Lvling War with Adv job Subs.

[Kurb]

i suppose for partying war is stuck to /thf then/mnk and then /nin just like pld is stuck with /war

[IfritnoItazura]

i suppose for partying war is stuck to /thf then/mnk and then /nin just like pld is stuck with /war

Hmm.

I would imagine a PLD/DNC is better for Greater Colibri camp than a PLD/WAR, since it can use up TP in smaller chunks (so lose less TP to birds over time). Earlier this week, had a PLD/SAM for DD using two-handed sword while I tanked on PLD/WAR on Hilltrolls merit party, and it worked out. (No Refresh, and only occasional Ballad for us, so an extra Cure/Flash source was nice.)

My last pick up exp/merit group on PLD, I was PLD/NIN. I don't think PLD is stuck on /WAR at all. At least, not so stuck, at Lv.70+.

* * *

WAR/SAM with Great Axe can be pretty impressive. I'd recommend anyone seriously about WAR to have /MNK ready for low levels, plus /NIN, /SAM, and /THF for higher levels.

For WAR, /DNC is still optional at this point in time, but I've seen it make a unworkable party work, so it's something to keep in mind.

I've tanked on BLU/WAR frequently up to level 40, and I was not very happy with the combination after Lv.35 or so on VT-IT critters. Recommending staying away from WAR/BLU based on that experience.

[Tomato_Kai]

O.o

Odd. The last 4 posts or so kinda fly in the face of the discussion that was brought up about war/blu. I mean, I like /thf, /nin, /mnk, and /sam, but I was primarily concerned with /blu.

Itazura, I'm not discounting your time as a blu, but I'm sure that blu/war would be a different experience from war/blu. I'm not sure I'd be keen on tanking as a blu/war past 25 or 30 anyhow, to be honest. The thing is, that's a different argument entirely.

[Celeal]

IMHO, I will look at the WAR's exp. party subjob this way:

WAR/NIN's strength: DD, co-tank, backup-tank, SATA partner, main-tank at level 74+.

WAR/THF's strength: DD, Level 30+ Skillchain closer, level 60+ transfer hate to tank.

WAR/MNK's strength: Solid tank at low level. Note ---- My last party as WAR/MNK is at level 64, as a DD in a LS party in Bibiki* (spelling?) Bay before the 2-handed weapon adjustment. It was very weak with sushi, and whiff-ing too much with meat even with Shield Break..... I was disappointed.

WAR/SAM's strength: Level 60+ DD plus de-buff (Full Break). It is not the same as SAM/WAR, but out of all WAR's subjobs, WAR/SAM gives the best TP control for DD purpose.

WAR/DNC's strength: I personally never try this yet. However, I see the potential of back-up healer, tank, de-buff, while DD at the same time.

WAR/BLU's strength: Never seen this in action. The only potential I see is Tank while dealing good damage. However, it is not proven.

[Lmnop]

Honestly, I would just stick with /nin or perhaps /thf at some levels, but I'm saying that just out of my experience with every party with a Warrior I've been in, in the past decade, including my own, and without reading everything in this thread.

i suppose for partying war is stuck to /thf then/mnk and then /nin just like pld is stuck with /war

Wth? I haven't really read any of page 3 yet but what happened, here?!

Are you guys disregarding everything pointed out in the last couple of pages or just not reading it (oh the irony, considering I still haven't read page 3)?

This isn't the same game as it was @NA release. We're not all War30/thf8 with sword/shield anymore. War/nin can't tank Bone mobs with ease anymore. And more importantly: I've been playing for half a decade but /BLU wasn't an option for a lot of that.

Times change, it's high time we kept up.

[Taskmage]

/rng is good stuff for consistent damage output 20+. At those levels accuracy is so frustrating the "free scorpion harness" effect is just a godsend. It also helps land acid bolts faster and more reliably, which is a invaluable at lower level crab, crawler and pugil camps and quite nice on other things.

[Tomato_Kai]

/rng is good stuff for consistent damage output 20+. At those levels accuracy is so frustrating the "free scorpion harness" effect is just a godsend. It also helps land acid bolts faster and more reliably, which is a invaluable at lower level crab, crawler and pugil camps and quite nice on other things.

