I'm Getting More Confused about a WAR's Ability to Tank

My off-class has been WAR for quite some time, but recently I leveled up PLD and now they share the same gear; I get they have different styles, but the more I play PLD, the more I started to doubt WAR. It didn't help that when I was still in T9 progression pug, someone else wanted to tank Nael as WAR and he was getting smashed. Hard. The guy just changed into PLD and we had way better progression.

I don't see a feasible logic for the 25% healing/HP vs a flat 20% mitigation especially since raids always have some kind of tank cruncher. Also, block not only procs more frequently than parry, it also mitigates more. WAR is literally a meat shield, with defensive capabilites that seem to be an after-thought than actual synergy to their class/job as a whole.

In a raid setting where precision is so important and there will always be inevitable raid-wide dmg, giving healers a high(er)-maintenance tank just makes their lives that much harder. And yes I DO POP CD'S when appropriate.

You're aware that most raid scenarios are built for 2 tanks, correct?

The Defiance vs Shield Oath conversation does have them to be about equal in terms of how they help the tank survive. You do have a point about the shield though. PLDs do have an advantage in tanking because of shield mitigation.

When played properly, WAR mitigation is actually really good and has better total up time compared to PLD. By building wrath stacks and using them on Inner Beast, you can have a decent up time on the skill (6 seconds of 20% mitigation per ~9 global cooldowns or 22.5 seconds). That's pretty good. Obviously you can't just use IB whenever you want but with Infuriate and Vengeance there are times where a WAR can go ahead and use IB for a free 20% mitigation for 6 seconds and high dps skill. Typically PLD needs to save all their cooldowns for specific tank killer moves, a WAR can have IB up for all tank killer moves as well as some extra IBs thrown in the mix.

PLD is also much easier to play mechanically so I think a lot of players can play PLD up to their potential but cannot realize the same potential on WAR. Having IB on the GCD makes it much harder to time the skill for big hits and you have to know they're coming. If you are stuck in the GCD while the big attack is charging you might be too late. MT WARs need to be more familiar to the raid encounter than PLDs, as they will need to proactively IB as opposed to reactively using cooldowns.

Defiance and Shield Oath are very similar, with Defiance falling only very slightly behind and requiring something like 4% more healing. The actual percentage of total HP lost on any given attack is identical for paladin and warrior (So an equally geared paladin and warrior should lose the same amount of their HP bar when taking an attack).

Shield blocking is roughly equivalent to Inner Beast in terms of mitigation. It depends on the item level of your shield, but you should get 6~8% overall physical mitigation from a shield, while Inner Beast will give you about 6% mitigation if you use it every time it is available. The difference is that you can choose to use Inner Beast to block specific attacks (and magic), which is an option paladin doesn't have. When it comes to tank busters, they're pretty similar. Paladin has Rampart/Sentinel/Bulwark/Foresight/Hallowed Ground and warrior has Foresight/Infuriate/Thrill of Battle/Vengeance/Holmgang. Each skill set has its pros and cons, but I think that generally warrior is better at dealing with 1-minute timer tank busters and anything faster than that.

It sounds to me like your Nael tank just didn't know how to play warrior.

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Originally Posted by Flipside101

I don't see a feasible logic for the 25% healing/HP vs a flat 20% mitigation especially since raids always have some kind of tank cruncher.

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Well you should see feasible logic these two things things are nearly identical in practice (it's only a 20% healing buff, though):
Two tanks have 100hp as a base value. They take an attack that does a base damage of 100hp.
A paly takes 80 damage (20% reduction) and is left with 20% of his HP.
A war takes 100 damage and is left with 20% left over (since he has 125 to start)

Say the healer uses an 80hp heal
Paly gets 80% of his HP back
War gets 76.8% of his HP back (heal hits him for 96 HP)
This is hardly any different in the end with typical over-healing. Lustrate has the exact same effectiveness between the two jobs.

