FFXIV Warrior Guide - Decimate Your Enemies!

FFXIV Warrior Guide

Warrior is one of the tank jobs available in Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. In the standard RPG terms, you can call it an off-tank, since Warrior brings to the team a lot of survivability as well as some significant damage output. At the same time, this job has excellent sustain tools that let you heal during combat.

Warrior’s Identity

Similarly to every other job in FFXIV, to become a Warrior, you first have to choose the correct class and level it up to 30. In this case, it would be the Marauder. The Marauder’s Guild is located in Limsa Lominsa - that’s where you will have to go if you want to either become a Marauder or upgrade your level 30 Marauder into a Warrior.

Since the job is, in this case, just a better version of the preceding class, they use the same item types and share play styles. They fight with great axes and wear heavy plate armor. That means that Blacksmith and Armorer will be your friends (or more likely, will be the Disciples of Hand that you will level up early on).

Warrior as a Tank in FFXIV

Before we go into the leveling, we should talk about some things to keep in mind while playing Warrior. Warrior has the highest DPS output of all the tanks, but ultimately he’s still a tank, and almost always, it will be your primary responsibility.

The way you keep the monsters’ focused on you in FFXIV is by managing the enmity. Instead of having a single ability that works as a taunt, the tank jobs in Final Fantasy XIV can provoke their opponents simply by using their standard combos on them. You just have to activate your Defiance ability, and all your attacks will generate more enmity than the actions of your party members.

The only exception to that rule is a tank role action called Provoke. It can instantly place you on top of the enemy’s enmity list. It will cause it to abandon its original target and start attacking you instead. However, you won’t be using this ability often. It’s only really necessary when you’re trying to transfer the enmity from one tank to another.

Warrior used to have access to two stances. Defiance was the tank stance that increased your maximum HP, the healing you receive, and the enmity your actions generate, but at the same time, it reduced your damage output. The second one was called Deliverance, and it increased the amount of damage you dealt with. Since the Shadowbringers update, it’s no longer true. You only have the Defiance stance now, but its effect has changed. It only increases the enmity gain – it doesn’t affect your damage anymore. A similar rework has been applied to all the tank jobs. It allowed them to focus more on optimizing their rotation in terms of damage since keeping the enemy’s attention is now much easier. 

Beast Gauge

Warrior’s job-specific resource is called Beast Gauge. It’s generated with your standard weaponskill combo, and it can be spent on some powerful attacks, like Inner Beast, Upheaval, Fell Cleave, Steel Cyclone, and Decimate. It’s a really easy resource to manage. The only difficulty comes with the fact that the skills that consume it are on GCD, meaning that you can’t weave them in between other attacks. You can store up to 100 Beast Gauge.

Warrior Weaponskills

Heavy Swing – the essential damage ability that will be a part of your every combo. It’s a single target attack with a potency of 200.

Maim – the second part of your standard combo. It has a potency of 200, and landing this attack provides 10 Beast Gauge.

Storm’s Path – the combo finisher that should be used after Maim. It hits with a potency of 380, heals you, and provides 20 Beast Gauge.

Storm’s Eye – the alternative single target combo finisher. If you use it after Maim, it will have a potency of 380, generate 10 Beast Gauge, and it will increase your damage dealt by 10% for 30 seconds. You should always try to get as much uptime of this buff as possible. You apply it during your first weaponskill combo, and then you don’t let it run out until the fight ends.

Tomahawk – the ranged attack that allows you to pull monsters from afar

Overpower – a cone-shaped AoE attack with a potency of 130. It’s the first skill in your AoE combo.

Mythril Tempest – the finisher of the AoE combo. It hits all nearby enemies with a potency of 200. It also extends Storm’s Eye duration by 10 seconds and provides 20 Beast Gauge.

Inner Beast/ Fell Cleave – a single target attack with a potency of 350/590. It costs 50 Beast Gauge.

Steel Cyclone/Decimate – an AoE attack with a potency of 220/250. This action consumes 50 Beast Gauge.

Inner Chaos – the upgraded version of Fell Cleave that’s only available under the effect of Nascent Chaos. It’s a critical direct hit with a potency of 920.

Chaotic Cyclone – the stronger variant of Decimate that can be used during Nascent Chaos. It’s an AoE critical direct hit with a potency of 400.

Warrior Abilities

Defiance – the toggle stance that lets you generate more enmity. Always use it when you’re the main tank.

Berserk/Inner Release – for 10 seconds, all your attacks will be critical direct hits. After upgrading to Inner Release, it also provides immunity to most crowd control effects and allows you to use the Beast Gauge skills and abilities without any cost. It has a 90 seconds recast timer.

