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

[CurlyBruce]

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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.