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

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Wouldn't WARs have more to gain from a higher damage weapon at the exact same level?

This is true for warriors. Better gear > more damage > more self-healing = more tanking viability. So tank survival scaling through gear is in warrior's favor.

The problem is, as you already noted, paladins keep their 20% mitigation. Therefore, both classes' survival improves similarly through gear upgrades prior to incorporating their skill set, but what ends up happening is warrior survival scales with gear/damage, while paladin survival scales with mob damage. And generally speaking for MMOs, mob damage tends to ramp up faster than player damage, particularly for tanks.

There could be a point that, during the same content level, as gear is acquired, warriors surpass paladins, but I don't think that's entirely likely at this point with the current content/mechanics/scaling of our heals to damage. And even if it were, that relegates one class to progression and the other to farm status, which is not good class balance design when both classes are meant to fulfill the same role.

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