Infuriate – provides 50 Beast Gauge and the Nascent Chaos effect. It has a one-minute recast timer.

The Thrill of Battle – it increases your maximum HP by 20% and heals you for that amount. It also increases the efficiency of your self-healing actions by 20%. It lasts 10 seconds and has a 90 seconds cooldown.

Equilibrium – an instant self heals with a potency of 1200. It has a one-minute cooldown.

Onslaught – your only gap closer, it hits your target with a 100 potency and costs 20 Beast Gauge. Onslaught has a 10 seconds recast timer.

Upheaval – a single target attack with a potency of 450. It has a 30 seconds cooldown and costs 20 Beast Gauge.

Shake It Off – a shield for you and nearby party members that lasts up to 15 seconds and can absorb damage equal to 12% of their maximum HP. It has a 90 seconds cooldown.

Vengeance – reduces all the damage taken by 30%. Every time an enemy deals physical damage to you, they get hit with a potency of 55. Vengeance lasts 15 seconds and has a two-minute cooldown.

Holmgang – for the next 8 seconds, your HP won’t get below 1. Holmgang has a 4 minutes recast timer. You should only use this ability if you’re already really low and in threat of dying. In other situations, it doesn’t do anything.

Raw Intuition – 6 seconds self-buff that decreases damage taken by 20%. It has a 25 seconds cooldown that’s shared with Nascent Flash.

Nascent Flash – an ally is required to use this ability. For 6 seconds, all your damage dealt is restored to you as HP. The ally will be healed for 50% of that amount and will get a 10% damage reduction. Nascent Flash has a 25 seconds recast timer, shared with Raw Intuition.

Shirk – a tank role action that transfers 20% of your enmity to another player. Useful for shared tanking or when you’re going as an off-tank. It can allow you to avoid death and turn the monster focus on another tank.

Setup

As we already said, Warrior has one of the highest damage output out of all the tank jobs (challenged only by Gunbreaker). You have to use this potential by constantly spending Beast Gauge, and using your most powerful offensive tools.

In Final Fantasy XIV, getting high critical hit rating not only makes your critical hits more frequent but also more powerful. It is why warriors have a strong synergy with this statistic – your guaranteed crits will be more powerful thanks to the high critical rate. We recommend prioritizing it when completing your gear. It’s especially important when you want to realize the full potential of your character, meaning not only being a good tank and keeping the monsters’ attention on yourself but also optimizing your damage.

The other stats worth looking at are Determination, Skill Speed, and Tenacity since they make your combo stronger and easier to execute. Investing in the second one decreases the cast time and cooldown of your skills what makes playing Warrior a lot easier. That being said, you don’t have that many offensive abilities to weave anyway, so don’t go overboard with Skill Speed.  

Leveling

Leveling a Marauder, and later a Warrior is pretty similar to any other combat class/job. There are a few viable options for gathering experience, and probably the best and most fun option is to combine all of them. There’s one marauder/warrior specific thing. If you’re farming solo and not role-playing as a tank, you don’t have to worry about enmity. It makes you kill monsters easier and quicker. Just remember not to pull too many of them. You have great HP sustain, but solo AoE farming can be a little risky.

Hunting Log

At low levels, you’re going to want to complete your Hunting Log. It tasks you with killing certain types of monsters, and grants reward for it. Every ten levels, you unlock new rank in the Hunting Log. Finishing all the tasks in rank rewards you with a significant amount of experience.

FATEs

Full Active Time Events are another excellent source of exp. It’s worth doing them, especially in the low levels, when you don’t have many other great options. The lowest level FATE hotspot is in Western Thanalan near Horizon.

Dungeons

It’s a good idea to start clearing dungeons as soon as you can. Always aim for the highest one available to you. It’s always beneficial to go inside the Palace of the Dead, because of its unique features and good rewards. While doing dungeons, you can increase your gains by accepting the Squadron Command Missions.

Challenge Log

After you hit level 15, you should go to I’tolwann in Limsa Lominsa and accept the quest called Rising to the Challenge (firstly, you need to complete Call of the Sea). When you do that, you will unlock the Challenge Log. It will provide you with a list of challenges of different kinds (dungeons, FATEs, guildhests, and more). Completing them will grant you some bonus rewards consisting of Gil and experience points. 

Roulettes

Roulettes are another great source of additional rewards. They provide you with random daily tasks appropriate for your level. We recommend doing at least the Leveling Roulette, but if you want to do some other ones, it’s even better. 

The other things to look at in the later levels are The Hunt and Beast Tribes Quests.

