Difference between revisions of "Sakuragi's Warrior Guide"

Revision as of 22:33, 15 October 2013

A Word of Warning

Warriors are something of an endgame class, both in terms of levels and gear. At 60 wielding the Blade of Strategy and Sword of the Shissar and wearing toys like the Belt of the Four Winds and Cobalt Breastplate you're the best tank in the game. But during most of your time leveling (especially if you aren't twinked) you aren't going to compare to the snap aggro of Paladins and Shadowknights or the damage of monks. Warriors are the most gear dependent class in classic EverQuest. It's simply not possible to make up a large difference in gear with skill, the way you can on an enchanter or even a monk.

So from a min/max perspective, Warrior is the most hardcore class out there. You should expect to either put in a LOT of time to level and gear up, or just be a mediocre warrior. I rolled my warrior mostly to do something different and not play a powerclass after romping through the game as an enchanter; on the whole I think Sakuragi is great but there have definitely been times when I wish I went Monk.

Just to drive the point home, it's easy to think that a Warrior is one of the simple, base classes. And they are. But they are also one of the most demanding in terms of time. You should learn about the endgame scene first: to get those pixels you're either going to have to track/batphone or farm for a long time.

The Mathematics of Threat Generation

The takeaway here is that you want two fast weapons with good ratios that also proc high-threat spells, while getting as much haste and dexterity as possible. If you are allergic to math, skip this section.

As a warrior, your primary means of generating threat is by beating on your target monster. Every time you swing your weapon, hit or miss, you will generate WeaponDamage+DamageBonus aggro. Some examples:

• L40 Warrior with a Short Sword of the Ykesha in the mainhand: 8+5 = 13 hate per swing
• L40 Warrior with a Short Sword of the Ykesha in the offhand: 8+0 = 8 hate per swing
• L60 Warrior with a Blade of Strategy in the mainhand: 14+11 = 25 hate per swing
• L60 Warrior with a Blade of Tactics in the offhand: 14+0 = 14 hate per swing

This means that as you level up and increase your damage bonus, fast weapons generate relatively more hate than slow weapons. A 9/18 Jade Mace is actually putting out more melee hate per second (ratio (9+11)/18 = 1.11) than the Blade of Strategy (ratio (14+11)/24 = 1.05).

Your secondary means of generating threat is by equipping a weapon that procs a spell. Your chance to proc is dependent purely on your dexterity: the game computes the number of procs per minute you get (0.5 + 1.5 (dex/255) for the mainhand, half that for the offhand) and then distributes them over your swings. Some examples:

• 255 dex, 60 delay weapon, 10 swings per minute, 20% chance to proc per swing
• 255 dex, 30 delay weapon with 100% haste, 40 swings per minute, 5% chance to proc per swing

It's not that hard to put these together (along with estimates for dual wield, double/triple attack, and so on) into a spreadsheet that lets you figure out the estimated aggro for each pair of weapons. Some results (at Level 60, 255 dexterity, 100% haste):

These numbers aren't exact: I'm using data from my tests which seem to indicate that damage is 1 hate per, debuffs are 550 hate, stuns are 500, and poison/disease procs are 750 (this is also why Willsapper doesn't score so well). You can see the testing thread at http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=120110 It's also possible I have a bug in my spreadsheet.

Anyway, it may not be obvious, but these are actually pretty solid numbers. For example:

So the wizard will die, but everyone else is looking pretty good. The problem is that procs (and taunt) are horribly random and fights are short. Suppose that our epic warrior is cursed by the random number generator gods and does not proc/taunt at all. Suddenly he is only generating 46 hate/sec. Our Shaman fired slow as soon as the mob hit camp, so it takes our warrior 12 seconds to generate enough threat for the shaman to sit down again. If the group is killing mobs every 25 seconds, that means our RNG-cursed warrior is tanking a whopping 50% of the time.

Fine you say, but what is the chance of being so cursed by the RNG gods? Higher than you think. For an exponential process exp[-ax] the mean is 1/a. In practice this means if you are due for a proc every 20 seconds (255 dex), you'll have to wait 20 seconds on average (not 10 as you would think). The worst case is much worse:

So if you have two proccing and weapons and 255 dex, you'll have to wait on average 20 seconds for a proc. 50% of time you'll get one inside of 14 seconds, 25% of the time you'll have to wait 27 seconds, and 5% of the time you'll have to wait almost a minute. If you have only one proccing weapon and less than 200 dex, you'll be waiting over a minute between procs fairly frequently. The point here is that warrior isn't bad as much as it is inconsistent. Having two proccing weapons and high dexterity not only increases your threat but decreases its variance and makes it (well a bit) more predictable.

