Tanking - WAR and PLD. There is no "Better".

[Kal-El]

Convalescence doesn't effect Thrill of Battle by the way. It's a static % heal. Same as second wind - that works off attack power rather than cure potency.

PLDs mitigation is % based while WARs mitigation is static and doesn't rise with harder content.

I love my WAR but you need better gear to do the same job effectively. So WAR is viable but why go for WAR when a PLD will be viable much earlier with worse gear and have an easier time?

[Hachiko]

I'd be interested to see how that works. Your numbers for Inner Beast heals seem a little bit low to me, considering that you're calling those numbers the Relic+1 high STR build?

1600 is about right. I think he's calculating the "average" inner beast, i.e. normal and crit inner beasts averaged.

I'm running a 30 STR build w/ 1 STR accessory and relic +1.

My inner beasts with Maim and SE up heal for ~1200-1300 non-crit, and 1800ish on crit.

[Gamemako]

Btw, what do you take into accoutn when you count pld mitigation ?

Illya is mostly correct here. I included block, Shield Oath, Rampart, Sentinel, and Hallowed Ground. I did not include Rage of Halone due to funky mechanics. I could try to include account for it as well, though I will need better endgame data -- level 50 mob damage parses which I cannot provide because I have no 50 PLD. Any volunteers on providing that data vs. level 50 opponents? Could test on some sad, lonely FATE boss nobody ever touches, I guess. If I had that, I would probably fork into magical and melee cases, since magic also cannot be blocked. Flash's blind effect was not included due to immunity on powerful opponents as well as lack of data. I tried to shy away from guesswork and maybes as much as possible. For WAR, I included several cases:

Wrath Only -- Sit on 15% from Wrath stacks. Exists for comparison with other cases and with PLD. This effect is 60% of Shield Oath alone.
WAR-low -- Average 850 heal (before Maim and Storm's Eye) from Inner Beast. This is a pure-VIT build with ilvl70 gear.
WAR-high -- Average 1200 heal from Inner Beast. This is a pure-STR build with ilvl90 gear. It is slightly above what Kunkka accomplished.
WAR-hold -- This is the WAR-high case with WAR holding onto Wrath stacks except when Infuriate is up. This is the better way of playing the Wrath-Only setup, since you get all the Wrath bonus plus 1 Inner Beast per minute.

All WAR cases include Bloodbath, Thrill of Battle, Berserk, and Second Wind. Neglected were Mercy Stroke, Featherfoot, Bulwark, Awareness, Foresight, Convalesce, Inner Release, and passive regen. Inner Release sucks horrendously, and the rest are either cross-class or have close analogues. They aren't pushing the dial much one way or the other.

I'd be interested to see how that works. Your numbers for Inner Beast heals seem a little bit low to me, considering that you're calling those numbers the Relic+1 high STR build?

Sadly, they are not. Kunkka has 423 strength, 262 Determination and a Bravura +1 and hit around 512 after Maim and Storm's Eye (posted this image verifying it).

Just for once i would like a REAL comparison taking everything into account so we can have a nice graphic showing once and for all how abyssmal warrior currently is for almost anything. And btw, i don't think assuming 18sec uptime per minute of flash and 2 stoneskin per minute is a stretch, and it would actually imply a much higher baseline for paladin.

Unfortunately, it is not feasible to create such an analysis. You will have to include a dozen cases varying by immunities and damage types, plus specific mechanics. At this time, I find it wholly unnecessary to even attempt -- the goal is to create a reasonable, representative sample case and balance toward it. There will be places where WAR actually has some relative advantages. For example, magical opponents which cannot be blocked but can be dodged offer WAR a relative advantage: WAR can activate Featherfoot to reduce damage while PLD's equivalent, Bulwark, would be wholly ineffective. Designing to this individual case is a fool's errand.

