Originally Posted by
Prothescar
As someone who is normally very critical about XIV things, I like a lot of what I saw today. The addition of new resources/mechanics to some of the more simple jobs (WHM for example) and wide sweeping changes to some other jobs looked pretty good. A lot of the new abilities look like they either add to the job in a way that it was lacking before, or amplify its strengths sufficiently to a point where they appear to have some impact.
Warrior is my main class, so I'll talk more about that. The changes are interesting. Removing Wrath stacks and replacing them with a universal Beast meter is cool. It also seems that the generation and consumption of these points/the meter has changed dramatically. From my observations and the information we have available from translated tooltips:
-Combo generators now provide 10 points of Beast Meter charge (BM). This is a 100% decrease from before, where 1 combo generator would provide 1 stack out of 5, or 20 out of 100 points. That said, points no longer carry the same weight.
-Actions such as Vengeance no longer produce BM.
-Infuriate possibly only gives 50 BM instead of 100, which would still technically be the same as what it did before and in fact it would be more potent if the cost of finishers is truly 15-25BM.
-There is now a cost attached to stance dancing. It costs half of your BM to change between Defiance and Deliverance, so you can't just do it willy nilly, build up all your BM in Deliverance and swap to Defiance to IB, etc.. We needed a balancing point on our stances; this may seem like a strong penalty to some but honestly, considering Warrior's breadth of utility and flexibility, I'd say it's fair.
-Berserk may no longer cause pacification. That'd be cool.
-Finishers/spenders now have variable costs and can be used in greater quantities at once, though not necessarily more often. From what I can see, spenders like Fell Cleave either outright cost 25 points, or that new fire shield ability thing reduces the cost of BM spenders. Lesser spenders (like the gap closer and that uppercut thing) seem to cost between 15 and 20 BM. Before, it would cost 5 stacks (100 of 100 "points" of Wrath) to use Inner Beast/Steel Cyclone/Fell Cleave/Decimate, or 5 generators. Now it costs 25 BM, or 2.5 generators, to use a finisher if the cost is 25, or possibly they have made it cost 50 points with 25 being the reduced cost while under the effects of that new buff. For the purposes of this post we'll assume it's just 25 BM to use a finisher. Theoretically this means we will be using BM finishers 30-40% more often than before, and if you store a full meter and Infuriate you can use up to 6 BM finishers in a single burst, or Berserk. This is either an enormous boost in burst damage potential, or something is going to change to make Fell Cleave less devastating, such as...
EDIT: Finishers cost 50 BM. The new buff halves costs. So you can do up to 3 Fell Cleaves without the new buff (2 from max gauge, 1 from Infuriate) or potentially you can build to 100 gauge -> Berserk -> New ability -> Fell Cleave x4 -> Infuriate -> Fell Cleave x2.
-STR is being shifted back into the spotlight for tank DPS. This would be great, except they are also making it so that tanks can only wear VIT accessories. One of several things can happen here:
a) Tenacity's damage boost will be enough to compensate for the loss.
b) They will put a small amount of STR onto VIT accessories or raise the amount of STR on tank gear.
c) Neither of these and tanks face another blanket nerf to damage output.
For warrior in particular, it's possible that certain job abilities and mechanics allow it to continue to deal elevated damage, however the possibility exists that the changes to tank stats will come out to another decrease in tank damage output. 6 Fell Cleaves in one burst sounds really, really strong... until you consider this, then 6 Fell Cleaves sounds more like Warrior's way to compensate for a possible damage nerf. We don't have enough information to say either way. No matter what though, unleashing that many finishers at once is going to feel tight as fuq.
-More on stats: removing Parry and replacing it with Tenacity was a great move. Tenacity sounds like it could be an incredible stat, however I'm tempering my expectations and assuming it will give less damage than Determination and a minor DR (like 1% DR per 400 Tenacity or something). Either way, it's nice to see that they've actually replaced it with something rather than just removing it entirely and saying fuck it.
Overall I feel like this could make WAR more interesting and varied to play. Right now it's easily the simplest of all 3 tanks to play optimally, the BM gauge and managing that resource properly could potentially lead to a more in-depth playstyle. We'll have to see what goes on.