My WAR & the two aspects to make you tank effectively!

[Kitru]

So you are never in a situation where you have to pop an emergency Berserk + Inner Beast to keep yourself alive because the healer is busy dodging something else or was already Curing you but because actions take effect after animations you would have died anyway?

I use cooldowns *before* the shit hits the fan because I'm paying attention. The only way I die without any recourse is when I get burst down to dead in under 1 GCD, which means that Berserk + IB wouldn't matter anyways. Also, unless you're in a dungeon, MT doesn't need to get adds so... yeah.

And you have found some magical use for Awareness or Mantra when they are subbed? Or are you saying you use Haymaker so you can cancel your combo on use when you (rarely) dodge? If there were better abilities to sub in their place I would gladly use them but there aren't.

Haymaker doesn't cancel combos. I used it for a little while but dropped it when I found that the slow suffered DR. Awareness is actually a very good CD; it's just not an incredibly obvious one because you don't notice when you don't get crit. Just because it slips beneath your radar doesn't mean that it's not doing anything. Mantra is actually pretty useful, not as a tank CD, but as a raid utility combined. Whenever you have raid damage going out, pop it: it increases your healing received a bit while lightening healer load on the rest of the group, allowing them more time to get back to focus healing you faster.

Awareness and Mantra (Second Wind until you get Mantra) are *most definitely* more useful than Flash. A strong case can be made for them being more useful than Provoke as well (since the only use it serves is easing up tank swapping and having the MT recover from a death, which, 99% of the time, ends up wiping the group anyway or being useless as the OT takes over MT duties). The occasions where Flash gets anywhere *near* being useful are so specific and so few that you have to be *trying* to make Flash useful by putting yourself in those situations to get anything out of it rather than actually playing intelligently.

Flash is horrible. Anyone that claims that it's *more* useful than Awareness or Mantra either *vastly* inflates the value of an safe AoE that can be used 3 times before running out or underestimates the value of ignoring crits and increasing all healing to the entire raid. Honestly, it seems to me like you're doing both.

[CurlyBruce]

...

Not every mob in the game has predictable attack patterns. Shit could hit the fan and then immediately hit the fan again if you get a bad streak of WS from a mob. Granted my hypothetical scenario was for a very specific case so I'll concede the point. I was unaware Haymaker didn't cancel combo. It did in Phase 2-3 and I never bothered using it from that point on so I never checked so thanks for the clarification.

As for Awareness and Mantra, Awareness only lasts 15s on a 120s cooldown and there is no way to guarantee you would even receive a critical attack during the time. Its function is pretty much the same as Featherfoot only Featherfoot at least allows you to mitigate 100% of the damage should it grant you a dodge where as Awareness just lowers the damage by 50%. Mantra is only 5% extra healing for 15s on a 120s cooldown again. I'm not aware of the range but unless it hits all party members regardless of distance there will be many situations where you are the only one gaining any benefit from it.

Of course this argument is pointless if you know ahead of time you will have no need for Provoke/Flash, as you stated, since that would just be a wasted slot. I guess the point I was trying to make is I find more uses for Flash/Provoke than I do for Awareness/Mantra overall.

[Kitru]

As for Awareness and Mantra, Awareness only lasts 15s on a 120s cooldown and there is no way to guarantee you would even receive a critical attack during the time. Its function is pretty much the same as Featherfoot only Featherfoot at least allows you to mitigate 100% of the damage should it grant you a dodge where as Awareness just lowers the damage by 50%. Mantra is only 5% extra healing for 15s on a 120s cooldown again. I'm not aware of the range but unless it hits all party members regardless of distance there will be many situations where you are the only one gaining any benefit from it.

Awareness isn't used to mitigate damage. It's to normalize your incoming damage to make it much more predictable than usual. Making incoming damage predictable is remarkably useful since it allows you to use the rest of your abilities more effectively over the duration of it. Yes, you can't guarantee that you could have gotten crit within the next 30 seconds, but you also can't be sure that you wouldn't get smacked by 2 or 3 of them.

For Mantra, the range is a limiting factor, but a *vast* majority of the time that big AoE damage happens, the group collapses to allow for Medica/Succor. Use it when the group is all nice and tightly packed and you're doing great with it (also, it's 5% below level 40, iirc; at 50, it's 10%).

A lot of it comes down to your tanking style and experience, methinks. I use and abuse my CDs by knowing the fights and using CDs proactively as well as reactively while having no issue with enmity, whether AoE or ST, or Pacification, which is why I like having 2 extra CDs rather than Flash and Provoke. The only time I'm going to take Provoke is for a tank swap fight; I'll never take Flash (unless they add some boss that hits the tank with Pacification right as adds spawn, which would just be a dick move on the part of the devs).

[Ondesvin]

Awareness you can't guarantee that you could have gotten crit within the next 30 seconds.

For Mantra, (also, it's 5% below level 40, iirc; at 50, it's 10%).

im sorry to say this but Awareness is 15 sec and negate crit 100% if you read the ingame tooltip.

and Mantra is only 5% as a cross class ability again if you read up on the ingame tooltip. it increase to 20% from the passive pug skill and you dont get that as a warrior.

[Kitru]

im sorry to say this but Awareness is 15 sec and negate crit 100% if you read the ingame tooltip.

Yeah, facepalmed that a bit.

and Mantra is only 5% as a cross class ability again if you read up on the ingame tooltip. it increase to 20% from the passive pug skill and you dont get that as a warrior.

I'm pretty sure that Mantra is another one of those additionals that has a lower effect if you're below a certain level, just like Bloodbath and others have a shorter duration if you're not at least X level. I'm not *absolutely* sure, but I've heard it enough and it makes enough sense given that there aren't really any traits that quadruple the effectiveness of an ability (double, generally, which would make sense with 10% base) that I'm confident that it does.

[Tronic]

Awareness and Mantra (Second Wind until you get Mantra) are *most definitely* more useful than Flash. A strong case can be made for them being more useful than Provoke as well (since the only use it serves is easing up tank swapping and having the MT recover from a death, which, 99% of the time, ends up wiping the group anyway or being useless as the OT takes over MT duties). The occasions where Flash gets anywhere *near* being useful are so specific and so few that you have to be *trying* to make Flash useful by putting yourself in those situations to get anything out of it rather than actually playing intelligently.

Mantra gives only 5% extra healing for 15 seconds every 120 seconds, and requires your allies to be close and for everybody to be taking damage to be worthwhile, so it's very situational at best. Worst of all, it requires you to level monk to 42 (and I find mnk incredibly boring to level >.<). Flash has some very real situational advantages and I use it all the time. I'll buy into awareness if I see some parser data on boss crit rates. If they have something like a 5% base crit rate, then no. Provoke is also useful as a long-range pulling ability and because people in your party will inevitably derp and steal agro by hitting the wrong mob, agroing adds or being medica 2 trigger happy.