Warrior riposte damage.

[Budizzle]

Wall of text.

Haha. I'm curious if you rip all your posts out of a text book. They read that way. Thanks for the concise warrior lesson though, pal -- I needed it.

When I choose to pop resilience depends on the mob. For most bosses in our tier (read: a large fucking majority), especially those whom frenzy/flurry/ramp, I open with a shield, /s 9, and resilience. This is not uncommon practice; in fact, it's pretty standard for a warrior to open with resilience on unslowed mobs. Depending on my raid's dps, most bosses don't live long enough for resilience to refresh. From what I've seen it lasts < 30 seconds.

Warriors do mitigate the most damage. I am not contesting that fact. However, it is not as big a margin as you're insinuating, and that margin is further reduced by a knight's utility, which I detailed in the first post. As such, heals are more manageable on a knight opposed to a warrior who can take three -- or even one on certain bosses -- unlucky ripostes in a single round and die the next. It doesn't matter that I have the potential to mitigate these more than knights when they can reasonably avoid them altogether. Considering you're the one always talking about how much easier it is to heal with a steady dps "curve," you should be able to absorb this theory pretty easily.

Toggling attacks/swapping shield is effective, I'm not disputing that. But there are very big risks in doing so since the distance your current aggro will hold is unpredictable. I'm only confident in my aggro enough to toggle/swap it off for a few tics (6-18 seconds) every 45-60 seconds or so. This is also heavily dependent on my procs.

I don't really have aggro problems. A combination of clickies, AAs, stances, and procs allow me to hold aggro relatively well. Like I said, I think warrior aggro is pretty balanced. I'll just file all the subtle diatribe about aggro under irrelevant. Also, if you struggle to pull aggro off a warrior as a pally, you're not a very good one...

The wiki quote I provided is pretty credible. The warrior class is universal to every mmorpg ever; sometimes the name changes, but their role never does. I don't play a warrior for their versatility or interactivity. Why the fuck would I? I play a warrior so I can stand in front of a mob and display how huge my dick is while feeling irreplaceable. I think it's pretty fucked that a knight's dick is so closely comparable in size under the same circumstances when they actually DO have the aforementioned versatility and interactivity.


In regards to the OP, I propose a trade off: reduce or completely remove the effects of /shield for a significant increase in base riposte mitigation. The scenarios that require /shield are limited to either a raid consisting of more than one warrior or a knight tanking.

 

[Severien]

I tinfoil just as much as any warrior about whether or not I'm being out-mitigated by knights, but I don't have much to say about it beyond this:

Its rather silly how small the gap is between warriors and knights considering that knights, especially paladins, ooze utility from every pore while warriors comparatively have almost none. The fact that knights can tank everything in sanctum just fine without a warrior in sight occasionally puts me in a catatonic emo state where I feel sad about my life as a warrior and hate my warrior parents. If I died, would anyone notice, or would the shadowknight tank? T_T

 

[Budizzle]

Oh. I knew this was going to be brought up. The effects of aux tanking remain for an additional 10 seconds (?) after you stop attacking, but they can be triggered pretty instantly iirc. Which means, in theory, you can almost constantly have the benefit of aux tank on yourself without actually attacking... I haven't played with it in a while though.

Your parse is interesting. It shows that warrior (without a shield) and paladin mitigation are fairly congruent, and a paladin compensates for any deficit in avoidance. Would you agree that this is bullshit? If not, why not?

Also, I'd like to see the results of the warrior /shielding the paladin, if you would.

Edit: Also, a warrior cannot hold aggro without attacking -- it's unpossible -- thusly, is guaranteed to eat riposte partially. At the same time, in an... alternate universe, a paladin can avoid 100% of that damage by just not attacking.

Edit:

In every parse I've seen in my history on SoD (Minus one occurance where I had broken Spell Ward SK thaz armor, Linken /shielding me, and chain runes) Warriors have taken less DPS when fighting the same mobs, ripostes or not.

