XIV WAR Tanking - Baseline Mitigation and PLD comparison

[Hachiko]

There has been a lot of stuff flying around after YoshiP’s semi dismissive “L2P WAR” answer during the live letter (assuming it is was interpreted properly in the context, and I have the utmost confidence in Reinheart).

The point of this post of this is to show that when it comes to the job of tanking, in terms of surviving while a boss beats on them, Warriors simply are significantly an inferior tank. Many people seem to be fundamentally missing some things about Warriors. I want to use this to make the following points:

1. WAR has the same Effective Health as a PLD before counting things like Rage of Halone or Cooldowns.
2. All forms of healing are more effective on a PLD
3. Damage (and % based heals) shields are equally effective on both tanks
4. Inner Beast does not close the gap between Defiance and Shield Oath, and provides only mediocre mitigation as damage increases.

For the purpose of this analysis, I will assume that there are no crits for either job, that the Paladin is not using a shield (no blocks), and that the Rage of Halone debuff is never up. Also we assume equal base stats, and equal base armor. (yes, WAR will have ~100 more effective health at 50, but this works out to ~1-2% more hp in high end gear, and can be ignored.)

1. Effective Health

Warrior Effective health is easy to calculate. Of course health will differ depending on the gear you have, but since both have access to the same gear we can hold that constant, as well as stat points assuming both put all stat points into VIT.

Warriors get 25% additional health, while Paladins get 20% damage reduction. This leaves them at the same effective health.

For a WAR in Defiance effective health = Base Health * 1.25.
For a PLD in Shield Oath, effective health = Base Health / .8

So, if a WAR has 4000 base health, and a PLD has 4000 base health, both will end with 5000 effective health.

Another way to think about this is to look at a WAR with 4000 base health and a PLD with 4000 base health. Assume a monster does a baseline 1000 damage per attack to both (and that the PLD is just standing there with no shield on) and neither parries.

The WAR in defiance will die in 5 hits. The PLD in shield oath will have each hit reduced to 800, and die in 5 hits (5x800 = 4000).

Thus, it should be obvious that WAR has no “hp advantage” over the PLD.


2. Healing Efficiency

It’s often claimed that heals are “more effective” on Warriors. This is not true. Warriors are at ~9% disadvantage when it comes to the amount of healing they need to top them off. This is because % damage reduction works effectively as % increased healing.

Again, let’s look at a PLD and WAR with 4k base HP each.

Suppose a boss just did a huge 4,500 damage (Base) attack and neither blocked or parried it, or use any other skills.

The WAR would be reduced to 500 / 5000 hp.
The PLD would be reduced to 400 / 4000 hp.

At this point both tanks have 10% of their HP remaining and are on completely equal footing.

Now, for a PLD to be healed to full they need to receive 3600 healing.
For a WAR to be healed to full they need to receive 4500 after the 15% bonus, or 3913 healing. (4500 = x * 1.15, solve for x).

This is a difference of 313 healing, which is a ~9% more healing. This is because the damage reduction reduces the amount of heals required to mitigate the damage.

If it wasn’t obvious enough, we can calculate the amount of healing bonus that -20% damage recieved works out to. 3600 * y = 4500. Solve for y, y = 1.25.

Thus, PLD effectively have 25% bonus incoming healing at all times.

This ~9% difference means that WAR will require, at a baseline, at least 9% more healing than the PLD, and this is ignoring the fact that the PLD can block, as well as ignoring the -10% STR debuff from Rage of Halone.

3. Damage Shields

Often people want to throw out the idea that damage shields are more effective on a WAR, usually because WAR has more HP and stoneskin #’s are based on max HP. This is not true though and they are equally effective on both a WAR and PLD

First, Stoneskin.

For a PLD with 4000 hp, stoneskin will grant 720 HP for a total EHP of 5900.
For a WAR with 5000 hp, Stoneskin will grant 900 HP for a total EHP of 5900.

