Yoshi P talks about Warriors- from Producer Letter Live @ TGS

[Guammasa]

You mean a Stoneskin/Cureskin or a temporarily boost your max HP for any excess amount?

Either way, one of the two would match with how self heals would function as mitigation. Warriors would either have a slightly boosted HP pool to sponge with or a shield to absorb some of the damage. Like I said earlier, I'm not for making it so Warriors can take a hit "like" Pally can. I want it so that the mechanic of self heals either matches a slightly higher portion of incoming damage or is able to be used on non-spike-damage periods to build a small buffer to absorb a little of the damage.

Either would work if the idea is that Warriors are meat shields that just sponge damage and Pally reduces it. Still, if we're going to keep bringing that horrible word "balance" into the fray, then if the two classes fight the same boss without external heals they should die at roughly the same time. That would exhibit balance in what I understand the word to mean.

[Wangstrong]

Both tank classes need to have similar survivability. That's the root of the problem; that is, the fact that they don't have anywhere near similar survivability is the problem. When it comes to survivability, damage mitigation is by far the most effective method. Self-healing and avoidance aren't nearly as reliable and have never been an adequate substitute for mitigation.

For baseline mitigation, warriors currently have pretty much just the armor off their backs. This amounts to approximately 25-30% damage reduction. Paladins have an additional 20% plus the ability to block (worth a rough estimate of 5% physical mitigation). A paladin's baseline mitigation is nearly twice as high as a warrior's even before adding the plethora of powerful cooldowns that further widens the gap between the two tanks.

There are some, even amongst those who agree that the warrior class needs buffs, who seem to think that the survivability has to be from sources other than mitigation because paladins somehow have a monopoly on this mechanic. This is never going to be possible. There's no realistic way to give the warrior similar survivability without giving them any additional mitigation at all. You'd have to give warriors so much self-healing that it would be completely absurd, probably enabling them to solo dungeons, FATEs and other pre-endgame content. Even then, their survivability would still be unreliable compared to the safe, dependable damage reduction mechanic.

Paladins will always have more mitigation due to Shield Oath. They'll always be the mitigation tank. However, in order for the two tank classes to be remotely equal and capable of tanking the same content without one being at a huge disadvantage and thus shunned by those who pick the proverbial team, there need to be some damage reduction abilities available to warriors. Something as effective as Rampart/Sentinel/Bulwark.

Ýou can't make an effective tank that has practically no mitigation and gets all of its survivability from self-healing. People tend to point to WoW and Death Knights as an example of a self-sustaining tank, but WoW's tank classes are nowhere near as different as FFXIV's. Not even slightly. They all have baseline mitigation within ~10% of eachother, and they all have relatively equal defensive cooldowns. The difference is in minor mechanics; DK self-healing compensates for the lack of block, and Blizzard would never be so stupid as to try and make a class with the raw survivability of a fury warrior, throw in a bigger HP pool, and then attempt to give them self-healing as the only substitute for the enormous difference in survivability between this and other tanks. I like to think that no competent developer would be so thoughtless and out of touch with MMORPG basics.

I don't even want to imagine what went through the minds of the developers who thought that they could give one tank class literally no mitigation beyond the defense stat on their armor, give the other half a dozen different sources of mitigation, and think that they could possibly be equally capable of tanking. It's gross incompetence, inexperience, and a blatant lack of playtesting. It's one of the most glaring and damaging lapses in class balance design that I've ever seen.

[Ruminate]

A paladin's baseline mitigation is nearly twice as high as a warrior's

I'm pretty sure thats wrong. Shield Oath's reduction occurs after Defense, not together. If it stacked, then Shield Oath would add ~50% more effective health at 40% mitigation from Defense + Protect(with ever increasing returns as Defense gets higher, in other words, PLDs would scale better with gear compared to WAR).

Anyone wanna test the damage done before and after Shield Oath? Keep in mind that damage variance is +/- 5%, so you would need to record more than a couple hits.

[Churchill]

Let's not forget, defense is worthless and you're not exactly getting boatloads of it every time you upgrade gear. A few points, yay. That's not stopping me from taking more damage.

[Duelle]

Ýou can't make an effective tank that has practically no mitigation and gets all of its survivability from self-healing. People tend to point to WoW and Death Knights as an example of a self-sustaining tank, but WoW's tank classes are nowhere near as different as FFXIV's. Not even slightly. They all have baseline mitigation within ~10% of eachother, and they all have relatively equal defensive cooldowns. The difference is in minor mechanics; DK self-healing compensates for the lack of block, and Blizzard would never be so stupid as to try and make a class with the raw survivability of a fury warrior, throw in a bigger HP pool, and then attempt to give them self-healing as the only substitute for the enormous difference in survivability between this and other tanks. I like to think that no competent developer would be so thoughtless and out of touch with MMORPG basics.

This makes so much sense it hurts. It also sums up how I feel on the matter and second the sentiment. That being said, prepare yourself for the stream of people who will predictably misuse the word "homogenization" in a poor attempt to argue against your statement.

[Ruminate]

Let's not forget, defense is worthless and you're not exactly getting boatloads of it every time you upgrade gear. A few points, yay. That's not stopping me from taking more damage.

This is flat out wrong. Damage reduction gains from Defense is linear. Every point is better than the last.

Most MMOs give a linear amount of armor/defense as the item level rises, but apply diminishing returns to the mitigation gained per point. This curbs the ever increasing returns phenomenon.
In FFXIV, there is diminishing returns on the amount of defense gained as the item level rises, but the mitigation gained per point is linear.
The effect is the same in both cases, the difference is that 1 point of Defense in FFXIV is worth a helluva lot more than 1 point of Armor in other MMOs.

[Churchill]

25 Defense is going to make Warrior da bes

[Wangstrong]

This is flat out wrong. Damage reduction gains from Defense is linear. Every point is better than the last.

Most MMOs give a linear amount of armor/defense as the item level rises, but apply diminishing returns to the mitigation gained per point. This curbs the ever increasing returns phenomenon.
In FFXIV, there is diminishing returns on the amount of defense gained as the item level rises, but the mitigation gained per point is linear.
The effect is the same in both cases, the difference is that 1 point of Defense in FFXIV is worth a helluva lot more than 1 point of Armor in other MMOs.

I reckon the point was that going from freshly-dinged 50 to full Darklight nets you something like 30 defense, 700ish to 730ish. This does not make a noteworthy difference, and thus warrior damage mitigation pretty much doesn't scale with gear. Nor does anyone else's, but thay's irrelevant. Going from Darklight to the next tier will bump your defense up to 740. Some people have been insisting that getting endgame gear will somehow make warriors viable.

[hola]

Except that WAR doesn't do more damage than PLD. It's a myth that's been propagated by people that don't know what they're talking about.

well, if we wear DD accessories，we could deal ok dmg, i just crit for 950 on my warrior with dd gear on garuda, without defiance of course.

so this class definitely need to be adjusted..

[Kitru]

well, if we wear DD accessories，we could deal ok dmg, i just crit for 950 on my warrior with dd gear on garuda, without defiance of course.

A PLD with Sword Oath hits as hard as a WAR without Defiance. Even when they're going DPS mode, WAR doesn't deal more damage.