This is an interesting thought, playing War a bit like a thf. My /rng is being leveled right now, using primarily marksmanship for this reason. I figure if I ever get into seriously leveling rng, I can go full on bow, but I seriously need to level marksmanship skills for now.

Question though: Do the ws's add anything? I know /rng unlocks the use of ranged WS, but am I still gonna be better off with tossing sturmwind/shield break?

[Armando]

Don't have the time to make a lengthy post right now. But to answer your question, no, the WS don't really add much. They're too inaccurate, Sturmwind would likely outdamage them, and Shield Break is always better.

And yes, please do level Marksmanship and use Acid Bolts. A 14.3% improvement to everyone's (Attack/mob Defense) ratio is very helpful, and being able to dispel Defense Boost moves makes an insane difference. Yet another reason why Shield Break is a good idea. Be sure to swap in +R.Acc gear.

[Saren]

Feedback on war/blu:

I’m only level 21 and it’s stopping there for a bit so it’s not exactly definitive but it was working really well for me. I should also say that we had a pl from 17-21 so I wasn’t exactly tanking full time but I was consistantly pulling hate from the PL through damage which seems like a good sign.

Damage:
I have to say that the damage was fairly awesome (having trouble finding a good parser so I wasn’t parsing any of this). I was about on par with the elvaan Samurai in the party who was the other well geared DD we had, I want to say I was doing more but I’d rather be conservative seeing as how I’m eyeballing it.

Damage Taken:
You only miss cocoon once or twice before it sinks in that berserk is not a good effect to be tanking under. Other than that, I wasn't taking as much damage as the DD were, not masses less but noticeably less.

Hate Holding:
This I can’t comment on too much because of the PL and not provoking but I think from how much attention I was getting through damage (even with a tanking PL) that adding provoke in there as well would probably have given me fairly solid hate.

Misc:
If you have all your spells, you can also get a few more hp war/blu than you do war/mnk which surprised a few people so I thought I would mention it.

I bought a bit of ranged accuracy gear to fire my acid bolts in and Marksmanship is still a bit painful to land and to skill up but when it hits it is wonderful. The only problem with being the person responsible for acid bolts is that I found that I occasionally lost hate because of my reduced damage trying to land them.

My warrior tank loves dancers, 9-11hp per hit is very very nice. Nin doesn’t seem to do as well with them because I at least am having problems doing enough damage consistently to activate the drain effect :S but I’m still fighting crabs with ninja so that might improve.

I was using juice to keep my mp up and it was definitely sustainable, one juice every 5-6 fights (though I do have my lol 1 mp merit which helps)

The only other thing I would say about tanking war/blu is that it's fun but you do definitely have to concentrate. I really missed being able to time everything off the in game time like I do on whm but that might just be a mage to melee thing.

[Lunaryn]

Question though: Do the ws's add anything? I know /rng unlocks the use of ranged WS, but am I still gonna be better off with tossing sturmwind/shield break?

The only think ranged WS adds for you is more SC options if you're looking to build one. Unless you really need to open Distortion or something like that, stick to GAxe WS. What /RNG contributes to your damage is Accuracy Bonus. At 20 main (RNG10) that gives you Accuracy +10 Ranged Accuracy +10. For comparison, Acc+10 is the bonus you get from Jack-o'-lantern; the popular pre-sushi DD Acc food Rice Dumplings only give Acc+5. Venerer Ring only gives Acc+3, and it's not available until 34.

[Silent Howler]

1-23: /MNK

I'm kinda in disagreement to this. I'm really not seeing much that /MNK has that is better than what /DNC has to offer at those low levels. Personally I think /DNC is even better, but not by much.

At level 1-23 in particular, /MNK gives Boost, Martial Arts, Subtle Blow, and Counter. While Boost can be nice to get a good first hit in, that's all it's good for. Boost is useless mid-battle. The time it takes to increase your attack by 12.5% is time that could have been spent towards another attack. It's not worth it. Martial Arts is useless. Subtle Blow is useless. Yes I said Subtle Blow is useless, because these are exp. mobs we are talking about. Mobs won't last long and going from 3.98 TP gain to 3.781 TP gain isn't going to make a noticeable difference. All that's left is Counter, and while I was told it only works with hand-to-hand, I'm inclined to believe that is false simply due to the fact that Blue Mage can also gain the trait with the right spell selection. With that in mind, Counter is the only real useful ability you get from using /MNK, which doesn't start until level 20.

