Warrior Tank Advanced Optimization Guide — Dawntrail 7.1

The contents of this guide assume you understand the fundamentals of Warrior and are seeking out additional means of enhancing and optimizing your game. The basic guide can be found via the navigation buttons above if you need to refresh yourself on the core concepts.

Despite the common opinion of Warrior being a very simple tank, there are several ways to optimize how you play that require more effort than what one would initially think. Before diving in, it's important to understand what these concepts are and their impact on gameplay. Warrior deals with all three of these regularly when optimizing encounters to ensure pulling on time, not losing out on damage when a boss goes untargetable, and threat management.

Knowing this, we can construct different openers depending on the situation. Pulling on time and ensuring you have threat helps everyone in your party. The boss won't auto attack someone else (looking at you, P8S) and if you have a Dark Knight as your co-tank then they'll get consistent The Blackest Night usage. When making openers it's important to know the application delay of your abilities; below is a handy table of your most common abilities.

Early Inner Release is for when you must get out Fell Cleaves where they wouldn't be on time normally. The caveat to this is losing out on the additional 10 seconds of Surging Tempest granted by Inner Release, thus requiring us to pull with Heavy Swing in order to still get Storm's Eye out in time. While this gets Inner Release out two GCDs sooner, slow GCD speeds that are unable to get 13 GCDs under potion will actually have the third Inner Chaos fall just outside of the window.

The absolute pinnacle of cursed openers, embracing the energy of your average Warrior in Alliance Raids who just pop Sprint and pull with Primal Rend. While we aren't pulling with Primal Rend, these openers have a bunch of flexibility on how early you need to press Inner Release, with variance on the sequence of buttons that follows. On top of having the same negatives as Early IR openers, all of your Fell Cleaves will not have the Surging Tempest buff, dealing 10% less damage. Figuring out how early you must use Inner Release, whether or not you require Sprint, and what GCD speed you have is where the fun comes in regarding these openers. All of these assume you're face pulling or pulling with Onslaught. A recent example of when this technique was used is in Abyssos with Hephaistos Phase 2 to gain an entire Inner Release window before High Concept 1 downtime.

This is a very unique choice that fits a niche when doing a pre-pull or early Inner Release opener. Should the boss be too far away to consistently face pull and also have a strict timer for Tomahawk to push Inner Release too far ahead, Onslaught can be used to pull instead. Because of the application delay on it, your first GCD is not immediately on pull. This is important to note especially for pre-pull openers as you have to shift where Inner Release is pressed. Need to press it at 9 seconds? Consider the delay of Onslaught and press it at ~8.4 seconds instead. This small change can make all the difference here if it nets you an extra usage. Scouring your logs is the key to figuring out if this is worthwhile and is purely recommended only for those in static environments.

To circumvent pulling with auto-attacks rather than the first GCD you press due to a difference in application delay, using mouseover macros allows us to queue an action while something is untargeted / untargetable without producing an auto-attack. This does have a downside of needing to manually initiate auto-attacks so not being on the ball with this can lose out on some autos over the course of the fight. Not only can this be used for pulling, but also times where queuing your GCD normally is not possible such as stuns, forced march, knock-ups, etc.

Your mileage may vary regarding the potential gains of this tech. Sometimes you can gain that last GCD in an uptime phase from that extra time, or be able to get an oGCD weave window as soon as possible. As these macro lines are run every frame, the true duration is actually based on your frame rate. Running a 14 line macro is equivalent to 14 frames of queue, playing at 30 FPS versus 60 FPS actually makes a difference. The former option feels similar to a standard GCD queue while the latter requires more mashing of the macro to have it execute consistently.

With the release of Dawntrail, all raid buffs have a 20 second duration, and thus our burst window is now always 8 GCDs. Ideally, every 2 minutes should include 1x Primal Rend, 1x Primal Ruination, 2x Inner Chaos and 3x Fell Cleave. This totals 7 GCDs, with your 8th being a filler GCD. In scenarios where you only have one Inner Chaos, this becomes 2 filler GCDs. Our best case scenario is entering an Inner Release window with exactly 50 Beast Gauge to ensure 8 burst GCDs, with a Fell Cleave taking place of a filler GCD. Alternatively, placing a second Primal Ruination or a third Inner Chaos in as the 8th GCD is also possible, but not without caveats.

On rare occasions, if you have 40 Beast Gauge and the GCD before Inner Release will be Storm's Path, intentionally overcapping on your Surging Tempest timer with Storm's Eye instead to allow for a filler-less burst window is an option, albeit a risky one. Due to Inner Release itself also extending Surging Tempest and the 10 Beast Gauge loss, there is a possibility that you'll lose a use of Fell Cleave across the fight's duration and should typically only be considered if you know that this won't happen. In prog, this is not really recommended as you may not know the kill time or what GCD specifically you'll end on.

This relies on your Infuriate timer and the current duration of Surging Tempest. Dumping your Beast Gauge with a low duration on Surging Tempest allows Warrior to carry over Inner Chaos up to a maximum of 7 GCDs. There are multiple ways that this can occur, but the concept revolves around not overcapping neither gauge or Surging Tempest and sometimes invokes decision making with how your GCD sequences have lined up. A couple examples of what this looks like are as follows:

• (With 60 Gauge) Maim → Storm's Path → Heavy Swing, Maim → 2x Fell Cleave → Infuriate
• (With 70 Gauge) Maim → Storm's Path → 2x Fell Cleave → Infuriate
  • Surging Tempest in these scenarios is ideally under 30 seconds such that you can carry Infuriate without overcapping its timer and build more gauge with Storm's Eye.
  • Both of the above examples are generally easy setups, spending 2x Fell Cleave to empty out your Beast Gauge.
• (With 50 Gauge) Storm's Path → (combo) Storm's Eye → 2x Fell Cleave → Infuriate
• (With 50 Gauge) Storm's Path → (combo) Storm's Path → Heavy Swing, Maim → Fell Cleave → (combo) Storm's Path → Fell Cleave → Infuriate
  • Due to Surging Tempest being greater or lesser than 30 seconds after the initial Storm's Path, you'll have to make a decision of whether to prioritize Storm's Eye or Storm's Path.
  • In the first example, Surging Tempest is below 30 seconds and thus you'll use Storm's Eye until being able to reach 100 gauge and spend with Fell Cleave.
  • In the second example, Surging Tempest is above 30 seconds. You'll prioritize Storm's Path and spend on Fell Cleave as necessary.
  • The second scenario is often avoidable if you take different combo routes earlier in the fight!

