Retaliate + WAR/NIN, put PLD + NIN out of merit parties?

[Selphiie The Enchantress]

I'm just glad Warriors have it, now no more /seacoms from lvl 60+ Warriors saying they don't want to tank.

[Celeal]

TBH, level 60 is too late.

Imagine if a WAR never have a chance to tank in parties between level 30 ~ 59, or refused to tank (DD only): Once that WAR ding level 60, do you expect that WAR readies to tank because he has access to Retaliate? It is risky, unless the WAR has previous tanking experience during level 30 ~ 59, or leveled PLD or NIN tank past 37.

The concept of Retaliate is great, but IMHO it is more useful if the JA is moved to level 40 or even 30, the point which the gap between WAR tanking and other tanks widen.

[Pavlyn]

now no more /seacoms from lvl 60+ Warriors saying they don't want to tank.

just because a job has the ability to do something doesn't mean everyone is going to want to do it. in fact, i think there might be even more search comments saying Shield No thanks just because people will know there is no excuse now and they won't want to anyway.

[Ziero]

I wouldn't have minded it at 50, but that's only because the more I can use it the better. But I certainly don't think it should be under sub lvls and it is *far* from an ability that will magically turn us into a full time tank without the proper set up. We still lack some sort of real damage mitigation, so until we get that we'll still be third-string-at-best tanks.

Wars never had problems with DDing while tanking, it's the fact we get hit so hard and so often that we bleed out a lot of hate. Without a real way to reduce the dmg we take, outside of subjob abilities, we still can't tank as effectively as a Pld or a Nin.

[Celeal]

I have WAR/DNC in my mind.

If WAR/DNC is invite to party as a DD, Quicksteps and Box Steps are nice debuff, Sneak+Invisible Jigs is great for pulling, and Waltz and Animated Flourish are a welcome addition.

If WAR/DNC is invite as tank, on paper it has enough tools to tank.

To sum it up, WAR/DNC fits in to the old school WAR ideal: Master of front line.

[Selphiie The Enchantress]

There was a Warrior I knew back in the day (he was an old school warrior so he started back during BETA) that whenever we went to do Sky/any endgame event he would carry his normal DD setup, but also he would have a setup for EVA/blink tanking and a Terra's staff, and a completely Tanking setup (Adaman/Koenig Shield), so you know his inventory was probably completely filled lol.

I remember back when I was tanking Faust as PLD/WAR one of the WHMs had to go afk to get the door, and the BLMs/RDMs/BRDs just couldnt keep me alive without cure Bombing me, (this was back when i didn't have /nin leveled yet). Once i went down the Warrior (who was hitting Faust with RATT) stepped in and went from Armada Hauberk/Ridill to Koenig Cuirass, Koenig Head, Koenig Shield, Terra's Staff, and tanked him down, (since the Backup Paladin was also AFK >.>)

Warriors Provoke sleeping mobs in Dynamis

Warriors help Sac pull

Warriors CAN TANK

*cough(with the right skill/gear/attitude)cough*

...geesh im all about WAR tanking lately lol...

[Ziero]

Once i went down the Warrior (who was hitting Faust with RATT) stepped in and went from Armada Hauberk/Ridill to Koenig Cuirass, Koenig Head, Koenig Shield, Terra's Staff, and tanked him down, (since the Backup Paladin was also AFK >.>)

...that's one talented War =P

Warriors Provoke sleeping mobs in Dynamis

Warriors help Sac pull

Warriors CAN TANK

*cough(with the right skill/gear/attitude)cough*

...geesh im all about WAR tanking lately lol...

Those aren't really 'main tanking' though, that's holding hate off the mages. I'll admit though, War can be a great tank for a lot of situations, but we could still use some help in terms of damage mitigation when it comes to full time tanking pre 75. A new 'stance' type JA that reduces swing speed but increased Dmg reduction or something? Another JA that ups our damage mitigation but weakens our offense like all our JAs currently do, to allow us to switch from tank to DD at the drop of a hat.

But then again, with all the viable sub job options, SE may have decided to let wars mitigate damage through their abilities.

[Selphiie The Enchantress]

I meant he had a koenig shield and terras staff, depending on situation lol, he always carried both on him ^^

He went in sword and shield at first, but even with his insane tanking gear and defender he was still taking some damage from Typhoon, so he switched to terra's staff.

[Lmnop]

It's a lot of work to get a full tanking set. @60 it was a bit better since 2x Phalanx Rings + full AF is best defense and best enmity, etc etc. @75, you pretty much want full AF for enmity as well as a bunch of other random crap just to take hits better... and you're still gonna want to be able to squeeze in extra offense whenever you can (especially WSs if you plan on using them).

Frankly, I'm a bit discouraged with my ability to negate damage short of Tank food. Even /dnc is just negating one 150 damage swing every 10 seconds (waltz recast being the problem, not the tp gain). To the point that I fear war/dnc would never get out of their self-cure get-up (luckily, lots of VIT+ helps taking hits to some extent as well as self cures).

Anyway, my point is that Retaliation hasn't really magically made us tanks. I've never been afraid to tank (assuming I'm awake) but I don't see a whole lot of the advantage Retaliation has given us for straight tanking.

Still, I'm going to work on a build to maybe use meat dishes or sushi, full time defender and tank gear, and rely on natural stats and retaliation to put out impressive damage.

[Nataka]

Frankly, I'm a bit discouraged with my ability to negate damage short of Tank food. Even /dnc is just negating one 150 damage swing every 10 seconds (waltz recast being the problem, not the tp gain). To the point that I fear war/dnc would never get out of their self-cure get-up (luckily, lots of VIT+ helps taking hits to some extent as well as self cures).