Warriors fulfill their role just fine. They take less damage, and have more HP to soak up said damage. Sure, you can close the gap by having a warrior /shield and aux for a knight, but you can also have a warrior /shield and aux for gasp another warrior, making the gap widen even further.

Reviewing the thread, I just read this and laughed. Not a fucking chance a warrior would mitigate more than an equally geared paladin who is /shielded, stanced, and bathed in runes. You are high. If this is in fact true by today's parses, I will personally apologize for every mean thing I've ever done or said. Individually. Alphabetically.

 

[Severien]

Read carefully. He said that that was the only exception.

And yes, there is something be said for slower weapons, which is that they make me lose aggro more.

Those parses are pretty interesting, but the bonus gained from aux tanking could be made up for by having several people on your raid aux tank while you keep attack off (since aux tanking caps out), which is an advantage for knights.
The gap between the two archetypes is still pretty small.

Case in point:
Warrior:
Attacking
Damage taken: 1664.03 per second
Mob accuracy: 67.2%

Paladin:
Shield + attacking
Damage taken: 1677.14 per second
Mob accuracy: 59.2%

There is almost no discernible gap between a dual wielding warrior in stance 12 and paladin with a shield in stance 3 and this is VERY VERY IMPORTANT. I have to dual wield for AT LEAST 30% of a fight in order to build enough aggro to prevent other classes from pulling aggro off and even then it's pretty shaky. Yes, warriors are still preferable because they have resilience and they can eventually put a shield in, but its a very small edge to have on knights when our utility is shit. And this is for raids - these parses would indicate that not only are paladins better than warriors for grouping scenarios in every other respect, but they can also mitigate equally if not better!

It has been suggested that the way around this is to engage with a shadowknight, build a giant pile of aggro and then have a warrior with a shield equipped area taunt, which is just fabulous if your healers can handle the switch, but its a stupid exercise to have to do in order to get a warrior to tank the way they're supposed to from the start. We would also lose our "give me back my aggro" button for that portion of the fight if not the entire thing.

One final thing I'd like to point out is that that paladin can heal himself, which tips the scale completely in his favor in most tanking scenarios.

 

[GuiardoTuneweaver]

Warrior:
Attacking
Damage taken: 1664.03 per second
Mob accuracy: 67.2%

Paladin:
Shield + attacking
Damage taken: 1677.14 per second
Mob accuracy: 59.2%

This is indeed most despressing. As has been pointed out, the warrior can't keep aggro with a shield over the long haul in most cases, where a paladin has no trouble doing so.

For a more raid-realistic scenario, it'd be intersting to see how much better the warrior auxing for and shielding the paladin while tanking is -vs- the paladin auxing for the warrior while tanking.

 

[Eustace]

Meleeing a mob while you're tanking it definately reduces damage - I noticed this while trying to be lazy and bow tank, and came to the conclusion that it's really easier to just snare and walk backwards than bother to heal myself (if the mob doesn't summon.)

I personally don't care for the direction this thread is going - it looks like it's leading up to a pally nerf. To avoid that, my suggestions are:

Give shadowknights triple attack.
Give warriors a slight chance to evade a riposte. (5-10%ish?)

That should address the "tank issues" without unbalancing the raid game or having to slug nerfs around.

 

[stope21]

WARRIOR:

Attacking
Damage taken: 1664.03 per second
Mob accuracy: 67.2%

Shield + attacking
Damage taken: 1265.67 per second
Mob accuracy: 53.0%

PALADIN:

Shield + attacking
Damage taken: 1677.14 per second
Mob accuracy: 59.2%

I'm sorry, I don't see how this is depressing. 1265 dps vs 1677 dps when both tanks are using their shield.

The knight is taking 33% more dps when going shield to shield. That is absolutely massive.

Not only that, but a good warrior has no downside to losing agro. If he loses agro, he is 1 instant click button away from regaining agro. Marza (who plays sald), has before expressed to me how important it is to use a shield on a raid as a warrior. This is actually putting what he said quite nicely.

