be comparable tanks instead of the dps boost, it just made things a little easier to swallow. The same will continue I expect, warriors will never compare in tanking to knights in the group game. More warrior stuff will be farmed out to other classes, the warrior nerfing will continue and warriors will continue to stagnate. This is why I was against the whole removal of the defensive disc. They just wanted to remove defensive disc but offered NOTHING on how the warrior class will end up since our last bread and butter is defensive. Anyways I rambled off and this post was just supposed to be a thumbs up to shiftie. It was a great post and I guess it made me share more then a thumbs up. I'm not calling for nerfs to knights, what they can do I think is great for their class, I just hope that warriors can at least start to be comparable rather then well behind of what knights can do.
Shiftee's post genuinely impressed me. I've liked a lot of Dre's posts too. I would rather see warriors regain the throne than just get sprinkled with utility myself, but either way I agree that the current state of things for warriors should be improved a lot. Is there an area that shows that (or even if at this point) warriors at 100 with say top tier group gear, tier 1-top tier raid gear have a sweet spot where they can tank all (even most?) raid bosses better than knights can? It is obvious from my experience that as tanks eventually outgear content, the knights become much better. I guess an even better question to ask would be what the best way to really test this would be given all of the factors involved. In any case I think some solid numbers might make a point to all of the naysayers out there.
Also adding my props to Shiftie for his excellent description of the "WAR mitigation vs Knight healing" disparity Warriors face. Identifying the problem is an important step, but only the first. boost warrior utility to further tank parity Curious that you started here as this is the absolute lowest priority on my list. Our first job is taking damage. We need to do that, well, before anything else matters. Otherwise I just end up tanking with my Bard's tank merc. tune raid content up which creates exclusivity You'd have to tune up group content as well. This sounds like it has much further reaching consequences than addressing Warrior concerns. Gates and Underfoot show us this can end up a step in the wrong direction that hurts EQ on a wider scale. create warrior abilities that offset spike damage (ie reprove) Now we're getting somewhere. The point I'd like to repeat here is that copies of Knight abilities won't cut it. Lack of self-healing dictates our abilities need to be better, or we continue the status quo of copy/paste where the core problems are ignored and nothing is gained. other options combination of all of the above Yeah, these. New new types of abilities on top of improvements across the board. Quite simply, the copy/paste design that works for everyone else has never, ever worked for the Warrior class. First order of business needs to be boosting Warrior survivability against spells and melee damage. It shouldn't result in knight nerfs - it should instead boost the warrior class into usefulness again 100% agreed. A shift in vision and attitudes needs to occur. From a defensive standpoint, simply "sufficient" isn't going to work anymore - we need to be overkill. Look at the way that necros completely dominate sustained today. That's the kind of tanking gap I'd like Warriors to hold over Knights/Pets/Mercs.
The bolded above does not promote tank parity which is what got warriors into this mess in the first place. Expecting to be the only class capable of tanking raid named etc is exclusive content. It won't work for the exact same reason that tuning raids for 3 guilds to finish isn't healthy for the game. You can have that gap over pets and mercs but you simply cannot have raid content catered to your supreme tanking. You missed the part where I outlined exactly how and why this happened. Warriors held the supreme tanking role and objected at every turn to knights closing that gap - the devs in shortsighted vision agreed and promoted it and in the end limited their raid design options. Knights gained utility to compensate for inferior soak damage/mitigation discs Player base dwindled Warriors were the only viable option Content is created to promote warrior usefulness - it reaches the extreme fringe of exclusivity (underfoot) Player base dwindles some more, guilds start failing as warrior tank discs are the only option to beat the events (guilds were waiting full 20 minute gaps and taking breaks or quitting for the night just for fort to refresh). The devs see that tank parity has to be achieved for raid boss tanking or they simply cannot create the content that they want, and still see lower tier > midtier guilds achieve success and advance through expansions thus retaining players who were otherwise sick and tired of not advancing. Knight discs are boosted to bring about closer parity Content is tuned down further emphasizing knight twitch support self healing and passive healing advantage. Knights retain all the utility they built up over warriors for 8 years and eclipse >>> present day warrior disadvantages <<< begin at utility and advance toward self activated survival tools. Merely creating a gap to put warriors on a throne again and make them feel useful only starts the whole process over again. It is bad for the game and bad for your class. Cyclical fluctuation is only mildly tolerable for dps and support classes. It can't be done for what is otherwise the cornerstone to raiding. There are 3 tanks and 3 priest classes they must reach as close to parity as they can The warrior class is not alone > see bard/enchanter non overlapping support of both melee and casters. The rest of the dps classes can duke it out over parse numbers. Tanks and healers simply do not have the luxury of exclusive content created just for them. This is why trying to fix warrior deficits through 3rd rate dps boosts is laughable at best. And all the fuss over it only glossed over the problems that the class was really facing. Sure they can boost the dps to be better than the knights but that does nothing for raiding. It simply puts warriors ahead of the archetype it isn't suddenly going to put them in a competitive dps spot otherwise that just makes 2nd tier dps classes complain and ask for dps nerfs. It is counterproductive. just repeat it over and over - tank parity.