Combos and rotations

Final Fantasy XIV puts a great emphasis on combos. It’s crucial to use your skills in the right sequence because it grants them some meaningful extra effects. It is one of the most challenging parts of mastering different FFXIV jobs. As a Warrior, you will continuously generate Beast Gauge. To make your damage output optimal, you have to make sure that you’re spending that resource as efficiently as possible. This job has a rather simple kit, but a lot of skills and abilities can synergize with each other. It’s crucial to take advantage of that.

Using Warrior’s Cooldowns

You probably already noticed that a lot of the Warrior’s cooldowns are defensive abilities, focused on mitigation or healing. It’s a bit difficult to define precisely when to use them. They’re not incorporated into any rotation. These cooldowns are situational – you use them when they’re needed. If you’re getting low on HP and a healer can’t save you, you use Equilibrium or even Holmgang. If you want to mitigate a strong hit, you should go with Vengeance or Shake It Off and so on.

Now, let’s get more into the offensive cooldowns:

Inner Release

This ability allows you to use the Beast Gauge actions without having to collect or spend the Beast Gauge. It lasts 10 seconds, so with a moderate amount of Skill Speed, you should be able to fit 5 GCDs, while also weaving in some abilities. It is your most potent damage window, so we recommend synergizing it with your party buffs. The sequences are not complicated since they’re based on a single weaponskill.

For single target you should go with:

(Inner Release)->Fell Cleave->(Upheaval)->Fell Cleave->(Onslaught)->Fell Cleave->Fell Cleave->Fell Cleave

The AoE variant is almost identical - you just replace all the Fell Cleave uses with Decimate.

Infuriate

This ability is strongly affected by the two traits that are connected to it. First of all, every Beast Gauge weaponskill reduces the cooldown of Infuriate by 5 seconds. Second of all, this ability provides Nascent Chaos that transforms those attacks into their more powerful versions that also are guaranteed direct critical hits. It results in two things. First of all, the real cooldown of Infuriate is lower than 60 seconds, since you’ll usually land a few Decimates or Fell Cleaves between the casts (especially during Inner Release). Furthermore, this ability does not only provide the resource necessary for these attacks – but it also empowers the next one that you execute.

As we mentioned, there are no longer separate combos for damage and enmity. You can freely hit as hard as you want, and the mobs should still focus you, as long as you’re using the Defiance stance.

Warrior Opener

During the opener, we want to put all of our strongest offensive abilities on cooldown, while also making sure that we‘re making our damage output as powerful as possible. Keeping all that in mind, we recommend this single target opener:

Tomahawk->(Infuriate)->Heavy Swing->Maim->Storm’s Eye->(Potion)->Inner Chaos->Inner Release->Fell Cleave->(Upheaval)->Fell Cleave->(Onslaught)->Fell Cleave->Fell Cleave->Fell Cleave->(Infuriate)->Inner Chaos-> Heavy Swing->Maim->Storm’s Path->Heavy Swing->Maim->Storm’s Eye…

After the opener, you should transition into your standard rotation. Remember to keep the Storm’s Eye’s buff running all the time. Refresh it whenever you need it. If you don’t need to do that yet, go with Storm’s Path instead – it deals more damage and generates more Beast Gauge.

FF14 Warrior Guide

Warrior is a great tank class that thrives when enemies focus on it. These characters have some great tools for damage mitigation and self-healing. While a good understanding of Warrior’s kit is vital to succeeding, the job is relatively easy to pick up. It’s a great choice for the first tank in Final Fantasy XIV. 

Developed and published by Square Enix, FFXIV: ARR is the second MMORPG in the Final Fantasy franchise. The game had three major expansion packs: Heavensward, Stormblood, and Shadowbringers. The last one came out in July 2019.

Players can choose from six playable races and 18 jobs, being: Blue Mage, Red Mage, Samurai, Machinist, Astrologian, Dark Knight, Ninja, Scholar, Summoner, Black Mage, White Mage, Bard, Dragoon, Monk, Dancer, Gunbreaker, Paladin, and finally Warrior. They can travel through the realm of Eorzea, finish a fascinating storyline, and take part in numerous endgame activities.

FAQ 

How to become a Warrior in FFXIV?

To become a Warrior, you first have to be a level 30 Marauder. You can do that by visiting Marauder’s Guild in Limsa Lominsa Upper Decks. Then, you’ll have to complete a quest called Pride and Duty (Will Take You from the Mountain). 

What is enmity in FFXIV?

Enmity is an in-game mechanic that determines the target selection of NPC enemies. They will always pursue the player with the highest enmity. Tanks have special actions that allow them to generate more enmity than other jobs. 

Can FFXIV Warrior DPS?

Unfortunately, Final Fantasy XIV has a very strict role system, and at the highest level, the tank jobs can only be played as tanks. Warrior has a high damage output for a tank and can definitely do a lot in the easier content.