Can someone give me a detailed comparison between PLD and WAR? Returning player here

hey guys, I'm just returning to the game and I have thought about DPSing.. and then I realised I didn't like it, so I am now turning to tank!

I have a 50 PLD, but I don't know. Often times I feel like I am falling asleep since I just spam the same rotation over and over. So I've been thinking of leveling WAR.

If you're falling asleep spamming the same rotation over and over, I don't know. While I agree that Warriors definitely have more rotation choices and can be more fun to play, it doesn't mean that the PLD is any short in terms of DPS and the amount of awareness you need to put into a fight.

While I'm not super knowledgeable about Warrior yet, there's a few tips I can give you as a PLD player that often out-DPSes a lot of regular DPS classes (excluding Coils). Firstly, treat Sword Oath/Shield Oath as like the White Mage's Cleric stance. If you're off-tanking, put on Sword Oath to dish out as much damage as you can. Only for instances where you are picking up adds or facing tremendous damage be it AoE or single target do you switch back to Shield Oath. Even when main tanking, I still find the opportunities to use Sword Oath while keeping a careful eye on the aggro bar so that I don't lose hate while still DPSing to someone else. And of course, I would switch back to Shield Oath when dealing with heavy damage during the fight providing I know them well enough.

I am i110 and there are many instances where I have been able to hit a very high DPS (not sure if we're allowed to talk about numbers here) and my general rotation is Fast Blade -> Savage Blade -> Rage of Halone (keep an eye on the TP bar) and Circle of Scorn/Spirits Within whenever they are up. I also pop Fight or Flight every chance I get and I keep a very careful eye on my cooldowns (there are enough to nearly fill an entire hotbar!). Become a master at managing cooldowns as well as putting in the most DPS and you'll be a PLD anyone would want very soon!

The PLD rotation is exactly how the above user described.
Use some cooldown buffs when the enemy is gonna hit you hard and that's it.


WAR rotation is more complex.
You have your aggro combo which is not very different from PLD " Fast Blade / Savage Blade / Rage of Halone ", but only really bad Warriors spam it all the time.

Warrior has another combo with Maim (increase dmg by 20% for around 20 seconds) and Storm's Eye (reduce enemy slashing def by 10%, roughly making your DPS 10% stronger), or Maim + Storm's Path (recover a few HP and make all enemy attacks, be it physical or magical, deal 10% less damage for 20 seconds).

While using these combos, when under Defiance, you get Wrath stacks. (Defiance gives you +25% more max HP but reduces the damage you inflict by 25%, which is almost compensated by having Maim up all the time; Defiance also increases enmity generated and increases the potency of all the heals you get by 20%)



When you have 5 stacks of Wrath, you can use one of the special Warrior Wrath skills, which cost no TP and will consume all the 5 Wrath Stacks.
Unchained will remove the 25% damage penalty of Defiance for 20 seconds, Inner Beast will cause a single target high damage that ignores Definace damage penalty and heal you for the same amount of damage you inflict and decrease incoming damage you suffer by 20% for the next 6 seconds, and Steel Cyclone is a wide circular AoE attack around you that also ignores the damage penalty caused by Defiance.
Invigorate is a 60 second cooldown that will automatically give you 5 Wrath stacks.

Other than that Warrior has Berserk (freaking +50% damage for 20 seconds, 5 seconds of Pacification after that), Vengeance (reduces the damage you take by 30% for 15 seconds and causes counter-damage to all enemies that attack you), Thrill of Battle (heals you by 20% of Max HP and increases the amount healed to your max HP for 20 seconds) and bloodbath (heals you for every damage you inflict).

Berserk and Vengeance also give you a stack of Wrath every time you use them.

Overpower is an AoE skill that causes damage in a cone in front of you for very high enmity.

If you combine Unchained + Berserk + Vengeance + Bloodbath with Overpower for multiple targets, or with regular combos for single target, the damage you inflict is very very high for a tank, and you also get healed by a decent amount, even more so if the enemy is under the Storm's Eye debuff.

It's not unusual for a good warrior to out-dps many medium or bad DPS players.

WAR has a better snap aggro rotation derived from sheer damage output.

