Paladin or Marauder?

[RayHylia]

The Paladin vs Warrior question will never end lol. Pld take less dmg overall, deal less dmg. War take more dmg and deal more dmg. To be honest Plds can hold hate against mobs just as well as War can but war has more aoe moves which makes it more prefered for mob tanking. Its that simple. I prefer my PLD over my War anyday and I hope they give us Holy Succor back since cure sucks ass.

[Swordphobic]

About aoe on warriors, you seem to forget that the enmity multiplier on overpower is 4, while pallies flash doesn't come even close to similar enmity on multi mobs. So yes, warriors are actually more adept at tanking multiple mobs, which can lead to faster clear rates if your team is aoe heavy.

There was a spreadsheet around showing a lvl 50 pally generating about 550 aoe enmity with flash, a warrior's overpower need only do 138 damage to surpass that. If you want to go into the tps realm of discussion, 1k tps spent in overpower with defiance should do more than enough agro to finish off most mobs. On survivability, bloodbath and a few cooldowns are usually enough for the fat pulls.

[RayHylia]

I endorse Gamemako's post as well....just saying.

[Size]

-snip-

Thanks for this post. Sounds like you truly know what you're talking about. As a newbie to ARR, I think I will level Paladin first and use that as my main and then warrior until I am good enough to do the content on that.

[Gamemako]

There was a spreadsheet around showing a lvl 50 pally generating about 550 aoe enmity with flash, a warrior's overpower need only do 138 damage to surpass that.

That's 138 damage from 120 potency, or 115 damage per 100 potency. Worse still, Shield Oath doubles Flash enmity and ignores the 20% damage penalty because it's not damage-based enmity. Thus, Flash is 1100 enmity per shot, while Overpower is 8 times an attack that is effectively 90 potency after Defiance reduction. To meet 1100 enmity per GCD with Overpower, you had to reach 152.78 damage per 100 unreduced potency. Depending on where you put your stats, you may have 100 damage per 100 unreduced potency. The reason AoE enmity generation not unbalanced in favor of Flash is because the ability doesn't benefit from damage-increasing abilities, so if you stack Maim and Berserk, you can generate 80% more enmity from Overpower for a short time while Flash is stuck at some number based on strength and weapon damage. Heck, if you're really up for it, you can burn 180s CD on Unchained, stack Maim, Berserk, Inner Release, and go to town -- lots of burst generation, though not a good idea pretty much ever for reasons I'm about to get to. Also, WAR can cross-class Flash, and every WAR really should because you have nothing else you can use with your GCDs during the 5s Pacification after Berserk.

But that's all beside, the point, because 2 shots of Flash generates a truckload of enmity in the first place. Remember than when a PLD drops 2 Flash and CoS, that's 2600 damage worth of threat in 2.5 seconds. Flare may hit like a truck (or a whole fleet of trucks), but it's not nearly 2500 damage, and your BLM can cut that in half with Quelling Strikes because there's certainly no other use for QS when single-target enmity is even more out-of-control. As I said before, neither tank is hurting for enmity. You almost have to actively try to screw up to lose aggro based on phase 3 multipliers.

[Junk4Brains]

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...

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.

[Swordphobic]

Junk4brains: Tests seem to show that self healing from abilities (bloodbath and such) do not produce enmity.

Gamemako: That was a test with a lvl 50 pally, from reports I've read it seems gladiators indeed are having a harder time holding multiple mob's agro, I'd expect to not overperform overpower when switching classes. Greatest reason I'd put flash on my bar isn't for pacification, but for using when ccing mobs because it doesn't break sleep.

The reason I'm going to invest more into marauder than pally is that from my experience in other games as long as you can get gear with enough mitigation doing fast runs with lots of aoe is way more fun than slow controlled 1 enemy at a time runs. Damage cooldowns might also be useful for enrage bosses/time limit/window of attack bosses.

Will prob level glad/pally a bit, if only so I can recycle my plate instead of being afraid of turning old hard to get pieces into materia.

[Gamemako]

Discussion

Yeah, I accounted for both Storm's Eye and Maim -- that's why I added them as part of normal DPS rotations. You're right that I didn't take crits into account, which are increased by Defiance. Inner Release is only usable 15 seconds per 60 seconds only boosts your damage by 2.5% of base damage when time-weighted, which is less than 2.5% relative after considering existing crit rates. The relative increase from the average 5% crit boost is another 2.5% of base. Adding in those bonus for WAR in Defiance is likely to add a small amount to the lead, but not very much, and I made other concessions like using an ability which would reduce the lead. Like I said, a few percentage points this way or that -- ballpark is what matters here, not exact numbers (else I'd have to start considering PLD's higher base strength, equipment for each, and potential builds, and we've got plenty of math in this thread already).