Hrm, it looks to me like you are lumping self healing into 'utility' where I see it as the critical flavor difference between Knight and Warrior tanking ability. Perhaps I misunderstood? The pet/merc thing is a bigger problem for all three tanks. Mercs will always do silly things (tank merc + selo's = facedesk) but it's far too easy to push a button or loot an earring and bypass the investment required to gear up a tank from a basic survivability standpoint. It's really a tuning issue - not a class issue. I won't comment on raid tanking as I don't raid. I'll let raiding Warriors make those arguments. I don't want to get into an argument over semantics, but I don't see where tank parity is possible without giving Knight level self healing to Warriors. I certainly do not want that, I think most members of the three tank classes would agree. Perhaps tank interchangeability can be something we can all buy into, unless that's what you meant anyway Either case, Warriors have a LONG way to go. Fast re-use survival abilities are only one part of the recipe - we also need downward-scaling mitigation abilities for Warriors to compete with Knight healing for group content. The last bit is a hard look at our soloability. Swarming, self-healing and Slay Undead are that special kind of awesome which attracts players to Knights. Warriors need their own "total-domination" brand of awesome in order to bring in new blood and energize the class. While we won't be fixed via DPS, our DPS does need to be fixed. Not in the sense that it needs to come up, but the way our DPS is generated - too much comes from Shield Specialist and Battle Leap. The former breaking viability of DW/2H and the latter being so painfully irritating to use, even worse than playing whackamole with Kick/Bash/Kneestrike/Topple/GutPunch for a cumulative total of half the boost.
I completely agree with shiftee. You need to find a tool of the right flavor that lets you survive more spikes, thats what I keep reading is hurting warriors. And the tools you use can't put you so far in advance of all the other tanks that there is a parity void, otherwise developers will fill that void with mobs that make it challenging for the tank type that is above the others and soon only that tank type will be able to tank mobs. You need to figure out an anti spike tool, you soak up damage better then all the other tank classes for longer times. Think about what it would take to fix your problem with spike damage that, like most of the other classes, requires input from them and seperates the best from the rest. I dont play a warrior so wont even try to come up with ideas but I would think that is the area you should get fixed. And don't ask for a clear and giant gap to exist ever again between tanks, its just bad for the game.
I fully disagree with the posters that don't think there should be a gap between warriors and knights. Knights tank group content so much better than warriors do. Knights have this great level of utility. This calls for a gap, plain and simple. I wrote a 2 page post that I deleted because it's just reiterating this point over and over. It was beautifully written, but there's just no way you can possibly ask for knights to get the level of utility they get AND tank as well as warriors do without sounding like some sort of living entity that is composed of 99% greed and 1% robitussin to hold it all together. There ABSOLUTELY should be a gap, and the content should be designed with that in mind. I get that population has dwindled. I get that it's hard for guilds to field enough warriors every night nowadays. Enchanters I view as essentially having been phased out for all raiding purposes (that's my main, heh) since it was too hard for guilds to field enough enchanters. If this expansion honestly has something that is to the contrary, feel free to send me a pm about it, but that's what I have seen happen through the years. All you need at this point is someone to box in an enchanter and mgb haste. But don't take warriors out of the game like this. Instead, make them the best tanks. Give these guys a gold watch instead of offing them 1 day before retirement. Even if you make content that knights can tank, at least make the warrior tank them better than the knights do. They've earned it through their sacrifices of not having anything like the utility knights have had since day one, and anything less is just unbalanced.
