I was also trying to improve melee dmg, as well as ws dmg when not doing a sc. I'm pretty satisfied, at least for now, with my spells' dmg output, considering I am not done meriting BLU yet.
Fair enough, and extra important when your refresh options are limited. However, it really boils down to hate control really:
- /THF lets you dump big hate spikes onto other people so you (and others) can cheerfully go spam damage without pulling hate and being an MP sink.
- /NIN lets you pull hate yourself (by whatever means you see fit) without being an MP sink.
The dilemma with /WAR - and this is true not only for BLU - is that if your damage is good enough that you'd be able to pull hate anyway just with /NIN, your damage will *certainly* be good enough that you'll pull hate with /WAR. And /WAR does not offer options of dealing with that hate.
So it means you're pulling hate and being an MP sink. Either that, or deliberately holding back and doing less damage, which defeats the whole purpose of going /WAR for more damage output in the first place.
Throw in that /WAR doesn't offer as much to BLU as to other frontline damage dealers (because while it helps melee and WS, it doesn't help spells, and while spells aren't *all* of a BLU's damage output, they're certainly a very significant portion of it), and the net conclusion is that it's not a good idea in most situations.
That doesn't make it useless. Sometimes you want to beef up your def with Defender, sometimes you want to be able to tank with voke. And sometimes - this is particularly true at lower levels - you wouldn't have been able to pull hate with /NIN in the first place, so /WAR may bring you closer to (but still below) that hate line, and in that case you'd be better off with /WAR.
But if you're just interested in optimizing damage output for killing efficiency (which includes factoring for mage MP - don't want downtime, and don't want haste and dia 2/3 to be left by the wayside), /WAR is usually not the best bet once you're powerful enough that subbing WAR means pulling hate.
It's disappointing because it *is* a really nice boost to damage, it's just that in the bigger picture, it usually ends up being less efficient for the party overall. It's a commonly shared sadness among most damage dealers that they don't get to go "whee look at my big damage with /WAR", but most of them accept that their own damage output is not as important as the party going well overall. (You'll get the odd "it's my $$$ a month I'll do what I want" people, but that's when you just keep a list of who not to invite next time.)