Anyway, my point is that Retaliation hasn't really magically made us tanks. I've never been afraid to tank (assuming I'm awake) but I don't see a whole lot of the advantage Retaliation has given us for straight tanking.

Still, I'm going to work on a build to maybe use meat dishes or sushi, full time defender and tank gear, and rely on natural stats and retaliation to put out impressive damage.

In the long run I think waltzes have similiar recast to the regular cure spells (if you include cast time), with the waltzes being instant cast instead (so they have the cure cast time + recast for a recast duration).

That's also pretty key... A /dnc will never get interrupted by curing him or herself. On top of that warriors get a flash in the form of animated flourish, and if our AF is really good tanking gear like you say, we get even more +enmity than a paladin. The downfall though is that this all requires us hitting the mob so our hate generation isnt as fast or reliable as a paladin. Anything that resets TP to zero is also a big problem (Colibri and BCNM-style events come to mind).

Thusly in conclusion I'd say what has pretty much been said: There is potential there, a LOT of potential, but as of warrior's current abilities we cant replace a paladin in every situation, and I imagine it'd probably be better to use a paladin if one is available...But if you're forming an exp party and all that is available is a war, and he agrees to it, it's a definite possibilty. SE said they wanted to grant another class some ability to tank in some situations, I think war/dnc has the potential to be what the doctor ordered.

At the very least, it'll work a heck of a lot better than a war/nin tanking before level 74!

PS If none of that made sense, sorry. XD I'm tired and need to sleep lol.

[Celeal]

In the long run I think waltzes have similiar recast to the regular cure spells (if you include cast time), with the waltzes being instant cast instead (so they have the cure cast time + recast for a recast duration).

That's also pretty key... A /dnc will never get interrupted by curing him or herself. On top of that warriors get a flash in the form of animated flourish, and if our AF is really good tanking gear like you say, we get even more +enmity than a paladin. The downfall though is that this all requires us hitting the mob so our hate generation isnt as fast or reliable as a paladin. Anything that resets TP to zero is also a big problem (Colibri and BCNM-style events come to mind).

Thusly in conclusion I'd say what has pretty much been said: There is potential there, a LOT of potential, but as of warrior's current abilities we cant replace a paladin in every situation, and I imagine it'd probably be better to use a paladin if one is available...But if you're forming an exp party and all that is available is a war, and he agrees to it, it's a definite possibilty. SE said they wanted to grant another class some ability to tank in some situations, I think war/dnc has the potential to be what the doctor ordered.

At the very least, it'll work a heck of a lot better than a war/nin tanking before level 74!

PS If none of that made sense, sorry. XD I'm tired and need to sleep lol.

Since Retaliate return TP, I think it works well with WAR/DNC.

Assuming a WAR/DNC tank would spam Box Step (defense down) or Quickstep (evasion down), it is okay for WAR/DNC tank to wear more defensive gear.

Another method is save TP for WS, instead of using Steps.

In exp. parties, there should be healer(s) to take care the WAR/DNC tank.

A weak spot of WAR/DNC tank is taking non-physical (magical) damage.

Added:
I have no experience with WAR/DNC, but I have been using PLD/DNC a lot for tanking/solo Campaign Battles and one merit party. I notice that the more I dance, the less WS I can use. With PLD/DNC, I could solo the regular mobs in Campaign Battle, hold solid hate from beginning to end while the rest of the players gang the mob.

In exp. party, WAR/DNC has enough tool for tanking.

[Lmnop]

I took war/dnc to Sky to farm. On most of the mobs (dolls and golems), I was getting tons of quarter resists on Drain Samba 2 (40 is absolute max and I was seeing a lot of single digits... admittedly, that may have been due to lots of 1-handers in the party and I was seeing their smaller drains instead of my big GA drains). But this makes me worry about exp parties. An extra 10 hp every 8 seconds is a lot less impressive than an extra 25-35 (what I average on DC-EM).

Insta-curing PLD who gets dropped to 150 HP is nice... he gets to live one extra swing (long enough for cure V to land).

I also took war/dnc to worms assault recently (there's always someone in the group that's still PSC). Total layout was nin/war, mnk/nin, war/dnc, brd/whm. So brd and I were the only healers. Worked out quite well despite me only having +3 CHR.

... I'm not sure what made me want to bring up that story. I guess it's just counterpoint to the bleak outlook of story #1.

About the waltz vs PLD curing...
PLDs don't really have a lot to swap to for curing, as far as I can tell. +Enmity is nice. But they don't try to load on +MND and see magically better effects. Meanwhile, Waltzes encourage equip swapping more since it's so easy to see the benefits of equipping the correct gear. When you're using 1/3rd of a WS just to cure yourself, you want it to be as efficient as possible.

Well... we'll see how it all goes. Ideally, I'd like to build a gear set that emphasizes VIT for self curing. But then, I'd also like to have lots of +CHR gear for situations like my worms or when fighting mobs with lots of AoE. But having both is just ludicrous. As much as I'd like those sets in addition to full enmity, full attack, full acc, full WS swaps...

[Celeal]

Single digit En-Drain for Drain Samba II for WAR/DNC? Hmm... Maybe there are other factors that affects the resistance of Drain Samba, I am not so sure. As for my PLD/DNC, En-Drain from Drain Samba II is fairly consistence: two digits (10~12 HP) per sword swing.

As for Curing Waltz II, my PLD/DNC is around 168 ~ 178+ HP depends on amount of VIT+ gear I am using. (I don't see the need for gear swapping, IMHO)

But I guess it is not fair to compare WAR/DNC with PLD/DNC, because PLD can Flash (evade a few hit) and Shield Block reduce a lot of incoming damage. On top of that, PLD can use Cures too.