Defiance still lacking in comparison to Shield Oath

[Kitru]

Warrior cooldowns are Thrill of Battle which is very good, Foresight which Paladin can use, Bloodbath which is entirely inconsequential, and Featherfoot which is pulled from monk. Other cooldowns are mostly damage based, aside from Infuriate which can be used to give you another snap heal. These aren't even remotely up to par with the 3 paladin mitigation cooldowns.

You're drastically underestimating the value of the healing CDs. Bloodbath heals for a lot more than anyone ever seems to give it credit for, especially when it's stacked up with the numerous damage increase CDs that they get (Unchained, Berserk, Internal Release), not to mention Convalescence.

On top of that, you're also ignoring the trait modifications that apply to the given CDs. Compare the CD suites with more than just names (and you *do* have to factor in the additional abilities since those are pretty much requisite balancing concerns; PAL has a great default suite but it gets a *lot* less from its additionals than WAR does) and you'll see: WAR CDs have better uptime but lesser effects while active.

WARs get Bloodbath (30 every 90), Foresight (20 every 90), and Thrill of Battle (10 every 120) by default. For additionals, Featherfoot (15 every 90), Convalescence (20 every 120), Awareness (15? every 120) and/or Mantra (15 every 120). That's 122% total potential uptime. Toss out Awareness (questionable value) and you get 110%.

PALs get Hallowed Ground (10 every 420), Rampart (20 every 90), Convalescence (20 every 120), Awareness (25 every 120), Sentinel (10 every 180), and Bulwark (15 every 180). For additionals, all they get is Foresight (20 every 120) and Bloodbath (15 every 90). That's 109% potential uptime. Toss out Awareness (questionable value) and you get 88%. Toss out Bloodbath (questionable value thanks to the lower DPS and fewer DPS CDs) and it goes down to 71%.

WARs don't have the same *spike* CD functionality that PALs get, but they don't *need* to have the same spike functionality to have an equally valuable CD suite. The fact that they can maintain survivability CDs on a near constant basis is a substantial advantage.

[Faction]

You're drastically underestimating the value of the healing CDs. Bloodbath heals for a lot more than anyone ever seems to give it credit for

Sorry but a couple thousand healing at best over 30 seconds isn't significant, no matter how you try to twist it. So I can heal for 40% of my health if I'm VERY lucky over 30 seconds if I use it in conjuction with every other dps cooldown - and this is significant? Not to mention the 5+ seconds you'd lose if you pop all of your cooldowns at once due to animation time.

you're also ignoring the trait modifications that apply to the given CDs.

Um, there's two defensive cd's that get traits. 30 seconds lower CD on Foresight and 15 seconds duration to bloodbath. Very big deal! We could compare the trait modifications to gladiator skills, but none of the best gladiator skills are cross class (except covalescense, which guess what, has a trait that we don't get), while they get access to our second best cooldown. Lol!

lol skill comparison

Yeah, great. Except the warrior cooldowns are MUCH WORSE. Slightly higher uptime if you're chaining ineffectual cooldowns back to back isn't an advantage, especially when so much of your theory relies on the assumption that Warrior cooldowns are actually good, which they aren't. Is your theorycrafting serious, or is this some kind of weird troll?