In Final Fantasy 14, every tank offers something a little bit different. And what the worry offers is a little bit of everything. The beefcake berserker is famous for its ability to dish out just as much damage as it takes. That’s still the case in Shadowbringers! But a few things have changed to make them even more of a secret damage-dealer than they were before. Find out what those changes were, and how best to take advantage of them, in our FF14 guide to the Warrior in Shadowbringers.
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FF14 Jobs are all going through some major changes in Shadowbringers. The new expansion includes major reworks across the board, as well as two entirely new classes: Dancer and Gunbreaker. Between these additions and another massive payload of story content, Shadowbringers almost makes FF14 feel like an entirely new game. And that’s exactly why you might need help picking your new main Job or Jobs this time around. We’re here to help with another FF14 Job guide — this time for the wild-eyed Warrior.
Warrior Role – FF14 Shadowbringers Guide
The Warrior, despite what some people think ahead of time, is not a DPS Job in FF14. They’re tanks! And they get all the advantages that every tank in FF14 does. That means they wear heavier armor, get access to damage mitigating skills, and can become temporarily invincible. Although the Warrior is also known for being the heaviest damage-dealer of all the tanks in FF14 right now.
Less directly, the Warrior also benefits from the relative rarity of tank players in FF14. Warriors can often get “Hero in Need” XP and gil bonuses by participating in daily roulettes. This makes them (and any other tank for that matter) somewhat easier to level up than DPS Jobs and sometimes even healers in Final Fantasy. They can also be quite complicated to play, however, as most dungeons, raids, and trials have unique (and complicated) mechanics exclusive to tank players. There’s a lot of responsibility on your broad shoulders!
Tanks received some across-the-board changes in Shadowbringers, as well. Whereas the role previously had two stances — one that increased damage output and one that lowered the damage you take — each tank now only has a defensive stance. The reworked modes don’t decrease incoming damage, either. They only increase enmity generation. The upside is that defensive stances no longer reduce the damage you do, either. That’s good news for heavy-hitting Warriors. Tanks also have new area of effect combos to complement their normal, single-target damage combos.
Warrior Rework – FF14 Shadowbringers Guide
The Warrior got a few significant changes across the board — mostly in the form of damage buffs. That’s basically true of most Jobs in FF14. Although it really matters for the Warrior. While the class is a tank by definition, much of its utility comes from the wild amount of damage it can deal for its class type. So across-the-board increases in damage only make the Warrior more viable than ever. Although the other tanks also got some serious buffs to help them compete, too.
But it’s not all about offense. The Warrior also saw a nice simplification of one of its key defensive abilities: Raw Intuition. The skill used to parry all attacks from the front for 20 seconds, while causing all hits from the side or back to become critical hits. That… was sort of silly, given that tanks face their opponents 99 percent of the time. And so Raw Intuition now just provides a flat, juicy 20 percent damage reduction buff. It’s duration was reduced from 20 seconds to just five, however, meaning you need to think about when you use it a lot more.
Holmgang also saw some tweaks. The king of all invincibility skills has been brought low with a much longer cooldown. It now takes 240 seconds to recharge instead of 180 seconds. Although it no longer chains the Warrior in place — just the player’s target. That’s nice, I guess.
Otherwise, a lot of the “new” Warrior skills are just updated versions of old ones. At level 72, the skill Infuriate now causes Fell Cleave and Decimate to become hilariously powerful for one use. In addition, Infuriate now has two charges with the new charged ability system. And using your juiced up moves reduces the cooldown on Infuriate by five seconds each time.
But… since the only reasons to use Infuriate are to increase the Beast Gauge a bit and fire off the aforementioned powered-up abilities… The reduced cooldown is kinda just baked in, anyway. At least you now do a 920 potency critical direct hit with the enhanced version of Fell Cleave. That’s a lot!
TL;DR the Warrior has been streamlined and simplified, but does more damage than ever. It was already one of the best tanks in all of FF14 before Shadowbringers. They didn’t need anything too fancy this time around! You can look at all of the Warrior abilities in FF14 here.
Warrior Tips – FF14 Shadowbringers Guide
- Don’t stack Infuriate and Inner Release. Infuriate already guarantees a critical direct hit on Fell Cleave and Decimate, in addition to the increased damage of its enhanced skills. Inner Release further gives you guaranteed critical direct hits on those and everything else. But it’s not like you can double crit… Instead, you want to use Infuriate when Inner Release is cooling down.
- Nascent Flash is for off tanking, Raw Intuition is for main tanking. The healing from Nascent Flash is nice, but the skill is really all about its 10 percent damage reduction on a target of your choice. Naturally, you want to put that buff on a player who’s going to be taking damage. That would be the main tank. But since Nascent Flash shares a cooldown with Raw Intuition, you need to choose between the two. Raw Intuition has the better defensive buff (20 percent versus 10 percent), so go with that whenever you can. And “whenever you can,” in this case, means when you’re the main tank.
- Heavy Swing→Maim→Storm’s Path is your main combo. All the basic tank combos in FF14 were heavily consolidated in Shadowbringers. Now you don’t need to worry about generating extra enmity, and can instead use your Heavy Swing→Maim→Storm’s Eye combo every 30 seconds, while topping off your health with the Storm’s Path combo the rest of the time. Otherwise, if you’re fighting three enemies or more at a time, start with the Storm’s Eye combo and then switch to Overpower→Mythril Tempest (your AOE combo). This is a basically identical — arguably even boring — pattern on all four tanks in Shadowbringers. That means it should be easy to wrap your head around if you’re switching from one tank to another.
How to Unlock the Warrior Job – FF14 Shadowbringers Guide
Like most Jobs in FF14, you can select the Warrior right at the start of the game. Sorta. You just need to make a character with the “Marauder” class. This will eventually morph into the Warrior once you unlock the full Job at level 30. Otherwise, if you started as a different class, you begin the first Marauder quest at the Marauder’s Guild in Limsa Lominsa.
That’s all for now, folks! Thanks for taking the time to read our guide to the Warrior in FF14: Shadowbringers. We hope it helps you master this puritanical tank to the best of your ability. Until then, good luck learning the new reworks, abilities, and intricacies of the Warrior going forward.
