Is Warrior a good end game job?Follow

It's good all around, but not usually in specific demand. SAM is probably more utilized, or situationally DRK.

One thing to keep in mind is that nearly everyone has multiple jobs now, so you'd not be bringing much at all to the table with just a fresh 75 DD.

as people have said, short answer: yes, long answer: not really if it's your only job. WAR is very versatile, but rather gear dependent, and occasionally not so useful. if utility is what you're after, BRD is a cheap and effective first job to level. if you like WAR and want to take a long time to gear it and work your way up while not always being a top contributor (or even necessary/helpful at some events), do it anyway. if you play/gear it well, it's a great job, and really you should play the job you most enjoy anyway.

This. More important than your job or gear, this.

If BRD is the first job you level, it might as well be the last job you level.

As nice as that sounds for "convincing" your group to let you come melee, when you show up for Ein, its a T3 night and there are only 2 brds logged on, i dont care if you have a relic, if you have brd you will be asked to come brd.

The ability for someone to come on a melee job if they have a support job leveled is directly coorelated with how many additional support jobs are available. Not your gear. Not your mad skillz at equipping str gear on sam for WS. Not your kitty pants. How much you are NEEDED as a support job and nothing else.

If you have brd and war and your LS is crapping brds left and right, sure, you get to come war often. If your group is like most, then you are Brd4life.

Thus the only support job im likely ever to level is Cor. At least that could be a LITTLE fun for someone like me (and 90% of the population) that prefers DD jobs. As fun as i think it would be to mess around on Rdm, im loathe to level it because i have zero interest in playing it in endgame. But its a hard sell to come lolThf or drg if you have a rdm on your ticket ><

Edited, Jan 28th 2010 10:16am by Banalaty

I am just pointing out its a supply/demand thing. We have relatively recently lost a lot of brd/Whms that decided to take breaks etc over the recent few months. Suddenly we are in a major crunch for brds. Anyone who has brd and is logged on doesnt really get the freedom of "choice" until brd numbers are shored up again, but the application process and whatnot isnt instantanious. Nor do we have 30 apps with brd mains knocking at the door.

Obviously that is a shell-based problem, but when was the last time you heard of a shell that suddenly had a "shortage" of melees? Shortages ebb and and flow in every LS as things change/people come and go etc, but its never in the "Holy hell we need more melees!" direction. It is ALWAYS in the mage/support department.

If you have brd+melee leveled, when push comes to shove, its always going to be brd when things get tight because there is always another melee. There isnt always another support class.

As for de-leveling/selling gear/killing your job, it will not make you very popular at all. Ive seen it on multiple jobs with different people Blms/Brds being the most popular delevel/gimp it up targets. Its your 12.95, Its not fair, blah blah blah. That doesnt change the fact that it pisses people off. I am not saying that I dont empathize or that its right, just that it will make your LS angry if you delevel an in demand job. It makes you LOOK selfish. Not that you are any moreso than anyone else who doesnt have (insert"4life" job here) leveled at all. But its a perception. In the great high school experiment that is FFXI, moves like this hurt your reputation.

When a guy joins an LS as a Smn+Blm then after a month says "Sorry guys, Im done with Blm. Selling gear and dont ask me to come blm again." it makes you look like a dick. That group let you in primarily so that you could be a blm to assist the group. Same with a Bst+Brd joining then deleveling Brd. Its a dick move. These are obviously more extreme examples contrasting much less useful endgame jobs with highly sought after ones, but you get the point. Its a little more tolerable if you have 8 jobs with a variety of use and you shut down one, but joining an LS with only ~2 jobs like Brd+war then saying your brd is "retired" is being a deuche to the group that let you join in the 1st place because you had more versatility.

I certainly wont endorse or suggest that a new player to do this.

Edited, Jan 28th 2010 10:53am by Banalaty

Warrior is a fantastic DD, more than capable of being top DD in any event where melee damage is used. Trouble is nobody has only one 75 anymore, the ideal is to have at least 4, a DD, a support job, a healer and a tank. Most people go with 2-3 of those. As said before though your attitude will be far more important than whether you top a parse or not in an endgame linkshell, with a good positive attitude and some flexibility (i.e. 2-3 types of jobs leveled) you'll do just fine in any good shell.

I'll give a brief rundown of common stuff people do at 75, hope it helps.