I enjoyed your earlier posting on this topic - especially as I posted each of points years and years ago. Failure to achieve tank parity is not what got Warriors into this mess in the first place. Developers being receptive to knight demands for tank parity is what got Warrior into this mess in the first place. From Daily Developer Chats extremely early following the initial release - yes, Warriors should tank better than knights, the question is how much better. From an SOE employee's response when knight were demanding Defensive be shared or removed from the game during GoD - Connor, many of the things knights are asking for are specific to Warriors and will not be shared. Warriors are supposed to and will always tank better than knights. From the Warrior class description - ""Warriors are the master’s of armed combat and defense, taking the point in battles and going head to head with the most dangerous creatures of Norrath. Warriors are a melee class with the ability to wear plate armor and wield all types of weapons. Warriors build their strength and stamina to unheard of levels, making them far hardier than any other class. When combined with their heavy armor and excellent defensive skills, warriors are unmatched in their ability to survive the most brutal battles. Warriors train themselves in the skills of combat mastering the use of all weapons and tactics. Warriors also learn to taunt their opponents, making themselves the focus of all their enemies’ attacks, allowing the less resilient members of their group to remain safe from harm." Now knights successfully argued that there had to be tank parity in group content as knights should be able to tank mobs that dropped flags or gear they requred to progress - they ought not be dependent on a Warrior tanking their group needs. Fair enough - and starting with DoN knights got that. Any Warrior objections were met with "You still get to tank the most dangerous mobs in Norrath - in raids. That's where the most dangerous mobs are." The incrimentalism (let a camel stick it's nose in your tent and...) is amusing. Shiftee suggests Paladins should be the tank (not the hybrid half Warrior they rolled) with awesome clerical spells. Brael were he around would argue SK's should be of course the pulling/DPS tank. And both would suggest Warriors should "enjoy" tank parity and fifth rate (if that) unwanted utility. I don't think so. IF the Berserker class had not been created and Warriors were designed as a Warrior/Berserker/one of three "equal" hybrids then and only then does the three equal tanks proposal have any reasonableness. That's not what happened and that's no what is gunna happen. Over the years I've argued for some in class character Warrior utility. The ability to stop runners, NPC spell interruption, to help close the group content utility gap favoring knights. And none of that Warrior utility has usefulness in the raid environment in contrast to knight utility which does. We can have tank parity in group content and do some modest closing of knight spellbook superiority. AND Warriors (at least raid Warriors) can still enjoy the class defining reasons they rolled and played a class for over a decade. Ten years and the highly flexible with powerful spell casting part melee/part caster hybrids STILL argue for equality in the area their parent class for VERY good reasons was promised superiority. Hey, it's a great scam if you can pull it off. The reason, put simply for Warrior issues in raid content is mobs that quad for 32K+. Guilds wanting content to be exclusive lobby for such content and once it's released lobby to keep it untouched (see UF). In group content...well since I'd never suggest an obviously needed nerf to two other classes,,,,Warriors should mimic Highlander and be able to exchange endurance for HP's (rapid wound recovery due to our unheared of stamina) and contribute more on the after damage is received part of our survival. Even Shiftee acknowledges the gap, he'd just demand the rest of the Warrior raison d'etre to repair it.
What everyone else says: "If you want to dps use a 2hander, if you want to tank use a shield with ac aug or go home" I think warriors should rely on their discs to do damage, and maybe add a feature that would let you use health % if your endurance runs out to keep on doing disc damage.
Great thread. I feel that warriors badly need a boost in the group game. Most of the time, I would rather use my tank merc than box my warrior. He's that useless. I would like to see a major increase in dual wield DPS and some major increases in self-activated and passive survivability. Warriors are supposed to be the unrivaled kings of melee combat. I don't think that "parity" with knights would be remotely fair, considering all of the self-healing and utility that knights bring to the table.
Adding warriors to reprove should be step one. It addresses both a balance concern (warriors inability to respond to damage spikes) and a playstyle concern (warriors are far too passive in their mitigation and can pretty much just watch and hope when they get spiked). On top of that, it's already created and likely very easy to implement. I really doubt any knights would complain about it. Dev time is always precious, so hoping for a lot is likely too much, but if there's one thing warriors should get, it's reprove.
Honestly i would work around with the Warrior's Berserk mode. Suggestion from me would be to add a passive ability to when the warrior goes berserk make it increase the warrior dodge or mitigation by like 30%. [probably was suggested already] Berserk AA: each rank raises the Health % of when warrior goes berserk by like 5% for like 4-5 ranks BloodRage AA: allows warrior to go berserk for 15seconds with a refresh of 20mins or so with the following would increase Warrior offen and defen at the same time.