It’s worth noting that this actually is significant, because unlike heals, at least stoneskin is equally effective on both tanks. Unfortunately, due to the long cast time of Stoneskin and the fact that it is so mana intensive, healing primarily or entirely through Stoneskin is not ideal. And furthermore, stoneskin is not improved by the healer’s gear and can not crit. So relying on it 100% would be unwise.

It’s also worth noting that Lustrate is effectively the same as Stoneskin. It’s % of health based, and gains no increase from increased healing (or decreased healing) effects, which makes it equally effective at healing a PLD and WAR.

For Adloquiun (and to a lesser extent, succor) the situation is slightly different. Since the shield is based on healing done, the same applies here as the Healing Efficiency above.

To illustrate the point, let’s go back to a hypothetical situation where a boss is hitting for 1000 and the WAR / PLD have 4000 HP baseline, and we have a Scholar using only Adloquium to heal them, and Adloquium is healing for 500.

After boss hit #1 (assuming no pre-cast shield):
WAR at 4000 HP, (80%)
PLD at 3200 HP, (80%)

After Adloquium #1:
WAR at 4575 HP, 575 HP shield.
PLD at 3700 HP, 500 HP shield

After Boss hit #2
WAR at 4150 HP (83%), 0 Shield
PLD at 3400 HP (85%), 0 shield

After Adloquium #2
WAR at 4725 HP, 575 shield
PLD at 3900 HP, 500 shield

After Boss hit #3
WAR at 4300 HP (86%), 0 shield
PLD at 3600 HP (90%), 0 shield

After Adloquium #3
WAR at 4875, 575 shield (5450 Effective Health including the shield)
PLD at 4000 Health (100 overheal), 500 shield. (5625 Effective Health including the shield)

What this is meant to demonstrate is that Adloquium is simply more effective on a PLD than it is on a WAR. A paladin will be at full health after the 3rd cast, while a WAR will not hit full health until the 4th cast.

There is a slight residual benefit of Adloquium for a WAR is that is not pure healing power, but the fact that it makes it easier to correctly use Inner Beast. Because Adloquium is less likely to overheal than say, Cure 2, it means that using Inner Beast is less likely to overheal as well, which can make a SCH a slightly more efficient healer on a WAR, when compared to a WHM. But this doesn’t mean a SCH is more efficient on a WAR than they are on a PLD.

[Hachiko]

4. Inner Beast

Inner Beast is intended to be what you might consider “the great equalizer” between Paladin and Warrior. We have very different kits, but ideally similar amounts of mitigation via different sources. Ignoring cooldowns for now, PLD have Shield Oath (+25% ehp +25% healing received), Rage of Halone (-10% STR), and a Shield (blocking ~26% damage at endgame).

Warriors, on the other hand have Defiance/Wrath (+25% ehp, +0-15% healing received), and Inner Beast. Inner Beast gives warriors a great degree of self sufficiency. This is why even a poorly geared Warrior can solo Demon Wall from 30% to 0% when his party members have died. The problem is that when it comes to mitigation, Inner Beast scales with damage done by the Warrior, and this does not scale up very quickly. In comparison, Paladin mitigation scales with the amount of damage done by the monster.

Let’s illustrate by looking at the way Inner Beast scales with monster damage. Using myself as a baseline, I do ~1100 healing per Inner Beast non-crit and ~1650 on critical. Assuming one uses Internal Release every time Inner Beast is up, I could probably get my average inner beast to ~1400 health restored (this is a bit generous), so let’s use this number for example purposes.

Inner Beast is usable every 20-22.5 seconds, depending on when in your rotation you use it. If you use it before a Heavy Swing, it will be 22.5 seconds before you can inner beast again, assuming you did not use Vengeance or Infuriate. Again, let’s take the short side of that and assume 20 seconds between Inner Beasts. The Bonus Healing will be 0% (the GCD from Inner Beast itself), 3%, (the GCD for the first skill in your chain assuming it wasn’t interrupted), 6%, 6% (from Heavy Swing), 9%, 12%, 12% (heavy swing again), 15%. That’s 8 globals, for an average of 7.9% bonus healing.

