Paladin or Marauder?

[Kal-El]

I loved MRD! Never had any issues holding hate on either GLA or MRD. GLA is a more traditional tank while I thought MRD was a bit more exciting and interesting, but that's just me!

If you want to be a tank you really need to level both as PLD gets MRD abilities and WAR gets GLA abilities.

After you level both you'll quickly find your favourite.

But ignore anyone that says "PLD is better" or "WAR is better". They can do exactly the same content but in different ways. It's the player not the class

[Strata]

After you level both you'll quickly find your favourite.

But ignore anyone that says "PLD is better" or "WAR is better". They can do exactly the same content but in different ways. It's the player not the class

What Kal-El said, but I will be playing both jobs depending on my party.

[khmeric]

Paladin takes way less damage then War in long fights. it also depends what content you are playing.

War while good is more of an Aoe tank any PLD worth his salt should be able to easily hold hate from a war if they start at the same time. However, war is much better on the DPS side then PLD not by much but enough to help out in low DPS groups. I would say go war if it looks like you are lacking in damage otherwise go PLD.

I love PLD it requires you to use all the skills affectively and adapt to the situation. War is more a im just gonna hit everything as hard as I can tank.

I like the sound of this. I want to be The Immovable Object. I want to be the reason my entire party makes it through the entire dungeon without any deaths (of course having a good healer is a given)

I think I'm going to stick with the ol' Pally Wally

[PSxpert2011]

Well I'll say this, Paladins main weapon is the shield, you are all about defending attacks to the fullest, where as Warrior is all about the axe and attacking harder to receive the most healing from your attacks, making it a little easier for the healers to keep you up.

Paladin seems to have a bit more utility as well for the entire group, where as Warrior seems to have the edge on damage.

Both 2 different play styles, one more defensive, one more offensive. ...

2nd THIS!
Though Warriors do alot more damage than a Paladin, a Paladin defends more. I feel like as old as this discussion is, people don't seem to understand and remain confused.

THey both are fun to play but if you don't balance your hate, you'll still cause pandemic and make yourself look bad. Maybe cause others of the same job to look bad!

Warriors deal CRITICAL damage with helps them keep HATE, no matter how much the white mage heals or the Black Mage nukes. That doesn't mean that mages have to go crazy and do w/e!

The Paladin-FTW keeps hate through healing, having high DEF and covering. It has natural hate also through distraction. Again, if you don't know how to use your abilities, the white mage or black mage will steal emnity w/e they feel they want to go crasy... remember not "I" in "team-work".

THere's a big difference between a shield and a axe, and I hope people start to see that and pay more respect to the roles. If the Mage runs out of MP for curing the warrior the whole fight, who do you think will cover the party? That's right, the Paladin(for all he/she's worth).

[t0fumast3r]

I don't think it matters much which is better.

The consensus is that PLD is better for main tanking and mitigation (unless the boss has huge spike damage then Marauder is best) and Marauder for threat/DPS/AoE.

I Don't think Yoshi-p make any tank mandatory for a fight (could be wrong).
Only groups that want to optimize every position in a raid would take one over the other imo.

Play what you like. I prefer Marauder because it feels like it has a higher skillcap, is a more offensive/reactive Tank and just look Badarse with the 2h Axe where as PLD has a plethora of mitigation tools and more of a pre-emptive CD management Tank but too shiny for me, just my preference.

IMO I would prefer the better player over their class/job.

[Chimaira]

WAR for life.. i found it a way fun then PLD in ARR, imho they are both good tanking jobs just different.

[Breezey]

i will be leveling both classes but i like the playstyle of the mrd so far over the pld

[Gamemako]

WAR is a drain tank. Instead of mitigation, it just acts as its own healer as it attacks, which means that attacking is its raison d'etre. WAR is undoubtedly much harder to use than PLD (i.e. more active, as you're looking for), for the player and team. A dead squirrel Carbuncle can play PLD. You have one meaningful combo, two off-GCD abilities to mash on cooldown (SW, CoS), and generally spend most of your time waiting for something to happen so you can hit Rampart or Sentinel. Healer just keeps mashing heal and barely even has to look at the screen. WAR juggles cooldowns to stay alive, actively timing drains for maximum effect. WAR takes a lot more trust in the healer, since you're never at near-max health (else your drains would do nothing). In that sense, It think many teams will prefer PLD even when it's not an efficient choice because the healer can't do a crossword puzzle while healing WAR, and nothing is certain if not human laziness. You're going to see a lot of "WAR is add tank" stuff with healers overhealing by 10,000 HP per minute anyway because they don't know or care what they're doing. If you play WAR, you should steel yourself against this, because it *WILL* happen. You're also going to see so much ignorance regarding skills it will blow your mind.