The real "difference" comes in the additional mitigation options that really matter. Sentinel, Rampart, HG (and maybe bulwark) vs. Vengeance, Inner Beast, Holmgang.
Either set can be better depending on the timing of the fight. Inner Beasting every tank-buster is often better than what a Paladin is capable of.

stop trying to play war like pld
play war like war and itll live just as long, if not longer

They are both good as evidenced by endgame raid groups almost universally opting for 1 of each. Everything in the game has been tanked by both tanks many times over. War takes a little more finesse is all. It's easier to "mess up" on war because the timings are more strict and you have to manage your Wrath stacks. IB lasts for 6 seconds, building Wrath takes 17 to 20ish sec. So you need to plan ahead on war. If you don't you either: sit on Wrath afraid to use it, or spend it and don't have it when you need it and there is now plan B of a shield block saving you. If you are unfamiliar with a fight pld is safer. Once you know a fight well, they both do about the same.

I found warrior to be kind of tricky to learn a fight on, mostly because of IB being on the GCD. My FCoB static wanted me to play warrior, but I'm fairly inexperienced at it. I found it really stressful to be trying to learn warrior as well as trying to learn the fight mechanics. We swapped me back to PLD and the turn went a lot more smoothly. Luckily we've picked up another tank that's a dedicated warrior. ^^

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

I found warrior to be kind of tricky to learn a fight on, mostly because of IB being on the GCD. My FCoB static wanted me to play warrior, but I'm fairly inexperienced at it. I found it really stressful to be trying to learn warrior as well as trying to learn the fight mechanics. We swapped me back to PLD and the turn went a lot more smoothly. Luckily we've picked up another tank that's a dedicated warrior. ^^

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This is the reason why PLD is the "simple" tank class. For anybody that likes to complain about that.

Your Warrior simply does not know when to use INNER BEAST which is the best skill available for Warrior, arguable on the same level of that Sentinel of Paladin. Coming from both Pal and War background, I can say that Pal is the example of PASSIVE TANKING, while Warrior represents ACTIVE TANKING. And playing Warrior is way more fun than playing Paladin.

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Originally Posted by LionKing

Your Warrior simply does not know when to use INNER BEAST which is the best skill available for Warrior, arguable on the same level of that Sentinel of Paladin. Coming from both Pal and War background, I can say that Pal is the example of PASSIVE TANKING, while Warrior represents ACTIVE TANKING. And playing Warrior is way more fun than playing Paladin.

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storms path too
as well as blood bath, especially when paired with vengance <- thats especially great for large pulls, but still helpful for bosses

Does storm path stacks with the debuff from Pal aggro combo skill as I have never bothered to find out? Or was that Storm Eye. ?

path lowers enemy damage output by 10% (and gives the war a heal for 50% of the damage dealt)
it probably does stack with halone's str down, since they dont overwrite eachother

also im not certain, but i think you can have multiple instances of path on the same enemy(1 per war)
i dont think you can with eye though

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Originally Posted by aisustrong

path lowers enemy damage output by 10% (and gives the war a heal for 50% of the damage dealt)
it probably does stack with halone's str down, since they dont overwrite eachother

also im not certain, but i think you can have multiple instances of path on the same enemy(1 per war)
i dont think you can with eye though

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Nah, I watch SP uptime for things like S ranks and CT bosses. You only get 1 SP total.

Can you imagine stacking 6 WAR/MRD + 2 healers for a raid? Raid wide boss damage down ~47%? that would be silly.

Yeah storm path can not be stacked together, as well as Dragon kick for that matter if you have two Mnk as they will overwrite each other. The question here is can anyone confirm if it does or does not work in conjunction with Halone dams reduction.

Halone and path stack. They are entirely different effects.
Dragon kick reduced mob int.(magic only)
Halone reduces mob str (physical only)
Path reduces all mob damage by 10% (magic and ohysical).

You can have all 3 on at on once, but not multiple copies of the same.