1400 healing Inner Beast works out to ~70 Health Per Second. This is why you can so easily solo a significant portion of the Demon Wall’s health without a healer present. Demon Wall does ~250-300 damage cast every 2.5ish seconds, and Inner Beast alone mitigates ~70% of that damage on a normal rotation. Adding in Bloodbath, Infuriate, and Thrill of Battle means you could theoretically solo Demon Wall indefinitely were it not for the adds or the fact that you run out of space.

But this is why Warrior is so strong in 4 man content: A Warrior properly using their Inner Beast simply needs very little healing to stay alive, and this is because a properly or over geared warrior is going to mitigate a large portion of monster damage with self heals.

So, if we want to look at the “mitigation” provided by Inner Beast, we might want to look at what portion of the monster’s damage is “negated” by properly using Inner Beast. In a situation where a WAR is taking 300 DPS, 1400 Inner Beast with high usage is effectively 23% mitigation. As it goes up to 400 DPS, Inner Beast drops to a still respectable 17.5% mitigation. As DPS increases to say, 600, it drops to 12.6% mitigation. At 1000 DPS, a 1400 Inner Beast makes up a paltry 7% mitigation.

Yes, Inner Beast does scale, but it simply does not scale quickly enough to keep up with monster damage. Talking about ~1400 average Inner Beasts is already iffy because you’re relying on crits as part of your “reliable” mitigation. While this can be seen as the analog of “blocks”, relying on them for an ability with a usage window of once every 20 seconds is inherently more prone to RNG messing you up. Further, this is already counting the ilvl 90 weapon, so the only room for improving damage is on non-weapon gear, which has less effect on damage output.

The other aspect of Inner Beast usage: Dropping Wrath Stacks.

Whenever you use Inner Beast, you lose your 5 wrath stacks (with the exception of when Infuriate is up). What this means is that it drops your bonus healing received. So there is already an opportunity cost to using Inner Beast, and that is that you will have more burst healing upfront, but less healing received over the next 20 seconds.

It works out to ~8% increased healing, when averaged, over the 20 seconds following a non-infuriate Inner Beast. What this means is that we can actually determine whether or not it’s better to use Inner Beast or not, in terms of general healing over time required and MP conservation.

Raw healing per second (before increased healing buff) required over the 20 seconds following an Inner Beast is going to be roughly approximated by (Monster DPS - Inner Beast Heal / 20) / 1.08. If this number is less than (Monster DPS / 1.15), then you should not use Inner Beast. The Break-Even point is when (Monster DPS - Inner Beast Heal/20)/1.08 > Monster DPS/1.15

Solving for Inner Beast we have Inner Beast Heal/20 > Monster DPS - Monster DPS * 1.08/1.15
Simplified, IB Heal/20 > .06 * Monster DPS, further simplified: 16.666 * IB Heal / 20 > Monster DPS, or alternatively, IB Heal > 20 *.06 * Monster DPS. If this inequality is not true, then it is not worth it to use Inner Beast in a general situation (though it may remain worthwhile to use it to counteract burst and / or get yourself out of imminent death range).

Some examples.

Let’s say we’re fighting Turn 1 Caduceus and he just hit a new stack. At this point he’s doing about 850 DPS to a Warrior tank. How much Damage does Inner Beast need to be to be worth using? Using the formula above, it needs to be, on average, 1020. This is pretty easy to obtain.

Let’s say we average 1400 on Inner Beast like my example above (Relic +1 and generally good but not amazing gear). How much monster DPS can a monster be doing and IB still be worth using? Using the formula above, ~1166 monster DPS.

In general, from this we should see that it’s worth using Inner Beast in most situations where you have a solo healer. If you are being double healed and you are the only healing target, of course it’s different. At 1500 DPS (meaning if healers stop healing you are dead in roughly 5 seconds) your Inner Beast would need to average 1800. This is a difficult number to achieve with current in game gear.

