Warriors - How to fix our damage mitigation

[Coramac]

" I feel like SE at least ONE time ... beat this Coil with a Pld war setup at least one time".... its a feeling... dont judge me lol......

Nice face and tattoo selection.

Basically, it works like this:

Pal and War have the same static EHP. With 15% War healing in healing intense scenarios, Pal have 8.7% more EHP. At 0% healing, Pal have 25% more EHP. Yes, you could likely orient your entire raid around having a War tank something or, you could bring a Pal, and have a lot more flexibility or room to optimize. Pal have 2 (or arguably 3) tanking cooldowns that blow away everything a War has. Lining up an big IB is good and takes multiple cooldowns. A Pal clicks one CD and they do everything IB does only better and for an extended period of time and execute faster.

Pal are not invincible. They are not indestructible tanking deities who laugh as they are tickled by raid bosses. They are, however, undisputedly better at tanking than Warriors.

[HiirNoivl]

1. You used 1 paladin who did 60 dps to argue that you can do 3x more dps than all paladins. That's a fallacy right there.

2. 140/60 is not 3.

It's not 5% either. XDD

So let's call it even Mmkay. And I didn't include DoTS from Fracture. Which I always Buff and put on for Max Damage.

[Kitru]

SAME Effective Health Points.

First off, lemme throw down with some math, since that's apparently what you want.

Your own math is flawed (and the numbers themselves are wrong, but I'll move on to that later). A target with 40% DR and 5k hp has an effective hp of 8333, not 8000, which mean that you're wrong, unless you want to claim a margin of error of 300 hp (which is pretty damned big).

Secondly, for individual burst hits without any CDs factored in, a WAR and a PAL *do* have the exact same eHP. WAR gets 25% additional hp and PAL gets 20% DR, which increased eHP by 25%. The issue is not about these circumstances, however. The issue is in long term healing required and in individual burst mitigation with CDs factored in.

For long term healing required, PAL still has the 20% DR going for it, which is a 25% effective increase in incoming heals (the same amount of healing is acting upon 125% of the amount of incoming damage that another person would take; this is why tanks are tank and not just enmity machines). WAR only manages 15% at best. This means that WAR requires 8.7% more external healing than a PAL does. As to WAR self heals, PAL has a shield, which provides additional mitigation because they can block and reduce incoming damage by 20+% a helluva lot more often than a WAR can, which more than makes up for the self heals that WAR brings to the table (Inner Beast is the only really sizeable self heal and it comes at a very steep cost that actually makes it benefit neutral outside of immediate Infuriate use).

Now, when you look at eHP with CDs active, WARs also get the short stick. All of the PAL CDs are dramatic, effectively guaranteed, increases to eHP: Rampart and Sentinel are DR (20% and 40%, respectively), Convalescence is increased healing received (30%), and Bulwark is a massive increase to shield chance such that it's dramatically more common to block than it is to not (block = 20% mitigation; ~80% chance while active equates to 10% mitigation). WAR CDs are either not guaranteed, only useful over long periods of time, and/or pathetically weak: Bloodbath provides 25% of outgoing damage as self healing (only useful if used on CD since it only provides appreciable benefits over the entire 30 second duration), Foresight's increase in Defense is so marginal thanks to defense's DR that you can pretty much ignore it (20% defense = ~5% physical DR), Convalescence is smaller (WAR goes from 1.15x healing to 1.35x, which is a 17% increase, so it's nearly half of what a PAL gets), and Fleetfoot is unreliable (15% miss chance is nice, but it's nowhere near guaranteed). The only really good tank CD that WARs get is Thrill of Battle, which increases eHP without reducing healing required so it's only effective for the incredibly short term, and, even then, it's weaker than the weakest of the PAL DR CDs (20% increased hp is 16.7% effective DR) while also having a shorter duration.

The only advantage that the WAR CD suite has is that it is almost universally on a shorter CD or has a higher effective uptime, which is useful if you know how to use it. The problem is that the comparative weakness of the WAR CDs is generally heavily overshadowed by the dramatically decreased effectiveness of the CDs. Bloodbath is decent and Fleetfoot is useful if you keep it on CD, but Thrill of Battle and Foresight, the only "true" tank CDs that WARs get, are woefully underpowered compared to a PAL's. The only time that a WAR's will stack well against a PAL is if the PAL doesn't use their CDs (which I'll admit is generally true; most of the PALs I know of barely touch their CDs whereas I abuse the living crap out of my tank CDs, keeping half of them on CD at all times).