General rules:
*Things that do damage can stack. 8 smn can all cast bio and it gets 8 bios.
*Things that have additional effects (not damage) don't stack. 8 wars can't put path up 8 times or eye eight times. But you can have 1 of anything with a different icon. Halone, dragon kick, virus, etc can all have 1. Even though they overlap effect. Virus reduces str/int. DK int. Halone str. All 3 can be applied because they have different icones (different abilities)

As I scroll down i found out i have nothing else to say anymore so i'll add some in my own words. Many people can't play WAR to it's potential so they throw it aside and say WAR can't tank. The truth is, as stated by other people WAR have a larger learning curve than PLD. You can argue as much as you want but PLD is the easier tank to play. And when you only compare Stance to Stance. At it's base PLD will win, but when you compare CD. Other than Hollowed vs Holmgang. WAR cd pretty much win over PLD cd. Why? See Dmg mitigation is multiplicative so when PLD uses Rampart. He loses 4% of the mitigation while WAR gets full 20% with IB. That doesn't end there, Like stated IB have more "up time" than rampart making it more useful than rampart. I myself would pair SP with Vengance and IB or SP with Thrill of battle and convo and IB

War can't tank t9? I think that tank of yours should play War more because I can tank T9 as a War as effective as a PLD tanking t9

I hear TC's buttock's speaking. Doubt he or she even plays a tank, but heeeeeey.

I solo tanked T9 as a Warrior pre-2.4

Warrior well skilled is a -30% damages basis on every big hits, even if the frequence of the big hits is short : SP + IB = -30% (it's actually less than that cause multiplicative)

In addition, depending on the situation, you can or should add another CD, meaning for every big hits, you almost always get damages reduced well above 30%.

I don't see where the warrior is bad at tanking, where he's getting hit so much... Unless I meet a bad player, which is completly different!

Also from a Healer POV, Warrior alone can't make miracles. You have to play with good healers that understand how to heal a warrior. A good WHM should Stoneskin the WAR a lot, even midfight (and above all, during your super Thrill of battle), and always have a Regen on him to benefit from the +20% heal bonus (also refresh it while Convalescence is up!). If your healers are not doing that, they are not maximizing the potential of the WAR, and that could result in a "so much damages!" feeling.

From my experience (Warrior since 2.0 and Paladin since 2.3) they both work well when played well and they both fail when played poorly. With that said: Warrior is a bit more difficult to play well. Really though, in most fights that suggest two tanks I prefer having a Warrior AND a Paladin cause they're tanking brothers for life.

Simply put, a WAR needs to pop Inner Beast and a defensive CD for the big hits while a PLD only needs to pop a CD. If a WAR goes into a fight with only a vague understanding of the timing of those big hits, then they will not be able to mitigate properly. PLD can mitigate everything on reaction as long as they are frugal with their CD usage.

You also tend to get a lot of WARs that spec STR and use (old i110) STR accessories without having the overgeared left side or healers to back it up. Random PLDs almost universally go full VIT.

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Originally Posted by Blueskyy

At it's base PLD will win, but when you compare CD. Other than Hollowed vs Holmgang. WAR cd pretty much win over PLD cd. Why? See Dmg mitigation is multiplicative so when PLD uses Rampart. He loses 4% of the mitigation while WAR gets full 20% with IB. That doesn't end there, Like stated IB have more "up time" than rampart making it more useful than rampart. I myself would pair SP with Vengance and IB or SP with Thrill of battle and convo and IB

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This really doesn't make any difference. You're correct in that the damage reduction is multiplicative, which reduces the overall effect of rampart to a 16% reduction of the original incoming damage, but this doesn't really mean it's more or less effective on the PLD vs. the WAR because the WAR is always taking more damage (and has a larger HP pool). The problem is that you're looking at that % reduction in terms of how it reduces the original incoming damage, not in how the damage effects the tank's HP pool.

For instance if a PLD has 8000 hp, a WAR with the same gear and Defiance will have 10000 hp.
Both tanks take a hit for 1000 damage.

With shield oath, the PLD gets hit for 800 damage, which means he loses 10% of his HP.
With the WAR will take the full 1000 damage, but since he has 10000 hp due to Defiance, he's still losing the same 10% of his HP.

