Warrior

[Ziero]

Actually the -Eva on Shield Break is -40.

....I totally knew that, honest!

And the only thing that sucks about Shield Break is when you miss

[Armando]

That's why Jeebus invented Sneak Attack.

[Ziero]

To be fair, all my comments really focused on Pre-30 stuff

[IfritnoItazura]

Wait wait wait, you "forgetting" to boost is a strike against War how? War/Mnk with a Gaxe opening fights with Shield Break is an excellent tank for the first 30 or so levels. Especially when the player doesn't "forget" to use their abilities.

lol. It's not a "strike against" anything, except maybe the newbie player I was. What I meant was that my DRG seemed to have outputted better damage my WAR at the same (Dunes) level; WAR needed Provoke and Boost to tank, my DRG did fine with just damage output and Provoke.

And I'll call BS on the whole "Berserk sucks cause you're always waiting", especially nowadays with the usage of hMP items, increased hybrid jobs capable of spot healing and the ability to chain T-VT mobs at high speeds instead of killing a single IT++ mob for 5 minutes. Which, as Armando pointed out, would make full use of 'zerk.

At lower levels without PL, there's still quite a bit of delay between fights. Even with two healers, a Dunes party just can't fight back to back to back.

Fight length isn't all that relevant; whether it's 40 seconds or 2 minutes, if you're fighting, Berserk is in use as long as you're swinging. But, if the in between fight time is 40 seconds instead of 4 seconds, and it falls within the Berserk window, then 30+ second of Berserk time is wasted.

That's what I mean by Berserk being overrated at lower levels; it's hard to fully utilize it then, unlike merit/WS spam parties with stagged pulling when there's practically no break between fights.

Jump, on the other hand, actually gets better with the longer delay between fights, since you would more likely to recover the timer before the next fight starts. That, and a constant Attack Bonus I, a damaging WS (Double Thrust), plus a Wyvern for additional DoT, may be what made my DRG such a powerhouse at Dunes level.

I do agree with Armando's assertion that WAR can bring more to a party than a DRG; Evasion-40 from Shield Break is hard to beat. The best Dunes party should have WAR and DRG both; they can co-tank and destroy anything except crabs--need a BLM for those pesky crustaceans.

[Silent Howler]

I won't argue against the -40 evasion. It is a nice debuff, but how long does it last? It says duration varies with TP. If it only lasts five seconds then it's not worth it. I haven't seen data on the actually duration of the effect at 100% TP. (If you want your Warrior to be using this every fight they won't be swinging with 300% TP.)

[Armando]

Full duration at 100 TP is 3 minutes. It lasts more than long enough to be useful even if you get a partial resist. It'll often be applied at over 100 TP as a result of the mob being too close to death to warrant resetting your TP.

Itazura: my problem with your Berserk logic is that it goes both ways but you're only applying it to the duration. Sure, a large part of the duration can be wasted between pulls but a large part of the cooldown can be wasted because of downtime as well. If you ask me, no matter how you slice it, it's still going to average out to it being active 3/5ths of the time.

[IfritnoItazura]

Full duration at 100 TP is 3 minutes. It lasts more than long enough to be useful even if you get a partial resist. It'll often be applied at over 100 TP as a result of the mob being too close to death to warrant resetting your TP.

Crabs can override that, right?

Itazura: my problem with your Berserk logic is that it goes both ways but you're only applying it to the duration. Sure, a large part of the duration can be wasted between pulls but a large part of the cooldown can be wasted because of downtime as well. If you ask me, no matter how you slice it, it's still going to average out to it being active 3/5ths of the time.

The way I look at it, if in a 15 minute partying time, there are 5 minute down time on average, that means over many, many fights, you'll get to 66% of potential out of Berserk.

The way you look at it is that the chance that each swing can have berserk behind it is 60%, no matter the amount of down time.

Both view are valid, IMO, but when comparing WAR with DRG, longer down time means higher number of Jump per monster on average. In a non-stop party, Jump can be used twice every three minutes, or max of 10 times in 15 minutes. With 5 minute down time though, it's still possible to Jump nearly as much in 15 minutes, as long as the individual down times aren't too long.

I should probably change my statement that "Berserk is overrated at lower levels" to say "Jump is underrated at lower levels" instead.

[Armando]

Crabs can override that, right?

No, Pugils and Beetles can. But if you open the fight with Shield Break, I doubt a pre-Dispel party can feed the mob TP at a quick enough rate for that to be an issue. The WAR can just overwrite it right back.

[Celeal]

A dead mob won't hit you.... in order to get exp. points in exp. parties, the mob has to die. For reducing damage taken, a WAR tank can get it elsewhere reasonably besides the shield, but WS-Break is unique to Great Axe.