just on those two steps alone you can heal yourself every 30 seconds & an extra heal every minute

Inner Beast has an *effective* cooldown of 20 seconds, which is the time it takes to generate 5 stacks of Wrath again. On top of that, it comes at a *very* steep cost: it removes all of your Wrath stacks and, as such, reduces your healing received. Using Inner Beast on CD ends up having Wrath provide you with a mere 7% +healing instead of the +15% that is pretty much always assumed, which means that, for it to be beneficial, it needs to provide 180% of the healing you'd receive from your healer(s) in a single GCD. At 900 hp, unless your healer is only hitting you with 500 point Cures (mine are hitting for 800-900+), Inner Beast on CD is actually going to make it *harder* to heal you. The only time it gets better is if you have multiple major DPS CDs active, which isn't possible all the time since none of those have 100% uptimes and unreliable to boot (Berserk is the only one that is guaranteed so you *have* to crit, which is a coin flip, to make it effective).

The only really effective way to use Inner Beast, using it before immediately using Infuriate to get your stacks back, *is* on a CD: 60 seconds. Getting ~900 hp every 60 seconds is a pittance: when big hits are for in excess of 2k, you're talking about, effectively, 2.5 seconds of 45% or less DR every 60 seconds. You get more out of Convalescence.

[Coramac]

Secondly, for individual burst hits without any CDs factored in, a WAR and a PAL *do* have the exact same eHP. WAR gets 25% additional hp and PAL gets 20% DR, which increased eHP by 25%. The issue is not about these circumstances, however. The issue is in long term healing required and in individual burst mitigation with CDs factored in.

This is individual burst hits only. There are few instances in any MMOs where burst is limited to a single hit rather than a combination of autoattacks with a special that happen in a short time span. Usually, the healers will be bombing the tank for this which will give the EHP edge to the Pal.

[HiirNoivl]

900~ HP... Is a pittance.

1700-2800 is not.

Look I understand that you've TRIED playing Warrior, but you stacked VIT, didn't deal much damage, didn't stack much enmity, couldn't heal yourself, couldn't survive, sucked Mana and made the healers rage quit.

I know because I made the same mistakes. But instead of giving up, I stepped back reassessed and gotten better at my job, to the benefit of myself and my parties.

I have 6770 and play better than I did with 8000. That's my story and I'm sticking to it until I see something INGAME that makes me feel differently.

[Ondesvin]

Again please stop with the ad hominem arguments! There is no reason to be insulting to make a point......

well javid, then tell me why a half geared Paladin can tank the current Content with hardly any problems, and a geared Warrior have huge troubles tanking the same content? give me an answer for that, we all know the inbalance is way out there and in huge favor for the paladin, and it will only get worse.

The Paladins I've seen DPS about 60. lol They spam the same combo over and over again for hate. about 140 DPS not counting Fracture DoTs. I had a Paladin practically drooling over my DPS and he was in AF +1 and I'm in level 70.

HiirNoivl give me a parse of you damage as a tank in Titan HM, for right now you are making assumption over your dps if you dont have a dps meter running it for you.

[Kitru]

So let's call it even Mmkay.

Any PAL doing 60 DPS against a comparatively geared WAR that's doing 160 DPS has no idea what they're doing.

First off, WAR and PAL weapons both do the same amount of damage so there is no equipment disparity; it's all based off of abilities.

Shield Oath applies a 20% reduction in damage dealt. Defiance applies a 25% reduction.

Berserk provides a 50% increase to all damage for 20 seconds and prevents any damage from abilities for 5 seconds thanks to Pacification on a 90 sec CD. This means that, for abilities, it provides a 5.56% increase in damage ((1.5 * 20 + 0 * 5 + 1 * 65) / 90). For auto-attacks, it provides an 11.11% increase in damage (.5 * 20 / 90) Fight or Flight provides 30% over its duration, and a 33.33% uptime. Berserk provides, over time, 5.56% increase in DPS to abilities and . Fight or Flight provides 10%.

Maim provides 20% additional damage on an effectively permanent basis. Storm's Edge, if you've got a WAR and PAL together, provides the benefit to both (both do slashing damage and it reduces the target's resistance to that damage), but it provides an 11.11% (1/.9) increase in damage.

PAL gets Circle of Scorn, which provides 250 potency every 25 seconds, and Spirits Within, which provides ~270 potency (assuming either an average 3.33 sec delay to get to max hp or averaging 90% hp using on CD) every 30 seconds. This averages out to 25 and 22.5 potency per GCD added to PAL.

