I always start with a simple test that anyone can do. This test is to get a PLD and get a WAR. Have each take turns tanking for a group. In each test as soon as you engage the enemy, now this is a VERY important part, have the tanks put the controller down. Now IF you have done this test correctly you will find that both tanks perform EXACTLY the same. Shocking right! I mean how can this be! Well fear not let me explain. From very careful, math intensive, and scientifically laboring research I have deduced that a classes performance potential is relatively the same UNTIL you add in the human element. That is right folks....you heard it hear first. The player makes the class not the other way around.

And I found that from countless hours of psychological study that... get this, people perform better when they are actually having fun. I know, its an odd concept right... who'd have thought that 'fun' matters in video games!?

All jokes aside...

Quote Originally Posted by Gamemako View Post
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.
I almost agree except the damage department. I don't know if you took Maim's 20% boost into account. Also remember that each stack of Wraith = 2% crit. So it will not always be best for the WAR use use up their stacks. One tool you didn't take into account was Internal Release. So, for myself, when I get 5 stacks of Wrath before using them if IR is up, I have 12-13 seconds of 30% crit rate before I unload IB. And that can be done every 60 seconds. And of course while FoF is in the realm of close to Berserk but not close enough. So you have 18% that by itself is not a small margin, superior crit rate and superior spike damage.

And when not in Defiance quite honestly a WAR is better off just going MRD to access a wider variety of offensive skills. Where a PLD going GLD will loose their Sword Oath buff.

Both I agree both tanks are relatively equal. But a PLD's maximum damage put is not going to touch a WAR the same way a WAR's damage single target damage mitigation is never going to touch what a PLD.

I posted this in another forum but here is my opinion on the matter:
Well this latest update in P4 brought PLD's damage up some to be a little closer to WAR and it brought up WAR's healing ability to bring its survivability a little closer to PLD. So the question is not really about which is the better tank but which is the funner tank. They both are just as 'tanky' but they both do so very differently.

PLD is more a passive tank relying on mitigation, their combos are rather limited but effective and they have a large list of hit it and forget it defensive skills. MRD is the opposite, they rely on absorption soaking up damage dealt to them with a large hp pool and self heals. Unlike PLD it is a more active tank that has to utilize a wider range of combos to maximize their effectiveness.

PLD might seem kind of boring but that is just the nature of the class. It is a very less is more, play style. PLD's job is to slow things down... or more so slow down the incoming damage as much as possible. While its stun looks useful there are a few things to consider, its on the global cool down which means if you just finished a combo when the mob starts charging up, you'll have to wait for the 2.5 seconds to pass. Also just about every class a stun in some form or fashion so in most cases it would be better to have a stun rotation rather than trying to take the responsibility all to yourself. What PLD's stuff IS useful for though is not a reactive skill but an active one. When you get hit really hard and your health is lower than you like, hit the enemy with shield bash to stun them and give your healer some more time to cure you. What makes PLD's damage mitigation so great though is Shield Swipe. With stun, repeated uses of it will become less effective. This resistance fades over time and this is where pacification comes it. Pacification prevents the target from using skills at all. That coupled with well timed stuns/sleeps. Means a boss can be locked down for quite a while. (Added not, Shield bash is also good to use RIGHT after pacification debuff fades away for that nice 12 second window.) But against bosses that spam a lot of dangerous hard hitting skills, PLD will be your go to tank.

MRD again is the otherside of the coin. If with PLD less is more, with MRD, more is more. Where PLD wants to slow the pace of the battle down, MRD constantly has their foot on the accelerator. And I hate to say it, but if a PLD and a MRD are in a group and the MRD wants to tank... the MRD is GOING to tank. MRD has access to all the same hate tools as PLD PLUS Overpower which has a beastly x4 hate bonus. Then you add in the added hate generated from their heavier damage and the hate generated from their self heals. ( 1 point of damage = 1 point of hate. 1 point of healing = .5 points in hate) and you have a tank that holds hate like no other. And all that hate means, the DD's can really let loose your healers can break out their big cures will less worry... and over all things just die faster. Of course MRD is not without it's weaknesses. MRD is all about controlled chaos, it is a VERY TP driven class and if you get just a little too out of control and you'll find yourself sitting at 0 TP much sooner than you'd want to. And a MRD with no TP is about as useful as a urinal in a ladies bathroom. Like I said MRD is a much more active tank, when it comes to variety they are second only to MNK. So you will constantly be deciding which combo is the best for turn in combat, whether it is to build hate, cure yourself, buff your damage, or do stronger AoE damage. And whether to do the long version of the combo or the short and if it is even worth the TP or let your auto attack run for a few turns. Then you have the Wrath mechanic and all the option that brings and in the end you get a very busy tank.

So what it all boils down to is this. For 80% of the content, both tanks can perform equally well if you center your group tactics around their strengths. For 10% of the content, both tanks are capable but one tank will have to put in a lot more effort than the other to get the same results. For 5% of the content PLD's mitigation will just plain old be better. For the last 5 WAR's absorption and offensive prowess will win the day. Of course without seeing end game those are made up numbers but the general sentiment is if you want to be the best tank, level both MRD and GLD. If one class is just plain more fun to you or fits your play style better, just play that and don't worry about it. Some fights might be really really tough but it won't be impossible. Their skill sets are basically close enough you don't have to kill yourself leveling both if you don't want to.