I would want to see an aa like Tryndamere from League of Legends, where if you pop the aa and then die while it is active, you just keep tanking and cannot take damage. Also you should scream a lot. I mean just nonstop. And no one should be able to turn off the screaming in the audio options ever. Just lots of screaming.
i honestly dont understnad the issue here. especially the part about "farming warrior abilities to other classes"...um..other classes' abilities keep being given to warriors last i checked, warriors are still the king raid tank, and ive yet to see a capable warrior turned away from a group so they can seek out a knight to tank instead, however knights get shuffled out of raids constnatly in favor of warriors (and each other as pallies are farm ore useful in raids than sk's). See, knights were fearless, warriors cried bc knights actually had a reason to be used as tanks, so warriors got fearless too. Knights had roots/stuns/snares to help control mobs, so warriors got new toys to do so also. Sk's could fd, bards could fade, warriors wanted to drop aggro too (why? you're a tank) so they got fade too, but to be fair so did enarly everyone else. So, given the choice making a new toon to tank in group content, people choose a knight, generally an sk bc they ehar OMG SWARMING! and think theycan jsut swarm everything. Wrong. BUT, that in no way takes away from the usefulness of the warriors alreayd in teh game either in group or raid content. SK's constnatly get our abilities farmed out ot other classes, and our ideas for a raid utility to be even wanted in a raid, given to literally all classes (hello FD drinks). The tanks are all different, but your statements are just wrong. We all ahve advantages, and disadvantages. Warriors have advantage in raids i ntanking, paladins have advantages in raids in usefulness and in group/solo game they ahve the same utilities plus slay. SK's have nothing to offer raids as good as or better than an equally geared/aad/skilled war or paladin, we just have a slight edge in the solo/group game over both (not much at 100 since the game naturally nerfed swarming at this level) so to sit there and say knights are more wanted in group game is bs, when a gorup needs a tank, if you're capable, you got a group. if a raid needs a tank, you're the winner unless you totally suck. pal is the middle ground on both sides , grouping and raiding plus soloing. and sk is the winner in soloing though not by much these days, those soloingskills are useful in group content, but we're last in line for a raid spot unless the wars are terribad and/or pallies in low numbers. Not that we're incapable we jsut don't have the added benefits or the ideal discs y'all have. stop the class vs class bs and work on talkign the devs out of having 37k flurry bosses that make all but the top 1% of wars in the game look like (EDIT: wet paper bags? the G word is forbidden! lol) and completely nullify the existence of knights. Knights arent better than wars (though our own opinions may be such, you coudlnt pay me to play a warrior bc they're a pure melee and i hate pure melees, they're boring to me) we're jsut different, and wars are still the best tanks when the best tank is waht's needed, provided you know what you're doing. if you find that you get turned down for groups looking for a tank, readjust how you play, or how you act.
be the only way imo to actually put the warrior back up there with the sk/pallies instead of relying on spell such as heals and lifetaps, the warrior would rely on brute force being able to absorb hits and dealing out some damage thru crippling blows. while having the same down time as the hybrid tanks but instead of mana it be health regen. Right at this moment solo with no merc/healer warrior are not made to endure like the sks/pallies with there spell but in reality all 3 tank classes should be balance out to last no matter what just thru different ways. With mobs hitting so Hard the warrior innate mitigation has become worthless compared to the sk/pallies spells, spell book has scaled much better then innate skills.
something to survive spike damage needs to be handled very carfully. Anything involving DDs/AoEs should be right out - and hear me out. (This is for group game, not raiding) If warriors had a way to strongly mitigate AE's and DDs from named, those AEs/DDs would just get stronger to make them a challenge. This would make knights unable to tank for an expansion until they got new abilities to also mitigate spike damage. It needs to be done in a way that won't alter the way new content is created. It sucks, because content is never thoughtfully created, but thats the way sony works. As far as a big dps increase goes, it cannot happen. A tank simply cannot be allowed to compete for a dps slot. If a warrior could, whats the point of playing a weaker dps class?
Not here to start a arguement, but wanted to ask a quick question based on things i been reading when did SK become the DPS Tank? I recall several years ago a devoleper saying they were the DPS Knight, how and when did this get changed to the DPS Tank?
You pretty much summarized it right there. I disagree. AE's are meant to strain healers and test survivability of other classes. Random death to tanks is a design problem that needs to be fixed. I thought Rangers and Monks were supposed to fill the "lighter tank with higher DPS" role. We've got Blade Guardian for that. I asked for it to be passive - Elidroth said no.
This really needs its own thread. Warrior skills haven't meaningfully improved from a defensive standpoint since Kunark. Result is that we LOSE ground every 5 levels when Aristo does a copy/paste for new discs. I don't even know what the vision for our class is here.
