Not sure why you guys are hung up on me overgearing things. Didn't realize gearing up suddenly deemed me inappropriate to discuss my class. I tanked turns 1-4 in less than full DL. My first run was NQ relic, Hoplite head/body, rest DL. That was plenty to MT Cadaceus, ADS and OT turn 4. Of course that's baseline gear and things go much smoother once you get more, but that's kind of the point in a linear progression MMO. You have 7 months to get full i90, which will again be plenty for the first batch of the next tier of content in 2.2.

I've not forgotten what WAR was like and I acknowledge multiple times in my post that WAR has a higher minimum baseline for gear and that PLDs mitigation scales better in harder hitting stuff (and worse in easier). The thing is that is not a problem in the slightest. Warrior does not need to mitigate exactly as much damage as Paladin. Just as PLD does not need to be able to watch our DPS. The classes only hindrance currently is the communities warped perception of what the class is capable of.

You bring up not having to worry about losing the 20% heal potency, but that was a change to wrath/defiance, not IB. I don't like there being no downside to expending wrath (might aswell just put IB on a 15 sec CD at that point, there's 0 resource management required) but I can live with it. It makes the class easier to play but doesn't adjust the playstyle. The IB change does change it however. We can't burst heal ourselves with 2x IB, we can't post-heal burst to avoid overhealing. PLD mitigates boatloads of damage, Warrior soaked it up and self healed through. Now we just get to mitigate it too. The two tank classes are no longer unique or offer any interesting differences.