This keeps our filler-less burst window by frontloading 4 Fell Cleaves then pressing Infuriate. We'll still have Primal Rend and Primal Ruination, thus your 2 Inner Chaos will be the last GCDs within the burst window. This option requires Infuriate to have a running cooldown over 30 seconds to accommodate the cooldown reduction from Fell Cleave (5s per) and natural time passing by pressing each GCD (~10s for 4 GCDs).

Depending on how fast your GCD is, you'll be able to hit 12 GCDs (2.50s) or 13 GCDs (2.45/.40s w/ late weave) under pot. Outside of potting in our opener, each potion window should include 2x Primal Ruination along with our other burst GCDs. Doable on any GCD speed, this has higher value than the traditional three Inner Chaos potion windows, not accounting for any filler GCDs hit within the pot window. Fitting in 2x Primal Wrath is also possible, and will be discussed further down the guide.

Also known amongst the community as "Twice Come Ruination", Ruination Smuggling is a straightforward technique with the concept of holding the Primal Rend buff as long as possible before using it. Depending on your GCD speed, this will line up when the timer is between 1-3 seconds. Likewise, delay using Primal Ruination and use potion the GCD before pressing Primal Ruination. This has higher potency than the usual "Triple Inner Chaos" sequence and is recommended for fights that allow potions at the 2:00 and 8:00 minute windows. If potting in the opener, then you'd have this option for the 6:00 minute window.

Depending on the filler GCDs used in this sequence, it can be a tiny gain over the smuggling technique. Usually this depends on downtime to not overcap gauge or the Infuriate timer, however it can be done naturally in full uptime at the 1:00 and 7:00 minute marks without hassle. In siutations where you can do 3 potions in a fight such as 0/5/10 you'll have a Triple IC in the opener and can use either a standard sequence or Primal Ruination smuggle to not grief raid buffs.

Requiring GCDs faster than 2.50, it's possible to carry over Primal Wrath into your potion window. Simply put, late weave Inner Release and use potion just before Primal Wrath's timer falls off and immediately use it on the next GCD. This is tight especially when looking to get 2x Inner Chaos, hence the requirement for a faster Skill Speed. It's also possible to combine both Primal Ruination smuggling and this technique for more personal gain while also not handicapping your raidbuff contribution.

Putting all of the aforementioned sequences together, it's possible to have the ultimate sequence. "Thrice Come Chaos, Twice Come Wrath, Twice Come Ruination" you could say (if you really like Thunder God Cid), as it fits x3 Inner Chaos, x2 Primal Wrath and x2 Primal Ruination. Though this is not without cost, as it will grief raid buffs. Keep in mind this is also GCD dependant and requires a very specific sequence and an overcap on your Surging Tempest buff timer.

Crafted by the excellent player Mercedene Oda, this sequence works on 2.48/.49 GCDs as well as 2.40. Testing has shown that it's not doable on 2.45 or 2.46 GCDs as Primal Wrath falls off. This technique involves weaving Inner Release late enough to allow 4 filler GCDs before spending stacks on Fell Cleave. This is possible not only due to the Skill Speed, but because the timer of Inner Release is slightly more than the stated 15 seconds, appoximately ~15.7 seconds. However, we cannot weave too late into the GCD roll, as its placement on the next usage would cause clipping and one of our skills out. On 2.40 specifically, Inner Release is actually used before Storm's Eye in the opener, but still following the similar weave timing.

Griefing raid buffs is a given with this, so the intention is purely for personal damage parsing. There's also quite some risk performing this as it's very finnicky and easy to mess up on the slower GCD speeds. If you fail to properly time the first Inner Release, you end up spending gauge and losing out on a Primal Wrath. If you weave correctly, but mistime the next Inner Release or your potion, then you'll lose the third Inner Chaos, making this window no more different than the others, barring the lower aDPS due to the modified opener. All that said, here's how it all pieces together:

1. Pull on time with Tomahawk or Heavy Swing.
2. Weave Inner Release about 70% of the way into the GCD roll.
3. Use 4 filler GCDs within then spend stacks on Fell Cleave. These should be combo GCDs and 1x Inner Chaos.
4. Spend 2x Onslaught charges and the 50 gauge on another Fell Cleave.
5. Delay Primal Rend as late as possible and hit Infuriate before it overcaps.
6. Use an extra Storm's Eye, which will overcap your timer by a few seconds and continue building to 100 gauge.
7. Weave potion extremely late but without clipping then immediately spend Inner Chaos, Primal Wrath and Primal Ruination.
8. Afterwards continue like normal, dumping gauge and using Inner Release.

This sequence is done for an odd minute (1:00) potion, that does allow for you to sync back with feeding raid buffs for all later windows. Setting this up again is possible, though with how strict the timing is, doing it once is hard enough. At 2.48 and 2.49 GCDs, it's not really recommended in PF groups and its more for a static environment. 2.40 does have an easier time setting this up, but without knowing your kill-time usually in PF, it's still best suited for static environments.