PLD in Sword Oath and with either NIN or WAR providing slashing resistance debuff will do more dps than a WAR offtank with defiance off.
(It's PLD in sword oath w/ debuff > WAR out of defiance > WAR in defiance > PLD in Shield Oath, roughly)
Dps is important for a tank because it directly correlates to hate generation.

PLD has stronger mitigation tools that also last longer, but on a slightly longer cooldown.

WAR need to time his short burst of mitigation namely in the form of Inner Beast.

When I OT as a PLD I like to use my Normally Aggro Combo but then use Fast Blade -> Riot Blade x2 then repeat.

They do the exact same thing.
Except:
PLD: Stun 3s cooldown + silence
WAR: -10% damage from bosses & +10% damage taken on bosses

Warriors have A LOT more diversity in their skills and combos.
They aren't as 'tanky' as a PLD due to their passive damage reductions, but WAR has skills they can time for big hits which make them just as good, if not better in raid situations.
"I'm expecting this attack to hit me for 5,000 damage"
-20% damage
4,000 damage.

You know that Shield Oath and Defiance almost cancel each other out in terms of effective mitigation?

Pld's not for everybody. If you're looking to keep busy with combos and such, NIN is a lot of fun for that, and WAR if you're looking to tank. PLD has a simple rotation but that allows for more opportunity to pay attention to what's going on IMO. If I see someone was Rez'd, I'll Stoneskin and protect them, because often a healer won't have the immediate time or mp to do so and the person dies instantly due to weakness. When melee is about to finish a close fight with a LB but is at risk of dying to physical damage, I'll throw Cover on him. Other than that there's buffing which you can half-ass without really knowing what your buffs do or if they apply to the situation, unwittingly getting carried by your healer (which actually is something that is a bigger issue with WARs doing speedruns in DF without knowing how to survive it). Knowing how to mitigate regularly while still mitigating appropriately for large attacks will improve your party's chance for success and/or give your healer breathing room to DPS if they'd like, speeding up the run. Point being, unless you're running something like AK when your party's ilvl is 100~ (I.e. You way out gear the content) then there's always something to do beyond the RoH combo and Flash if you're interested in performing your best. Even on an easy boss at your ilvl, like the first in Snowcloak; DPS still messes up on bombs causing wipes in DF. I personally get a head start on aggro and then swap to sword oath. Now I'm taking more damage and it's a good idea to cycle my buffs. When bombs spawn I mark and aggro them, making It convenient for melee to burn. Of course many would view this as overthinking a simple fight and that's fine, there's nothing wrong with staying in Shield Oath and repeating the RoH combo on the boss, so long as you aren't getting pissed at the DPS who didn't see the bomb spawn when you yourself couldn't be bothered to make an effort.

However one thing I can tell you is that people who do love PLD tend to burn themselves out playing it. I've seen it time and again and done it myself; they'll get tired of pld and play another class deciding PLD isn't for them. Then you go back to PLD and remember why you loved it in the first place. After repeating that process about 3 times I realized that I needed to regularly play other classes that I enjoy when it's convenient, that way I'm more than happy to play PLD whenever it's needed. :)

Pld is an easier tank class to play and learn while warrior is the more complex one. Often you would see many bad warriors because A Bad pld is better than a bad warrior. But a Warrior that can play the job to it's limits is better than a good pld.
For warriors you would want to put stats into VIT when you are undergeared for a fight but when you are slightly overgeared you can put your stats into STR. Tho it lowers your HP, it makes your Self heal stronger. (True story) My warrior with 30str ilvl110 self healed thro the last boss of snowcloak and 2nd boss of temple (hard) when my healer died at around 50-47% when i queued the DF

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Originally Posted by Blueskyy

Pld is an easier tank class to play and learn while warrior is the more complex one. Often you would see many bad warriors because A Bad pld is better than a bad warrior. But a Warrior that can play the job to it's limits is better than a good pld.

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Agreed except that a good warrior is only a better DPS than PLD, and can help meet DPS checks. A good PLD is a better party support if shot hits the fan, and has skills that make it a much better choice for certain mechanics. Both are equally capable tanks in that they both hold aggro and both stay alive.