It’s also worth noting that once we get to these fringe cases / break even points, it’s no longer that Inner Beast is providing meaningful mitigation. All it means is that using Inner Beast is not a loss in effective heals received required to stay alive.

Looking above, this makes sense. 1400 Inner Beast is roughly 7% mitigation if we’re taking 1000 DPS. This is roughly offset by the 7% loss in healing received.

Thus, it should be clear that there are damage thresholds, and if the monster DPS crosses them it is no longer a gain in survivability to use Inner Beast, but rather a loss in survivability. Though Inner Beast will always remain important as a “counter” to burst damage, either beforehand to top oneself off, or after the fact to get out of danger.

Comparison to PLD

This is really where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. How does Inner Beast and Defiance compare with a Paladin’s Shield Oath? At what point in terms of Boss DPS does being a paladin give an appreciable edge over a Warrior? Keep in mind this is still ignoring Block and the STR reduction from Rage of Halone. In essence, we are comparing a WAR to a shieldless PLD that is missing one of its most effective traits.

Let’s take a boss that does 400 DPS. A Paladin with Shield Oath alone is going to mitigate 80 of that dps right off the bat, making the new DPS for them 320, meaning the healers have to put out 320 heals per second to keep up with dmg.

A WAR on the other hand is more nuanced. A warrior using Inner Beast on “Cooldown” (Assuming no overheals) will be negating IB Heal / 20 DPS, along with having an ~8% bonus to healing received.

So, the Warrior calculation will be (400 - IB Heal / 20)/1.08 = HPS required, as per above. So let’s solve for the IB heal, and set HPS to 320, in order to find out at what point IB overtakes shield oath on a 400 DPS boss. Solving for the IB Heal, we get 1088. That means that a WAR with 1088 average heal on Inner Beast will require the same amount of healing a paladin requires. This isn’t so bad, and this is why there is a rough parity between classes at the low end of lvl 50 content (i.e. Ifrit, Garuda, AK).

Now let’s turn it up a notch. Let’s say the boss is now doing 800 DPS. How much IB damage does a Warrior need to keep up with a PLD?

The PLD requires 640 HPS to stay alive.

The WAR, in order to require the same HPS, would need an Inner Beast that averaged out to 2176 in order to keep up with a Paladin that isn’t even using a shield. This is extremely hard to attain on average.

Let’s look at 1500 DPS.

The PLD requires 1200 HPS to keep alive.

The WAR, in order to require the same HPS, would need an average inner beast of 4080, which is not obtainable, in order to keep up with the Paladin that again, isn’t even using a shield.

So, circling back to the initial thoughts on the subject of Inner Beast, I think it’s fairly self evident as to why it is not an effective counterpart to a Paladin’s Block and Rage of Halone. In fact, as monster damage increases, it isn’t even an effective answer to Shield Oath, let alone block and rage.

Yes, Inner Beast will always remain a critical tool for Warrior tanking. It is pretty much the WAR’s only answer to burst damage. But it effectively does nothing to close the gap between Paladin and Warrior survivability.

Conclusion

I think there are several things to draw from this analysis. In most situations it is worth the healing to use Inner Beast. It’s not until very high incoming DPS that it becomes more efficient to hold onto the stacks of Wrath, though it may be easier for a healer to predict incoming damage if you aren’t bouncing up and down with Inner Beast. With that said, if you get to the point where it is more worth it to hold onto the stacks, chances are you are in a situation where the WAR is simply unable to tank, i.e. Caduceus 4-5 stacks, Turn 4 Double Dreadnaught, or Twintania.

I went through this mostly to show the disparity in passive mitigation between WAR and PLD particularly at the high end. All of this leads me to believe that when YoshiP was talking about WAR being very powerful, he was talking about it being powerful from a general perspective. WAR are in fact very powerful in places like Castrum, WP and AK. Possibly better than PLD at the same gear levels for the low level 50 content (though it’s not like PLD has a hard time with any of this content).