Next we add in mitigation abilities.

With shield oath and rampart, it mitigates 36% of the damage (0.8 * 0.8 = 0.64 damage taken, 1 - 0.64 = 0.36 damage mitigated). The PLD takes 640 damage. 640 / 8000 = 8% of his hp lost
With inner beast, 20% is mitigated, and the WAR takes 800 damage. 800 / 10000 is 8% of his hp lost.

So you see, while the damage mitigated by rampart is only an extra 16% of the base damage value, the effect it has on the PLDs HP is the same as Inner Beast for the WAR.

As has been stated, the big advantage to the WAR is that Inner Beast has a much shorter cool down than any other damage reduction ability. So when absorbing a big predictable hit (like a death sentence or whatever), Inner Beast will always be available. This is in addition to their other mitigation/survival abilities. A PLD may run out of cooldowns in a similar situation.

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Originally Posted by kro

Simply put, a WAR needs to pop Inner Beast and a defensive CD for the big hits while a PLD only needs to pop a CD. If a WAR goes into a fight with only a vague understanding of the timing of those big hits, then they will not be able to mitigate properly. PLD can mitigate everything on reaction as long as they are frugal with their CD usage.

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Inner Beast is every bit as strong as a PLD's Rampart, it just doesn't last as long and requires better timing. If a PLD can survive a big hit with just Rampart, the WAR can survive the same hit equally well with a properly timed Inner Beast.

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Originally Posted by kro

You also tend to get a lot of WARs that spec STR and use (old i110) STR accessories without having the overgeared left side or healers to back it up. Random PLDs almost universally go full VIT.

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This is definitely part of it.

Another thing is the PLD's shield. A PLD standing still mitigates more than a WAR due to the shield and the ability to block. A stupid WAR that doesn't do anything is going to appear squishier than a stupid PLD because of this.

I also think random PLDs tend to cycle their cooldowns better to mitigate random damage. It's easy to cycle a PLDs defensive abilities by just using one after the other. PLDs seem to do this frequently because it's a pretty simple concept. However with a WAR, you don't have as many basic "press this to improve survivability" abilities as a PLD would, you're pretty much limited to Vengenace and Thrill of Battle+Convalescence (used together is almost as good as rampart) and a collection of lesser abilities you can stack to some benefit (bloodbath, defiance, awareness, mantra, second wind, etc). To properly cycle, the WAR needs to save his inner beast (and 2x inner beast when infuriate is up and you're not using it for vengeance) to use in between his other cooldowns, even better if you can time inner beast for when you're damaged to take advantage of the heal. Your average WAR will just fire off Inner Beast whenever it's up, which causes the damage mitigation to be very inconsistent, leading to times where no cooldown is up and the WAR will look to be taking more damage.

Finally many WARs will forgo defensive abilities in exchange for MOAR DAMAGE! Using Steel Cyclone instead of Inner Beast for AoE or not using their SP combo (choosing to go SE>BB or just BB because they think they're PLDs). By trading their defense for damage, it will give the impression that the WAR is squishier. In this scenario, the truth is that the WAR is squishier because he chose to be, not because he actually was.

http://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/f/54...ffc0_50x50.jpg

Eh.

I find Warriors to be basically the same as Paladins. I feel I have to heal them more often for some reason... I dunno, but I've never found Warriors lacking at all.

I make note of what Tank I have, but I literally see them both as one thing: Tank. That's it. Neither one being more preferred (usually). Their Job doesn't matter to me, Warrior = Paladin. I'm very much a casual player and don't do Coils so take this however you want.

Sorry if I insulted any tanks with this post. ]:

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Originally Posted by Kelya

Also from a Healer POV, Warrior alone can't make miracles. You have to play with good healers that understand how to heal a warrior. A good WHM should Stoneskin the WAR a lot, even midfight (and above all, during your super Thrill of battle), and always have a Regen on him to benefit from the +20% heal bonus (also refresh it while Convalescence is up!). If your healers are not doing that, they are not maximizing the potential of the WAR, and that could result in a "so much damages!" feeling.

