FFXIV Marauder / Warrior Stats & Materia Guide

What’s a good marauder stats build? What are useful warrior stats? Marauder / Warrior materia? If any of these questions brought you here, you came to the right place. Whether its by stat allocation, gear or materia: knowing what stats your Marauder or Warrior need should never be far from mind!

Marauder (MRD) & Warrior (WAR) Stats

What are the marauder or warrior stat weights?

VIT > STR > Parry > Critical Chance > Determination > DEX

*These may vary slightly from patch to patch, or by personal preference. Following the recommendation above will always give you a good MRD & WAR build.

Marauder (MRD) & Warrior (WAR) Primary Stats Allocation

What stats should I add as a marauder or warrior?

Vitality – Increases total HP. Many skills of MRD/WAR scale of total HP, and this also makes you a better tank. Really, it doesn’t get any simpler than that.

STR – Hit harder, Parry for more, and generate more threat. Marauders that make the case STR>VIT have a bit of logic in it because so many of the Warrior skills scale off damage. Don’t get sucked in to thinking you’re DPS though.

Dexterity – Increases Parry Chance. While you might not ever need to allocate a third primary stat, this is the only remotely useful one.

Maruko’s Note: VIT or STR, how much should you get of each? Marauders will be throwing this argument around until the sun goes down. While you really want STR, VIT is ALWAYS IMPORTANT. As far as stat allocation goes, just focus on VIT because you can always customize your materia later on if you find you need more STR (unlikely).

 

Marauder (MRD) & Warrior (WAR) Secondary Stats

What are good secondary stats for marauder and warrior, and why?

Parry > Critical Chance > Determination

While you can’t allocate this directly, these will be heavily considered when picking gear upgrades and slotting materia.

Parry – Marauders have an extremely thin HP pool. They have alot of HP but no mitigation. Adding Parry somehow counters this weakness.

Critical Chance – Serves to increase damage, threat and shields generated from Storms Path.

Determination – Generic stat when you have nothing else to put into that serves to increase damage and threat. *If you somehow want more damage and threat, value crit and determination over parry.

Marauder (MRD) & Warrior (WAR) Materia

This is directly related to the first section. As you may know, all gear has a limit for each stat it can have, the higher its Item Level, the higher amount of stats it can hold. So the idea is to max out (or get close to maxing out) the left most, and work your way right. Again: VIT > STR > Parry > Critical Chance > Determination > DEX

Materia Name
VIT: Vitality
STR: Strength
Parry: Battledance
Critical Strike: Savage Aim
Determination: Savage Might
DEX: Dexterity

See Also: Materia Guide | Melding Guide Summary:

  • Overall MRD WAR stat importance: VIT > STR > DEX > Parry > Determination > Skill Speed
  • MRD WAR Stat allocation: VIT> STR > DEX
  • Secondary stats for MRD WAR: Parry > Critical Strike > Determination
  • Reference links: Marauder FAQ, Warrior FAQ
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Have a question about MRD WAR? Chime in on the comments or in our Marauder / Warrior Forums.

Paladin VS Warrior Tanking Comparison

Warrior Or Paladins? Is one truly better than the other? In this battle of the fat, we try to determine just that. PLD VS WAR comparison!

Inevitably, it’s come to this. “Who is better”, Warriors (Marauders) or Paladins (Gladiators)? Here, we will try our best to give you the ins and outs of each class. Note that we will be discussing level 50 PLD and WAR capabilities, and this somehow extends to lower-level Gladiator and Marauder comparisons.

This is also our very first ‘community driven’ guide – we will be discussing key points in the forums, ultimately leading to the content to this page. Participate and be commended!
PLD vs. WAR Forum thread

For reference you can open these windows:
Gladiator | Paladin : Marauder | Warrior

Base stats / Innate capabilities

Warrior
The main advantage of a warrior is it’s immense maximum HP. Does a lot of damage, and indirectly increases defenses by doing so. Marauders and Warriors are extremely combo sensitive, and are definitely more difficult to play. This further extends by adding the “Defiance” / “Infuriated” warrior system. Compared to Paladins, these guys pack a huge punch. Parrying serves as a welcome additional defense (Although Paladins have this too), they cannot block.

