As you'll note he also once said DW is not for tanking, DW and 2H are for DPS. Therefore he's subject to changing his mind (as a fan of DW is for tanking posted in this very thread) and therefore some of the "penalties" on DW may be intended. For example for deflection to work knights must be in S&B. Despite me believing smooth switching from using 2H or DW DPS to S&B tanking requires Fort, Flash, and deflection to be usable the instant you are taking hits, Elidroth may believe if you're worried about that then "DPS" in S&B and accept limitations on flash immunity/reduction. He hasn't imposed many such restrictions but in order to be consistent he could. Frankly I still see Warriors, Paladins, and SK's tanking geared like Tanks in TDS. It may be also that DW is for tanking doesn't mean unrestricted practically S&B survival but with better DPS every single day in current content, unlike other tanks in the Tank Archetype and unlike melee DPSers too, tanking. The enthusiasts may be overly enthusiastic. Goodness knows that the Pandora's box opened in part to address their "concerns" released some nightmarish stuffs. I hope nothing else that's "holding us back" is discovered and nerfed so we can be "improved".
Battleaxe Our stances, weapons, aa's and disc's are our tool box. Knights have spells we have a backpack holding different weapons. Would you advocate for a knight to have an entire school of spells locked out when they perform specific duties? But you advocate limiting our toolset based on your illogical view of what a warrior HAS to be. You pine for shield useable one handers equal to what knights get, but do you advocate our skills and aa's needed to bring us in line to knight weapon skills? You claim that we were broken during the dark days that we exclusively dual wielded, yet this is the period that made everquest warriors the iconic tank That held a uniqueness that other games lacked. The steel warrior is a dead website, it rarely has new posts and it serves mostly as a library for possibly outdated information, yet you reference it as a gospel just like you reference Eldroth stating he intends for S&B to be the main tank stance. I recall a specific time during gates of discord where dev's were totally against knights getting any form of a defensive ability, yet look at us know. Your blatant refusal to see dual wield as.anything other than a dps set up is the same as a mechanic who refuses to use a wrench because he has sockets and a ratchet (even when a wrench is the correct tool for the job). Dual wield is a tanking stance I.e. you can take damage and hold agro just like S&B is a tanking stance. The ability to kill faster and have a higher threat generation has a place in the group game weither You like it or not.
Pardon the formatting I am on my phone not a comp. 1. We are given stances, it's what we have to work with, it is a popular model for warriors across multiple games. It can work but needs to be tuned more, and the recent changes are steps towards that. 2. I did not communicate this like I intended I will try and figure out a better way to word what I intended. Should have read nerfed instead of needed. To the effect that knights get better ratio weapons to make up for their lower skill caps and abilities. 3. When I jump over to my paladin, I do not see the toon unable to cast stuns or heals or nukes while trying to tank. If this is the case in the raiding game then it is the first I am hearing of this and will retract my statement. 4. Typo during initial post, should have read nerfed instead of needed. To the effect that knights get better ratio weapons to make up for their lower skill caps and abilities. 5. I think you misread. 6. My point was, that as he dwells on a single phrase from Eldroth, that just because a developer says something does not mean it is an end all be all and they have and do change their views over community issues. So it does have some bearing on modern issues related to tanks. 7. Tanking in any game that follows the tank healer principle consists solely of taking damage and keeping the attention of the mob on you. There hits a break point or a" soft cap" on defensive effectiveness. If you get hit 15 times for 1000 damage you will take 15000 damage. If you can use a different stance and take more damage per hit but have the mob stop hitting you in a shorter amount of time you are effectively reducing damage as well. I you are hit 10 time by the same example mob I pulled random numbers off of earlier in this paragraph at an increase of 25% for a total of 1250 per hit, you will take 12500 damage. But because you could kill it faster you took less damage overall. In the group game you do not need 15000 ac and 200000hp.
The reason knights have higher damage Slower weapons is so they can thread spells in between melee rounds.