And yes, you're no better off as WAR when not using Defiance, but you can't enter a dungeon as WAR and take off the job stone mid-fight. As far as comparisons go, you have little choice but to consider WAR-as-DPS to be WAR without WAR abilities because that's what you'll do if you're hitting enemies in a dungeon. You could use Infuriate->Unchained for a very brief take on extra crit rate and one free use of a 300-potency attack, but you're recovering all of maybe 200 potency per 180s -- negligible again. You're right that WAR can set up very high peak damage output. Berserk is 50% compared to the 30% bonus on Fight or Flight, plus Inner Release for another small damage boost. However, over time, PLD is going to do just as well. Berserk is 50% for 20 seconds and a 5s pacification effect. It earns you 10 DPS-seconds, then costs you about 3.5 (the weaponskill portion of 5 seconds). Fight or Flight gives you 9 DPS seconds (30% for 30 seconds) and takes nothing, meaning it actually gives more over time. It's counterintuitive, probably, but Fight or Flight is now better than Berserk over time. Either way, in the end, the damage figures in DPS mode are pretty comparable and are more dependent on the build and gear. I certainly don't have any kind of data which would suggest WAR has any advantage here, but if you come across come phase 4 parses on some HP tank boss, let me know!

Junk4brains: Tests seem to show that self healing from abilities (bloodbath and such) do not produce enmity.

Gamemako: That was a test with a lvl 50 pally, from reports I've read it seems gladiators indeed are having a harder time holding multiple mob's agro, I'd expect to not overperform overpower when switching classes. Greatest reason I'd put flash on my bar isn't for pacification, but for using when ccing mobs because it doesn't break sleep.

Re: self-healing, yes, self-healing didn't increase enmity in Phase 3. Self-healing also was not affected by healing modifiers (Convalesce), so I suspect it's also not increased by Defiance.

Re: lower-level tanking, the modifiers were level-based in Phase 3. You got much less enmity early-game on all weaponskills, but by the time you hit 50, the modifiers were insane. Holding aggro early on was harder in Phase 3 as well, and doesn't seem to have changed in Phase 4. I've been wary of my assumptions of things working like they did in Phase 3 simply because of how massive those modifiers were. Still, if something changed, we'll know in a week or less.

[Hoshikogi]

PLD Cure is pathetic, good weapon or not. It is in my leveling rotation, sure, but won't take a place on my hotbar when tanking.

I'd have to agree, even with decent gear my cures were 1/3 the potency of my WHM's cure in equivalent gear. I'm curious if it's just a matter of re-balancing.

[Junk4Brains]

Discussion Con.

Like I said I kinda of agree but still there is a reason people pay obscene amounts of currency of HQ gear when the NQ version can be had for a tenth of the price and is only 2-3% weaker at best. And that is because small differences =/= insignificant differences because after a while all those little small differences add up. And that is mainly the difference between WAR and PLD. You are right that at their foundation they aren't that far a part in damage. But all of those small differences add up. Like I see you gave PLD credit for their DoT skill but a Warrior can also work Fracture in their their rotation PLD can do this too but at a slightly inferior total of 220 potency vs 300. And then you also have Vengance which his based off the enemies attack rate. Heck if I know I don't have to stun and moves, I always make sure to use Brutal Swing every 30 seconds. Its not a lot of damage but its free damage, and free damage is always good damage in my book. And that is the story with MRD vs PLD damage wise. To me the main advantage is not the quantity of the damage but the quality... or more accurately the versatility of the damage. There really is no dancing around the naked true that PLD simply has more defensive options and WAR simply has more offensive options.

As for MRD vs WAR. Of course you can't swap in a dungeon but if I run a dungeon a couple of times and I realize that I don't need the extra HP or hate. I'll run that dungeon as a MRD. (Provided that the gear is not so inferior to AF that its not worth it.) But yes, I agree, for general purposes the damage is close but being close does not make them equal and even by shallow min/max standards at 20~% difference is MASSIVE. Now is this difference massive enough to make a difference in a party setting? No. You're a tank and the DPS classes' contribution to damage will always outweigh your own. But in a solo situation... well that is where someone might care how much damage they are doing.