But it seems pretty obvious that there is a huge difference in healing required for PLD and WAR even without counting Cooldowns and Without including damage mitigation from Block and Rage of Halone.

Adding cooldowns to the calculus actually increases the gap between WAR and PLD, in case anyone was still not sold on that fact. And adding in Rage + Shield Block you have PLD so far ahead that it’s silly to pretend there is some parity between the classes. (I have some numbers on WAR CD’s v. PLD CD’s if anyone is really interested).

For further analsyis it would be worth it to look at Rage of Halone and Shield Block without shield oath. I suspect healing a WAR in defiance is roughly equivalent to healing a PLD outside of shield oath, but I have no numbers to back that up at the moment.

This isn’t to say that Warriors aren’t viable or that it is not possible to do endgame content with them. But to show that it is going to be significantly easier with a Paladin.

[Leiron]

Because SE compares the data from the TOP FORM player of EACH class, their math likely makes them EVEN

These are the same people that said "Yeah... we killed this boss on our test server." like Pandemonium Warden, Absolute Virtue and I forgot who else.

Yeah...no.
Sorry you're flat out wrong, and math illustrates it well.
Warrior is NOT even with Paladin.

[Hachiko]

In the hands of a skilled player, I hope you understand that Warrior will come out on top.

I'm pretty sure I showed why mathematically that is not possible in a raid environment.

There is no reason to take Parry into account because Parry is a constant across both PLD and WAR, and further Parry mitigation isn't even remotely 15%, it's a 15% chance to reduce dmg by 23-26%.

Second point, there's no point in adding in cooldowns the the calculus on WAR without adding them for the PLD also, which I already examined in another post. Long story short, it's no surprise that PLD cooldowns come out on top when compared to WAR cooldowns by a significant margin.

Unless your point is that a WAR would need to utilize all their cooldowns to mitigate the same amount of damage a Paladin who isn't using a shield oath or any cooldowns would mitigate. If that's your point, then yeah, I guess you're right.

For Posterity:

I assumed 1400 average inner beast (this is averaging crit and non-crit, assuming Maim / Storm's Eye is up every time), 7000 WAR HP, 770 incoming DPS, ~100 tank DPS. I also assumed 100% physical, blockbable damage (Basically, Caduceus fight). I also assumed 26% block value as that seems to be standard for Holy Shield +1 PLD's. Finally, I left off Awareness because I don't know if I am safe assuming bosses have a crit rate of 10% and even if they do, they certainly don't crit on specials like Rock Buster / Mountain Buster / hood swipe, etc. I also counted Foresight slightly higher at 10% but that isn't really enough to matter. For this I'll use 7.5%. Also, I counted Berserk as a defensive cooldown (though I left off Internal Release as it seems slightly speculative). Finally, I didn't count Second Wind because I think it's a bad cooldown, personally.

For Convalescence, I took the amount of damage needing to be mitigated and considered that roughly the amount of healing needed, then I looked at the difference between healing required before and after.

So if a boss is doing 770 DPS, that's low enough that a WAR should be using Inner Beast whenever possible unless they are saving it for spike damage. Again, assuming a fight like Caduceus most of the damage is predictable. For this reason, I treated Infuriate as it is: a 7% increase in healing recieved for 20 seconds on a 60 second CD. And using Inner Beast every 20 seconds is essentially a net heals per second of 70, which reduces the damage to be mitigated to roughly 700 (not exact when it comes to foresight, but close enough). Also, for this reason I am clearly counting the Defiance bonus as 8%, due to that being roughly the average assuming you use Inner Beast every 20 seconds and only use it after you've used Heavy Swing.

