Paladin vs Warrior - ARR better set roles!

I agree with a lot of the posts saying PLD was a lot better then people thought it was for AOE hate..

One prime example - Flash > Rampart. That alone was quite a solid chunk of hate. After the SC nerf, WAR lost a major aoe hate source right there, as a couple of cures and the WHM is often swamped with mobs.

PLD was by far the best job to hold hate, damage mitigation was reasonably effective, and with someone who knows how to play both classes, I would pick them on PLD over WAR in pretty much all circumstances.

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Originally Posted by Altena

I agree with a lot of the posts saying PLD was a lot better then people thought it was for AOE hate..

One prime example - Flash > Rampart. That alone was quite a solid chunk of hate. After the SC nerf, WAR lost a major aoe hate source right there, as a couple of cures and the WHM is often swamped with mobs.

PLD was by far the best job to hold hate, damage mitigation was reasonably effective, and with someone who knows how to play both classes, I would pick them on PLD over WAR in pretty much all circumstances.

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Sounds good on paper. But that rampart skill is 3m cooldown, and you would lose aoe hate a lot faster than your flash could recover. You can only heal yourself so much on targets doing actual damage to you, and unless you have the best paladin trousers, it got interrupted a lot when you were getting beat on, so the healers would even draw hate off of you. SC nerf didn't heavily effect warriors ability to be the better hate magnet for multiple targets, as I was still doing aoe parties with them near the end of the era.

Now that TP will start off max, a warrior won't even have to wait. charge in, chain some aoe skills. Thats going to be much better than flash on a cooldown and rampart - which warrior can also use.

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Originally Posted by Altena

I agree with a lot of the posts saying PLD was a lot better then people thought it was for AOE hate..

One prime example - Flash > Rampart. That alone was quite a solid chunk of hate. After the SC nerf, WAR lost a major aoe hate source right there, as a couple of cures and the WHM is often swamped with mobs.

PLD was by far the best job to hold hate, damage mitigation was reasonably effective, and with someone who knows how to play both classes, I would pick them on PLD over WAR in pretty much all circumstances.

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Totally agree with this... Paladin in 1.0 was actually quite good at holding hate but many players were not too focused on really blending the PLD skills together to make the class shine. If in 2.0 it can get an even higher hate amplifier added to divine veil and holy succor, then Paladin will really become a beast of a tank on the battlefield.

Well like I said earlier and will probably be ignored again, your personal experiences are one thing, but what is programmed is This tank is better at this than that tank. I'm eagerly awaiting Beta to comment further after seeing what they did.

Also, actually trying to go toe to toe pld vs war and 5 or more monsters, i can tell you warrior will have 4+ of them, paladin will have 1 by the time they die... and thats only if the pld gets a block off with enough TP at the start. Poorly chosen combo...

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Originally Posted by Reika

Paladin needs more real defense to go along with its lower than warrior HP as well as increased agro gain off its two aoe agro abilities, as well as more practical way to use wardrum, and they added damage to wardrum after a while, but the damage is laughabe, and the cooldown is laughable. Re-adding circle slash, or even better a paladin-like aoe light attack, would help too. Warrior should have to sacrifice some of its damage but with increased enmity when in a tank role and make it comparable to paladin in a single target role, give them a spirits-within type skill, just one that is more warriorlike. Later down the line there will be more classes added that are considered 'tank' and they should certainly each perform as well as paladin and warrior in single and aoe situations. There are many other things they could do in terms of cooldowns and damage amounts they could do to balance the two, so people can actually have a job preference and be proud of their preference.

But like its been said as well, Warrior is was made like a jack of trades, and if it stays that way, shouldn't even be better at paladin at aoe tanking, but I also always felt they should go one way or the other with warrior and not try to have them able to do both.

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HP discrepancy shouldn't really be there, as while effective health is determined by a combination of defenses, health and cooldowns, it does make one tank harder to heal than the other.

Personally, one of two things should happen. You either nerf WAR damage and up enmity generation, or you buff PLD damage and even out the two so that both are generating the same DPS and enmity. Or at least take steps to close the gap to where it's only noticeable on sims and spreadsheets rather than during a boss fight.

Hate to (well, not really) pull out a WoW comparison, but the reason tank damage was buffed for prot warriors and paladins (who were sword & board) in WotLK was because the devs knew that a tank with a two-hander (death knights) could potentially wipe the floor with them in terms of DPS. Pallies were given a DoT, some reactionary abilities (Holy Shield, Reckoning) and a heavy hitting ability (Avenger's Shield). Warriors were given damage bonuses on reactionary abilities (Revenge), damage buffs for their rotation skills (Heroic Strike, Devastate), and crit bonuses on their main attack (Shield Slam). That's how the gap with death knights was for the most part closed, and it worked out pretty well, IMO.