Stances can be well integrated with existing systems and practically transparent to the user with their effects, when its best to invoke them or not intuitively obvious and seamless when moving from one form to another or otherwise. A fairly widespead belief by Warriors I've listen to is that the current stances even with changes are not elegant, not balanced, and confusing. Quite the opposite of a "step in the right direction". Knights received better 1Handers when Warrior and knight skillcaps were practically the same and Warriors had no greater abilities. Keep in mind, Warriors and Bards were often on the same weapons despite Bards getting double attack fairly late. Rogues used the same ratios we did yet had a rather devastating special attack (devastating enough that the Backstab stat was finally added). Class A got more out of a weapon than Class B was not a give everyone different ratio weapons rationale. Had knights been allowed to DW all of the DWers would have used weapons with similar ratios. At one point 2H damage bonuses were adjusted primarily to help out knights. Warriors, Rangers, and other pure melee did more damage than knights. Obviously if we all did that damage with 2H the damage bonus adjustment would have boosted us all and knights would not have enjoyed a relative to the other classes improvement. BUT Warriors, Rangers, and other pure melee did more damage than knights with....DW. They couldn't fix the DPS disparity by tweaking knight skills (normally easier and done regularly) and abilities so they bumped 2Handers. It was the lack of DWing that allowed knights higher ratio 1Handers for use with a shield. And it took those higher ratio weapons to make S&B practical. Having improved 2H damage bonuses to make them more in line with the DPS they should put out (primarily to benefit knights) they'd have a knight use an 8 DMG 24 DLY sword meant to be used two a a time with a shield???? I don't think so. Yes, they briefly did - and they changed things. Doubt it still? Else why would a Dev raise the damage produced by a sword meant to be used two at a time when only one is used with a shield- he didn't just fall off a turnip truck. Given Warrior only shields prior to Kunark and Warriors having shield AC not subject to the softcap and shield block I don't buy the "Warriors weren't meant to use shields" argument either. There are plenty of arguments that insist a heavy plate tank should forego shield use. But some aren't very persuasive.
I'm all for that, but Knight weapons tend to be higher ratio than generic melee 2H as well. Warrior skill damage being heavily modified complicates itemization and skill damage growth. RNG/BER/BST/MNK get the short end here as well as Warriors who would like to use DW proficiency since our skill attacks are all 2Hs.
(This may be an old bug) something I noticed yesterday is that dual wield proficiency doesn't overwrite other proficiencies when activated.
From my experience, slow 2H weapons don't work well, you may as well take 5-7% off of the ratio on 35+ delay weapons. Given that the difference between knight and generic 2H ratios is actually quite small these days, I certainly wouldn't want to use a 37 delay knight weapon over a 30 delay generic. I wouldn't be surprised if paladins would get a minor DPS boost on their AA heavy burn rot using a generic 2H over the knight one. Since the SK burn is spell heavy, they're probably better off with the 37 delay.
There are times I'd happily trade a little swing DPS for ~16% more riposte damage Royal Executioner's Ornamental Bastardsword 2HS ID: 99007 DMG: 383 Delay: 37 Ratio: 10.35 Class: PAL, SHD Raid: Burn Out in CoF Tier 2 - Staff of Elemental Transfiguration 2HB ID: 99005 DMG: 330 Delay: 35 Class: WAR, PAL, RNG, SHD, MNK, BST, BER Raid: Burn Out in CoF Tier 2
Just started to play my warrior again, and noticed the same thing that the OP stated. DW seems completely useless, and the only viable specs are defensive and 2-handed. I read some comments about people saying Warriors are supposed to be tanks, defensive 100% etc., but if Warriors have 3 distinct stances, I think all 3 should be viable in at least some situations. If you're not a tanking warrior, 2-handed DPS seems to have been given a nice boost, but Dual Wield seems completely broken/useless. Am I missing something? or is that still the case in TDS.
Just looking at the spell file entries for the abilities, the DW proficiency looks to be designed as a middle of the road "bruiser" stance, possessing substantially better defenses than 2H while offering better DPS than S&B. I would expect it to be at its best when you're tanking while plowing through a few dark blue mobs at a time, in content that you're just one or two levels / tiers of gearing above. It also might be pretty solid for molo-questing/molo-xping if you'd like to kill a bit faster than with S&B but can't tolerate the degree of tankiness loss that the 2H proficiency implies.
The recent changes to stances fixed DW. DW is 90-95% the undisced DPS of 2H, with a mitigation boost and it doesn't block FOA. There's little incentive to tank with 2H if you're going for DPS. The biggest difference is disced DPS. 2H gets a giant boost from Brutal, and a big boost from mighty strike. The boost for DW isn't nearly as much, leaving a big gap between 2H and DW DPS with burns. I use DW a lot when tanking outside of raids.
Hello all, first, sorry for my poor/rusty englis. I know this is an older thread but for me a current theme/problem . Info, my warrior is near 88 now with max AA. I am unsure with this warrior stance and was is the best stance for the most situations (and what is with this DW stance bug today?!), BTW , i play mostly in a group, no raids. What is the best stance for fellstrike and or mighty strike (don’t really know what is the better disc) 2h and fellstrike for higher dmg spikes (but lower mitigation) or DW with mighty for constant crits ?, I am a bit lost here Thanks for any information,s
Mostly, unless you're very overgeared for the content you're facing, you'll be using Defensive Proficiency. Mighty Strike is the more powerful damage discipline ever since Veteran's Wrath AAs. The stance employed doesn't affect that.
The best stance to use your DPS discs is 2H stance, providing you aren't the active tank tanking mobs in the group. If you are actively tanking, you can still use your DPS discs under Defensive Proficiency.