Jesus, the ability to take 33% less damage than any other tank... wow. That is absolutely astonishing that warriors can do that.

Furthermore, this parse is misleading for a few reasons.
1) Warriors have greater mitigation. Their dps taken will be much more consistent than that of a knights over a smaller period of time. These smaller periods of time are what makes it easy/predictable to heal. Thus a warrior is much easier to heal on a raid than a knight.
2)Knights gain a bigger advantage from throttling attacks, as they are less dependant on attacking to hold agro (especially the sk's, which can hold good agro on any mob).
3)Total DPS, and DPS are both misleading numbers, they always have been, and they always will be.
4)The stances parsed are not the stances generally used when the going gets tough.

Anyways, this still continues to appear to be an issue with warriors interaction/versatility than anything else. Also possibly an issue with warriors inability to hold agro with higher delay weapons. Warriors shouldn't be confined to holding agro predominantly with low delay weapons.

 

[stope21]

For a more raid-realistic scenario, it'd be intersting to see how much better the warrior auxing for and shielding the paladin while tanking is -vs- the paladin auxing for the warrior while tanking.

This would be interesting, but is highly subject to misleading the interpreters.

It would be interesting to test, I agree. I would like to see numbers, infact I would like to see far more numbers than just the dps taken. I would like to see charts of every 12 seconds dps. There is simply ALOT more than what comes to the eye.

If the knight does well, he's going to look really good, especially when you throw those numbers right next to a warrior tanking without the warrior being shielded. It is easily subject to misinterpretation when the fact that the knight is doing so well is because of a direct ability of the warrior.

You also need to take into consideration the ability to "build agro off a knight." This is when you have a knight build up a tremendous amount of agro on a mob for a period of time and then you have the warrior taunt it off (or keep his agro high by taunting occasionally then backing off). Doing this essentially enables a warrior to use his shield the rest of the fight (which prior was said is impossible). Not only that, but he can be shielding the knight the entire time until he takes over.

If the knight dies at any point when building agro, or you decide to just let the knight tank till he dies, you ALWAYS have the ability to area taunt for gaurunteed agro. This is super super powerful.

Quote of

As has been pointed out, the warrior can't keep aggro with a shield over the long haul in most cases, where a paladin has no trouble doing so.

Learn to build agro off your higher agroing, less tanking able tanks we call knights. Agro management is the KEY to going from an okay warrior to a great warrior. Practice this, and learn to do it well, and I think you will be very surprised to how much a warrior can use a shield during a fight and still be comrades with Mr. Agro.

I am honestly, getting really tired of telling people the intricacies of their class. How their abilities are so strong. How to use them. How they can do things they don't feel they can't. You are a very smart and credible source Gunder, but I feel you are misleading people by saying warriors can't keep agro with a shield in most cases. Unless your guild simply doesn't utilize a well geared, well played knight (which would be the problem) I couldn't disagree with you more.

I would also like to touch on the fact that TU uses knights to do sanctum (as i expected this to come up):
1) We have the best healers in the game. All our healers have absurd mana pools.
2) Although not ANYWHERE close to as significant as our amazing healers, our knights are better geared than our warriors by a considerable margin. Even regardless of our gear, our healers are so amazingly good that they could probably pull a 8.4 hp warrior through sanctum with little difficulty. Mad props to eldo/asura/gelu/rehn/nepthes/lytec/zurkka/anyone else I missed/anyone who plays these amazingly well put together toons on raids.

 

[Budizzle]

Jesus, the ability to take 33% less damage than any other tank... wow. That is absolutely astonishing that warriors can do that.

HOLY FUCK SHAMWOW CLEANS COKE OUT OF CARPET!111!11!!!ONE!