Using my numbers:
Foresight .075 * 20 * 700 / 90 = ~11.7 DPS mitigated
Featherfoot .15 * 15 * 700 / 90 = ~17.5 DPS mitigated
Bloodbath @100 DPS 100 * .25 * 30 /90 = ~8.3 DPS mitigated
Thrill of Battle 1400 / 120 = ~11.7 DPS mitigated

Convalescence - base HPS required = 648, HPS required during convolescence 546. Difference = 102 HPS. 102 * 20 / 120 = ~17 DPS mitigated
Infuriate - Since I'm counting using Inner Beast every time it's up, essentially, it works out to ~8% healing increase for 20 seconds on a 60 second CD. Base is the same as w/ Convo. With IB it's 608 HPS required, a difference of 40. 40 * 20 / 60 = ~13.3 DPS mitigated.

Berserk = Increase Inner Beast damage to roughly 2k averaged. a difference of ~600. 600 / 90 = ~6.7 DPS mitigated (potentially double if you Double IB during a Berserk).

This totals ~86.2 DPS mitigated for WAR, or about 12% of the incoming damage.

For PLD 770 DPS is cut to 616 incoming damage via Shield Oath (though I am still assuming that Rampart / Sentinel are additive, so their reduction is based off of 770 not 616).

Foresight .075*20*616/120 = ~7.7 DPS mitigated
Rampart .2*20*770/90 = 34.2 DPS mitigated
Sentinel .4*10*770/180 = 17.1 DPS mitigated
Bulwark .6*.26*15*616/180 = 8 DPS mitigated
Bloodbath @100 DPS 100*.25*15/90 = 4.16 DPS mitigated

Convalescence - Base HP/S required = 616 after Conva 456, a difference of 160. 160 * 20 /120 = 26.7 DPS mitigated
Hallowed Ground* 616 * 10 / 480 = ~13 DPS mitigated

* I don't like to count hallowed ground because just counting how much DPS it mitigates trivializes its usage. It is much better than that, and I consider it a factor but I don't like counting it as a traditional mitigation cooldown. It looks like one of PLD's worst cooldowns if examined in this light, but it's clearly their best. But I added it here for kicks.

This leaves PLD with a total of 110.9 DPS mitigation. Though in fairness this is significantly higher due to the incoming damage of PLD only being 616, it's effectively 18% of incoming DPS mitigated. I personally leave off Hallowed Ground though, which drops it to ~98 DPS mitigated, which is much closer to WAR's 86.2, and ends up being ~16% incoming DPS mitigation.

So I suppose you are right. Even using my numbers, methodology, and preferences, PLD's have ~30-50% advantage in terms of mitigation from cooldowns. I guess I was selling PLD cooldowns short by saying there was a parity. And it is worth conceding the point that getting all of that out of your cooldowns is going to be between difficult and impossible for practical terms, because it means never getting an ounce of overhealing on WAR, along with a near perfect rotation, which is unlikely.

I still stand by my assertion that the passive mitigation is a bigger deficit, though. And the fact is that Shield Oath begins to outperform Inner Beast/Defiance at incoming DPS levels ~400.

If you have some reason why Lower Baseline mitigation + no shield or Rage of Halone + less effective mitigation cooldowns = somehow better mitigation in the hands of a "skilled" player then I think you're simply wrong. Though I will admit that to get even remotely close to the potential out of WAR cooldowns you would have to play insanely well and it is honestly not particularly realistic.

I am no math whiz but aren't you forgetting maim? I may have overlooked it but isn't maim like a bonus of 20%. Wouldn't that cause inner beast to hit harder?

Maim is assumed. If you're hitting 1100 Inner Beasts non crit without maim up, let me know what kind of gear you have. Same with Storm's Eye. Storm's Path is... iffy to use at best. There is no conceivable situation in which it would match Blocks unless you were just talking about solo trash pulls in castrum.

The purpose of the analysis is to look at the passive mitigation, ehp, and general healing required. When you add in any other factors it leans more and more in favor of the PLD. Inner Beast usage was really the only "ground" for argument in which it was conceivable that WAR was on par with PLD, and my point with this info is to show that the "coparability" between the two really only lasts until you are in AK at which point PLD pulls ahead quickly.

