My Opinion on why WAR is the superior Tank.

[Huntington]

After having PLD to 50 before MRD was even past 15, I was happy with my new class for awhile, but then I realized one really crucial thing.

Warrior got patched and updated and a lot of people started using it, I was curious why of course. I knew it had an axe and that's baller, but I knew pretty much nothing else on how it worked. So I started going for levels on MRD and eventually got it to 50 after a week or so.

Much more fun than Paladin was first off, this was a Tanking class I could get behind, and after significant time using it, I think I've found some reasons that it should be the superior of the two tanks.

1. HP
A good WAR will have thousands upon thousands of HP as they get better gear, eventually hitting 10K, this of course where most classes don't go beyond 6K is impressive, and you will awe all of your friends and allies with that hunk of green stuff.

2. Makes your healers feel awesome
Healers have the highest amount of "damage" done in terms of heals, of course BLMs can hit very hard but heals go the range more so than any damage based ability. Being on a WAR with a heal that's crit healing you for upwards of 3K makes them feel like a badass and helps them to try harder so they can see how high their heals can go. There's no better jolly-cooperation than a Tank that needs heals and lets a healer see just how much they can heal for.

3. Damage
I myself have extensively used PLD and WAR by this point, and WAR seems like the obvious answer for which class can do more damage. The highest hit I've done so far on WAR is 966 with an Inner Beast, and that can still go higher, Spirits Within on Paladin has done some high hits before but nothing higher than 600 for me so far. Couple it's damage boosting moves that it has access to like Internal Release and Berserk, and WAR is going to regularly crit more often and do more damage, in addition to lowering the damage of an enemy like PLD, but also being able to increase their own damage with Maim while increasing the damage done to an enemy with Storm's Eye if the class does slashing damage.

4. Wide-Range Enmity control
WAR is very good at maintaining Enmity on multiple targets, admittedly with some Overpower spamming, but Steel Cyclone helps as well if you're going through your rotations at a decent speed and also using Flash from GLD. PLD only has Flash and Circle of Scorn for holding enmity on groups, and MP runs out more quickly than TP often does considering each classes MP total at 50. For WAR I have 777, that's at least 4 more Flashes in addition to all of my other attacks, WAR's damage boosting abilities and ability to temporarily remove the damage penalty from Defiance also assists it in holding enmity, whereas PLD has to have that damage penalty up from Shield Oath if they're going to control several targets well.

There's probably other reasons as well that WAR works better than PLD at the end of the day. I still have to give credit to PLD though, if you know what rotations and order an enemy does it's attacks in, PLD will be much more stable at taking damage than a WAR would be, IB only lasts 6 seconds and Vengeance's damage reduction of 30% is only a 15s duration, Rampart lasts longer than both of these and has the same damage reduction if not more than IB. Couple that with a Strength Down on something from a Halone combo and Sentinel, and you're going to be able to for a short period of time really bunker down and survive something, whereas WAR would just take a few 1000 off the top of that hit like in Twintania tanking for example.

I felt like making this thread so I could see more thoughts and opinions on the matter, here's to hoping that I didn't just blab and some people liked getting a topic on this.
(One more thing, WAR is much more engaging as a Job as well since it can very well play Support for another tank if they're working on one target while not having to worry about stealing enmity like another PLD might, the Maim combos and the Wrath stacks work great for extra DPS if you don't mind leaving Defiance on or off, depending on if you feel like having it up incase you need to snag a target.)

[Kerberon]

One question if someone can answer it. War's have more hp but they're missing out on block. Extra mitigation creates more "effective health" for the PLD. At similar gear levels which one comes out ahead numerically? I'm fairly new and willing to accept most of what the OP says about damage etc. However for me the big thing with tanking is making sure I can take the most amount of damage while needing the least amount of work from the healer. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

[Kitru]

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

PLD has block (30% chance for 25% mitigation or thereabouts but no parry), and WAR has Inner Beast (30% uptime on 20% mitigation and you can still parry), which makes it basically a wash. WAR and PLD have the same eHP (20% DR is the same as 25% +hp as far as eHP is concerned), and PLD has a *tiny* advantage in stance based mean mitigation (20% DR is the equivalent of 25% +healing; WAR has only 20%) but that advantage is offset by the WAR self heals which brings it back in line.

Basically, WAR and PLD are so well balanced right now that it's practically impossible to say definitively that one tank is better than the other without getting into specific content. The only major differences are based around damage (WAR has better damage) and utility (PLD has better utility). There's an argument than PLD is woefully underpowered in the AoE department because, while Flash is balanced as an enmity tool (since it costs MP, it's basically free; Overpower and SC generate more per use, but they're also more expensive so they're not as spammable), PLD has laughably bad AoE damage, but its enmity is alright, which is something that could potentially be addressed.