No matter how enthusiastic or "astonished" you pretend to be about 33% more mitigation (which isn't that fucking much) doesn't veil the fact that you're wrong. Grasping at stink on the wind in a feeble attempt to pad your argument is fucking stupid. Get out with that noise.

Paladins should NEVER... ever ever ever mitigate/avoid anywhere near what a warrior does (if they're in the same tier). A warrior's right to mitigate/avoid more than a paladin should not depend on the obscure variables you're trying to throw down here. Despite all that, warriors under tier 7 only have the capacity to shield 10-30% of the time, which means a paladin is mitigating/avoiding just as much as a warrior 70-90% of the time? A warrior's ability to shield while still holding aggro should peak at 50% in any tier, which means at least half the time a knight will receive as much or less damage than a warrior? Fuck you, step off my toes.

Being completely honest, I believe warriors should be able to take ~40% less damage than a knight while shielded and at LEAST 25% less using dual wield. All other warriors would agree with me.

 

[JDJersey]

To put it a little less emphatically than he previous poster, it does seem like a warrior should at least be comparable to knights while DW-ing, or at least the gap should be narrowed. I don't know how that could be done, or maybe a way for the warrior to hold agro better with the shield. Possible an increase in proc-rate for his mainhand while shield equipped? I don't know, the numbers to me just seem a little off from what I imagined they should be.

 

[Salarus]

Couple things....

First, i'd be very intreesting to see those parses with /s 9 for warrios and /s 4 for paladins.

Second, i've raided both a warrior, and a paladin, and I do'nt think mitigation is really the issue is shields are being used. As this parse shows, in /s 12 vrs /s 3, shields cause 33% more mitigatoin in damage, which is HUGE. Warriors however, due to lack of aggro cannot alwasy keep aggro with a shile,d unless you have yoru dps hold off.

What I would be interested in seeing happen, is a change to the point where warriors can keep aggro with a shield MOST of the time, in a more conventional manner than is currently avaible. As to how, i'm not completey sure, maybe give them a bonus to aggro if and only if they are using a shield. I do not understand what can/can't be changed, but I firmly believe that if warriors were able to hold aggro on most mobs while tanking with a shield, there woudln't be an issue here.

 

[Marza]

Anyways, this still continues to appear to be an issue with warriors interaction/versatility than anything else. Also possibly an issue with warriors inability to hold agro with higher delay weapons. Warriors shouldn't be confined to holding agro predominantly with low delay weapons.

Honestly I agree with what was said here very much. Warriors are almost forced to use two fast one handed weapons to hold agro over the raid. This can cause a few problems and some of it has been said in this thread and the other thread that cropped up about riposte damage. Warriors have an AA that reduces the enemies chance to riposte us true, but we STILL take more ripostes then knights and this can lead to some incredibly spiky rounds that exceed anything a knight could possibly take due to how many attacks we get per round in comparison.

This isn't always a issue but there are some bosses that riposte for a ton of damage and could lead to a warrior getting floored very quickly if they get unlucky with the RNG. Warriors might mitigate better but when they are taking more hits this can lead to damage incoming being much higher then a knights.

Given what I have experienced with Sald tanking Sanctum while in Steel and what I have seen TU do in Sanctum, it is no surprise that they prefer paladins over warriors. Why? Because the mitigation warriors can provide for part of a fight WITH A SHIELD is not needed while the utility that paladins and, to a lesser extent SKs, provide is.

Yes warriors crush the knights in tanking when they have their shield out but agro IS a issue on warriors and it always will be. And with a shield on? Well you better have a substantial lead because at that point you are just losing ground, and pretty quickly.

If the warriors only job is to tank then I feel like they should do it well, and honestly the only way they are able to outshine others is with a shield out, which is something that they do not have the luxury of doing for a majority of their tanking career. Because of the fact that they have to DWed weapons for most of the fight before they can sub in the shield.

On the concept of slower weapons...