[James1213]

I am no math whiz but aren't you forgetting maim? I may have overlooked it but isn't maim like a bonus of 20%. Wouldn't that cause inner beast to hit harder?

I plan on leveling both classes to max as I want to be a flexible tank so I am interested in in seeing that the warrior is on the same footing as a pld however I feel that there will always be fights one tank is better at tanking then the other.

I just got to being coil ready so take what I say with a grain of salt

Another thing I would like to say wouldn't storms eye usage help bring warriors up to pld shield blocks? What would blood bath do?

I also am not a warrior expert I just feel focusing on just one thing while comparing it to a pld tool kit is a flawed way to go about it.

Just my thoughts anyway

[Giantbane]

You also failed to mention the utility of berzerk + second wind (a 500-750 minimum healing every 120 seconds)

I'm pretty sure a PLD's own stoneskin can prevent something like ~500 or so HP of incoming dmg and they don't have to wait 120 sec and blow 2 cooldowns to do it

The healing capabilities of our abilities are further increased with maim, Storm's Eye, and to a lesser extent, storm's path, which if it's heal wasn't so low (or was healing over time like in beta) would have more utility.

PLD can cure which is slightly less pathetic than storm's path.

And I wouldn't necessarily always supplement blood bath with storm's path. storm's path is actually the least damaging of our 3 combos so it's getting the least benefit from bloodbath. And if you're not doing storm's eye at all, then you're also losing out on the boost to your dmg (and healing received from blood bath) from the 10% debuff boost there.

[Judge_Xero]

Great write up OP very nice.

The only question I have atm is about your DPS #'s from bosses.

I was watching some fights to get an idea about what their attack patterns were and their damage over 20s,60s intervals.

For instance on Cadaceus it was around 15000 +/- 3000 over a 60 second span. Worst case scenario 300 DPS.
As the DPS will scale with our current gear, what are the realistic numbers of the other Endgame fights, in the Lvl i70-i90 range.

[Surfie]

Thanks for that, your math however, fails to take overall parry rate and crit rate into account. You ignore them, but the truth is, over a long period of time, the "random" nature of them becomes a reliable percentage.


an average rough parry rate mitigation of 15% total incoming damage from spells and attack damage due to parry rate over time, (you can calculate pld parry and block against this if you would like)

Thank you. I hope you are surprised by your findings. I was.

First of all, you don't even know how parry works. It is a 15% chance to mitigate 23% of incoming damage, not a 15% chance to mitigate 100% damage.

Shield Block is superior to Parry. But here's the kicker, Paladins can parry too so your entire argument is crap.

[Coramac]

Plus we have more HP and use the same armor as you. And we get foresight too, which stacked with protect, makes us very hard in general.
Just face it - it's the stability of the HP pool that makes PLD feel "safe" and people are scared of the fact that bad warriors usually spike heal rather then just keep their HP pool maxed by rotating self-heal.

You don't have more HPs than a Pal. Not really. Paladins have the same HP, have a better bonus to incoming healing, have far superior cool downs, and have a shield for better efficiency. If you believe that a PLD feels "safer" and is not actually safer, you are ignorant of the reality of the situation.

[Giantbane]

And yes, shield block is GREAT. But they need it because Knight is all about mitigating away damage. That's what they do. It also requires ZERO effort, it just happens.
Also, if you shield block, you do NOT proc the chance to parry. If you unequipped a shield, you parry more, because first game checks for:

Chance to block: Yes/No Yes? Block. Parry does not happen.

Chance to block: Yes/No No? => Chance to Parry yes/no? No? => Chance to dodge yes/no? no? => Chance for mob crit you? Yes/no ?
Those things happen in that order. IF any of those things go off first, NONE OF THE THINGS UNDER HAPPEN.

So no shield, first thing that happens, is chance to parry. War gets big Parry+. Think about it.

And you seriously think that's going to tilt the results to make WAR and PLD equal?