Use of Stoneskin is certainly dubious at best. You will not use it at all except in cases where you have free time or in cases where you desperately need more healing. These are not frequent cases, nor are they of particular impact. I believe Stoneskin is best represented a bit differently as an extension of PLD's burst eHP pool.

//EDIT:

Here are some of the cases you would need to consider:

-Single target / 2 target / 3 target / 4 target / 5+ target
-Physical damage vs. Magical damage vs. 50/50
-Vulnerable to Stun, Blind, Silence, Slow, Pacification
-Average opportunities for Stoneskin per minute
-Defense passthrough abilities and debuffs.
-Ground-target frequency and feasibility of dodging

I count at least 5760 charts needed for that. Better to just keep one or two realistic cases, don't you think?

[Amyas]

Devs say war is fine, you guys and your 'mathematicuhl evuhdence' haven't researched enough ;p

[Hachiko]

Devs say war is fine, you guys and your 'mathematicuhl evuhdence' haven't researched enough ;p

Says the WAR with no coil experience who hasn't downed Titan yet.

Also, how can insult 'mathematicuhl evuhdence' and then say we haven't researched enough in the same breath? What are we supposed to do research with? Our gut? Our feelings? Because math, and experience both result in the same (obvious) outcome.

But yeah your feelings about WAR are clearly much more accurate, WAR who has no end-game experience.

[Amyas]

But yeah your feelings about WAR are clearly much more accurate, WAR who has no end-game experience.

I was partially being sarcastic and butthurt at the current situation as to how players view war (healers complaining about healing?! GAH!). I've had a few titan attempts, in DF and a couple of pugs, I've just been focusing on getting af2 so I won't be such a burden. I take pride in my chosen main job, it was what I started 1.x as, and I don't want to be left behind because some dorks want everything easymode ;-;

[Casper]

Illya is mostly correct here. I included block, Shield Oath, Rampart, Sentinel, and Hallowed Ground. I did not include Rage of Halone due to funky mechanics. I could try to include account for it as well, though I will need better endgame data -- level 50 mob damage parses which I cannot provide because I have no 50 PLD. Any volunteers on providing that data vs. level 50 opponents? Could test on some sad, lonely FATE boss nobody ever touches, I guess. If I had that, I would probably fork into magical and melee cases, since magic also cannot be blocked. Flash's blind effect was not included due to immunity on powerful opponents as well as lack of data. I tried to shy away from guesswork and maybes as much as possible. For WAR, I included several cases:

Wrath Only -- Sit on 15% from Wrath stacks. Exists for comparison with other cases and with PLD. This effect is 60% of Shield Oath alone.
WAR-low -- Average 850 heal (before Maim and Storm's Eye) from Inner Beast. This is a pure-VIT build with ilvl70 gear.
WAR-high -- Average 1200 heal from Inner Beast. This is a pure-STR build with ilvl90 gear. It is slightly above what Kunkka accomplished.
WAR-hold -- This is the WAR-high case with WAR holding onto Wrath stacks except when Infuriate is up. This is the better way of playing the Wrath-Only setup, since you get all the Wrath bonus plus 1 Inner Beast per minute.

All WAR cases include Bloodbath, Thrill of Battle, Berserk, and Second Wind. Neglected were Mercy Stroke, Featherfoot, Bulwark, Awareness, Foresight, Convalesce, Inner Release, and passive regen. Inner Release sucks horrendously, and the rest are either cross-class or have close analogues. They aren't pushing the dial much one way or the other.



Sadly, they are not. Kunkka has 423 strength, 262 Determination and a Bravura +1 and hit around 512 after Maim and Storm's Eye (posted this image verifying it).



Unfortunately, it is not feasible to create such an analysis. You will have to include a dozen cases varying by immunities and damage types, plus specific mechanics. At this time, I find it wholly unnecessary to even attempt -- the goal is to create a reasonable, representative sample case and balance toward it. There will be places where WAR actually has some relative advantages. For example, magical opponents which cannot be blocked but can be dodged offer WAR a relative advantage: WAR can activate Featherfoot to reduce damage while PLD's equivalent, Bulwark, would be wholly ineffective. Designing to this individual case is a fool's errand.