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This is propably biggest diffirence between WAR and PLD, WAR kinda requires good healer to back him up while PLD can be left alone for few seconds even in bigger pulls. Inexperienced healers usually dont like WAR tanks >_<

all the time I've spent healing, I prefer wars
they actually press more than 5 buttons

and all the really really terrible tanks I've had while healing were pld/gla
durr what's flash, I'm totally a dps class,I gots a sword

[QUOTE=Synestra;2736620]This is propably biggest diffirence between WAR and PLD, WAR kinda requires good healer to back him

In speed runs like brayflox hard. Warrior don't even need a healer. Go check out Lucrezia running WAR,DRG,MNK and BLM in brayflox hm.

Tho I agree a little on "WAR kinda requires good healer to back him up" but you know how much a Good WAR can heal back himself? My hp sits at 10800 lets put it at 10000 for easier calculations. (If you count only the heal back of ToB it's 8k ), My Inner beast hits 1k with berserk which in turn heals me back 1k, when added up with blood bath, it's 1200. Also WAR have Second wind which will work better with berserk. Healing me 600 or 800 with crit if im not wrong. If done in one go, the heal back is amazing. And also Healer do tent to heal a warrior or overheal back to max hp when he's in ToB which is unnecessary

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Originally Posted by Giantbane

This really doesn't make any difference.

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Hmm my post might be misleading but what i meant is WAR always have an option to pair up his "small cd aka IB" with big cds like vengance and thrill. PLD can do that too but with the long "CD timer" on their "Def CD" (I hope that's not confusing) it's more wasteful to do that. I understand about the whole get hit % hp thing but the last sentence is pretty much what i was trying to say. Just that maybe my english is bad so I can't fully express myself thro words

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Originally Posted by Blueskyy

In speed runs like brayflox hard. Warrior don't even need a healer. Go check out Lucrezia running WAR,DRG,MNK and BLM in brayflox hm.

Tho I agree a little on "WAR kinda requires good healer to back him up" but you know how much a Good WAR can heal back himself? My hp sits at 10800 lets put it at 10000 for easier calculations. (If you count only the heal back of ToB it's 8k ), My Inner beast hits 1k with berserk which in turn heals me back 1k, when added up with blood bath, it's 1200. Also WAR have Second wind which will work better with berserk. Healing me 600 or 800 with crit if im not wrong. If done in one go, the heal back is amazing. And also Healer do tent to heal a warrior or overheal back to max hp when he's in ToB which is unnecessary

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I have no doubts how a WAR can self-heal a lot without a healer, and I will always prefer a WAR in speed runs as a WHM.

However you can't do it very often ( 120s ToB/Second wind and 90s Berserk). In coil you will survive the first big hit, but not the second if you don't have good healers.

By good healers I mean healers that understand how is designed the WAR and how to heal him accordingly. If you have bad healers, no matter what you do in coils situations, you will feel taking so much damages in comparaison to the PLD, and the first to complain will be the healers themself, putting the fault on the WAR... That may explain why a lot of healers always stand for the "PLD is easier to heal than WAR".

With the passive buff of +20% healing bonus provided by Defiance, Healers definitively are one of the main keys to influence WAR gameplay/survivability.

So actually, WAR in general is very dependant from his healers, be it only to be measured at his fair value.

This all because people see bigger damage numbers on the War and don't realize the incoming damage in proportion to max health is identical.
The idea that "War needs a good healer" or some kind of different healing strategy is bunk. The extra healing required is less than 5%.

For instance, some one was saying that WHM should SS the war more, especially when ToB is up. That's rarely ever true.
For a WHM that's roughly up-to-date on gear, even with ToB up on a highly geared WAR, Stone Skin is still less than a cure 2 in effective HP recovered.
A Cure II on a war from an ~i120 WHM is going to hit for something like 2500hp
An i120 war with ToB on is at something like 12500hp in pure vit gear (which not many do) so the stone skin is going to hit for about 2200.