Paladin
Damage reduction / mitigation is the paladins key trait. Wears a shield by default (Blocks!). Paladins have a reactive gamplay style, and are much easier to play ‘mechanically’ than warriors. Paladins are susceptible to burst damage with a low HP pool, but over the course of longer encounters – their mitigation more than makes up for it. Their “Effective HP” is much much higher than a Marauder. Their damage is so pathetic, and could possibly be out DPS’d by a Conjurer.

So here we see the main difference, Warriors rely on HP and Damage. Paladins rely on Damage Reduction. This becomes brutally clear in the next section:

Defensive Skills

Warrior
— MRD —
Foresight – Increases defense by 20% for 20s. Recast 90 (Traited)
Bloodbath – Gain 25% “Lifesteal” for 30s (Traited). Recast 90.
Mercy Stroke – Killing a target with mercy stroke restores 20% of max HP. Recast 30 (Traited)
Thrill of Battle – Increases max HP by 20% (Traited) and heals for that amount. Duration 10s.
Storms Path – (If Combo’d into) Creates a shield equal to 20% of damage dealt up to 10% of max HP.
—WAR—
Defiance – (Stance) Increases maximum HP by 25%, while lowering damage dealt by 30% and increasing enmity.

Paladin
— GLD —
Rampart – Reduces damage taken by 20% (Traited) for 20s.
Convalescence – Increases HP restored by spells or actions by 30% (Traited) for 20s.
Awareness – Reduces critical strike damage taken by 15% for 25 (Traited) seconds.
Tempered Will – Immediately cures Bind and Heavy, while preventing knockback and draw-in effects.
Sentinel – Reduces damage taken by 40% (Traited) for 10s.
Bulwark – Increases block rate by 60% for 15s.
— PLD —
Shield Oath – (Stance) Reduces damage taken by 25%, and damage dealt by 30% but increases enmity generated.
Hallowed Ground – Renders you impervious to most attacks

Wow, from here it becomes rather obvious that warriors have the short end of the stick when it comes to purely defensive skills. Foresight is directly inferior to Rampart (Which also reduces magic damage) and Sentinel (40%!). Thrill of Battle is ‘cute’ at best, amounting to a large heal. Storms Path is the warrior saving grace here, giving you a reusable shield without a long cooldown.

Paladins on the other hand have a long list of defensive skills, all ridiculously effective. Just by comparing the stances, the trade-off for 30% reduction for damage dealt is just completely lopsided in the paladins favor: 25% damage reduction for the paladin, and 35% max hp for the warrior. While 35% HP is better in a vacuum, when healers are involved, this becomes next to useless (Remember Effective HP?)

Warriors scale extremely well with offense, and even benefit from it defensively. While this is good, the survivability gained is just nowhere NEAR the Paladin. Not even close.

 

Threat Generation

Both Paladins & Warrior have no trouble generating threat. It’s the small differences and situations that make the Warrior superior to Paladin in terms of threat.  It’s very unlikely that DPS will pull aggro during a fight from either a Paladin or Warrior, so what’s the difference? Two key points.

Threat on Demand
The main difference? Warriors are better in more desperate times. When sh*t hits the fan – you’re going to want a warrior. When resources are tight, and adds spawn, Warriors are much much better at picking them up and making them stick. Paladins have superior resource management and will match a warriors threat over time. Warriors excels at keeping up with initial burst aggro when picking up and killing newly spawned adds.

Adds, AoE
In both single target and AoE situations, Warriors will out-threat Paladins any day. Paladins also have decent AoE threat, but simply pale in comparison to what Warriors can do to multiple enemies, and struggle alot less to build up initial aggro. It’s like Warriors WANT adds to spawn, and lots of them, while Paladins would rather not!

Due to the length of this post, we split it into two pages. In Page 2, we discuss Healer Preference, Overall Kit, and finally Summary and Recommendations.

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