As to the OP, WAR is actually going to have a more stable incoming damage profile specifically because of IB. IB shouldn't be compared to Rampart or any other part of the PLD CD suite; IB is the WAR response to PLD shield block. Since shield blocking is an RNG mechanism but IB is guaranteed flat DR, (properly played) WAR actually has a much more stable incoming damage profile. Also, you really shouldn't bring up RoH as a major advantage of the PLD. Storm's Path reduces damage by a helluva lot more (10% STR translates into something like 7% less physical damage whereas SP is just straight up 10%) and it applies to magic as well as physical damage.

As to the CD suites, if you only look at the magnitude of the CDs while they're active, of course WAR is going to look rather pitiful; the advantage of the WAR CD suite is that it's got low CDs which translate into higher relative uptimes compared to what PLD gets. If you do the math, the value of the two CD suites, over time, is basically the same. The only reason that some people seem to think that PLD has the "better" CD suite (other than HG being *way* better than Holmgang as an uber CD) is that they assume that they'll follow a similar use paradigm. A WAR should be actively using their CDs, actively trying to keep them on CD and staggering them; PLDs are best served by holding back and only using them in emergency/high risk situations because, if they start using them actively, they're not likely to have a CD up when they hit an emergency. WAR CDs are low enough that, unless you're popping them simultaneously, you'll almost always have at least 1 at your disposal so the "risk" of not having one when you really need it is negligible (especially since, if you're using them proactively, you'll often preempt the emergency).

[Huntington]

Glad I got a reply from you Kitru, was expecting one.

[Kerberon]

PLD has block (30% chance for 25% mitigation or thereabouts but no parry)

I didn't realize that PLD didn't get anything from parry. Parry has been on all my low level tank gear as a GLD and I assumed it did something for me. =(


edit*

He means paladins don't have the ability to parry if they block. You can't Parry an already blocked attack.

Ah thank you, that makes much more sense and works like I thought it did. Replying this way since I'm still locked to just a couple posts per day to ask questions.

[ZDamned]

I didn't realize that PLD didn't get anything from parry. Parry has been on all my low level tank gear as a GLD and I assumed it did something for me. =(

He means paladins don't have the ability to parry if they block. You can't Parry an already blocked attack.

[Kitfox]

IB is the WAR response to PLD shield block.

I've heard you say this on a number of threads and I'm kinda curious what makes you think this way. From limited numbers between me and my friend, PLD's parry+block rate seems to equal WAR's parry rate, at least to the degree that they're comparable. Just glancing over something I got from running brayflox HM: as PLD I was getting around 8% parry and 17% block, give or take RNG, while I heard from my raid tank doing some parry testing that he was getting around 25% parry rate. From this I'm assuming blocks are calculated before parry, and since you can't parry and block at the same time PLD's get a significantly lower parry rate.

Maybe I'm missing something really obvious here, but I don't really see how PLD's block provides any kind of advantage over WAR's parry.

[Kitru]

Maybe I'm missing something really obvious here, but I don't really see how PLD's block provides any kind of advantage over WAR's parry.

In all of the testing I've done, PLD has a significantly better chance to Block or Parry than a WAR has to simply Parry (to determine whether it's absolute parity for Parry, all you'd need to do is take the shield off of a PLD and make sure neither axe nor sword has any parry on it; if the numbers are not significantly different, it's identical), and Blocks are always bigger than Parries (in the same gear except for MH/OH, my WAR parries for 24% whereas my PLD with the Onion Shield blocks for 26%). I actually considered that WAR might have a higher natural Parry chance than PLD, but I've seen absolutely no evidence for this (and I've yet to see anyone else actually put up numbers to support it either).

[Inosaska]

I actually considered that WAR might have a higher natural Parry chance than WAR

LOL Well that some damn nice logic going on here (Btw just poking fun Kitru <3)

[Menae]

I've heard you say this on a number of threads and I'm kinda curious what makes you think this way. From limited numbers between me and my friend, PLD's parry+block rate seems to equal WAR's parry rate, at least to the degree that they're comparable. Just glancing over something I got from running brayflox HM: as PLD I was getting around 8% parry and 17% block, give or take RNG, while I heard from my raid tank doing some parry testing that he was getting around 25% parry rate. From this I'm assuming blocks are calculated before parry, and since you can't parry and block at the same time PLD's get a significantly lower parry rate.

Maybe I'm missing something really obvious here, but I don't really see how PLD's block provides any kind of advantage over WAR's parry.

What are your respective parry numbers? What was he testing parry on? Need a little more hard info before I'm going to reject the hypothesis that both classes get x% parry from y parry.