Merits/leveling: WAR is top tier DD here without a doubt, some people in this game think if it's not SAM then it's second best. Ignore these people, they obviously don't parse and as a result don't really know what they're talking about. SAM often looks good in parties and can get more hate than it's overall damage deserves due to it's spike damage nature, giving people who don't parse the wrong impression.

Sky: You'll want to do this as WAR, many nice pieces come from sky and for most things war is a great DD. There are several fights however where you will be nothing more than a spectator. This can be a bit frustrating but it's not something a linkshell will refuse you for.

Sea: The opposite to sky, you can do some fights but mages seem to rule supreme in sea. The upside is there isn't really anything great for warrior in sea anyway, you can get a PCC -1 and a zerg axe, that's about it really.

Dynamis/Einherjar: WAR is superb in these, fantastic DD, great caller and nice mini tank for anything but the NM's. You can even tank the NM's if you have good support and can do enough damage. Einherjar has some nice things for WAR but if you never do Dynamis you won't be sorry, the gear in dyna for WAR is dreadful.

Nyzul/Assault. Hit and miss for Assault, depends on which one you do, you'll either excel as a DD when you can melee or not be able to do anything at all and therefor not get invited. The gear from Assaults is... OK at best, with the exception of Perdu voulge, the best Axe you can get barring lucky Augments on a Erlking's Kheten. Nyzul also helps towards getting a Perdu so all is not lost, WAR is fantastic in Nyzul and the gear is a little better than for other Assaults. You also get King's Justice from Nyzul which is a very nice weapon skill to have and worth getting. Nyzul will be better for you than other Assaults for sure and WAR is more than welcome on any run with a DD slot available.

ZNM: I'm not very experienced with ZNM to be honest but when I have done it it's always on BLM, these fight are often kited from what I've read so I'd say War isn't that great for ZNM, you'll want Aurum boots too, they're the best we can get currently.

BCNM/ISNM/CoP/various BC fights: This is where you'll really start to struggle with only having a physical DD. There are many fights you can do but far more you can't. As a result making money could be tricky for you from time to time (BCNM etc.. are great ways of making money) Worse than that though will be getting CoP done, at this late stage in the game you might get lucky and tag onto a group which will pretty much walk you through it. But, and it's a big but, if you don't then you'll have to /sh for groups etc.. and you'll have almost nothing to offer for some fights. You will want to complete CoP too, Rajas ring and Brutal earring are both peerless for warrior.

HNM: I've never joined a HNM ls so again my experience is limited in this, I understand that war is fine though. The problem you will have is getting a good shell that can actually claim and kill these creatures with only one 75. I'd say your chances of doing so are somewhere between remote and non-existant.

Limbus: For Farming chips there are few jobs that can match a WAR in limbus as it literally tears through those mobs. You can easily be top DD and tank at the same time in limbus, you even get the chance to use your 2 hour frequently thanks to restore chest for those awesome 2 hour'd weapon skills. My favourite event in this game is Limbus on WAR, I just can't get enough. For the Bosses though.... you'll either be badly nerfed or out right useless depending on what strategies are used for Omega, for Ultima you can melee but most shells I know of just blow it up with BLM's meaning no room for WAR.


tl:dr: When war is good it's fantastic but there are many events/strategies that simply don't use physical DD or don't straight tank stuff. For those fights you'll be a spectator so having job flexibility is important if you want to be able to do lots of different things.

All the ZNM fights are a little different. Alot of them you can zerg, and of course war is no slouch there.

As for the bard stuff, just be honest. If its a drag to play the game on BRD, tell the LS leader. Tell him your limits (I can only play bard on a events 2x per week otherwise I'll get over bored with the game and quit or move to another LS/server to avoid being asked). It should be a give and take thing, just be upfront about where you stand. Don't quietly sulk in a corner about always coming on bard for months and then explode on the leader and tell him you are done with bard and demand he use you as melee.

Here is my advice do not ever touch bard. if u want to be a dd be a dd. RL xp here uncut and truthful. i leveled brd for part time reasons. ls kept not having a ballad brd i said why not. i went 5 months w/o using drg and almost 3 w/o using warrior. do not acknowledge intrest in bard AT ALL. in fact do not even unlock it. as its been said b4 in previous posts if your linkshell leans on you to level something u dont like, say no and stick to your guns. if they break your pearl then they didnt respect u to begin with and only care about themselves.

End game isn't about what you know or what you have. Its who you know. You can have every item that Warrior can equip, and just want to get into a top tier shell to get stuff for another job, but if you don't know the people in that shell, you're simply fighting an uphill battle.