The Halone combo (i.e. what PALs spam) provides 610 potency (150 + 200 + 260) over 7.5 seconds. The BB>SE combo string provides 1240 potency ((150 + 200 + 280) + (150 + 190 + 270)) over 15 seconds. These average out to 203.3 and 206.6 potency per GCD.

Auto-attacks have a default potency of 83.33 per GCD (auto-attacks deal weapon damage over 3 seconds which equates to potency 83.33 per GCD).

So, let's put it all together.

PAL (PAL tanking alone):
(203.3 + 25 + 22.5 + 83.33) * 1.1 * .8 = 294.03 average potency per GCD

PAL (PAL paired with WAR):
(203.3 + 25 + 22.5 + 83.33) * 1.1 * .8 / 0.9 = 326.70 average potency per GCD

WAR:
(206.6 * 1.0556 + 83.33 * 1.11) * 1.2 * .75 / .9 = 310.6 average potency per GCD

So a PAL either does 94.66% of the damage that a WAR does or 105.2% of what a WAR does (close enough to call it "within 5%").

The only time that a WAR outdoes a PAL for damage is when they are tanking alone, and, even if they're tanking together, a PAL manages a *crapton* more threat because they get to spam their high enmity combo whereas a WAR has to alternate between their high enmity combo and a default combo.

So, yeah, it's a complete and utter fabrication that WARs do more damage than PAL. Hell, WAR is *worse* at enmity generation than a PAL thanks to being forced to use non-high enmity combos to maximize DPS. Anyone that claims that WARs have some kind of absurd DPS advantage compared to PALs is either mathematically incompetent or deluded.

P.S. Fracture only bump up the baseline ability potency per GCD to 213.85, which brings the end total up to 318.24. This would have a PAL doing either 92.40% or 102.65%.

[Kitru]

This is individual burst hits only. There are few instances in any MMOs where burst is limited to a single hit rather than a combination of autoattacks with a special that happen in a short time span. Usually, the healers will be bombing the tank for this which will give the EHP edge to the Pal.

It's not individual burst hits explicitly. It's damage taken within a single GCD (which, admittedly, is how most big hits work), since that's the healing rate capability of a healer. A majority of the burst damage that tanks take end up being taken within a single GCD or a small number of GCDs where a healer is incapable of throwing out heals thanks to moving or other preventative methods.

When you start increasing the number of GCDs, you're not talking about eHP but instead healing required, which, as previously mentioned, is a different construct.

[Kitru]

1700-2800 is not.

First off, I take it as a bit of an insult that you automatically assume that I'm having a bitch of a time on my WAR. I'm not. I do quite well because I *do* know how to play a WAR effectively. I put all of my bonus attributes into Strength, because I *know* that it provides more than Vit does. It's a bit presumptive to tell someone that has shown you math that you're wrong that they're somehow making a crapton of newbie mistakes when it's pretty apparently that I actually know more about the class than you do.

Secondly, if you can *regularly* manage a 1700-2800 Inner Beast, I will eat my shoe. The only way you're getting those numbers is by boosting it *heavily* with CDs and scoring a critical hit, none of which are even remotely close to reliable, not to mention that, because you're waiting for a CD to be up, it might as well be the one you're saving Infuriate to recover from. Hell, that's *exactly* how I use my Inner Beast.

The issue is that Inner Beast, used in such a way, is *not* a viable boost to mean mitigation. It's a reactive CD that requires a *shit-ton* of set up (compared to the default "click it and it does its job) and luck (since you really need that crit). I was pointing out that using Inner Beast as soon as you have it available means you're going to be *hurting* yourself.

Also, the 900 healing number came from you in the post I quoted from. If you want to correct the Inner Beast heal number I used, you might want to make sure that you're not correcting your own number.

[Glakan]

This is what I don't get People put points into STR. Why? I'm serious why are you putting point into this stat?. Vit is mostly the way to go. I feel that most people go for STR because they see ooo I can parry more damage. YES but your parry has a chance to occur. If you don't parry that hit or dodge it you don't have a shield so what keeps you for being alive. Your defence and your HP, bigger health pool means that you can take a lot more hits. Yes you are spikier then a PLD but that is always been the case for non shield tanks in any MMO your healers just need to work around it. Use your CD correctly and just let the healers figure out how to heal you.

STR would be the way to go if you had a Parry chance of 100%. But it's not so you want to rely on defence and health pool to keep you alive.