The alternative would be to just turn WAR into a DPS job, but that would make it the second failed attempt by SE to make WAR into a tank only to just go DPS and never look back.

can't run into unbalances again. A war can DD but never out DD a mage. WIth defense comes other sacrifice.

It seems the plan is to have them hit hard to help maintain control, but slowly. As well as the ability to BREAK enemy defenses (armor) and enhance.

Going to take time regardless.

What ever way, PLD and wars need to be able to maintain control, so a hard nuke doesn't result in a instant dead mage or healer. Toss me some defense preeez.

I could be totally confused, but does anyone remember the "Don't Pull with Provoke" thing? Was that fixed?

For those that don't know, your first attack didn't give any hate, so if you pulled with voke, for example, you wouldn't get the hate from that first provoke. You would provoke some mob, then the BRD would get aggro off you the first time they attack.

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Originally Posted by Reika

Sounds good on paper. But that rampart skill is 3m cooldown, and you would lose aoe hate a lot faster than your flash could recover. You can only heal yourself so much on targets doing actual damage to you, and unless you have the best paladin trousers, it got interrupted a lot when you were getting beat on, so the healers would even draw hate off of you. SC nerf didn't heavily effect warriors ability to be the better hate magnet for multiple targets, as I was still doing aoe parties with them near the end of the era.

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I am no career PLD but it is pretty common knowledge how rampart works, and how useful it is for a nice initial hate boost. It seems to work for the most part when my group's tank opens the fight with it. Long cooldown aside, it shouldn't be the only thing you rely on for hate of course but for crowd control, it is more often then not enough to keep them looking at the PLD until the mobs die.

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Now that TP will start off max, a warrior won't even have to wait. charge in, chain some aoe skills. Thats going to be much better than flash on a cooldown and rampart - which warrior can also use.

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You have to remember that other DD's also start off with full TP - along with PLD. Even a WAR charging in with full TP and spamming every WS combo they have, it will not match or come close to a DRG or MNK's while under rampage (single target).

However, once again, in cases where there is a large crowd of mobs, hate does not have to be extremely heavy - just enough to hold the hate off the WHM until the mobs die which is 9 times out of 10, an extremely fast process (in the 1.x system).

While yes, WAR has the means of AOE / Crowd Control in a couple of situations, PLD is by far a more useful and solid tank in a huge majority of the situations in end game content so far. When your DD's start becoming extremely heavily geared, and your WAR's are trying to keep up - Provoke, Antagonise, and the weak WAR weapon skills (under Rampage) are definitely not enough to hold hate off those DRG or MNK zergs.

Yes the SC nerf, tied with the Collusion nerf reduced WAR's ability tenfold. It is much easier to pull hate off a WAR then it is a PLD, presuming they both know how to play those roles.

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Originally Posted by Lucke

I could be totally confused, but does anyone remember the "Don't Pull with Provoke" thing? Was that fixed?

For those that don't know, your first attack didn't give any hate, so if you pulled with voke, for example, you wouldn't get the hate from that first provoke. You would provoke some mob, then the BRD would get aggro off you the first time they attack.

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The action (regardless what action that is) that makes the mob go from passive to agressive does not increase any enmity. (Well at least in 1.x) There isn't really an answer for this in 2.0 as far as I am aware, but I daresay that won't change.

Altena you just descibed how horrible a WAR is (crap damage compared to others and bad at end game tanking).

Lol. I agree there are a lot of areas END game that PLD soar - but they flunk in hilarious style until then. And a few areas that WAR still excel in like multi target trash.


All in all the tanks imo are not well balanced. PLD needs more in X and WAR in Y and instead of trying to hybrid balance - just make a tanking class that works on different styles of play* :P


*How you play, not how the character is balanced. I hope some people in SE play MOBAs...

I won't quote because I am lazy but..

Yeah I did basically say how WAR is basically a hybrid DD / Tank.. Doesn't compare to the other more specific jobs.

But yes when I talk about jobs, I talk about a job in its entirety, with all abilities and traits (ie level cap / end game). EXP parties I will admit, PLD has always been pretty trashy but in saying that - I don't really consider that to be where the job really defines itself. I mean MNK is almost as good a tank as WAR and GLD if you are talking about EXP parties.. At that sort of level / stage you don't want extremely defined roles as it allows very little flexibility.. However the EXP system is changing dramatically so there goes that anyway..

TBH I don't want WAR to be a tank. I would much rather see them more as a brute DD - slow, heavy attack speed, high damage and sure some AOE / devastating weaponskills. They should be a heavy AoE DD whereas at the moment they are far too "inbetween".

I think a few more enmity / damage mitigation skills for PLD would be enough but to be honest I think it is rather working as intended :/