Defense (HP vs AC)

If you are being healed by a shaman or druid (or, god forbid, a paladin), AC is all that matters. More AC = greater efficiency.

If you are being healed by a cleric, especially on raid encounters, HP is going to be more important. Raid mobs have very high ATK and AC is not as effective. In addition, you don't care about the average case: it doesn't matter whether you average 25% or 30% when the complete heal hits. What matters is the worst case, i.e. death, and avoiding it. I feel like HP compensates for that a bit better than AC.

So I feel that 1AC is worth about 3HP for raid tanking but more like 5HP while leveling, when mobs have lower ATK scores and it is more likely you'll be healed by a druid or shaman.

Also, slowed mobs are better than any amount of AC. If stuff is slowable, the best defense is a good offense so that your enchanter and shaman can get to work earlier.

Creation

In the long run (and there really isn't any other reason to play a warrior from a min/max perspective) you'll want to max both Stamina and Dexterity. With full Shaman/Enchanter buffs you'll get +80 DEX but only +50 STA, so I suggest setting Stamina to 30 more than Dexterity.

From a min-max perspective, Ogres are clearly the best. Aside from having the best stats, a quick back-of-the-envelope estimate shows the value of stun immunity: mobs get their secondary attack every 8 seconds, bash instead instead of kick 75% of the time, hit 50% of the time, and stun 50% of their hits. So if the mob isn't hasted you'll be spending roughly 2 seconds out of 40 (5%) of your time stunned. Depending on how fast your weapons are, that's some 2-3% of your threat and damage (your weapons will be ready as soon as you aren't stunned, so you don't lose all of the time) which isn't gamebreaking but is certainly nice.

Second best are Dwarves, Trolls, Halflings, and to some extent Barbarians which all have nice stats and special abilities. There is no min-max reason to play the other races (especially Dark Elves with their brutal 75 starting stamina AND dexterity), but of course min-max isn't everything and with some effort you'll be able to cap your stats in the endgame anyway. In the long term the lack of Slam is not that important as you'll get stunning Kick at 55.

Last but not least are the Iksar. In Velious their AC and regen bonuses will make them competitors with Ogres, but currently we have been mired in Kunark for the past three years and Iksar Warriors are still wearing ranger armor. Really they are only 5-10% worse than comparably geared Ogres in Kunark (Hakata has tanked just about every mob in Kunark, and Sakuragi has tanked most of them) but people will expect you to be horrible. To these people I have only one thing to say: hiss! hiss!

Disciplines

Warriors get the best disciplines in the game, mainly because many of ours ours last 3 minutes instead of 10 seconds.

Evasive vs Defensive

These are your bread and butter, and the big reason Warriors trump other classes for endgame tanking. A Warrior with 4000HP and one of these disciplines will outtank a hybrid with 5000HP . . . easily.

Mobs hit for DamageBonus+DamageInterval*Rand(0,20). Evasive causes them to miss more, while defensive reduces their damage interval. What this means is that if mobs have a high DI but low DB, defensive is better, while if they have a high DB but low DI, evasive is better. There is an entire [thread] devoted to which discipline to use when, but as a general rule of thumb I suggest using defensive for mobs that hit for over 400 max.

Precision

With this discipline you will basically never miss. It's good for about a 50% increase in damage for three minutes, and if the fight lasts long enough you can outdamage the rogues and monks.

Mightystrike/Fellstrike

Mightystrike is best saved for when you are in trouble and below 40% health, when all of your critical hits will be crippling blows. Unfortunately it has a 60 minute reuse time.

Fellstrike is good for the 30 second endgame kills we see on this server and refreshes a bit faster.

Useful Clickies and Procs

With zero class-based utility spells or skills, these items can be extremely useful.

Procs

• Blood Point

  Blood Point

MAGIC ITEM
Slot: PRIMARY SECONDARY
Skill: Piercing Atk Delay: 21
DMG: 10
STR: +5 CHA: -5
SV DISEASE: +10 SV POISON: +10
Effect: Siphon (Combat, Casting Time: Instant) at Level 50
WT: 2.3 Size: MEDIUM
Class: WAR ROG
Race: ALL