This, and also what Milich and lolgaxe said.

War is a very highly gear dependent job, and we don't have much else other than tomahawk and the ability to tank and dd to offer aside from top tier damage. You can be a good top contributor without the best gear, but you won't be an asset.

If I didn't have rdm and war both, Id be less valuable to my shell as a member for sure. My rdm is much more useful at some events (especially things that can be easily lowmanned/manaburned like Sea) than my war. But for any event where time matters and zerging is preferred, war is generally more useful. A lot of people have support jobs now that can perform a buffing-only role.

Though it's possible, that doesn't happen to everyone.

For me:

Salvage: RDM.
Nyzul Isle: SAM.
Sky: PLD mostly.
ZNM: Usually RDM or PLD; sometimes BRD. (I run this, so may not count. lol.)
Dynamis: They don't really seem to care, so I bring BRD...
All else: mostly RDM or PLD, except meriting.

I leveled up RDM, PLD, BRD, and SAM, in that order, so the older jobs (RDM and PLD) see more action since people are used to having me on those jobs. Still, if you're decent at a job, and the job is needed, that job will see uses, sooner or later.

DD 'main' people who are always asked to come as BRD? I can think of three reasons:

1. Leaders forgot you have a particular job (yes, it happens...) or the player didn't communicate well that he doesn't want to be stuck on one job all the time. I find that most leaders are willing to accommodate when the LS can fill the critical positions.

2. Too many people (who likely have been with the LS longer) already locked up the DD jobs in the LS.

3. The player doesn't perform well; it's easier to get more benefits from a so-so BRD than a so-so DD.

#3 is especially important; if I see a WAR fires off Provoke the second the tank goes down, I make a mental note. If I see the Provoke right after the tank ate a 1000 point damage move and BEFORE the tank goes down, I make a VERY positive note.

If after event the parser says a WAR did far less damage than a BLU who was spending good amount of MP on Diamondhide? Well, let's just say I will still make mental note, but a very different one.

Guess which WAR will be asked to come as WAR next time, and which will be asked "So, you have a BRD, right?"

BTW, #2 has been fairly rare in my experience; most long time members are flexible and willing to share seat time as DDs (or tanks or healer or support). Other people's experiences may differ.

#1 is just a communication problem; talk to the leaders (nicely) and usually they can accommodate the players on at least some of the runs.


* * *

That said, OP seems interested in WAR, and only WAR. I'd say don't level another job to Lv.75 if that's really the case. Nothing annoys me more than seeing people not even making the bare minimum effort to play a job right--on any job.

While I didn't have the best gear in the world, I like to think I was a good war. I stepped up to the plate whenever the tank went down, and my dyna shell loved when I was there, because if the pld went down they knew they had someone who could jump in and hold the mobs reasonably well until we had a breather.
Any ls I've been in have been happy to let me come on war, even to events where I wasn't needed but I think that was more a personality thing. I attended EVERYTHING and talk an awful lot, so I think they liked having me there for the occasional 3 hours of camping, etc.

Well, in any given situation where hit rate's not capped, Fort Torque will be worse...

This, 100 times this. You'll notice that in most end-game events (non-HNM stuff, since I don't have experience with that, so I can't comment), you'll move up the ladder faster as the person behind your character, not the character itself.

Take the most recently-in-this-thread discussed Dynamis. A WAR is ALWAYS useful, between being a top DD as well as an add-voker. Sometimes when you have multiple mobs slept, your Paladins just can't keep up keeping hate on everything, and it's usually not good if they do keep hate on everything*. That said (I HATE when people say "that said", why did I just say it?), as a WAR or any kind of voker, PRO-TIP: remember that Provoke hate decays gradually over 30 seconds, so Provoke slept mobs ~20 seconds or so into sleeping to keep some kind of hate on them.

I lost my train of though. I really need a keg of Guinness in my house at all times to keep me going. It's like milk. Guinness + Lucky Charms = win.

Anyway, I try to take WAR (or DRG) to Dyna as much as possible, although I'm stuck on RDM most of the time. Is that relevant? I dunno. Off to make posts on other job forums for no reason.

*To all you "LOLPLD in Dynamis!" people, eat some high-% Hundred Fisting MNK mobs without Sentinel, unless you're taking 35+ people, overflowing with uber DDs, to Dyna.

WAR is only a subjob anyway.