Given CureII's lower cast time it's a no-brainer to Cure over SS unless you're going to be overhealing a couple hundred HP.

The difference between SS and Cure 2 is also about the DPS. Putting SS allows you to stay in CS and dps, and SS is, most of the time, always needed before every big hits.

The effectiveness of SS is better on the WAR than the PLD because of his HP, so even better with ToB, and any good WHM will use SS in some situations because it's actually a good spell regardless Cure 2 (which shouldn't be spammed like a no brain btw). Besides when the WAR is already full life or doesn't need to be healed for a while and ToB is up, why not put a SS on him ? It last 30 min you'll loose nothing but gain a future big mitigation on the next attack.

But the subject isn't about the healers spells, I was just saying than most of the ppl share a wrong feeling about WAR (taking more damages / needing more heals than PLD) just because a lot of healers actually don't know how is working the WAR and how to heal him. They end up overhealing a lot or using too much Cure 2 and then complain because WAR is difficult to heal instead of questionning themself, that's all.

The effectiveness of Stone Skin is exactly the same on a WAR and on a PLD. ShO and PLD cooldowns also apply to the additional health provided by Stone Skin, so the effective bonus is the same.

The only difference would be if you pop thrill of battle before a pull, which no one really does.

Stoneskin on war is 25% more hp on war.(defiance)
Stone skin on pld is 25% tougher on pld. (Shield oath).

Stoneskin is identical on pld and war. Same with adlo.

The only things that chane from pld to war are % based things under ToB. Lustrates, stoneskin, benediction are 20% more effective when used on ToB. That's the ONLY healing difference between pld and war.

The only other difference is war needs 4% more cures across the board, but a lot of that should he made up for by self heals like inner beast which basically makes it a complete wash.

Properly played war is virtually identical to properly played pld with the single exception of hollowed ground. That is the pld edge.

^ end thread

I stopped after you mentioned progress was better when he switched to PLD. Maybe he is not comfortable with WAR? Maybe you aren't either?

As for T9, I do not see how PLD would be much better. Same goes for turn 10-13. I do think WAR has higher learning curve when getting into new content, but that's just a couple of raids.

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Originally Posted by aisustrong

stop trying to play war like pld
play war like war and itll live just as long, if not longer

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Yeah...I remember when I went into my first 8 main raid on WAR after being a PLD forever...was not pretty. Tried to play them the same and it ended very badly. I've had much more pleasant experiences after actually putting the time in to learn WAR correctly.

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Originally Posted by Raelen

Yeah...I remember when I went into my first 8 main raid on WAR after being a PLD forever...was not pretty. Tried to play them the same and it ended very badly. I've had much more pleasant experiences after actually putting the time in to learn WAR correctly.

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ain't no 3 button dance

I would also note that the 5% extra healing required on war, could be looked at in a positive light, due to overhealing. Technically your heals may or may not be more efficient on a warrior vs a pld.

food for thought

Read the OP. I main WAR but also have PLD. Naturally they use the same gear (minus weapon and shield). Before 2.4, I played WAR in all raid instances except T9. PLD was simpler to play. There were a lot of mechanics and PLD has the benefit of all of their mitigation moves being on CD instead of having to time IB on WAR. Couple that with stoneskin, and PLD just "felt better" for this fight.


Take the last phase of T9 and Bahamut's Claw. The first claw (and every odd one after) is coupled with Favor. Lots of time to get ready for claw. But the in-between claws are harder to time when you are new to the fight. And the 6 second duration of IB sometimes wouldn't be enough unless I was comfortable with exactly when that "big hit" was coming.

As for stoneskin, it was handy because there was those times when blight would explode followed shortly by another "big hit" like Drive. Since there is some latency with the server, it is possible to finish casting SS while WHM SS is up, have blight be eaten by the WHM SS, then mine would go active immediately after that and help eat the drive (or whatever the next bit of damage is).

T9 has a lot of pauses in the fight. Warrior has nothing to do during those breaks. PLD can SS. It's something.