Also, note that WAR is not an AoE tank. WAR is no better than PLD for multi-target situations. Yes, really. Consider three possible activities for WAR: Overpower spam (Steel Cyclone impossible), single-target Wrath gen to Steel Cyclone spam, and Inner Beast spam with Overpower to front-load enmity. The massive TP cost on Overpower with no means of mitigation (no Wrath gen) make it pretty infeasible in general. 10 uses is only 900 equivalent potency delivered to all targets and burns 1300 TP, leaving you at zero from max. No durability left, balls for damage. Not a good idea. Steel Cyclone can be used every 17.5 to 25 seconds and hits for 200 potency. Circle of Scorn hits for 250 potency reduced by 20% to be 200 effective potency and hits every 25 seconds for free. Steel Cyclone takes away your drain again, so if you wanted to be really comparable, you'd have to take Sword Oath for PLD, which means PLD is doing just as much AoE damage and more single-target damage to boot. If you take the last option, which all but ignores the AoE element altogether the PLD's CoS is going to deal more damage than two Overpowers, plus he gets damage reduction from Flash's blind effect. The only question is whether enemy damage is low enough to make WAR preferred, and that's not an AoE factor at all. So cast that notion from your mind if you had ever considered it.

WAR is also not thumping PLD as a DPS -- that's gonna be another myth for you. If you are concerned about tanking DPS, PLD combo is 610 potency plus roughly 250 potency worth of autoattacks per 7.5 seconds. Add in Circle of Scorn (250 potency per 25s) and Spirits Within (300 potency per 30s) and reduce by 20% from Shield Oath so you have you have 107.73 potency per second. If we consider WAR's combo to be Storm's Eye -> Butcher's Block -> Inner Beast (only possible with one additional ability use), you get 127.05 potency per second -- an 18% advantage or so. Acting as DPS (i.e. when not in tanking stance), WAR delivers 154.67 potency by alternating SE and BB combos while PLD drops in 156.22 potency per second in Sword Oath due to Curtana's fast attack rate. The difference between the two acting as DPS is pretty negligible. You can tweak to add in Fracture, Berserk, Inner Release, and Fight or Flight but it's not going to make much of a difference. Just a few percentage points this way or that.

Finally, enmity is trivial on WAR and PLD both. Phase 3 enmity multipliers were insane (in Defiance or Shield Oath, you'd get 10x enmity on Butcher's Block -- you're CRUSHING the best DPS in enmity), and due to the 2x multiplier on Defiance, there's a fundamental inability for enmity to ever really matter on Jobs. You have a ton of innate headroom.

So yeah, in terms of ideal roles, what you really have is this:

WAR = tank for situations with lower enemy damage output
PLD = tank for situations with higher enemy damage output
Titan = tank for when you want to get your MNK killed

And not really anything else. That said, both are probably going to be plenty viable for all content. WAR is more active and requires more skill on behalf of the WAR and healer.

Oh, but by the way, WAR (along with ACN/SMN) is a prime contender for Ultimate Solo Championship. If you want to try soloing silly things for shits and giggles, WAR is a much better choice.

[DeeBeeP]

After reading everyone's post and doing some research I'm leaning heavily to Warrior. It sounds more exciting and at least for most dungeons you will be able to get by without a Paladin.

[TiberiusAugustus]

Maybe they need to drop "Bladed" from the lantern shield and re-skin to not have blades on them and make an actual shield blade as sword weapon for PLD exclusive that gives slight % (2%~5%) in block rate and slight DEF bonus and end game/high craft version have regen along with more % (6% ~ 10%) block rate, DEF bonus.