Dancer is a lot more simple to look at. The only ability you get before level 30 is Drain Samba, which is gained at level 10. In comparison, the only ability /MNK offers at level 10 is Boost, which I explained has limited usefulness (getting ONE good hit at the start of the fight IF you don't miss). Personally I find Drain Samba much more appealing. At level 20 you might be able to swing the other way and go /MNK for Counter, although you still might not want to. Looking at it from a defensive standpoint, you need to think about whether the damage prevented by an occasional counter outweighs the consecutive HP gain from Drain Samba. Testing something like that is a bit beyond me, but I wouldn't expect the results to vary by much.

Looking beyond the scope of the level 1-23 range, both sub jobs offer two new abilities/traits at level 30. For /MNK it's Max HP Boost and Dodge; for /DNC it's Evasion Bonus and Curing Waltz. As you can see both offer similar types of abilities/traits. The Evasion bonus from /DNC is a consistent +10 while Dodge from /MNK is +20 for two minutes (five minute recast). Race might play a role for this. A mithra, which already has a high natural evasion from high agility rating, might find that a consistent +10 helps her avoid a decent number of attacks. A elvaan, on the other, which can't avoid a frisbee if he saw it coming, might favor the +20 evasion from Dodge so he can avoid a hit once in a while.

The other abilities that each sub job offers at level 30 are Max HP Boost and Curing Waltz. A increase in maximum HP might save your life once in a while, that's all I can say about that. Curing Waltz offers consecutive healing for you and your party members at the expense of TP towards weapon skills (you CAN still weapon skill as /DNC, but just maybe not as often, depending on how much curing is being done by other party members). At this point it becomes difficult to compare the usefulness of each sub job as play style becomes very different. Personally I would suggest not judging anyone who uses /MNK or /DNC and criticize that they should use one or other. Both are viable sub jobs, whether tanking or not. It can sometimes be a situational decision. If you have a White Mage and two Scholars in your party, might as well go /MNK because I think they have curing covered. If all you have is a Summoner for a healer, cut them some slack and go /DNC.

[Celeal]

In the old days, Boost + Counterattack is great tool for tank as WAR/MNK before level 30.

IMHO, /DNC is great at the levels which the WAR have enough accuracy for TP gain and DoT (via gear and other tools). At low level potential of /DNC is limited when connecting each swing could be an issue. (as relative to TP-burns at high levels).

Between WS (the powerful ones) and Waltz, if the party expect you to DD as WAR/DNC, then WS should have higher priority. If you are expect to tank as WAR/DNC, use Waltz more frequently.... just common sense.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Boost is useless mid-battle. The time it takes to increase your attack by 12.5% is time that could have been spent towards another attack. It's not worth it.

From a DD stand point, mid battle Boosts aren't helpful. From a hate spike stand point, Boost is a very nice tool.

... Counter, and while I was told it only works with hand-to-hand, I'm inclined to believe that is false simply due to the fact that Blue Mage can also gain the trait with the right spell selection.

Many WARs who leveled as /MNK before the pervasive acceptance of /NIN will back that up. Counter attacking with a GAxe is rather satisfying.

[Karinya]

I wouldn't use Navarin, a three hour food, in a pickup group; at the levels it's effective, we're talking about Valkrum Dunes and Qufim Island parties which can break up any second.

Navarin is 2k on Carbuncle. I wouldn't worry that much about losing it (especially if you can find/form another party before the 3 hours are up, which is likely).

As for WAR/DNC, here's an example of a working WS spam party in Lv.72-74 range:

PLD, WAR/DNC, DRG/BLU, BRD/NIN, DD, DD.

No Ballad; PLD made do with Auto Refresh and Sanction Refresh, with WAR and DRG shouldering most of the healing load. (Don't quite remember if I was PLD/NIN or PLD/WAR, though; probably PLD/NIN.)

Wow, I never thought I'd see healing breath used in 6-man exp. Waiting ~5 seconds AFTER being below 50% hp is kinda scary. But I guess modern tp burns only fight T and low VT anyway, so it's not that dangerous... DRG healing is incredibly efficient, basically bottomless (especially if you have Wyrm Armet and the macro to take advantage of it), but it's the conditions you have to satisfy to trigger it that make it difficult to use against harder mobs without risking sudden death.