Use of Stoneskin is certainly dubious at best. You will not use it at all except in cases where you have free time or in cases where you desperately need more healing. These are not frequent cases, nor are they of particular impact. I believe Stoneskin is best represented a bit differently as an extension of PLD's burst eHP pool.

//EDIT:

Here are some of the cases you would need to consider:

-Single target / 2 target / 3 target / 4 target / 5+ target
-Physical damage vs. Magical damage vs. 50/50
-Vulnerable to Stun, Blind, Silence, Slow, Pacification
-Average opportunities for Stoneskin per minute
-Defense passthrough abilities and debuffs.
-Ground-target frequency and feasibility of dodging

I count at least 5760 charts needed for that. Better to just keep one or two realistic cases, don't you think?

I do agree that you can't take everything into account as it is impossible to cover all cases. I didn't thought of resisting flash -- indeed in this case it is best to let it go (although it can prove non negligible when it works, and i don't know which boss resist it, but titan don't for example and its awesome. Are you certain mobs are immune in coil ?). Now for rage of halone, i think you should try to take it ionto account, even if you have to lowball your guesstimate, as it is probably 3 to 5% more physical reduction (aka alot).

Another one that is HUGE is convalescence. This may be the best CD available to warrior... but pld one is 50% more powerfull. It would create, again, a non-negligible disperancy, and i think you should juste include it, by considering it represents a 1/6th damage reduction for warriors and 3/13th for paladins (20/120 for warriors, 30/130 for paladins). This is easy to integrate (you average over the 2 min of CD as for others) and would be more accurate. 20sec/120 = 1/6, so actually it represents about 2.77% for warriors and 3.84% for paladins, again an additional percent.

Distinguishing physical and magical damage would be interesting -- no need to do 50%, we can see how it would go mor or less with the two extremes. As for stoneskin, well you already have the baseline of 0 stoneskin per minute, but i would love if you could make graphs with 1 and 2 respectively to see how it influence stuff, as these two are quite realistic in most encounters.


Anyway, i really appreciate all your theorycrafting -- its awesome stuff and helps a lot

[Hachiko]

Another one that is HUGE is convalescence. This may be the best CD available to warrior... but pld one is 50% more powerfull. It would create, again, a non-negligible disperancy, and i think you should juste include it, by considering it represents a 1/6th damage reduction for warriors and 3/13th for paladins (20/120 for warriors, 30/130 for paladins). This is easy to integrate (you average over the 2 min of CD as for others) and would be more accurate. 20sec/120 = 1/6, so actually it represents about 2.77% for warriors and 3.84% for paladins, again an additional percent.

People have compared cooldown effectiveness, the thing is there is basically 3 aspects: General mitigation (i.e. Shield Oath), Passive mitigation (i.e. Block, Rage of Halone, Parry) and Cooldown Mitigation.

Comparing all 3 at once is really taxing because of the way it works together, and because honestly we still don't have very good numbers on parry / block rates for lvl 50 mobs.

It's fairly easy to compare all 3 in a vacuum: I.E. Compare Defiance / Inner Beast to Shield Oath, Compare WAR CD's to PLD CD's, and compare Rage of Halone + Block + Parry to Parry (and IMO we should look into the relative crit rates), but combining them all is really a lot of work. IMO It's enough to look at each of them in isolation and identify where the lead lies, and that gives you an estimate.

IIRC Paladin Cooldowns alone are ~30-90% more effective in terms of mitigated damage when compared to Warrior CD's, but this all depends on the incoming DPS. At 600ish DPS it might only be like 25% more effective. At 1500 DPS it's probably more like 90%.

