With all the negativity around war let's talk about the best part of 4.0!

With that being MTing as war. It's so much fun, it feels great! Tank busters are nothing and my dps is pretty darn high as well. The class feels engaging and dynamic, 100 beast gauge lets us use inner beast for dps and still have one locked and loaded, meaning we pretty much always have a mini rampart on deck. Not to mention the lack of needing to focus entirely on shoving as many Fell Cleaves at the boss as possible means I can happily zip around with Onslaught. It's wonderful, no other word for it. Warrior in defiance really does feel like the immovable mountain that shrugs off everything that is thrown at it, just like the class quests made it out to be.

How have you warriors been enjoying finally using Defiance for more than 10% of the fight? I genuinely dislike having to play war in the OT role because it feels so rigid and static compared to how fluid MT gets to be.

I am in actual agreement! I was never good enough, nor in a good enough group, to stance dance constantly (just for burn phases), so the transition to being more stance locked hasn't affected me at all. In Defiance, I feel awesome. I feel tough, I feel like I can take a beating, I can pull hard, fight hard, and rely on my Pally pal to look after me and the rest of the party while I focus on staying alive, putting out a good solid amount of DPS and drool over my Upheaval numbers.

It's just a shame Deliverance feels so... awkward.

Yeah this is why I don't think DRK supersedes WAR in 8-man content at all. WAR MT/PLD OT brings superior mitigation and DPS, hands down, than any comp with a DRK in it, with the sole thing that it misses out on being a piddly 4-4.5K shield occasionally on the MT.

Yeah, that's fair to say. If I have to be stuck in Defiance, this is probably the best iteration of Defiance to be stuck within.

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Originally Posted by TheFanciestBard

How have you warriors been enjoying finally using Defiance for more than 10% of the fight? I genuinely dislike having to play war in the OT role because it feels so rigid and static compared to how fluid MT gets to be.

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War as MT is a joke compared to others. For the sake of testing I went some rounds at Suzano as MT WAR full fending defiance turtle. Timing IB on mini tank busters on the first phase etc
DPS. The same of other tanks.
Mitigation. Using my healers feedback. You are squish. You have a massive hp pool and it's harder heal fully.
Can't even compare to PLD mitigation

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Originally Posted by Kothos

Mitigation. Using my healers feedback. You are squish. You have a massive hp pool and it's harder heal fully.

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Unless there was a nerf to WAR healing buff in defiance, the difference in topping off a warrior (compared to PLD/DRK) should be less than 5%.

I haven't tested it in stormblood, but if WAR is suddenly much squishier than the other two tanks then that's no good.

In Defiance, there is literally no contest, WAR is hands down the hardest tank to kill in this game right now.

This much mitigation is rarely needed, but I did test on a dummy just for curiosity's sake.

You can literally daisy chain CDs together, pairing Awareness with RI, Conva with Thrill, and Rampart/ Vengeance on their own, filling in gaps in between with IB or infuriate - IB, indefinitely, forever. If a WAR wanted to, he/she could sit in defiance and pop cooldowns forever and never not be covered by something, even for a second.

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Originally Posted by Kothos

Mitigation. Using my healers feedback. You are squish. You have a massive hp pool and it's harder heal fully.

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It doesn't work like that. You can't go with what the healers say on this. It's largely psychological, they look at your HP, see a giant chunk of it missing, and think "ugh, if it was Paladin I'd have less to heal back".

But they don't take into account the fact that their heals do more when they use it in Warrior.

It's the same as Thrill of Battle. You use it when you get hit, it doesn't look or feel like you mitigated anything! You just see a huge chunk of your HP drop. Only after it fades and your HP resets, IF you pay attention you will see your HP is actually higher than what it would have been if you had taken the damage without Thrill.

as already pointed WAR has so many mitigation tools. obviously the higher hp pool means nothing if you aren't healed up but you are gettin healed for more. You always have IB for any tank buster + an additional CD. if you are dying the issue with your healers.
And yes MTing as WAR is great. the joke is that it always was since 2.1 and just improved over time. Just that it was forced into OT pos all the time.

I think the issue is most tanks don't aim to be in tank stance for very long even while MTing, so while Defiance is super strong right now in comparison to other tank stances and especially previous forms of Defiance, it still isn't going to justify heavy usage in hardcore content.