Warrior Tank Rotation, Openers, and Abilities — Endwalker 6.4

This page will cover the core rotation and openers of Warriors; the general rotation of a Warrior focuses on the generation and spending of their Beast Gauge, managing buffs, and ensuring that oGCDs are used properly.

Warrior has multiple potential openers that can be used in various situations; the first opener presented, named as the Basic IC-IR-IC Opener, is your general choice. It works in almost every situation and ensures that party buffs are utilized well, but can lead to some very tight timing line-ups with your second Inner Chaos.

The second opener, the Basic IC-IC-IR Opener, is similar to the first opener, but aims to delay Inner Release by a GCD in order to ensure all of your biggest output lines up with party buffs comfortably, including Trick Attack.

There are three other openers that can potentially be used, but they are generally advised against unless you understand the situations in which they would be useful and are comfortable executing them. Using these last three openers will be detrimental to your damage output if you use them in the wrong situation, due to the large potential downsides and very situational upsides.

The 6.1 opener changes the usage of Inner Release slightly, causing variation within the rotation. Below is an image from the Balance, created by Mox and the Warrior team, which gives an idea of the preliminary opener. We will update this section further as the opener becomes more set-in-stone.

This is the basic opener for Warrior that uses the IC-IR-IC setup. Note that all items in nested lists are oGCDs.

This is the basic opener for Warrior that uses the IC-IC-IR setup. Note that all items in nested lists are oGCDs.

Warriors do not necessarily followed a fixed rotation, instead following general rules to ensure that certain situations always or never arise.

The basic points for gameplay as a Warrior are as follows:

1. Always making sure you are hitting something, avoiding downtime where you are dealing no damage.
2. Make sure to keep the Surging Tempest buff up at all times, but do not overcap it.
3. Use your combo to generate Beast Gauge, but do not overcap it.
4. Keep Upheaval and Inner Release on cooldown.
5. Allow your Onslaught and Infuriate to always be recharging.
6. Use your Beast Gauge and stacks of important abilities when you have buffs from your party active.

Warrior's combo system is fairly straightforward. The final combo GCD has a split path, where you will either use Storm's Eye to upkeep the Surging Tempest buff, or Storm's Path for bonus Beast Gauge generation. Tomahawk and your Beast Gauge spenders will not break your combo.

This buff stacks up to 60 seconds of duration and you should aim to always have it active. Don't worry too much about the proper time to refresh this buff, just avoid overcapping it. This is especially true with something like Inner Release, since this adds an extra 10 seconds onto the buff duration. When an encounter is close to ending, you should aim refresh the buff with 7-15 seconds of duration remaining on it, since ending a fight with more than 30 seconds on the timer is a slight damage loss.

Beast Gauge is used as a resource for Inner Chaos and Fell Cleave.

You should always aim to use it when party buffs are up to maximize the damage dealt, but it is also massively important to ensure that you do not waste it by overcapping on it.

You cannot have more than 100 Beast Gauge; if you are at 90 and generate 20, you will waste 10 of the resource due to the cap.

Multi-target for Warrior will only apply to situations where you have three or more targets. At two targets, refer back to the single-target rotation. Even though the skill names change, the basics of resource generation still apply.

At three targets, you will swap the following skills for their AoE variant:

• Warrior combo is Overpower → Mythril Tempest.
• Warrior Beast Gauge spenders will either be Decimate or Chaotic Cyclone.
• Use Orogeny instead of Upheaval.

Warrior is often referred to as a third healer, and for good reason. This job has a multitude of healing a shield abilities at their disposal, and, in most cases, can keep themselves alive with little to no help from the healer in their party. Some of these actions also extend to their co-tank if doing eight-man content, allowing you to further reduce the healing stress from your team. Mitigation is calculated multiplicatively (i.e., two 30% reductions will result in 49% damage taken), and it is better to rotate cooldowns rather than use them all at once.

• Rampart and Vengeance are your basic cooldowns that should be rotated appropriately to prevent a percentage of the damage you take. Unless you are required to "kitchen sink" (use all of your cooldowns at once) incoming damage, these two actions should not be paired together as it will reduce the effectiveness of them.
• Thrill of Battle and Equilibrium function as your two main healing cooldowns. While they both function as a form of healing, their priority of usage is opposite. Equilibrium should be used reactively if your HP is getting low. As an added bonus, usage of this skill also applies a regen onto yourself, equal to the initial heal, lasting for 15 seconds. Thrill of Battle should be used proactively to gain effective HP prior to incoming damage, while also aiding your healers by increasing the amount they can heal you, as well as increasing the healing and effectiveness your own actions provide. This action doubles as both mitigative and healing. Below is a list of self actions that gain the benefit of this healing buff:
  • Storm's Path's healing potency.
  • Shake It Off's healing potency.
  • Both aspects of Equilibrium's heal, the initial heal and the regen.
  • Bloodwhetting's shield.
• Bloodwhetting and Nascent Flash, while different skills, share the same cooldown and similar functions to each other. They are both considered part of your "active mitigation" due to the extremely low cooldown on them, allowing for a high amount of uptime during an encounter. For general usage, Bloodwhetting should be used when you are the main target of incoming damage, while Nascent Flash should be used if your co-tank is the main target of incoming damage.
• Reprisal and Shake It Off are your raid mitigation abilities. Reprisal can only be used on a target, but it mitigates both physical and magical damage over the course of its timer. Shake It Off operates mainly as a shield, and should be used to mitigate a single instance of incoming damage on the raid. As of Patch 6.3, this action now provides additional healing over time to everyone hit by the initial cast.
• Warrior's invulnerability cooldown is Holmgang. The main benefit of this action is the short cooldown timer associated with it. Every other tank has, at minimum, five minutes on their cooldown for invuln skill. The main drawback is the end of incoming damage will (if used properly) always leave you with 1 HP and require you to use another cooldown to heal back up or rely on healers to top you back up. Thankfully, the interaction between Holmgang and the rest of Warrior's kit negates most of the drawback on the invulnerability and makes it a nonissue.
• Arm's Length is a useful mitigation ability for dungeons, as the applied Slow effect will greatly reduce your damage taken by trash mobs.
• Low Blow can also be used to Stun trash mobs. Stuns have diminishing effects, so if you have a White Mage in your party, the mobs will likely be Stun Immune due to their Holy.