Convalescence is actually significntly better for PLD than WAR because of the way it synergizes with damage reduction. But that's assuming it's additive with Wrath stacks, which I haven't checked. It is something like a 20% difference in healing required when ignoring the other factors. That meaning that a PLD under convalescence will require about 20% less healing than a WAR before you take Rage of Halone and Shield Block into account.

[Gamemako]

I didn't thought of resisting flash -- indeed in this case it is best to let it go (although it can prove non negligible when it works, and i don't know which boss resist it, but titan don't for example and its awesome. Are you certain mobs are immune in coil ?). Now for rage of halone, i think you should try to take it ionto account, even if you have to lowball your guesstimate, as it is probably 3 to 5% more physical reduction (aka alot).

Not all Coil mobs are immune to blind, but neither are all Brayflox mobs vulnerable. It's hard to put a number on any of it. RoH, as you say, is more like a 3-5% reduction, and it's only effective on physical attacks against a single target, so... yeah.

Another one that is HUGE is convalescence.

Hm, I suppose I should include that. The difference actually is very small, but it's the method which is such a killer -- for PLD, it stacks multiplicatively with other bonuses. If you're under Shield Oath + Rampart + Sentinel, you've got an effective 2.6x healing incoming already, and adding Convalesce pushes that up to a whopping 3.4x. This means that it 37-78% effective healing for PLD. As Hachiko pointed out, I should determine whether Convalesce stacks additively or miltiplicatively with Wrath, though. Would require a large sample size to figure that out -- it is a 3% difference at max Wrath stacks.

As for stoneskin, well you already have the baseline of 0 stoneskin per minute, but i would love if you could make graphs with 1 and 2 respectively to see how it influence stuff, as these two are quite realistic in most encounters.

I could, but I feel that it would mostly be a waste of effort. Take the number of casts per minute, multiply by 10 to get HP per second, divide by damage dealt to get percentage. At 1000 DPS, each cast per minute reduces healing load by 1%. In any such situation, you cannot use it more than once -- you just don't have breathing room as you'll get interrupted. You also reduce your DPS and enmity by 5% for each cast per minute -- casting stops autoattacks.

People have compared cooldown effectiveness, the thing is there is basically 3 aspects: General mitigation (i.e. Shield Oath), Passive mitigation (i.e. Block, Rage of Halone, Parry) and Cooldown Mitigation.

I tend to look at it as continuous mitigation, burst mitigation, and total mitigation. Continuous is the passive stuff that you're going to have all the time on everything, like blocking, Shield Oath, etc -- the sum of your General Mitigation and Passive Mitigation. Burst mitigation is what you're calling cooldown mitigation. It's the stuff you use to get out of trouble. The third is the combination of the two, which tells you overall outcomes. This is needed for silly mechanics like losing Wrath to and for comparing unequal methods.

IIRC Paladin Cooldowns alone are ~30-90% more effective in terms of mitigated damage when compared to Warrior CD's, but this all depends on the incoming DPS. At 600ish DPS it might only be like 25% more effective. At 1500 DPS it's probably more like 90%.

Depends on how you look at it. In terms of average burst mitigation, yeah, about 100% at 1500 DPS. In terms of normal burst action over 20 seconds, then again, around 100%. In terms of peak burst action compared to Rampart&Sentinel, around 33%. Once you add in WAR's gimpy continuous mitigation, though, PLD is rolling WAR to the tune of 150%. Really, though, it's not burst mitigation that's the problem at all. That discrepancy would be reduced on the top end if it weren't for the competitive resource for continuous and burst mitigation. You'd be talking 10-15% instead of 100% if they fixed that. I didn't include Convalesce in that estimate, but still, it's insane how badly that mechanic ruins the job.

I don't know if I can make WAR even fully competitive with PLD, but a few small tweaks would do wonders for at least making WAR viable.

[Royze]

Dev (According to Yoshida) actually said "MRD" was OP - not WAR.
And I am finding this statement to be very true as long as you have a PLD as MT, a MRD as an off tank and very big DPS works great.