I will not lie I love the idea of warriors using slower weapons because of the fact you would receive less ripostes. But unless they are able to generate solid agro it would not work. Not to mention that itemization proves that there are no slow one handers (sorry 23 24 delay is still rather fast when you are using two of them) that a tank would have any interest in using. I am even willing to say that it would work for warriors to tank with a two handed weapon (Blade of War from live?) until they got enough hate to put in a shield. From the sounds of it there are some changes in the works to make it so using fast weapons doesn't net you more agro then slower but unless itemization changes I fail to see how this will change anything.

 

[Ponden]

Zaela's parses confirm what Ive suspected -- that shield AC increasing past the previous balance point would result in equal tanking averages between knights and warriors.


My suggestion on how to fix this:

Increase lower tier (lvl 65+) Shields to 75 ? AC

Decrease top-end shields to 85 AC

And never make another shield with more then 85 ac ever again.

----- This would keep the ability to tank (knights compared to warriors) nearly the same for low tiers and high tiers. While keeping some motivation to obtain the next shield beyond just HP/stats.


However -- Keep in mind that warriors are still far superior tanks (even the ones in Zaela's parse.) Because best tanking is determined by the MAXIMUM damage spike over 6-10 seconds (lower is significantly better) -- and max HP. (AKA mitigation > Avoidance.) Id still estimate warriors as having a 7-8% tanking edge over knights. Which, is maybe a little low, but its still there.

----------------------
Also:

Budrick - I suggest you lay off Mythryn because you dont know what your talking about.

""Reviewing the thread, I just read this and laughed. Not a fucking chance a warrior would mitigate more than an equally geared paladin who is /shielded, stanced, and bathed in runes. You are high.""

Mitigation is not the word your looking for here :-/

 

[Budizzle]

1.) I'm not going to "lay off" anyone.
2.) I do know what I'm talking about.
3.) I used the correct word, though I agree it's a combination of avoidance and mitigation that makes my original statement true.

This has basically evolved into a debate about how often a warrior can use a shield, which is enough as it is tbh. What is not balanced is a knight's ability to take so little damage comparatively under the same stress while a warrior is dual wielding. Dual wield is a warrior's unique feature among the tanks; reducing the necessity to use it is not a solution.

Edit: Also, the "maximum damage spike over 6-10 seconds" is far greater for a warrior, hence why I used the word "manageable" when commenting on healing knights. It's called riposte, and we eat a fucktruck full of it.

 

[Xach]

Being completely honest, I believe warriors should be able to take ~40% less damage than a knight while shielded and at LEAST 25% less using duel wield. All other warriors would agree with me.

Of course you would, and of course they would. Why would any class not want to be overpowered?

I completely don't understand why you are unhappy with your 33% higher mitigation, even if it is only for half a fight when you're able to use a shield.

 

[Tyvec-a-tron]

Of course you would, and of course they would. Why would any class not want to be overpowered?

I completely don't understand why you are unhappy with your 33% higher mitigation, even if it is only for half a fight when you're able to use a shield.

You don't think warriors should mitigate better than knights without having to switch out their regular gear set? Shields are great, I use them regularly. But the focus here shouldn't be on warriors with shields. Hell, I'd even be happy to see a decrease in warrior mitigation with shield if it meant a bigger boost to dual wielding mitigation. This way, warriors would get a boost to their regular mitigation and the capacity for them to be substantially ahead of the knights with shields wouldn't be there. Honestly though, I'm happy with the class as it is.

 

[Budizzle]

Of course you would, and of course they would. Why would any class not want to be overpowered?

I completely don't understand why you are unhappy with your 33% higher mitigation, even if it is only for half a fight when you're able to use a shield.

That is a copout. Warriors need to be buffed to compete with how overpowered knights are right now. The suggestion I offered would not be overpowered at all in relative terms. If you want to bring accusations of malicious intent, why don't you address the classes that are currently overpowered before doing so?

