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?

[SpookyGhost]

Both have the same eHP.

Inner Beast is to make up for the lack of blocking.

Warrior's damage is higher while tanking than PLD, but it's not by a huge margin or anything.

PLD has access to Hallowed Ground, a cooldown that makes you immune to most damage (read: anything that isn't designed to one shot you regardless) for 10s.

Neither is superior, in 8 man content you want both. In 4 man content it doesn't matter which you choose as they can both get the job done. Who Main Tanks and who Off Tanks depends on the fight.

[Huntington]

Both have the same eHP.

Inner Beast is to make up for the lack of blocking.

Warrior's damage is higher while tanking than PLD, but it's not by a huge margin or anything.

PLD has access to Hallowed Ground, a cooldown that makes you immune to most damage (read: anything that isn't designed to one shot you regardless) for 10s.

Neither is superior, in 8 man content you want both. In 4 man content it doesn't matter which you choose as they can both get the job done. Who Main Tanks and who Off Tanks depends on the fight.

Well yeah, with Defiance up and Thrill of Battle available it can just go much higher.

Doesn't parry matter at all though? I still seem to parry a lot on WAR and that's with a current 539 for it. That still seems pretty decent.


The one downside to Holmgang is that it just prevents you from being killed while HG prevents all damage, that's where it sucks to be a WAR a bit because if you pop Holmgang for a heal there's still a very plausible chance you can die by the time it ends, but with Hallowed Ground you can pop it ahead of time to burn through it's invincibility then hope another cooldown or heals will make it to you shortly.

I have to chalk the rest of that up to difference of opinion, I'm likely never going to use PLD anymore myself.

[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.

[Kitfox]

The tank classes are extremely well balanced and the right answer is to have both of them in a party so you can use the best of both worlds. WAR has IB for nice mitigation on one-shotters, PLD has silence+chainstun, both have debuffs that stack, WAR has good burst, PLD can mitigate with Stoneskin, and so on. There's no superior tank.

[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.

[Ispen]

The only real difference between them is the player which is a good thing lets hope it stays that way in future patches/expansions.