Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: FFXIV, Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIV, Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood, Patch 4.2, Square Enix

FFXIV: Dear Square Enix, Please Nerf Warriors

I honestly never thought I would be writing these words, but after a week of playing Final Fantasy XIV since patch 4.2 went live, Square Enix have gone too far. When I initially played version 4.0 Stormblood back at launch, I was somewhat unhappy about how useless my warrior's pile of HP was. I tend to war main, though I do also play around with paladin and dark knight because tanking is fun and I'm terrible at any other job. With fewer native buffs to the class, survivability in previously released content was dicey. We got some changes in 4.05 and more in 4.1 that really did help to make the tank class workable. Warriors were arguably at the best they'd ever been. And then we got the preliminary Patch 4.2 notes and Letter form the Producer, which indicated that we'd be seeing some more changes to war. Seemed like some subtle buffing and debuffing to make a couple of tweaks. Things seemed fair if not a bit too heavy on the buff side.

And then we got the full patch notes. The FFXIV devs made 15 changes to the marauder/ warrior class, which was more than any other by a significant margin. After re-tooling their gear post-patch, properly-kitted warriors were able to crit for 25-30k damage. As a tank. My direct and critical hit rates are outrageous, my skills will still heal me when they land provided I'm  in a defensive stance rather than an offensive one, and my overall pile of HP has increased significantly. And I'm not even near the increased ilvl cap yet.

Meanwhile, poor Paladins saw a nerf to two of their offensive abilities, and while you could argue that Holy Spirit was OP, shield swipe didn't need to have its potency lowered. And Dark Knights got a shortened recast timer and a two-second increase in the duration of their highest shield buff.

I can take hits to the face that should kill me. I can survive with 4-5 stacks of vulnerability after screwing up mechanics on brand new end-game content (haven't tried that with Savage yet, but give me a day or two and I will). The only good thing to come of Patch 4.2's changes to warriors has been the fact that shirk is now in permanent residence on my hotbar. This can only mean one thing. Please, dear development gods, nerf the hell out of me.

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