I love my mitigation while wearing a shield. I love my mitigation in general. What turns me inside out is a knight's ability to perform my job as well or better than me. I'll offer an analogy: what happens if mages were given nukes as big and mana efficient as those of a wizard and at the same time retained all the rains and utility that they have now? Remember when rangers could do as much or more dps than a rogue while being out of range of all incoming damage and producing less aggro? That is how I perceive the issue of warriors vs. knights, except warriors have ZERO utility. Warriors are amazing tanks, but knights are just as good without sacrificing any utility. Disclaimer: I do not want knights nerfed and I don't want warriors to get any amount of utility beyond taking hits.

Edit: Only the highest tier warriors can shield 50% of the time. What about the other 7-8 tiers that come before that pinnacle...? Do not disregard them.

 

[GuiardoTuneweaver]

Not only that, but a good warrior has no downside to losing agro. If he loses agro, he is 1 instant click button away from regaining agro.

Once, and only once per encounter.

You also need to take into consideration the ability to "build agro off a knight." This is when you have a knight build up a tremendous amount of agro <blah blah blah>

Yes, we all know what building aggro off a knight is. Maybe with "the best healers in the game" you don't have any issues with switching tanks mid fight, but when your healers are on the same tier and your guild is doing bleeding edge content, it's not easy to keep 1 tank up (especially if you don't happen to have the perfect healer configuration). Switching tanks mid-fight will result in both tanks being dead a good chunk of the time.

I am honestly, getting really tired of telling people the intricacies of their class. How their abilities are so strong. How to use them. How they can do things they don't feel they can't.

And we're all tired of being told we don't know how to play our class, when we very much do.

I think the posts following yours pretty much summed up my feelings on your other comments.

Back to the parses, I also wonder what a SK would look like in those circumstances, since they're supposed to be better tanks and weaker DPS.

 

[Severien]

I love my mitigation while wearing a shield. I love my mitigation in general. What turns me inside out is a knight's ability to perform my job as well or better than me. I'll offer you an analogy in terms of mages and wizards: what happens if mages were given nukes as big and mana efficient as those of a wizard and at the same time retained all the rains and utility that they have now? That is how I perceive the issue of warriors vs. knights. Warriors are amazing tanks, but knights are just as good without sacrificing any utility. Disclaimer: I do not want knights nerfed.

This. Warriors should still be able to retain a significant lead of 15-20% less damage taken while dual wielding, in stance 12, compared to a paladin or shadowknight with a shield in stance 3. If something could be dreamed up where we still get our 33% less with a shield, instead of that becoming even more powerful, awesome. I do have to say though, even if it were more powerful than that, it still would not be as unbalancing as people might think it is because knights can heal themselves. One of you knights needs to hurry up and address that fact.

Warriors as a class need to retain the ability to take less damage while tanking than knights IN ALL SITUATIONS. The reason why we deserve this is because when we created our characters and we said to the Guide in The Dream "Yay I'm a warrior! Whats my utility Mr. Guide sir?" he said "EAT SHIT LITTLE TANK."

I'm sorry, but relying entirely upon a knight to build aggro for you so that you can actually tank better than the knight is BROKEN. It also completely ignores anything outside of the raid game.

Whether or not warriors do better when in stance 9 compared to knight parry stance or shadowknight stance 6 is a significant piece of data, but it isn't going to affect the core of this argument because those are special abilities that run out over the course of the fight. The bread and butter of tanking is a warrior dual wielding in 12 and a knight using a shield in 3 AND YOU ARE DOING IT BETTER.

 

[Marza]

Edit: Only the highest tier warriors can shield 50% of the time. What about the other 7-8 tiers that come before that pinnacle...? Do not disregard them.

I am not sure where this 50% number came from but honestly it isn't true in most cases at even the highest tier. It depends a lot on the fight in question to when or IF you can use a shield. Another thing to keep in mind is if the tier you are on has poor warrior weapon selection (or just has not dropped) the time frame that you are able to realistically use a shield without much worry of dps pulling agro diminishes.